TIMES ONLINE: German Catholic leaders openly admitted for the first time today that the Church betrayed and abused children in its care.
The admission by Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, came as Catholic priests across the country called on their congregations to pray for abused children.
But in many churches worshippers took the unusual step of expressing their unhappiness with the Church's management of the crisis.
Archbishop Zollitsch said that the Church had committed serious mistakes and done too little to help the victims of priestly abuse. “The caring responsibility towards the victims was insufficient in the past because of our own disappointment at the painful failure of the perpetrators, and out of a falsely understood concern for the standing of the church," he said.
It was as close as the Church in Germany has come to admitting that it covered up crimes committed by priests.
That, he said, was the "painful reality that we have to face up to". The Archbishop's words were notably blunter than those used by the Pope the previous day.
On Maundy Thursday he did not refer directly to the child abuse revelations now spreading across continents and confined himself to calling on Christians to respect the law. >>> Roger Boyes in Berlin and Ruth Gledhill | Friday, April 02, 2010
