A little advance notice: The new expert report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is expected to be published this summer, according to Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
"I believe that when we experience our report in the summer, there will certainly be some points where we can still improve, where some things are not yet as we might imagine," Marx said Saturday at the spring plenary meeting of the Diocesan Council of Catholics in the archdiocese.
"Westpfahl report still under lock and key
The Archdiocese of Munich has commissioned the expert opinion from the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW). The new Munich report will examine the years 1945 to 2019 and will also be published – unlike the last time in Munich. The so-called "Westpfahl Report" by the same law firm from 2010 is still under lock and key.
Recently loud accusations that the church has learned nothing in ten years in the area of reappraisal and prevention, Marx rejected at the online meeting for his diocese. This is not true, he emphasized.
Marx sees reform process on the right track
The former chairman of the German Bishops' Conference in Germany sees the reform process of the Catholic Church on a good path. "We will hopefully also take away new ideas from the Corona period – for the future of the church and the future of our polity," Marx told the roughly 140 attendees of the archdiocese's top lay body.
The Catholic Church has to do its homework and reposition itself. "We will only find our future as a church, also in this society, if we are committed to others," he emphasized.