Church under criticism
Archdiocese of Cologne settles a priest’s gambling debts in the millions – “shameful”
The reform movement “We are Church” protests against the return of Cardinal Woelki with banners and placards in front of Cologne Cathedral. The gambling debt scandal has unleashed a new wave of criticism.
© Thomas Banneyer / Picture Alliance
After the Archdiocese of Cologne settled a priest’s gambling debts, criticism rained down. The spokesman for the Advisory Board of the German Bishops’ Conference described the incident as “disturbing” and “shameful”.
The Archdiocese of Cologne paid more than one million euros for an over-indebted priest. According to a spokesman for the diocese, the clergyman has accumulated 500,000 euros in gambling debts. In order to help him out of this acute need, they wanted to repay the sum in several tranches.
However, the donations were taxable, as an intensive legal review revealed. Subsequent taxation plus interest increased the total by an additional EUR 650,000.
Archdiocese of Cologne takes money from special funds
Some of the funds were taken from a special fund from which payments to victims of sexual abuse are also made. The wage tax payment plus interest, on the other hand, was paid from the archdiocese’s personnel costs budget, said the spokesman for the Advisory Council for those affected by the German Bishops’ Conference, Johannes Norpoth, the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”.
The actions of the Archdiocese of Cologne triggered a wave of protests
© Thomas Banneyer / Picture Alliance
This has triggered sharp criticism in large parts of the Church, the Archdiocese shows the sums that come to the victims of sexual assault, much less generous. Victims of sexual violence in the church have struggled for years for real recognition of their suffering, Norpoth said. 60 percent of the applicants received less than 20,000 euros. “Victims of sex crimes, sometimes without a secure income like a priest, are fobbed off with an amount that is less than two percent of what the church was willing to pay to compensate for a priest’s self-inflicted financial difficulties,” he criticized .
Archdiocese of Cologne under criticism
The spokeswoman for the reform initiative Maria 2.0 Rheinland, Maria Mesrian, spoke of irresponsible financial management. Victims of sexual abuse would be “fobbed off with ridiculous amounts of money, while millions are squandered on a superfluous university or on a priest’s private gambling debts,” she told the newspaper.
Once again “mirror” reported that the supervisory and control bodies of the Archdiocese of Cologne were not involved in the decision on the sum of millions, which, according to the spokesman for the diocese, would not have been necessary. , comments the Münster canon lawyer Thomas Schüller on the procedure.
Sources: German Press Agency, “The mirror“