By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Feb 28, 2010 (IPS) - The Catholic Church has for decades protected paedophile priests and clerics who sexually abused children from judiciary prosecution, according to German theologians, law experts, and internal church documents.
The church hierarchy's complicity was confirmed recently through thousands of denouncements against numerous priests in Germany. In practically all the cases, the abusers were only transferred from one jurisdiction to another and never legally prosecuted.
Similar cases of sexual abuse of children within Catholic schools and other institutions, with impunity for the abusers, have been documented in such countries as Austria, Australia, France, Italy, the Philippines, Spain, and the United States.
In Germany, the denouncements started last January, when Klaus Mertes, director of the Catholic Canisius high school in Berlin, in an open letter addressed to former students, apologised for the sexual abuse priests had inflicted on them in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the letter, Mertes said that he knew "since years" of the abuse, and called them "systematic and years-long." He also urged the victims to reveal the precise the nature of the abuse and encouraged them to ''break the wall of silence" maintained around the cases.
Much attention has fallen on the Canisius high school, managed by the Jesuit order, and rated as one of the best educational institutions in Germany.
On Feb. 14, Mertes said at a press conference that the number of cases of sexual abuse at Canisius reached "the hundreds" and suggested that the Catholic church pay financial reparations to the victims.
The Berlin-based lawyer Manuela Groll, who legally counsels several of the victims of the Canisius school, confirmed Mertes' estimations. "I receive new denouncements practically every day," Groll told IPS. "I am sure the number of victims reaches three digits."
Since Mertes' revelations, hundreds of other cases of paedophilia perpetrated by priests have been confirmed in numerous other Catholic schools across Germany. Much of the abuse goes back to the 1960s and 1970s, but some it was committed as late as 2002.
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