Nobel Prize-nominated Bishop protected abusers and was an abuser himself

With code names, cover addresses, cheques, Bishop protected abusers from prosecution

A new investigation confirms abuse and cover-up allegations against Latin American Bishop Emil Stehle.  He allegedly covered up for sex offenders and earned himself a reputation as a "groper".

The late Latin America Bishop Emil Stehle was also known as Emilio Lorenzo.

Emil Stehle was the first Catholic bishop of Santo Domingo in Ecuador.  A man with an impressive life, to whom the city erected a larger-than-life monument: the image of a well-meaning smiling shepherd with his hand raised in blessing.

Born in Mühlhausen in 1926, first a front-line soldier and prisoner of war, then a priest in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Stehle became an advisor to Pope John Paul II because of his Latin America expertise.  As he was committed to the peace process in El Salvador, he received a Federal Cross of Merit in 1986.  He was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  However, the reputation of the clergyman, who died in 2017, has suffered greatly.

For some time, there have been allegations of abuse and cover-ups against the go-getting bishop. Now an investigation commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference confirms that Stehle helped three priests in the 1970s to evade criminal proceedings pending in Germany.

In two cases, the priests were wanted for child abuse, in one case the accusation could not be found in the files.  With the help of code names, cover addresses and living costs assistance by cheque, Stehle had ensured that the men could remain undercover in Latin America.

Further victims and cover-ups likely

Moreover, Stehle is also alleged to have committed sexual assaults himself: According to the report, he is linked to 16 reports of sexual offences.  He allegedly committed the offences during his time as a priest in Bogotá in Colombia, as Adveniat Executive Director in Essen and later as Auxiliary Bishop and then Bishop of Santo Domingo in Ecuador. According to the report, in Santo Domingo he was considered an "abuser", allegedly had an affair and behaved in a border-violating manner towards young women.

"We assume that there were other victims at Stehle's places of activity and possibly also attempts to cover them up," says the author of the investigation, Bettina Janssen.  For her report, the lawyer analysed files of the co-ordination office Fidei Donum ("Gift of Faith").  Since the 1960s, Fidei Donum has sent around 400 priests to various countries in Latin America.  Since 1973, the coordination office had been located at the aid agency, Adveniat. The now confirmed suspicion of a cover-up casts long shadows on both institutions.

"Constructs like Fidei Donum must be fundamentally put to the test," says Cologne lawyer Janssen to SPIEGEL.  This association was completely without structure.  "The priests had virtually no liabilities and some did not even have employment contracts.  Nevertheless, they were financially supported by the church." The connections to the church authorities in Germany were often loose, according to the report, in one case there was no contact between the priest and the co-ordination office for 34 years. As so often in the Catholic Church, there seems to have been a lack of control and transparency.

Disturbing clergy deported

In 1957, in his encyclical Fidei Donum, Pope Pius XII called on the European bishops to send clergy from the dioceses in view of the shortage of priests in developing countries,  also for the sake of the Christian mission.  The fact that priests who had travelled from Europe had abuse and criminal behaviour in their baggage was repeatedly the subject of reports.  But often there was a lack of evidence.  The politically unstable and partly undemocratic societies of Latin America offered ideal hiding places for criminals who wanted to evade the investigating authorities.

The unmasking of Bishop Stehle as a perpetrator shows pars pro toto that there was probably a kind of deportation practice for decades.  In the process, the Catholic Church repeatedly got disagreeable, inconvenient but above all dangerous clergy out of the firing line by transferring them to developing countries.  Already in Germany, the ranks held and the ecclesiastical omertà was almost unbroken until the first major scandals were uncovered in 2010. All the more so in arch-Catholic foreign countries.

"In the countries of Latin America, sexual offences in the church are a taboo, a stigma; there the fear of revelations is even greater," says Janssen, a lawyer.  For this reason alone, it must be expected that there will be more victims among nurses, interns or indigenous helpers.

The investigation included protocols and conversations with current and former Adveniat employees, as well as 474 so-called personnel files and correspondence between Fidei Donum and the dioceses.  The results of the abuse report from the Diocese of Hildesheim from September 2021 were also included.  After its publication, eight women affected by abuse had come forward.

The reports speak of forced kisses and touching all over the body.  One woman suspects that Emil Stehle not only baptised her, but also fathered her, as he had had an affair with her mother.  Stehle's paternity could not be completely ruled out, the enquiry said.  The woman concerned also reported that Stehle had asked her to undress and had "groped" her.

What the bishop does not know...

One of the authors of the Hildesheim abuse study, the former Justice Minister of Lower Saxony, Antje Niewisch-Lennartz, had long suspected a system behind the Latin American mission of troublesome priests.  In December, she wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing.

She quoted from a letter of 6 May 1976 from the "Fidei Donum" co-ordination office to the then Bishop of Hildesheim, Heinrich-Maria Janssen, who was later also suspected of abuse.  In this letter, the bishop bluntly offered to assign a "gentleman not named here to another place, not only in another diocese, but also in another country".  It is assumed "that you will agree if I do not inform you of this new place of assignment and that you will therefore not be able to give any information to third parties", it continues.  The relief organisation, Adveniat had agreed to pay for the monthly support, "so that such help on your part could be dispensed with and this problem should also be solved". They were looking for quick solutions through short official channels, that is how this letter appears.

It was signed by the then Executive Director, Emil Stehle. For ex-minister Niewisch-Lennartz, the phasing of the letter is a clear indication "that the procedure chosen here to withdraw the accused priest from prosecution is not an exceptional individual case".

And now?

The German Bishops' Conference, in co-operation with Adveniat, now wants to discuss a restructuring of the Fidei Donum co-ordination office.  "A comprehensive selection and suitability procedure will be indispensable," it says.  In future, candidates for posts abroad should provide proof that they have never been sexually assaulted and have completed prevention training.  This is a kind of certificate of good conduct, a not exactly revolutionary innovation.

"Adveniat takes the position of absolute zero tolerance towards the crime of sexual abuse and - also with this unsparing investigation - stands by the side of those affected in Germany and Latin America," the head of the Fidei Donum co-ordination office, Father Martin Maier, stated in response to a request for a statement.

Standing by the side in support, a nice image but who will find the presumed victims in Latin America? Who compensates them? Who evaluates improvements? And who controls the behaviour of Catholic priests far away from the German dioceses? As always, there are more declarations of intent and questions than answers and actions.

The question of who else knew about Stehle's alleged misdeeds and turned a blind eye also remains unanswered. According to Janssen's investigation, one of those affected contacted the German Bishops' Conference as early as November 2005. She informed Cardinal Karl Lehmann and Archbishop Robert Zollitsch in writing about sexual assaults by Emil Stehle. The latter had "admitted to the offences with his written confession of guilt and payment of compensation for pain and suffering", she said. "Befogging with alcohol was his method when the victim refused, not violence. Probably the reason why there were never any official reports of further victims." Lehmann and Zollitsch apparently did not react either.

The German Bishops’ Conference and Adveniat emphasise in their current statement that no donations were used for the maintenance of the Fidei Donum priests.  This will hardly reassure the faithful, who are on the verge of leaving anyway after endless abuse scandals.