The Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, offered his resignation to Pope Francis over failure to deal with sexual abuse in Germany's Catholic Church, according to a statement published by the archdiocese. "In essence, it is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades," the statement issued on Friday quoted Marx as saying in a letter dated May 21 to the Pope. In April, Marx was to be awarded the Order of Merit of Germany but rejected the decoration after criticism from victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. An expert report on cases of sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising is expected to be published this year. In March, an independent report commissioned by the Cologne archdiocese on sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church and the Church officials' handling of those cases was published.
Source: dna June 05, 2021 05:26 UTC