Robert Zollitsch

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the leader of the German Roman Catholic Church, admitted during an interview to the German magazine Focus this sunday, that cases of child sex abuse were known and covered up by the Roman Catholic Church.

Yes, we did have that.

The assaults that took place in such numbers within our institutions shame and frighten me.

Every single case darkens the face of the entire Church.

Zollitsch also added that there was certainly no direct connection in Celibacy being the cause of the sexual assaults; a declaration that solely relates to the fact that changing the rules of Celibacy would bring the Catholic Church closer to Christian Protestants; something they adamantly refuse to.

On Saturday Zollitsch apologized personally for a cover-up of sexual abuse that happened 20 years ago, while he was in charge of human resources and staffing in the Freiburg diocese.

The pope and Zollitsch have tried in vain to limit the damage in the German Bishops Conference

Pope Benedict XVI released on saturday a Pastoral letter expressing shame and remorse of Catholic church and calling on priests to face justice. He also castigated Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgment” in their handling of the pedophilia scandal and ordered a Vatican investigation into the Irish church.

Despite the size of the letter, it only says that the abuses happened, the victims lives are shattered, but yet hypocritically argues that it was not the Church’s fault, but fault of independent deranged people.

Benedict made no mention of any Vatican responsibility, gave no specific punishments for bishops who have been blamed by victims nor Irish government inquiries for having concealed the abuse; and he he did not rebuke Irish Bishops specifically for having failed to report cases of abuse to police.

In the meanwhile, on the Internet, the Roman Catholic Church have been nicknamed as the “International Pedophile Ring“; pope Benedict XVI as the “Lord Chief of the Catholic Pedophile Network“.

In Austria, over a million people were reported doing the Kirchenaustritt last week – Kirchenaustritt is the option to be taken off the church rolls in order to get completely detached from the church, ie. to officially abandon the church, for good.

And yet more and more cases of sexual and corporal abuse come to light.

In Brazil, a priest was caught on a hidden camera in a 12-year old boy t-shirt, touching himself half-naked while trying to rape this boy – five other minors also reported abuse with involvement by yet other two priests.

It was broadcasted last week, in the most popular television station in the country in the eyes of millions of viewers (a report from a Brazilian source), and this same report is already in Europe – I watched it on Euronews last night in its program ‘Perspectives’ with a shocked wife by my side, together with reports from the Portuguese television saying they have a number of similar cases and the same recent widened happenings in Central Europe are also starting to come to light in Portugal.

Victims in Ireland, to whom the letter was addressed, said the pontiff had not accepted the responsibility of the Vatican, nor did he recognize that there was a structural problem within the Church. “My first reaction was deep disappointment,” said Maeve Lewis from the One-in-four alliance.

Catholics in the United States said the pope should have mentioned the extent of sexual abuse in numerous countries. Benedict also made no reference to the cases in Germany, his home country.