German Catholic Church To Compensate Sex Abuse Victims

Tag: germany

RTT News-Germany's Catholic Church has decided to compensate those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of members of the Catholic clergy, the country's most senior bishop said Thursday.

"We are ready to get involved financially, in the sense of paying for therapy and also as an admission" Robert Zollitsch, the Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, said at a news conference on Thursday.

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Stressing that the decision was aimed at "helping victims overcome their fate as victims," Zollitsch said the total amount of compensation was yet to be determined. He added that further details would be announced next week after a meeting between representatives of the government, Church and welfare officials.

"The number of victims who so far asked for financial compensation is very low. That can change once it is known that there is a kind of financial recognition or assistance," he said at the news conference held after a meeting of the heads of Germany's 27 dioceses in the central city of Fulda.

In March earlier this year, Bishop Zollitsch had held a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican to discuss a child sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in Germany.

After the meeting, Bishop Zollitsch said that the pope had encouraged him to press forward with the "decisive and courageous" decision to implement tough new measures to prevent such abuses from repeating themselves in his home country.

At that time, Bishop Zollitsch said Germany's Catholic Church would launch an investigation into the allegations of child abuse by priests and offer counseling to the victims. He also pledged to implement several measures to prevent such cases from happening again.

The development comes after over 100 allegations of sexual abuse of children at Catholic institutions in Germany were reported in recent months. The allegations emerged after a Jesuit school in Berlin admitted that two priests had carried out systematic sexual abuse of pupils during the 1970s and 1980s.

In addition to the German Catholic Church, the Catholic Churches in the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland and the United States have been damaged by sexual abuse scandals in recent weeks, prompting many of them to launch independent probes in sex-abuse claims.

Earlier this year, the Vatican had said that the Church authorities in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and other countries had acted "decisively" by launching independent investigations into allegations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

The scandal has already forced several bishops in Ireland, Belgium and Germany to step down. Though the Vatican has said it plans to take steps towards bringing clerical abusers to justice, it is yet to disclose details of the measures planned to tackle the crisis.

By RTT Staff Writer

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