Original shocking 1995 article exposing Cardinal Groër
The Groër Case
A former student is challenging the eccentric church leader's soft image. He accuses Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer of repeated sexual abuse. The Archbishop of Vienna refuses to comment.
Soon after moving into the Archbishop's Palace, he told confidants: "I moved in with five suitcases. I can leave at any time with five and a half suitcases."
For nine years now, Hans Hermann Groer, 75, has resided as dominus liti in the sprawling, magnificent building at the corner of Wollzeile and Rotenturmstrasse in Vienna's city center. The "Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Vienna and Ordinary for the Faithful of the Byzantine Rite in Austria"—his official title—has yet to establish a lasting presence in the minds and hearts of his faithful.
Groer apparently hasn't forgiven the Viennese for the unfriendly reception he received at his enthronement in the fall of 1986: The majority were simply shocked by the nomination of the ecclesiastical—usually ecstatic—devotee to Mary as successor to the worldly and dialogue-loving Franz König. The shrinking segment of Catholic activists still prefers to stick with their now almost 90-year-old predecessor. To this day, Cardinal Franz König can barely resist the flood of invitations to internal church discussion forums, symposia, or festive Masses.
When Groer rarely causes a stir, it's with quirky gestures: Last year, for example, he interrupted a press conference at exactly midday to pray, forcing the astonished journalists to join him in invoking the "Angelus."
The Viennese bishop almost never gives private interviews. The few he grants to select orthodox media outlets are particularly popular with lovers of flowery piety. And when he—now and then—issues a public statement via the Catholic Press Agency, it's only on the Vatican's top topics of sex and sin: trite pleas against the "war against the child in the womb" and against "licentiousness in the area of sexuality."
The most recent public statement, dated February 22, 1995, "the Feast of St. Peter" (Groer), also revolves around the current primary cause of the Roman Curia—the ban on communion for divorced and remarried persons, renewed by John Paul II at the end of the previous year. The circular is addressed to the clerical "dear brothers—bishops, priests, and deacons"—and the secular "highly esteemed collaborators in family pastoral care." It offers a rich catalog of "help" to bring unbelievers onto the right path regarding the ban on communion, such as "consecration of families to the Sacred Heart of Jesus," "family pilgrimages," and—in a kind of general preemptive strike—"efforts to 'purify' public morals." To demonstrate his orthodoxy, Groer also intersperses biblical quotations throughout his moral epistle. For example, this one: "Do not deceive yourselves! Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, neither adulterers nor prostitutes nor molesters will inherit the Kingdom of God."
Just one of his rare public signs of life could prove to be Groer's downfall at the end of his term. In a relevant report (profil 10/95), Josef Hartmann, a former pupil of the Hollabrunn boys' seminary, was particularly struck by the biblical threats against "prostitutes and molesters" – especially "from Groer, of all people" (Hartmann).
This resurfaced memories of experiences with the current Viennese cardinal in the former Groer student, experiences he is still working on coming to terms with today. The picture Hartmann paints of his former teacher differs sharply from the image of Groer as a Viennese professor. The son of a small farmer and sexton from the Weinviertel region experienced the ecclesiastical leader as an obsessive boy molester and brutal psychological terrorist: "Groer sexually abused me."
At the end of the 1960s, Hartmann, 37, followed the path that many gifted students outside of the big cities took before the educational explosion that began with the Kreisky era: The only path to higher education almost inevitably led to a – mostly Catholic – boarding school. Just nine years old at the time, he also ended up in the most Catholic of all boarding schools, the Archbishop's Boys' Seminary in Hollabrunn. The institute's purpose: Teenagers recommended by their local pastor are to be drilled for their future destiny, the priesthood, during their middle school studies.
The day began with getting up at 6:00 a.m., mass on weekdays at 6:30 a.m., breakfast, 20 minutes of "morning study," and then off to the public school. The rest of the day was also strictly regulated: lunch, often with "spiritual reading," 1.5 hours of sports or a walk in the boarding school garden, afternoon study, 20 minutes of "snack," evening study, dinner, shoe-cleaning check, and off to the dormitories. In Hartmann's early years, the barrack-like dormitories were kept under strict "silence," even during the day. Lights out in the lower grades at 7:30 p.m. sharp.
Exit "into the city" was only permitted with express permission and with a specific reason. The exact times of arrival and departure were recorded on an "exit list" at the "boarding school gate."
Contact with parents was limited to weekly letters and occasional weekend trips home every few months. Anyone who wants to be dedicated to God, according to the school's educational philosophy, must learn early on to renounce worldly ties.
