Big Pond News http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2010/06/03/German_archbishop_in_sex_abuse_inquiry_469136.html
Thursday, June 03, 2010 » 05:03am
Proscutors say they are probing Germany’s top archbishop on suspicion of abetting child abuse, in the case of a man who said he was molested with the clergyman’s knowledge in the 1960s.
German Episcopal Conference chief Robert Zollisch was being investigated for allegedly turning a blind eye to the abuse by a priest, public prosecutor Wolfgang Maier said on Wednesday in the southern city of Freiburg.
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Prosecutors Investigating Robert Zollitsch, Top Archbishop In Germany
Huffington News
02 June 2010
JUERGEN BAETZ | 06/ 2/10 01:28 PM |
BERLIN — German prosecutors are investigating allegations that the country’s top Roman Catholic cleric was responsible in the 1980s for hiring a priest known to have sexually abused minors, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The investigation of Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch is based solely on a complaint by a person who claims to have been abused, and the allegations haven’t yet been scrutinized, Prosecutor Wolfgang Maier said.
Zollitsch also heads the German Bishops Conference. Archdiocese spokesman Robert Eberle rejected as baseless the allegation that he was an accessory to abuse of minors by omission.
“The archdiocese is in contact with prosecutors in Freiburg to swiftly prove the allegations’ complete lack of substance,” Eberle said.
The complaint alleges that, in 1987, Zollitsch – then in charge of human resources at the Freiburg diocese – was responsible for hiring a priest known to have sexually abused minors.
The archdiocese, however, says allegations of abuse dating back to the 1960s by the priest at a church in Birnau only surfaced in 2006.
Eberle added that the church belongs to the Cistercian monastery of Mehrerau and therefore doesn’t fall under the archdiocese’s jurisdiction. The entire responsibility for the monastery – including recruitment – lies with its abbot and not the archdiocese, he said.
The fact that the complaint was handed over to prosecutors and local newspapers at the same time suggests the complainant wanted to damage the archbishop’s reputation with a media stunt, linking him to the “sensationalist allegation of accessory to sexual abuse,” Eberle asserted.
The archdiocese says it informed the Cistercians when it first learned of the allegations against the priest in 2006.