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	German Prosecutors Drop Investigation of Bishop By Vanessa Fuhrmans Wall Street Journal July 22, 2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383261229943970.html?mod=googlenews_wsj German prosecutors said they dropped an investigation into Germany's top-ranking Catholic bishop after finding no proof that he had knowingly allowed a priest accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1960s to be assigned to a parish some two decades later. Prosecutors in the southwestern German city of Konstanz launched the probe in early June after an alleged victim of the priest filed a complaint that Robert Zollitsch, archbishop of Freiburg and the head of Germany's Bishops' Conference, abetted the priest's sexual abuse by reassigning him while Archbishop Zollitsch was the archdiocese's personnel chief in the 1980s. After being assigned to the new parish in 1987, the priest allegedly committed sexual abuse again, according to the complaint. In a statement issued late Wednesday, the prosecutors' office said it found no evidence of wrongdoing by the 71-year-old archbishop. "Since no concrete abuse cases or victims' names have come to light from the priest's second period in Birnau from 1987 to 1992, there are no grounds for holding Dr. Zollitsch criminally responsible," the statement said. Nor could prosecutors conclude that the archbishop acted with knowledge that the priest might commit sexual abuse in his new post, it said. Freiburg archdiocese officials have rejected the allegations, saying Archbishop Zollitsch only learned in 2006 that the priest in question had committed sexual abuse in the 1960s, and that the archbishop wasn't responsible for his 1987 assignment. Contact: vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com
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