Allegations of abuse against German legend, the late Cardinal Hengsbach, Bishop of Essen. What did his successor know and when?

Honorary miner, kidnap intermediary - and sex offender?

The Diocese of Essen is making serious accusations against its late founding bishop Franz Hengsbach public. If the suspicions prove true, it would be the dismantling of a Catholic monument.

It is a shock in the Catholic Diocese of Essen: On Tuesday, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck made public "serious allegations of abuse" against Cardinal Franz Hengsbach, who died in 1991 - the founding Bishop of the Ruhr Bishopric. Like his brother, priest Paul Hengsbach, he is alleged to have sexually abused a minor in the 1950s.

Brother holds portrait of brother

The case concerns the alleged abuse of a 16-year-old girl in 1954 in the Archdiocese of Paderborn during Hengsbach's time as auxiliary Bishop. The alleged victim had come forward in June 2011 and reported abuse by both the Ruhr Bishop and his brother. Paul Hengsbach, who died in 2018, had always vehemently denied the allegations.

"Terrible crimes were committed under the cover of religion and faith," now writes the acting Bishop of Essen, Overbeck . For a long time, he could not imagine "the extent of the horrors that took place". Even today, there are people in the Catholic Church who talk down and relativise the extent of sexualised violence. "That must not be."

"We did not have the protocol until March 2023".

Overbeck claims to have learned of another allegation "a few months ago". In October 2022, he says, a person had approached the assigned contact persons and put on record a sexual assault by Cardinal Hengsbach in 1967. Overbeck was informed of this in March 2023.

Why did it take five months for the Diocese leadership to learn of the suspicion? "The contact persons are independent of the Diocese," says the spokesman of the Essen Diocese, Ulrich Lota. In this case, the person concerned had also insisted on remaining anonymous and not making the case public. "We did not have the protocol until March 2023."

So why was the case disclosed now anyway? "We want to reach more people affected, that was our driving force," says Lota. He added that they had thought long and hard about whether to go against the explicit wishes of the person affected. "She probably won't like that, but we wanted to be honest," the spokesperson continued. The two alleged assaults reported by the Diocese had occurred in 1954 and 1967 - there was little time to reach out to possible victims who were still alive, he said.

"It's about questions of power"

The Diocese assumes "that it takes a lot of courage and strength to make accusations against a monument like Hengsbach, an identification figure for so many in the Ruhr Diocese".

The "honorary miner": hard coal instead of a gem in the Bishop's ring

Hengsbach was considered one of the most influential theologians of the young Federal Republic - and particularly close to the people. His connection with the coalfield was legendary: he bore the title "Ehrenbergmann" (honorary miner), was "one of us", the "Kumpel Franz" (miner Franz) in Essen Cathedral. He visited mines and looked after the miners' interests. His first post as chaplain took him to the Ruhr region, to St. Marien in Herne-Baukau, where he remained until 1946. When he was appointed Bishop in 1958, his unconventional ring spoke volumes: instead of a precious stone, it contained a piece of hard coal.

Hengsbach stood by his faithful when the first mine closures in the Ruhr region led to uncertainty and the great steel crisis began. Together with representatives from business and industry, he founded the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet, which was to initiate measures to overcome the structural crisis in the Ruhr region.

Money messenger in the Theo Albrecht kidnapping case

Hengsbach's role in the kidnapping of Aldi co-founder Theo Albrecht in 1971 was spectacular. When the then 49-year-old company boss was released after 17 days of captivity in exchange for a ransom of seven million German marks, it was the then Ruhr Bishop who handed over the money in two suitcases to the kidnappers. Theo Albrecht then remains in the Bishop's custody for another 24 hours, as demanded by the kidnappers, before returning to his family on 17 December.

In February 1991, Hengsbach resigned as Bishop of the Ruhr after 33 years in office. He died in June of the same year and was buried in the Adveniat crypt of Essen Cathedral. Still in 2010, the Diocese of Essen celebrated his 100th birthday with a pontifical mass and a ceremony. "At that time, we were not aware of any accusations of sexual abuse against Hengsbach," says Diocese spokesman Lota when asked.

"People loved him," reads a tribute from the Diocese on the cardinal's death. A "never-ending procession of mourners" had wanted to pay their last respects to the cardinal in the open coffin in Essen Cathedral.

Should the abuse allegations prove to be true, not only the cardinal's image will have to be fundamentally reconsidered, but also the role of the Vatican authorities will have to be questioned again.

The role of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Diocese of Essen states that after the allegations of 2022, it asked the Archdiocese of Paderborn, Cardinal Hengsbach's Diocese of origin, whether there were also indications of abuse by the cardinal in the files there. "This request was answered in the affirmative," it says, adding that the allegation of abuse for the year 1954 was confirmed. Paderborn had sent the 2011 report to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome for examination in the same year. However, the Congregation assessed the allegations as "not plausible".

From today's perspective and after a renewed examination, however, the plausibility assessment at the time "must unfortunately be clearly questioned", according to a statement from Paderborn.

Another woman had already made allegations of abuse against Paul Hengsbach in 2010, which he also denied. The woman had later received acknowledgement payments. However, the two cases had not been considered together in the files. If this had happened, both cases might have been judged differently, the Archdiocese said. It now wants to contact the "two women concerned".

The new findings cast an extremely poor light on the previous work of the Dioceses, but also on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for sexual offences. The authority has long been criticised for dealing with suspected cases far too slowly and only rarely in the interest of those affected.

The victims' organisation Eckiger Tisch e.V. said that the way the Dioceses of Paderborn and Essen have dealt with the abuse allegations against Hengsbach is "unmasking for the self-investigation efforts of the Catholic Church in Germany since 2010". "Anyone who still hasn't understood why it's not a good idea to leave the organisation, which has covered up abuse crimes committed by its clergy for decades, alone with the clarification of these cases, has another good illustrative example here."

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