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	German Bishop Denies Allegation of Sex Abuse - Summary Earth Times May 7, 2010 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/322527,german-bishop-denies-allegation-of-sex-abuse--summary.html Augsburg, Germany - German police are investigating sex- abuse allegations against a controversial Catholic bishop who handed in his resignation last month, officials said Friday. Walter Mixa, 68, who is on leave while the Vatican considers whether to let him go as bishop of Augsburg, denied the allegations. Catholic officials were reported to have called police over the claims that Mixa breached rules on sexual contact by church employees with minors, but it remained unclear what he is supposed to have done or who he did it to. Mixa's lawyer, Gerhard Decker, told a newspaper, the Augsburger Allgemeine, "My client utterly denies the allegations being made against him and will cooperate with prosecutors to the utmost to bring this case to a clear close." The claims, after weeks of revelations of paedophile attacks on children by junior clergy, are a bombshell for the church. A feisty conservative with a commanding tone, Mixa is the first of Germany's 27 Catholic bishops to face sex allegations. Bishops, who report direct to the pope, are the upper rank of Catholic clergy. Last month Mixa offered to resign as bishop of Augsburg after admitting that he had slapped teenagers' faces 20 to 30 years ago. A spokeswoman for the justice ministry of the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria confirmed that prosecutors in the city of Ingolstadt were conducting a preliminary inquiry. The newspaper said it was connected to Mixa's term from 1996 to 2005 as bishop of Eichstaett, a rural diocese in northern Bavaria. A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Augsburg said, "The diocese has passed on information and made a complaint to the appropriate authorities in accordance with the guidelines of the German Bishops' Conference." Mixa's lawyer said he would ask police to show him the evidence. The diocese, where senior clergy seemed shocked and demoralized Friday, declined comment on reports that Mixa was staying in Switzerland. The Bishops' Conference in Bonn said it had no comment to make. Under German law, a preliminary investigation can only lead to a full-scale prosecutors' inquiry if compelling evidence can be found. Mixa offered on April 21 to resign, but Pope Benedict XVI has not responded yet, despite Germany's most senior bishops meeting with him last month at the Vatican to discuss the Mixa crisis. Mixa's troubles began began when half a dozen former residents of a Catholic orphanage in the town of Schrobenhausen gave affidavits that Mixa hit them with a fist, cane, carpet beater or the palm of his hand while he was town parish priest from 1975 to 1996. After commissioning an investigation, the orphanage apologized to the former orphans for Mixa's acts. The investigator also discovered financial irregularities, with unexplained spending from orphanage funds on fine wine, expensive art, a tanning bed and furniture. Since the scandal, the church has moved to a policy of openness, publicizing allegations of sexual abuse or violence by church staff. Mixa's two-week denial of the allegations, followed by a grudging admission, made his position untenable. Other bishops publicly told Mixa, who is also Germany's senior Catholic military chaplain, to take leave. A gifted communicator, he had previously been popular among conservative Catholics because of his anti-abortion and pro-family campaigns. He once outraged many Germans by saying there were similarities between large-scale abortion and the Holocaust. Bishops in Europe have been mainly blamed for covering up paedophile offences by priests in their care, not for offending themselves. One of the few to resign over his own misdeeds was the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Wilhelm Grooer, who had to step down as archbishop of Vienna, Austria in 1995 after evidence he had forced many boys to have sex with him. A liberal Catholic group, We are the Church, appealed to the Vatican to swiftly accept Mixa's resignation. If the sex-abuse allegations proved to have substance, a Vatican decision was even more urgent, said a spokesman, Christian Weisner. "The Mixa affair is casting a long shadow over the entire Catholic church in Germany," he said.
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