What happened in Birnau Monastery shames the modern Church

In the bosom of the church- article from 2019

A case from the Birnau Monastery on Lake Constance shows how dramatically the Catholic Church failed for decades in dealing with sexual abuse. Instead of protecting the children, it mainly protected itself. Investigating authorities are now also taking an interest again. Michael Lünstroth has chronicled the ordeal of a victim in his article that first appeared in the Kontext weekly newspaper.

There was a time when Jürgen S.* felt like he was going crazy. There were all these disturbing images in his head. The window. The blurred sky behind it. The crowded church. The priest's lap. The rough fabric of the monk's habit on his thigh. "What is true? What am I imagining? Sometimes I was afraid I could no longer trust myself," says the now 61-year-old.

Flashback to the late autumn of 2006. After several difficult years on duty, Chief Inspector Jürgen S. began therapy. The diagnosis at the time: burnout. In the sessions, piece by piece, a completely different, long-repressed truth emerges: S. was abused at the age of nine as an altar boy in the Birnau monastery. More than 50 times and for almost two years. Always between Sunday masses, sometimes also on Saturdays when there was a wedding.

The then 26-year-old Father Gregor Müller lured him to his room with stamps. There he lifts the boy onto his lap, reaches into the boy's trousers and talks about marriage preparations and problems with foreskin constriction. "He said he could cure it by laying on his hands. As a boy I had no idea what was happening, I just let it happen," S. says today. The 61-year-old, white temples, alert eyes, three deep wrinkles on his forehead, has learned to talk about his abuse. His voice remains firm. It only rolls over a little when he gets upset about the church.

In December 2006, Jürgen S. reports his case to the Archdiocese of Freiburg. A few days later he receives a handwritten letter from the perpetrator apologising. S. decides he wants to talk to the priest "to tell him what a pig he was." So he calls him. The priest talks his way out of it. Says he is sorry and that it was a one-time slip. At that point Jürgen S. already suspects that this cannot be true: Other altar boys had also received stamps from the priest. S. hangs up. He then contacts the Archdiocese of Freiburg again: he asks for clarification and trusts that someone will take care of it.

He wants clarification and only gets evasive answers.

For four years he will hear nothing more about it. Because his own marriage was in ruins, Jürgen S. also put the subject aside for the time being. It was only when he read reports about the abuse cases at the Canisius College in Berlin in 2010 that everything started all over again. Since the statute of limitations had expired on his case, he filed a church suit against the perpetrator and the then Archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, among others. The Archdiocese of Freiburg is not much help to him. S. wants clarification and only receives evasive answers.

Not even the jurisdiction is clear, because the Cistercian monastery of Birnau, located a few kilometres southeast of Überlingen in the Lake Constance district, is special: although it is on the territory of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, it is under the jurisdiction of the Abbey of Wettingen Mehrerau in Austria. Freiburg takes the position that the perpetrator, Father Gregor Müller, had worked on the territory of the archdiocese, but not for the archdiocese. Since there was therefore no "employment relationship", in 2006 they were content to pass on the information about Father Gregor to Mehrerau Abbey. Not much happened there after that: "Existing knowledge about possible sexual abuse was not passed on in earlier years by those responsible at the time," the abbey now admits on request.

Jürgen S. does not know this in 2010 and begins to do his own research. He reconstructs the professional path of his tormentor: Father Gregor is ordered from the Birnau monastery back to Mehrerau, followed by stations in Oelenberg (Alsace), Himmerod (Eifel) and Baden (diocese of Basel). In the meantime it has been established that he abused other children at almost all these stations.

This could have been prevented. Since December 1968 at the latest - the Austrian abbey also admits this today - the Abbot at the time, Kassian Lauterer, has known about the paedophilic tendencies of his priest. However, he did not suspend him, but only transferred him again and again from one place to another. Whether the respective parishes were informed in advance about Father Gregor's past is "no longer possible to reconstruct completely", the abbey explains when asked.

No one stopped the repeat offender

In any case, no one prevented Father Gregor from working at Birnau Abbey again from 1987 to 1992. When Jürgen S. found out in 2010, he asked the public prosecutor's office in Constance to investigate. He assumes that there are further cases of abuse. But the public prosecutor's office refuses because possible cases are time-barred. And the Archdiocese of Freiburg and Mehrerau Abbey are also keeping quiet. There are no appeals or statements that possible victims can come forward.

Jürgen S. investigates further and finds out that the pastoral unit of Meersburg was not informed about Father Gregor's inclinations before his second stay in the Birnau monastery. When asked how all this could have happened, the Mehrerau Abbey simply explains that "the handling of perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse decades ago was not adequate". The Archdiocese of Freiburg points out that at the time of Father Gregor's second transfer to the Birnau monastery, it knew nothing about his acts and would not have had any influence on the occupation of the monastery anyway. This had been a matter for the abbey.

