EThe Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hess, read in a letter that the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki, wrote to him on April 1, 2019 that questions might arise regarding this case. The reason for this was an opinion by a renowned canon lawyer on the question of whether Hesse and others had breached their duty in 2011 to report a suspected case of abuse to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The judgment of the Innsbruck canonist Wilhelm Rees was clear: the case should have been reported to Rome. In addition, there had been “violations of applicable church legislation on the part of those responsible in the Archdiocese of Cologne”.
Woelki himself did not want to confront the former head of the pastoral staff department in 2019. This was to be done by the Munich lawyers at the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm, which he commissioned in 2018 to draw up an expert opinion on how those responsible should deal with cases of abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne. This happened without the public ever knowing anything regarding the results of the interrogations. Because when Hess and other diocese officials suspected that they would hardly get off well in the report, they put Woelki under such pressure with the help of well-known legal advisers that he sealed the Munich report (and keeps it to this day).
violation of the duty to inform
But Hesse did not come off well in the replacement report either. The Cologne criminal defense lawyer Gercke stated that there had been a breach of the duty to provide information if the Cologne human resources managers had to assume in 2011, following examining the files of the public prosecutor’s office, that there had been serious sexual abuse of minors. However, Hesse failed to take minutes of the confrontational talks with the accused priest (who “told everything here”) at the end of October 2010. Gercke did not want to recognize other transgressions, although the guidelines of the bishops’ conference from 2002 also stipulated that contact should be made with those affected (“The care of the church applies first to the victim”) and accused of a “differentiated diagnostic clarification” with regard to pedo – or would have to be subjected to ephebophilia.
But now it’s up to Christoph Kaufmann to ask Hess a question or two. As the first incumbent bishop in Germany, he has to testify as a witness in abuse proceedings once morest a priest. The allegations of serious sexual abuse that three nieces made once morest their uncle in 2010 are not time-barred. At that time, the public prosecutor’s office had to stop the investigation because those affected had exercised their right to refuse to give evidence due to pressure from within their families. In 2019, they revived the charges – which led to a subpoena for Hesse to testify on Tuesday, January 18, 2021 in Room 142 of the Cologne Regional Court.
.
