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Peter H. lives again in Essen. He was once a chaplain there. It all started there. His move from Munich to the Ruhr area is the result of tough negotiations: the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising wanted to get rid of the 72-year-old, the Diocese of Essen was reluctant to take over. H. is under constant observation, it is said in Essen. His pension has been reduced. We have the man under control, is the message.
H. is a symbolic case in the abuse scandal of the Catholic Church. In 1980 he arrived in Munich from Essen. The parents accused him of abusing their children; in Munich he should be in therapy. The archbishop was named Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. In Munich, H. was reinstated as pastor. He sexually abused children and received a suspended sentence. He became a pastor and did other works.
What did Archbishop Ratzinger know about it? When the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Germany became apparent ten years ago, it was even for them New York Times Interesting. At that time it was said in the Munich ordinariate that Ratzinger knew nothing about the process. It will not be possible to clarify whether this is so.
But an explosive internal church document that Southgerman’s newspaper he could see, it shows how the church leadership up to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith protected the violent priest, saved him from punishment and left his victims alone. And how he still finds it difficult to punish H. It shows how little the responsibility of cardinals, bishops, vicars general and directors of personnel in the abuse scandal has been addressed so far.
It gives an idea of the painful process that the Catholic Church still has to go through when the archives of many dioceses are looted again: Who knew of the facts and kept silent? Two cardinals are involved in the case of the priest H., the late Cardinal of Essen Franz Hengsbach and the retired Cardinal Friedrich Wetter in Munich. And Benedict XVI, the Pope Emeritus.
The document is an “extrajudicial decree” drawn up by the Ecclesiastical Court of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising on behalf of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is dated May 9, 2016; Prelate Lorenz Wolf, an Archdiocese official and head of the Catholic office in Bavaria, wrote it in charge.
The decree states: Peter H. has been guilty of moderate sexual abuse in five cases for sleeping naked with minors in a bed and thus becoming sexually aroused. He was guilty of a misdemeanor in two other cases by displaying boy pornography.
H. has to pay three months’ salary to the “Tabaluga” children’s foundation. You are no longer allowed to call yourself a “retired pastor.” But: he is still a priest of the Catholic Church.
Two dozen cases are not included in the verdict because no proceedings were initiated or evidence was lacking. It can be called a severe punishment when a pastor loses his title and has to live under supervision on a permanently reduced pension. But it can also be mild if H. continues to receive a church pension and apartment and pays an affordable three-month wage penalty.
In the dioceses of Munich and Essen, some see it that way and are shocked by how a criminal was treated in 2016. Thus the information about the decree reached the SZ.
The documents are in catastrophic condition.
In 2010, at the first high point of the scandal, the Archbishop of Munich Reinhard Marx and the Bishop of Essen Franz-Josef Overbeck, both new in office, want to remove H. from the priesthood. However, he refuses to request laicization on his own initiative. He sees himself as the victim of a media campaign. The case goes to Rome, to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He rejects the request of the two bishops.
In 2014 he only agreed to a so-called extrajudicial procedure by administrative means. A church court can only evaluate the existing results of the church’s preliminary investigations and not investigate it itself. The documents are in catastrophic condition. They are mostly incomplete, ornate, reflect the perspective of the accused priests and rarely that of those affected. From the beginning, there are narrow limits to education.
Nonetheless, Prelate Wolf, a longtime church judge, takes on the task. For two years he meticulously examined the documents; the decree was over 40 pages long. Despite all the loopholes, it shows: the way those responsible deal with H. is a total catastrophe.
1979 in Essen, the prosecution was not reported. H. tells a therapist about new sexual contacts with minors and that he had to spend a night in police custody due to masturbating on the playground.
The only consequence: H. is supposed to undergo therapy with Professor Werner Huth in Munich. In Munich, despite his previous record, he was soon employed as a chaplain.
In 1984 ten young men accused him of sexual assault. This time the parents appear before the chaplain and the trial begins. In June 1986, H. was sentenced to a suspended sentence of 18 months. One is relieved at the Munich Ordinariate. It could have been worse.