The failure of the church is also evident in other places: in 2010, four years after the perpetrator's confession, Father Gregor still has access to children. Meanwhile in Schübelbach, Switzerland, in the diocese of Chur. Jürgen S. cannot believe it when he finds out in March 2010. He calls on Fribourg and Mehrerau to act. Nothing happens. Only when he threatens to demonstrate every Sunday in front of the church in Schübelbach with a sign saying "A child molester is celebrating here" does anything happen.

S. also telephones Father Gregor again, urging him to resign and to publicly confess to his deeds. Now the abbey also takes action. Father Gregor was suspended and henceforth prohibited from any pastoral activity. The abbey initiates canon law proceedings against Father Gregor at the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Seven years later, after the death of the priest in May 2017, it is discontinued without result.

Jürgen S. learns rather by chance that his case against the perpetrator was also dropped after his death. It is this casualness that makes the former police officer so angry. "I never had the feeling that the church took me seriously," says S. today. The email correspondence between the church and him alone amounts to 150 pages over these years. Among them was a criminal complaint against the former Archbishop Robert Zollitsch - for aiding and abetting sexual abuse. The case is dropped. 150 pages - and still nothing really happens. For S. it is an emotional catastrophe: "What I experienced as a child was terrible. But I couldn't defend myself then. To experience this powerlessness again in 2010, even though I thought I could defend myself now, that was at least as bad."

There were more words than deeds from the church

The archdiocese points out that it also helped Jürgen S. in 2006: With offers of talks, 5000 euros as "recognition of suffering suffered" as well as offers to pay for therapy and lawyers' fees. But what Jürgen S. wants most urgently has not existed for a long time: justice and consequences within the institution of the church. "I finally want to see action. The church must separate itself from all perpetrators and cover-ups, publicly name the acts and punish the perpetrators," S. demands.

In recent years, there have been more words than deeds. The German Bishops' Conference commissioned a study on sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, deacons and male religious. The result: from 1946 to 2014, 3677 children were abused, there were more than 1600 perpetrators. The Archdiocese of Freiburg is also continuing to work on the issue. Archbishop Stephan Burger has appointed a Commission, "Power and Abuse", which is also to clarify the events in the Birnau monastery. The Commission is also to clarify the question of whether the Archdiocese will take criminal action against abusers and cover-ups.

So will the Church finally clear up the matter now? Jürgen S. is sceptical. He does not accept the role of Archbishop Stephan Burger of Freiburg  as the chief investigator. S. got to know him differently. When he asked the Archdiocese for help with his Church lawsuit in 2010, it was Burger who answered him in his then function as an official. In his e-mail, Stephan Burger mainly lists things that speak against a lawsuit. Freiburg does not even want to make an effort to file a complaint of its own against the perpetrator or those responsible in the Archdiocese. S. finds Burger cold and dismissive. There was further contact with the office in June 2010. In an e-mail, Jürgen S. asked him to check whether a new consecration of the Nußdorf chapel (near Überlingen) was possible. Behind the altar there, Father Gregor abused another boy at the end of the 1960s. Stephan Burger rejects the rededication: "Since the events you have described relate to a longer period of time in the past, were not publicly known at the time and in the meantime the worship spaces have been used countless times for other services, in retrospect a penitential rite no longer makes sense with regard to the premises."

Suspicion of obstruction of justice: criminal complaint against Archbishop Burger

No, Jürgen S. no longer believes that the Church is really ready to change: "The only thing the Church has learned in the past years is that it has to do better press work. It sells itself better now. Otherwise, nothing will happen."

He still won't give up his fight for justice. In February 2019, he will travel to Rome to bring another church complaint directly to the Vatican against Archbishop Burger and his predecessor, Robert Zollitsch, among others. But that's not all: because files on sexual abuse were also manipulated or destroyed in the archives of the Archdiocese of Freiburg, S. has filed two criminal charges with the Public Prosecutor's Office in Freiburg against the Diocese. One is generally directed against responsible persons of the archdiocese for suppression of documents. This is the legal term for the manipulation and destruction of documents. The second is addressed personally. It is directed against Archbishop Burger. Facts: Suspicion of obstruction of justice. S. suspects that Burger might have known about the purges in the archives earlier than he has so far publicly admitted. Both proceedings are ongoing.

Will this ultimately bring him the peace he wants for his life? Jürgen S. shrugs his shoulders. He does not know. But he knows one thing for sure: he wants to finally wrest the power to determine his life from the Church.

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