German minister cites Vatican secrecy as factor in “wall of silence” over abuse

German minister critical of Vatican rule on abuse

BERLIN — Germany’s justice minister said Monday that a Vatican secrecy rule has played a role in a “wall of silence” surrounding sexual abuse of children.

The Vatican says it wouldn’t comment on the criticism from Germany, the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI. Later Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the German church’s effort to respond to a spate of abuse allegations.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger cited a 2001 Vatican directive requiring even the most serious abuse cases to be first investigated internally.

Scandals over sexual abuse by Catholic clergy of minors and cover-ups by church hierarchy have exploded worldwide in the last two decades, including in recent weeks in Germany and the Netherlands.

Benedict has a meeting scheduled this week with the head of Germany’s bishops conference.

Recent events in Germany have shown “that there was a wall of silence here in many schools and facilities” that prevented information on abuse and violence getting through to judicial authorities, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told Deutschlandfunk radio.

In the case of abuse at Catholic schools, one factor is the 2001 directive from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “that even such serious abuse cases are first subject to papal confidentiality and are not supposed to be divulged outside the church,” the minister said.

That directive was promulgated by the late John Paul II, whose papacy was overshadowed by allegations Vatican officials failed to confront the abuse aggressively.

The German minister was critical that the directive calls for initial internal investigations and doesn’t make clear prosecutors should be brought in “as soon as possible.”

For years, the minister has also been honorary chairman of an association fighting sexual abuse of children and providing victims with support.

The Vatican has said it backs German diocesan efforts to look into the “painful question” of sexual abuse “in a decisive and open way.”

Merkel told foreign reporters that the German church has taken “very, very important steps which indicate that the Catholic Church is confronting this problem very seriously.”

She cited an apology last month by Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, and the church’s readiness to rework its guidelines on abuse.

Merkel’s ministers for education and families said they plan “round table” meetings involving school, church and other representatives to work on ways of detecting, preventing and dealing with future abuse. The first meeting is set for April 23.

Abuse cases have also surfaced recently in at least one non-church school in Germany.

In the Netherlands, Rotterdam Bishop Ad van Luyn has apologized to victims and called for an independent investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests after 200 alleged victims contacted help services last week. What started as allegations of repeated incidents within a single cloister last month has quickly spread.