The 75 priests and lay Catholics who make up the parish council met just days after the conclusion of an apostolic visitation of the archdiocese.

The Vatican investigation of the largest archdiocese in Germany had been ordered by Pope Francis.

The meeting also followed a demonstration by a group of Catholics who walked from their parish some 30 km to demand that the cardinal resign.

The cause of the tension relates to Cardinal Woelki's refusal to publish an independent report on sex abuse in the archdiocese.

He had previously vowed to make the report public.

The 64-year-old cardinal set up a victims' council and commissioned a law firm to write up the report. But at a meeting with the council in October 2020, he backtracked and said he would not allow the report to be published.

Patrick Bauer, one of the council's members, said it was a "terrible meeting" that left the victims feeling betrayed.

To show his disappointment, he resigned from the victims' council. Soon others followed.

The cardinal then commissioned a second report, which was published last March.

But this has done nothing to ease tensions.

"All the people mentioned in the second report were mentioned in the first," said Bauer, who had access to both files.

"The only difference is that the first report looked at the systemic dimension of the abuse and its cover-up. The second one only looked at individual cases," said another person who also saw both documents.

Many argue that this is the real reason why Woelki decided to publish only the second report.

The ongoing crisis surrounding Cardinal Woelki comes when the Catholic church in Cologne sees members leaving in large numbers.

Discontent is largely fuelled by paedophilia scandals. But, many German Catholics are also demanding radical changes for a more inclusive church.

In Cologne's administrative court is an office where dozens of people come every day to officially leave the Catholic church.

Followers of all faiths in Germany are required to pay a tax to finance the religious institutions they belong to. This is registered by tax authorities.

The demand to leave the Catholic Church is so high, that the deregistration office has increased the number of appointments it offers from 600 to 1800 a month.

In defiance of Vatican doctrine, the blessing of homosexual unions is one of the expressions of a growing reform movement in Germany.

There is also a growing demand for equal rights for women in the church.

In the light of growing discontent within its institutions, the bishops' conference and the central committee of German Catholics are exploring ways to reform the church. In 2019, they launched a vast debate referred to as the 'Synodal Path'. Their conclusions are due in 2022.

The winds of change are blowing through the Catholic church in Germany.

That's why there is a campaign for reform and also for more plurality in the Church. Followers want more openness, and all believers want to stop more people leaving.

Only the future can tell whether these reforms will come to fruition.

Sources

La Croix International

EuroNews

The archdiocese said that the pope's apostolic visitors would evaluate "possible mistakes" made by its leader, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.

"During the first half of June, the Holy See's envoys will visit the archdiocese to get a comprehensive picture of the complex pastoral situation in the archdiocese," the statement said.

It added that the visitors would also examine possible errors committed by Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, who was Cologne archdiocese's vicar general from 2012 to 2015, and the Cologne auxiliaries Bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp and Bishop Ansgar Puff.

Woelki welcomed the apostolic visitation saying, "I welcome the fact that with the apostolic visitation the pope wants to get his own picture of the independent investigation and its consequences."

The apostolic visitors will be Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm and Bishop Johannes van den Hende of Rotterdam, president of the Dutch bishops' conference, reported CNA Deutsch.

"I will support Cardinal Arborelius and Bishop van den Hende in their work with full conviction. I welcome every measure that will help to ensure accountability."

The 64-year-old cardinal announced in December 2020 that he had asked Pope Francis to review the decisions he took regarding an accused priest 'Pastor O' in 2015.

Woeki, who was appointed archbishop of Cologne in 2014, has faced calls to resign since the archdiocese controversially declined to publish a report by the Munich law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl.

In January 2019, the archdiocese commissioned the law firm to examine relevant personnel files from 1975 onwards. Their brief was to determine "which personal, systemic or structural deficits were responsible in the past for incidents of sexual abuse being covered up or not being punished consistently."

Lawyers advising the archdiocese raised concerns about "methodological deficiencies" in the law firm's study. Woelki then commissioned Cologne-based criminal law expert Professor Björn Gercke to write a new report.

The Gercke document, more than 800 pages in length, covers the period from 1975 to 2018 with the goal of identifying any legal missteps or violations, as well as those responsible.

Specifically, the Report refers to 314 victims of sexual abuse, all but one of them minors, and 202 aggressors, nearly two-thirds of whom are clergy.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

Vatican news

The Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, Ranier Maria Woelki, also took action against two subordinates in the wake of a damning report on the church's mishandling of sexual abuse allegations.

