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	German Bishop Suspected of Sex Abuse (roundup) Monsters and Critics May 7, 2010 http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1554013.php/German-bishop-suspected-of-sex-abuse-Roundup 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, an outspoken conservative, 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. The allegations mark a new peak in a scandal over paedophile priests that has buffeted the Catholic Church round the globe in recent months. There had not been any sexual allegations against Mixa before. 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 into a complaint about Mixa in the period from 1996 to 2005. Mixa was at that time bishop of Eichstaett, a mainly rural diocese in northern Bavaria. A newspaper, the Augsburger Allgemeine, quoted a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Eichstaett saying, 'The diocese has passed on information and made a complaint to the appropriate authorities in accordance with the guidelines of the German Bishops' Conference.' The newspaper said the church initiated the inquiry over a sexual matter, but did not say who the complainant was. The Bishops' Conference in Bonn said it had no comment to make. Under German law, a preliminary investigation can lead to a full- scale prosecutors' inquiry if compelling evidence is 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, a cane, carpet beater or the palm of his hand while he was town parish priest from 1975 to 1996. The orphanage appointed a special investigator, then 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. He is a leading anti-abortion and pro-family campaigner. He has gone on leave while the Vatican decides how to respond to the resignation offer. At the urging of fellow bishops, he offered his resignation after denying for two weeks that he had hit misbehaving teenagers while he was a parish priest, then admitting that he 'may' have slapped their faces. Bishops in Europe have been mainly blamed for covering up paedophile offences by priests in their care. One of the few to resign over sex offences was the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Wilhelm Grooer who was archbishop of Vienna, Austria from 1986 to 1995. 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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