Top German Catholic Church official offers resignation over ‘catastrophe of sexual abuse’

Marx cited that report in his resignation letter, noting that after it was published, he publicly stated that “we have failed.”

“But who is this ‘We’?” he wrote. “I also belong to this circle. And this means that I must also draw personal consequences from this.”

“I believe one possibility to express this willingness to take over responsibility is my resignation,” he added, noting that he hoped his actions could be a “signal for a new beginning, for a new awakening” of the Church.

“We have always pointed out that the abuse crisis of the Catholic Church is not about a number of isolated cases, but that it is a systemic failure. As a leader in this system, Cardinal Marx has now personally decided to take responsibility. This is an exemplary act, as those affected have long called for,” Katsch, who is the spokesperson for the survivor group Eckiger Tisch, said in an published statement.

Katsch added that he was hopeful that Marx’s move would bring survivor-supported initiatives to the fore, including the establishment of a truth commission and compensation for victims.

A ‘coverup’

“I will face possible mistakes and failure in individual cases to be investigated in detail which were committed during my terms of office and which will then have to be reviewed and evaluated pursuant to objective criteria,” Marx wrote in his letter.

A report on abuse in the cardinal’s Munich diocese is due later this year.

At a Vatican summit in February 2019, Marx admitted that documents that could have contained proof of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were destroyed or never drawn up.

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed or not even created,” Marx said at the summit.

“The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution offenses were deliberately not complied with … such standard practices will make it clear that it is not transparency which damages the church, but rather the acts of abuse committed, the lack of transparency, or the ensuing coverup.”

At a later press conference during the summit, Marx said that the information about destroying files came from a study commissioned by German bishops in 2014. The study was “scientific” and did not name the particular church leaders or dioceses in Germany that destroyed the files.

In April of this year, Marx told German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier that he would not be comfortable accepting the “federal cross of merit” — the highest state tribute for individual services to the nation — since survivors of abuse would have found it offensive.

“It is my great request to you not to carry out the award,” he said. “I am convinced that this is the right step with consideration for those who obviously offended by the award, and especially with consideration for those affected.”

Approximately 27% of Germany’s population is Catholic, according to 2019 government figures. Catholics however, have been leaving the church in steady droves over the last 60 years, with the proportion of the Catholic population dropping from 45.9% to 27.2% between 1956 and 2019.

Marx, born in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region in 1953, became a priest in 1979 and a bishop in 1996.

In 2007, he was elevated to Archbishop of Munich and Friesing by Pope Benedict XVI, who once also held that position. In 2013, he was appointed to the Council of Cardinals, a group of nine Cardinals who advise the Pope.

He also served as the head of the German Bishops’ Conference — the governing body of the country’s Catholic Church — until last year, when he declined to run for a second term, saying “I think it should be the turn of the younger generation and perhaps it is good if this role changes hands more frequently in future.”

On Friday, Marx said that the Church must “learn from the crisis” of sex abuse, saying: “We are not yet at the end of the road.”