Auxiliary Bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp and chancery official Fr Günter Assenmacher, both senior officials in the archdiocesan curia, have been suspended.

The 800-page report was prepared by the highly respected criminal lawyer Björn Gercke.

The report was commissioned by Woelki after archdiocesan legal counsel discovered "methodological deficiencies" in an earlier review.

Controversially, Cardinal Woelki decided not to release that report to the public.

Prof. Gercke's report details "a systematic coverup" in handling allegations of abuse between 1975 and 2018.

The report found more than 200 wrongdoers and more than 300 victims. Most of the victims were boys under the age of 14.

Roughly half the allegations pertained to sexual abuse of different kinds and gravity. The rest fell under the category of "boundary violation" or other misconduct of a sexual nature.

Archbishop Hesse, who became the country's youngest bishop in 2015, is one of two identified in the report as having mishandled cases. The other is Cardinal Woelki's predecessor, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died in 2017.

Meisner reportedly failed to do his duty in 24 cases, while Hesse failed in 11 cases. The failings are described as failing to follow up on or report cases of abuse, not sanctioning perpetrators or not caring for victims.

Hesse posted a video statement in which he conceded that he had made "mistakes" in the past. He said he very much regretted if he caused new suffering to victims or their relatives "through my action or omission."

"I never participated in cover-ups," he said. "I am nevertheless prepared to carry my part of the responsibility for the failure of the system."

"To prevent damage to the office of the archbishop and to the Hamburg archdiocese, I am offering my resignation to Pope Francis, and I am asking him to relieve me of my duties immediately," he said.

There was no immediate comment from the Vatican, and it was unlikely Francis would act quickly on Hesse's offer. At 54 years old, Hesse is more than 20 years away from the normal retirement age for bishops.

"As of today, it is no longer possible to say we had no idea," Cardinal Woelki told reporters at a news conference following the release of the report.

"I am deeply moved and shamed by this. Still, I am convinced that for clerics, their actions must have consequences."

Prosecutors in Cologne are to review the report, which does not contain allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Cardinal Woelki said a copy would also go to the Vatican.

Woelki has rejected increasingly intense calls for his resignation and asked the Vatican to review his handling of one case. He said he will announce further steps regarding personnel next week.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• AP News
• Daily Herald

He offered his opinion at Katholikentag, a Muenster-based conference drawing tens of thousands of Catholics from German-speaking Europe.

"Let us seek ways of expressing the common Christian faith by sharing in the Last Supper and Communion. I am sure thousands of Christians in interdenominational marriages are hoping for this."

Steinmeier said he was speaking "not as Federal President, but as an avowed Evangelical Christian who lives in an interdenominational marriage."

His views followed last week's Vatican direction to German bishops to come to an agreement among themselves about whether Protestants married to Catholics may receive Communion under certain circumstances.

While most of the German bishops' conference supported the sharing of communion, seven said it violated Church teaching.

The issue dominated the Katholikentag conference.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is the president of the German bishops' conference and the main proponent of the plan, echoed Steinmeier's words.

"When someone is hungry and has faith, they must have access to the Eucharist. That must be our passion, and I will not let up on this," he said.

He says Protestant spouses of Catholics "in individual cases" and "under certain conditions" may receive Holy Communion, provided they "affirm the Catholic faith in the Eucharist."

One celebrity who spoke at the conference was Protestant German comedian, Eckart von Hirschhausen.

He demanded to be "handed that wafer" because, since he is married to a Catholic, he pays Church tax.

"I don't see the point of a public debate about wafers," he said, referring to the Blessed Sacrament. In his view, climate change is a far more serious issue.

He later apologised for his comments.

Cardinal Rainer Woelki disagreed. "As a Catholic, I would never speak of a wafer," he said.

"Using this concept alone demonstrates that we have a very different understanding" of the Blessed Sacrament, in which "Catholics encounter Christ Himself."

Woelki called for all parties to "consider and recognise that the Eucharist is ordered to the unity of the creed."

Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg criticised the tone of the conference, saying it was in danger of being "intrumentalised" by supporters of the proposal.

Public pressure that does not appreciate the depth of the doctrinal issues at stake is very unhelpful, he said.

In his view, the intercommunion debate in Germany is a matter of doctrine that requires the unanimity of the universal Church if it is to proceed.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• National Catholic Register
• Catholic Citizens of Ilinois
• Image: Deutschlandfunk