By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk

AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands – Dutch Roman Catholic bishops have ordered an independent inquiry into over 200 reported cases of alleged sexual abuse of children by priests, with investigations slated to begin “as soon a possible.”  The Dutch Catholic Church also issued a statement offering its apologies to the victims. The allegations, which first centered on a monastery school in the eastern part of the Netherlands, soon sparked dozens more allegations across the country. 

New allegations of abuse have not been confined the the Netherlands; on Tuesday it emerged that Bruno Becker, head of a monastery in Salzburg, Austria, confessed to having abused a boy forty years ago when he was a monk. Church authorities quickly accepted his resignation on Monday.

Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that the sexual abuse scandals were particularly reprehensible in light of the educational and moral responsibilities of the Catholic Church. He also said that Church institutions in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands have “demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved date[s] many years ago.”

Father Lombardi also denied that the Vatican has tried to erect a “wall of silence” around the scandals.

On Monday, German justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger accused the Vatican of erecting the “wall of silence” surrounding abuse cases, and said that the Vatican secrecy rules were complicating German efforts to investigate the claims of abuse. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger also cited a 2001 rule from the Vatican requiring abuse cases to be investigated internally as having hindered investigations.

There are currently investigations into abuse allegations underway in eighteen of Germany’s twenty-seven Roman Catholic dioceses. In January, pupils at the Jesuit-run Canisius College in Berlin were the first to come forward with allegations of abuse, prompting many others to come forward in subsequent weeks.

Allegations that abuse occurred at a church choir in the Regensburg Diocese have made the Vatican particularly uneasy. The choir was run from 1964-1993 by Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother, Father Georg Ratzinger.  The abuse, however, is alleged to have occurred before Father Ratzinger took charge of the choir. Although he has denied any knowledge of the sex abuse cases, he admitted that he knew discipline was strict, and said that he had, himself, sometimes slapped students in the face.  He told the Passauer Neue Presse:

“Pupils told me on concert trips about what went on. But it didn’t dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I was not aware of the extent of these brutal methods.” He added: “At the start, I also slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience.”

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops, has apologized for the abuse, and is scheduled to meet with the Pope later this week to discuss the scandal. The German Catholic Church has pledged to investigate all 170 allegations of abuse and to investigate whether Pope Benedict XVI knew about the sex scandals when he was a bishop in Bavaria between 1977 and 1994. Father Karl Jüsten, spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference in Germany, said:

“We do not know if the Pope knew about the abuse cases . . . However, we assume that this is not the case.”

The abuse cases have  prompted German legislators to discuss the possibility of changing Germany’s statute of limitations to allow for the prosecution of priests.

 For more information,  please see:

The Times Online – German Catholic Church pledges to investigate all 170 allegations of abuse – 11 March 2010

BBC – Dutch Bishops order abuse inquiry – 10 March 2010

Deutsche Welle – Archbishop will report to Pope on abuse in German church schools – 10 March 2010

Radio Netherlands World Wide – Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal widens – 10 March 2010

BBC – Vatican accused over German sex abuse allegations – 8 March 2010