The secular verdict on the venerable gentleman was one year and four months in prison for “repeated serious fornication with men,” as it was called in the 1960s. The eight victims of the pastor documented in this way were 15 and 16 years old at the time and, as is always the case in such cases of abuse, they remained his victims for the rest of their lives. In the small Unterwössen in the district of Traunstein, however, not only at that time did many prefer to see them as the culprits, responsible for the fact that the popular pastor, a member of the riflemen, the glider pilots and the ski club, had to leave the place. It all came up anyway because one of the boys had confided in a friend who wanted to blackmail the priest.
Since this fall there has been a place in Unterwössen where these and other abuse stories can be reflected on by people who, despite everything, still belong to this church or who at least still enter such a building. The well-known wood sculptor Andreas Kuhnlein designed a prayer room for it in St. Martin, the parish church in his home town. The independent advisory board for those affected in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising invites you to a service there next Wednesday evening.
According to Kuhnlein, the history of abuse in Unterwössen is much more extensive than what can be found in old files and since January also as “case 22” in the abuse report by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm for the archdiocese. In the process in the 1960s, by far not all of the victims played a role. Not the younger ones in particular, says Kuhnlein, affirming “that these people went through hell.” A lifelong hell, of which the 69-year-old has a clear idea, because three victims, who are all dead now, have been close friends of his since they were young. And a part of hell, that was also in Unterwössen the others. At times, the family of one of the victims “couldn’t get anything to shop in Wössen,” says Kuhnlein. Some people in the village are still of the opinion that the boys were the real culprits at the time and that they were ultimately paid for all of this.
The fact that some people no longer want to know anything about all of this, or do not want to know anything again, may have been a reason for the resistance that Kuhnlein, according to a description, had to fight for seven years with his plan to design a prayer room on the subject of abuse. Originally, the renovation of St. Martin was intended more as a general prayer room. But then, says Kuhnlein, a lot came together that made a place for the topic of abuse appear absolutely necessary to him. The abuse office of the diocese and later the new advisory board for those affected were of the same opinion, and the ordinariate in Munich also backed his ideas.
A small room of only a few square meters was created at the foot of the old church tower. Instead of plaster, the masonry is now visible there. Three of Kuhnlein’s works, the condemnation of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus and the resurrection, cover little of this. On the sides, the light from two windows falls through blue-colored areas with text. Above all, the central “Resurrection” is one of those jagged sculptures, often cut out of the wood with a chainsaw and other supposedly crude tools, for which Kuhnlein is internationally known. A brochure for the prayer room says about those affected by abuse: “Perhaps, perhaps resurrection will also happen in their lives” – if their fellow human beings take their side.
Benedikt doesn’t want to know much about Unterwössen
Church leaders haven’t done that for a long time. Former Pope Benedict XVI. for example, who went to school in nearby Traunstein, wants to know as little about the case of that long-dead pedophile priest as he does about Unterwössen in general. This is how it emerges from his statement on the case for the abuse experts. Benedict, then still known as the Regensburg theologian Josef Ratzinger, was a close friend of the pastor who was sent to Unterwössen to succeed the convicted abuser. There is evidence of numerous vacation stays by Ratzinger in the village. To the great irritation of many locals, Benedict writes in his statement for the abuse report that he “only spent his vacation once in the area of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising”, and that was somewhere else where he had no contact with such a case. The Benedict bust, which was erected in Unterwössen only a few years ago, has never been consecrated.