The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne launched preliminary proceedings against Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki on Wednesday. The allegation of false affidavit is being investigated, said senior public prosecutor Ulf Willuhn.
The former assistant to the personnel manager in the Archdiocese of Cologne, Hildegard Dahm, has in an interview with the Cologne City Gazette said that she informed Woelki early on about allegations of abuse against the former Sternsinger boss Winfried Pilz. She “can’t stand it anymore (…) to know things firsthand that contradict Cardinal Woelki’s public statements, especially in the case of the former Sternsinger President Winfried Pilz,” said Dahm.
The mushroom, who died in 2019, is accused of abuse. In a press law procedure, Woelki assured that the case was only dealt with from the fourth week of June this year. Dahm said in the interview that she personally created an Excel list for Woelki in January 2015 with all the abuse cases that were current at the time. There would have been 14 names on this list, including that of Pilz. Her boss took the list to a conversation with Woelki.
Afterwards she asked her boss what Woelki had said about the list. He replied: “That didn’t interest the cardinal at all.” She was then “petrified”. From the Cologne City Gazette pointed out that Woelki said that he was only dealt with in the Pilz case in June 2022, Dahm replied: “That’s not true. It may be that he didn’t look at the sheet with Pilz and the other 13 names. But he dealt with it I have it with it. Definitely. That’s why I was so appalled by the cardinal’s public self-portrayal.”
From 2013 to 2017, Dahm worked in the Vicariate General – the central administration of the diocese. After that she took over the management of a parish association. Regarding her motivation for going public, she said: “It just had to come out now. I don’t want people to come to me later and ask me: ‘You knew so much. Why didn’t you say anything?”
The chairman of the independent investigation commission for sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne, the constitutional lawyer Stephan Rixen, expressed his alarm at the revelations. “We now expect a detailed description of the processes in the Pilz case in a timely manner,” said Rixen City Gazette. Dahm is a “top witness”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/.” If it’s true that a list of perpetrators didn’t interest the cardinal, then I ask myself: what kind of game is actually being played in this archdiocese ?”
Due to the allegations, the reform movement Maria 2.0 appealed to all congregations in the Archdiocese of Cologne to cancel confirmation appointments with Woelki and his auxiliary bishops. There should be information evenings for the confirmands to enlighten them about the role the officials played in covering up the acts of sexualised violence. The Archdiocese of Cologne has not yet commented on the allegations.