Status: 05/12/2022 2:44 p.m
The Trier Bishop Ackermann will give up the office of abuse officer. This was announced by the bishops’ conference. At the same time, the bishops announced that they would reorganize the processing of sexualized violence in church contexts.
The Bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, will give up his position as abuse commissioner for the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) at the autumn plenary meeting in Fulda in September. This was announced by the Bishops’ Conference in Bonn. At the same time, the bishops said that a new and broader responsibility structure was needed as soon as possible. According to the announcement, the 59-year-old Ackermann explained that the Catholic Church in Germany must be able to do even more justice to the complexity of the subject of sexual abuse and the dimension of the task area. He is therefore resigning from his post.
Resignation after much criticism
The chairman of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, thanked Ackermann for his twelve years as abuse officer. Without the work of the Bishop of Trier, the intervention and prevention regulations of the German Bishops’ Conference and other documents would be unthinkable. In particular, the MHG study on child sexual abuse published in 2018. “With her difficult history, it was Bishop Ackermann who made a significant contribution to the implementation of this important and groundbreaking research project for us,” emphasized Bätzing.
Ackermann took over the newly created office in 2010. At that time, the director of the Berlin Canisius College, Father Klaus Mertes, publicized the abuse scandal at the Jesuit school. He thus triggered a wave of further revelations on cases of sexualized violence in the church and in other institutions. Most recently, the bishop of Trier was heavily criticized because he had disclosed the real name of a victim of sexual assault known under a pseudonym.
suggested resignation
A woman from the diocese of Trier, who is herself an employee of the diocese, had repeatedly reported about “spiritual abuse” and sexual assaults by a priest around 30 years ago. Ackermann had given her real name to about 40 employees of the diocese. He then signed a cease and desist letter and apologized to the woman. Affected initiatives and the DBK Advisory Board had criticized Ackermann’s behavior and suggested that he resign.
Ackermann has been Bishop of Trier since 2009. As abuse commissioner for the German Bishops’ Conference, he was in charge of dealing with abuse in the Catholic Church. Together with the Federal Government’s Abuse Commissioner at the time, Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, he developed a declaration for the DBK that was adopted in 2020 with criteria for the structural processing of abuse in all German dioceses. In addition, Ackermann heads the liturgy commission in the bishops’ conference.