The internal criminal procedure prescribed by the church is waived. A report from the psychologist Huth describes H. as a narcissist who enjoys being admired but is not interested in real relationships. H. says he drowned his inner emptiness in alcohol. Find the therapy humiliating. A commitment to youth work is unthinkable, judges Huth.
But already in 1987, H. became the parish administrator of Garching an der Alz, and since 1989 he directed the parish. The congregation knows nothing and is happy: finally a pastor who takes care of the acolytes. For more than a decade, H. is considered a charismatic pastor. When there were rumors in 2002, only the order came from Munich that H. should no longer give religious instruction.
Even when a man reports to the Diocese of Essen and says that H. once committed sexual violence, nothing happens. And nothing happens when in 2006 and 2008 emails appear whose sender claims to have been abused by HH sees himself blackmailed, the prelate Wolf, who will later take over the process against H., forwards the emails to the prosecutor’s office public, due to a blackmail attempt.
The bishops’ conference has long had guidelines stipulating that priests who have committed sexual violence against minors can no longer work in the community. But in 2008 the Archdiocese transferred H. to Bad Tölz as course chaplain, he should stay away from children and young people. It was only when the cases at Berlin’s Canisius College sparked the big scandal in 2010 that he was hastily put into temporary retirement.
Because there are new accusations against him. One man says the pastor encouraged him and a friend to view pornography during their time in Garching. Another said H. demanded sexual acts as a kind of indulgence for confessed sins. H. admits that with porn. He vehemently denies confessional history.
How does the Church Court evaluate these allegations in 2016 and the failure of superiors, including Cardinals Hengsbach, Ratzinger and Wetter? The decree judges them severely. By 1986, at the latest, there should have been a trial in the church against H. As a result, however, this criticism is helpful to H .: Had he gone unpunished at that time, he now could not be held responsible.
You can see how suspicious the decree of the possible victims is. In one case, Wolf speculates that a therapist convinced a patient of a history of abuse. It is not about the possible victims. It is about whether H. broke his promise of chastity and how he did it.
Cardinal Marx of Munich and his vicar general at the time, Peter Beer, are said to have been angry about the decree in 2016. Neither Marx nor Beer want to comment: Beer is now a professor at the Vatican Center for the Protection of Children in Rome. .
However, there is an expert opinion prepared on behalf of the Ordinariate by the Westpfahl law firm, which investigated abuse in the Archdiocese in 2010. It suggests dissatisfaction. He accuses the authors of the decree of disabling possible victims. It is unprofessional to simply assume that a therapist has told the story to a witness. Nobody wondered if the process was not fundamentally inadequate for establishing the truth?
H. still sees himself as a victim
Ask the Prelate Wolf. He is an independent ecclesiastical judge, he emphasizes, “I am not available for symbolic politics.” H. had not “turned out well, as they say: he has lost his job and his reputation, he lives under control with a reduced pension.” Had he been released from the clergy, he would have had to be insured with the pension fund, Wolf says. “Today I could do whatever I wanted with a full pension. Would it be better, fairer?”
Was he, Wolf, too suspicious of the victims, should he have questioned them again? “We were not allowed,” he says. Shouldn’t he then have refused to take over the proceedings? The prelate shrugs: “Then someone else would have done it.” Perhaps, he says, canon law is reaching its limits here.
It’s reaching its limits, says Thomas Schüller, a canon law professor at Münster. If you think inside the system, you can hardly blame Wolf. The problem is the type of procedure, without the ability to do your own research. “In this way the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith protects two cardinals and the Pope emeritus,” says Schüller.
In Munich, bishopric spokesman Bernhard Kellner says the archdiocese is having all files of possible perpetrators re-examined, especially regarding the question of where those responsible failed. Depressing results can be expected. Even with new conflicts. The Archdiocese of Cologne had to cancel the idea of an investigative report because former leaders threatened to sue.
H. himself tells the diocese of Essen that he is not interested in a conversation. It is said that he still sees himself as a victim.
