Lingering Effects Of The Berlin Jesuit High School Abuse Case

The protests contrast with the welcome Benedict received from hundreds of thousands of worshippers six years ago when he sailed down the River Rhine to Cologne on his first visit to Germany as pope.

Not everyone agrees with Catholic teaching on lifestyle issues and “in a free society this dissent must be allowed to express itself,” Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, said in Berlin yesterday. Yet some of the protests are “excessive.”

The first German pope since the 16th century was greeted by a front-page image adorning the headquarters of Axel Springer AG’s mass circulation Bild Zeitung published on April 20, 2005, the day after he was elected pontiff, saying: “We are Pope!”
‘Heinous Crime’

The Catholic Church in Germany has encountered a wave of allegations of sexual abuse by priests that emerged last year, beginning at an elite Jesuit high school in Berlin. Archbishop Zollitsch apologized to more than 100 pedophilia victims in February 2010 after Benedict called abuse a “heinous crime.”

Link (here) to Bloomberg.com