Cardinal Woelki questioned in court on the matter of Bild newspaper

The decision of the Cologne district court is to be announced on April 26th

Accompanied by a large media presence, an eagerly awaited questioning of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki began on Tuesday in front of the Cologne district court. In the press law proceedings, the Archbishop of Cologne is suing a report in the "Bild" newspaper, according to which he promoted a priest in 2017, although he was aware of a warning from the police against the clergyman being used in youth work and another document from his personal file .

Before the civil chamber responsible for press matters, Woelki confirmed that he had no knowledge of either document. At the time, he only heard rumors that the priest had had sexual contact with a 16-year-old prostitute a long time ago and was not punishable, as well as "other rumours".

   

 To this day, he himself has not seen the personnel file or held it in his hands. To date, he has not taken note of the originals of the documents in question, not even from the files on the ongoing court proceedings.

At the beginning of March, the Cologne Regional Court decided to personally question the archbishop as a party after two witnesses had been heard. The former secretary of Woelki's predecessor, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, testified that she had already informed Woelki around 2010, when he was auxiliary bishop in Cologne, about the priest's sauna visits with acolytes or the purchase of underpants with penis depictions during a trip to Rome informed.

When asked about this, Woelki said he could not remember this phone call. "For me, this conversation doesn't exist." Since the woman's testimony, the Cologne public prosecutor's office has been investigating Woelki on suspicion of false testimony. The priest concerned reported to the secretary for unsworn false statements.

Woelki also stressed that he had not seen a 2015 compilation of documents about the priest. The former abuse officer of the Archdiocese of Cologne, Oliver Vogt, reported this as a witness. Nobody spoke to him about the police warning until 2017, otherwise he would have remembered it and not promoted this priest. Only later did he find out that his predecessor, Cardinal Meisner, had sanctioned the clergyman for the incident with the prostitute.

Woelki reported that he heard about the rumors during a consultation at the personnel conference. In order to clarify them, the promotion had been adjourned. After the rumors were not confirmed as such, he agreed to the promotion. His future superior, Auxiliary Bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp, and the head of the church court at the time, Günter Assenmacher, had campaigned for this. The leading employees in the human resources department had expressed themselves critically. The incident with the prostitute from 2001 was a long time ago and the priest did a good job, according to Woelki. "You have to be able to forgive and get a point." In the meantime, there is a canonical judgment that the rumors have nothing to do with it. The public prosecutor's office also stopped all investigations against the priest.

The cardinal sworn to his statements with the phrase "I swear, by the help of God." A decision in the process is expected to be announced on April 26th.

Because of other "Bild" reports about Woelki's dealings with the priest, the Cologne Higher Regional Court recently banned four out of six statements from the newspaper in the Second and Final Appeal Court. So it is inadmissible to write that Woelki promoted a "sexual offender" because according to the law at the time, the behavior of the priest was not punishable. On the other hand, the headline "Cardinal Woelki promoted abuse priests" was permissible. Because the formulation "abuse priest" includes a moral evaluation in addition to the legal one.

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