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	Germany Plans Ombudsman on Church Sex Abuse, Source Say - Summary Earth Times March 22, 2010 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/315302,germany-plans-ombudsman-on-church-sex-abuse-source-say--summary.html Berlin - Germany's government has agreed internally to appoint a special ombudsman to review allegations that children were sexually abused in church institutions, sources in Berlin said Monday. The independent commissioner with investigative powers would also make recommendations on how to compensate victims for attacks by paedophiles and sadists over the past half century at Catholic, Lutheran and non-religious boarding schools and in churches. More than 200 Germans say they were molested as children by Catholic church priests, nuns and other staff. In the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI, 26 million people are officially Catholic. The sources said a high-level meeting of the parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government had agreed on the plan, but had not yet nominated the person to become ombudsman. At the same time, three main government ministries will jointly confer with the churches on the crisis, beginning April 23. The plans are to be discussed at a cabinet meeting chaired by Merkel on Wednesday. Merkel, meanwhile, welcomed a letter of remorse from the pope to Irish Catholics after revelations of extensive sex abuse and sadism in church institutions. Merkel spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said: "The chancellor is glad the pope has frankly raised both the issues of making up for past wrongs and the need for better prevention in the future." The allegations, mostly involving molestation between the 1950s and 1970s, have brought attacks on the Catholic Church over its weak investigation of the cases at the time and failure to keep offenders away from children. The pope's letter to Irish Catholics on Saturday did not refer to allegations in other nations. The Catholic Church in one German region, Bavaria, responded to the crisis last week by ordering that all sexual advances on children must be reported to the police, however minor and whenever they happened. Other bishops have resisted changes in their guidelines, which only require cases to be reported to police if there is clear proof and if the passage of time would still allow prosecution. Wilhelm said Merkel welcomed the move by the Bavarian church. Bavaria is the home region of the pope, who, as archbishop of Munich and Freising, led the Bavarian church at the time when a convicted child molester was allowed to work in the diocese as a priest. "The victims, and society as a whole, require frankness and truth," said Wilhelm. The sex allegations have also shaken Germany's Lutheran church and non-religious groups. The Bavarian Lutheran Church said it was re-opening inquiries into evidence that two ministers raped girls while they were being given religious guidance, in one case in the 1960s and the other in the 1980s. It had not report the cases to police. At the Odenwald School, a liberal secular boarding school in southern Germany, most of the board of management resigned Monday after 33 ex-pupils said they had been molested by teachers.
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