Fulda, Germany - The Catholic Church will work 'with all its
might' to uncover paedophile attacks on children by priests, the head
of the German Catholic Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Karl Lehmann,
said Friday.
Speaking amid an outcry over a paedophile clergymen who was
reassigned to a parish, Lehmann said the 70 bishops had discussed the
issue for two and a half hours at talks this week but had not put it
on their formal agenda.
A guideline adopted by the bishops in 2002 prohibits the
employment of convicted paedophiles in parish work, effectively
confining them to administrative tasks where they only have contact
with adults.
Referring to the arrest of a previously convicted priest in the
Bavarian parish of Riekofen on new child-sex charges, Lehmann said,
'Every case of sexual abuse is one case too many.'
'The church will do everything with all its might to uncover
sexual abuse,' he said.
Though he did not criticize the priest's diocese, Lehmann said at
the end of the talks in Fulda, central Germany, 'I'd accept that here
and there things should have been done differently.'
Parents in the diocese of Regensburg voiced outrage last month
that they were not warned about the disgraced priest's past.
Lehmann, who said such cases 'harm and lead to a loss of
confidence in the whole church,' added that bishops hoped to achieve
'as much transparency as possible.'
The bishops adopted guidelines on the use of an ancient ritual,
the Latin mass, as ordered by Pope Benedict XVI.
Lehmann said Catholics could request a Latin mass, but it must not
replace the normal Sunday mass in German.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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