German bishop says he did not expect so many sexual abuse cases

German bishop surprised at number of abuse cases

BERLIN — The Roman Catholic bishops in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Bavaria sought Tuesday to deal with a sexual abuse scandal whose ever-widening scope has left church leaders baffled.

“I would not have expected such a multitude of cases,” Bavarian Bishop Ludwig Schick, who is hosting his colleagues’ meeting at Vierzehnheiligen, told Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio.

He said he was shaken and ashamed of what had taken place within the church.

“It is bitter and it is hard, but it has to be dealt with,” Schick said. “This festering blister needs to be opened up and dried out in order for it to heal.”

In Bavaria alone, more than 100 former students of Catholic institutions have come forward with claims of physical or sexual abuse.

Some of those cases involve the prestigious Regensburg Domspatzen boys choir once led by the pope’s older brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger.

In Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin declared Tuesday that his Catholic colleagues in Ireland must tell “the entire truth” about their decades of covering up child abuse in the priesthood — or else the Irish government may have to broaden its own investigations.

Martin, the second-highest-ranking Catholic in Ireland, has demanded greater honesty and openness over the church’s longtime refusal to tell police about pedophile priests being transferred from parish to parish, school to school.

He declined Tuesday to call for the resignation of his superior, Cardinal Sean Brady, who acknowledges he never told police about victims’ statements that he collected against notorious pedophile priest Brendan Smyth in 1975.

In Rome, the Vatican’s No. 2 official brushed off any suggestion that rank-and-file Catholics were losing faith in their church as an institution.

“The church still has the great trust on the part of the faithful,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See’s secretary of state and a close aide to Benedict, told reporters in the Italian capital. “It’s just that someone is trying to undermine this trust, but the church has on its side a special help from high,” the Italian prelate said with a slight smile.

Schick reiterated his belief that the statute of limitations on abuse cases — currently 10 years from the time victims turned 18 — should be lengthened.

There is a debate brewing in Germany on whether extending the limitations would enable a clearer accounting of the abuse claims, which now number some 300 across the country of 82 million.

As it stands, a victim would have to contact investigators within 10 years of their 18th birthday to trigger criminal proceedings; to claim damages in civil proceedings a victim typically has only three years.

“I would hope that the courts could deal with such criminal acts even if they happened long ago,” Schick told a church-operated Web site that posted an audio clip of the interview. “It is important for the debate to return to rationality and the courts could contribute to that.”

While the federal government has said it wants to extend the statute of limitations for civil proceedings, it is unclear if the timeframe for criminal proceedings will also be changed.

Joerg-Uwe Hahn, the justice minister for the German state of Hesse, said this week he opposed the idea of extensions. Instead he called for a “culture of watching out and of open dialogue.”

Hahn said that since 2000, 54 cases of sexual abuse by teachers, priests and recreational club staffers have been investigated in the state. In contrast, there were 3,832 abuse cases in Hesse in 2008 that did not involve churches, a clear sign that most abuse cases occur in families.

Schick said that about 80 percent of Germany’s 15,000 registered cases of abuse happen in families while the other 20 percent come from schools, sports clubs and youth groups.

“Each institution, above all the church, needs to do everything in their realm to clear up abuse,” he said. “No institution should be left on its own. In each case external experts should be contacted.”