Church
Accusation of abuse against mushroom: Woelki denies errors
Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki has stated that he was not involved in the case of former Sternsinger President Winfried Pilz until June 2022. photo
©Oliver Berg/dpa
Allegations of abuse have been made against former Sternsinger President Winfried Pilz. The Cologne Cardinal Woelki does not see any own omissions in this context.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne has denied personal failings in the case of former Sternsinger President Winfried Pilz.
It is true that the Pilz case is addressed in the abuse report by criminal lawyer Björn Gercke, but without naming any names and without details, the Archdiocese of Cologne told the German Press Agency on request. “The reader cannot tell from this nameless summary that the case is Pilz.”
Allegations of abuse have become known against the mushroom, who died in 2019 and used to pose regularly with carol singers in the Chancellery. Woelki’s predecessor, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, had banned the clergyman from contact with minors in 2014. After Pilz’s death, the Archdiocese nevertheless published an exuberant obituary for the priest, who wrote the famous hymn “Laudato si”. The Archdiocese is also accused of not having informed the Dresden-Meissen diocese, where Pilz spent his twilight years, about the allegations against him. Woelki has stated that he was not even involved with the Pilz case until June 2022.
“Reconditioning put into the hands of his specialists”
The Gercke report on how those responsible in the archdiocese deal with allegations of abuse was published in 2021. When asked whether Woelki had not inquired about the identity of all the suspects listed anonymously in the report, the Archdiocese of the dpa replied that the report identified more than 200 suspects.
“Cardinal Woelki did not inquire about the personal identity of all of the more than 200 accused, but placed the investigation and prevention of abuse in the qualified hands of his technically experienced specialists.” Woelki has set standards for years when it comes to dealing with and preventing abuse, for example by creating an intervention center with a large number of staff.
“He no longer has the list”
The Archdiocese confirmed that years earlier Woelki had also been presented with an Excel spreadsheet containing the names of priests suspected of sexual abuse. “He no longer has the list. Cardinal Woelki has no recollection that Pilz’s name was even on the list consulted years ago. He also does not know whether the list of priests who were accused of abuse was complete .”
The top Catholic of Bonn, city dean Wolfgang Picken, said that one wonders why Woelki had such a list drawn up if he did not deal with it in more detail afterwards. A similar lack of understanding was triggered by the information that this list of all things had been lost. “If you don’t explain such oddities or apologize for them, you expose yourself to the unnecessary suspicion that you deliberately let an important document disappear,” Picken told dpa.
One would expect that Cardinal Woelki, as the person ultimately responsible, would know the names of the perpetrators in his archdiocese. “Not asking questions, not addressing them and leaving the responsibility completely to others – that doesn’t work when it comes to preventing sexual abuse,” says Picken.