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	German Church Abuse Study Implicates Priests By Vanessa Fuhrmans Wall Street Journal December 3, 2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703350104575653110492675020.html?mod=googlenews_wsj A new report found that more than 250 priests and clerical staff were implicated in abusing children over a 64-year period in the Munich Archdiocese that Pope Benedict XVI once led, but that destruction of church documents over time prevented a full accounting of the scandal. The report, released Friday by a church-appointed law firm, is the result of a six-month audit of the diocese's vast archives to see how Catholic leaders handled, or mishandled, past sexual abuse cases in the pope's former archdiocese. Though similar archival searches have been under way elsewhere since a clerical abuse scandal first rocked Germany and other European countries this year, the Munich investigation has held particular attention because of what skeletons it might unearth from the pope's tenure there as then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 to 1982. In that respect, the report disclosed no new bombshells. Munich attorney Marion Westpfahl, who helped to lead the audit, said investigators couldn't find any further documentation regarding the case of one abusive priest, whose return to ministry in Munich during Archbishop Ratzinger's tenure in 1980 was widely reported this year. Archdiocese officials have said that the priest's return to pastoral work was the decision of a subordinate and that the archbishop wasn't involved in it. One other document was found connecting the future pope to another case, a letter in which he declined to grant a reprieve to a priest already relieved of his priestly duties because sexual-abuse allegations, she said. Still, the report presented a harsh assessment, adding that the archdiocese for decades systematically played down and kept secret abuse cases until 2002, when German Catholic leaders revised guidelines for treating abuse claims. A "considerable number of undetected cases must be assumed," it said. But they would never be established, the report added, because many documents appeared to have been deliberately destroyed over the decades or often stored in church officials' private quarters, where they could be manipulated. "For these reasons, there were in many cases obvious gaps in documentation," the report said, though it added that the archdiocese gave investigators full access to what documents were available. "It was repeatedly impossible to reconstruct events." In total, the audit found evidence that 159 priests from 1945 to 2009 were involved in some sort of abuse, while 26 of them were convicted specifically of sexual abuse. The report added that investigators found evidence that an additional 17 priests also committed sexual abuse. In addition, investigators found evidence 15 deacons and 96 religion teachers also committed abuse, though only two were ever convicted of sexual abuse, according to the report. At a news conference to present the report, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the current archbishop of Munich, called it an effort by the church to learn from its "awful mistakes and transgressions of the past" and asked for forgiveness for "the actions of members of the church." Abuse victim advocates, though, criticized the cardinal's plea. "Forgiveness happens after a crisis passes. This crisis, however, is current," said Barbara Blaine, a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "No one in his right mind believes that all German child-molesting clerics have been suspended, convicted and jailed. Nor does anyone believe we all know the full truth about and extent of decades of abuse and cover up within the church." Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com
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