In this strict world of discipline and order, sensitive minds were crushed – or they escaped wherever an emotional loophole presented itself. Dismissals overnight for "sex games under the covers" were commonplace from the fourth grade onwards.
I seemed rather girlish back then, which must have particularly appealed to Groer.
Josef Hartmann, too, went through the troubles of all adolescents. The fact that he ran into Hans Hermann Groer, of all people, still troubles him today. At first, the Hollabrunn native showered the slight youth with the feminine features with caresses and flattery for his flowing hair. Hartmann: "I seemed rather girlish back then, which must have particularly appealed to Groer."
Although the man in his mid-fifties held no official function as prefect or educator at the boarding school at the time, he had – while living there – carved out a warm spot for himself in the seminary hierarchy as the "spiritual advisor" to the upper school students. It therefore seemed unobtrusive to the outside world when he increasingly summoned the 14-year-old under false pretenses during long boarding school afternoons and evenings: sometimes to ask him for help with the "accounting." (Groer was just successfully raising donations for the revival of the nearby pilgrimage site of Maria Roggendorf and the establishment of a nunnery.) Sometimes to assist him in founding new local chapters of the militant Catholic lay organization "Legio Mariae," over which Groer headed as "spiritual director." Initially, these were certainly attractive offers for the chosen pupil: they offered him a welcome escape from the constraints of a standardized, hourly daily routine. From the regular contact – "sometimes up to three times a week" – an intense relationship developed – soon also on a physical level.
According to Hartmann, Groer lured the teenager into the shower of his apartment under the clumsy pretext of health care: "He wanted to show me how to properly practice intimate hygiene. Then he soaped me all over. After that, I had to lie in bed with him and endure his French kisses."
"Caressing, cuddling, and French kisses" were part of the ritual of regular encounters in Groer's bedroom from then until I graduated from high school. Hartmann: "He was always visibly sexually aroused. Because he pressed himself against me, there was naturally some physical contact, although after the shower scene, there was no more manual contact."
The priest, who had long been secretly called "Uncle Hans" at the boarding school, subsequently sought to make Hartmann emotionally dependent on him: "He managed to replace my father and mother, whom I rarely saw anyway, as parental figures. After a visit to my home, he later disparaged my mother in conversation with me as a mild psychopath. He now understands why I have such difficulties with masturbation."
Now also Hartmann's "confessor," Groer pauses particularly long at the sixth commandment and has the teenager recount his "self-defilement" "with voyeuristic precision." He knows how to drive the Weinviertel farmer's son "into an inescapable cycle" of guilt and atonement: "He reproached me the worst and repeatedly said he had never done that in his life. In doing so, he placed himself in a state of glory that made me appear even blacker to myself. I developed enormous feelings of guilt. The sin of masturbation became a nightmare for me."
After the condemnation, someone was always able to offer consolation – Hans Hermann Groer: "He simply put it this way: I need attention, I need tenderness, and he gives it to me."
Josef Hartmann's summary of his four years in Hollabrunn with Hans Hermann Groer: "A mixture of devotion on my part and relentless dominance on his part: He was essentially father, mother, and lover all in one. This created such a strong emotional bond that I was completely unable to think objectively about myself and this relationship." For the Viennese psychiatrist Michael Leodolter, this is a classic case of "subservience."
Primarily the emotional, but also the time-consuming strain soon also affected his academic success. From being a top student and top of the lower grades, Hartmann became a mediocre graduate.
When the decision came in 1975 as to whether Hartmann would transfer to the Viennese seminary—"at least as the only one in the class"—he felt one last time "coerced by Groer to comply with his wishes." During the three semesters of theology studies at the University of Vienna, Hartmann's contact with his superego became less clear. The reluctant priest candidate "feels increasingly lonely in this unfamiliar freedom."
In his second year at the seminary, he slipped into a neurosis: "I soon couldn't read any sentence that contained any form of negation. No no, no never, no not. I just sat there and couldn't understand the sentence anymore."
For psychiatrist Michael Leodolter, the connection to Groer's years-long physical and mental obsession is clear: "The word no apparently stirred Hartmann's unconscious. Because he couldn't say no back then, and he's tormented by the question of whether he shouldn't have said no. We know from victim profiles of abuse cases that people torture themselves afterward, which is their own fault."
When Hartmann "first asserts his own will" and switches to studying agricultural sciences, Groer tries to subdue his victim one last time with the scourge of God: "He wrote me a bitter letter and literally called me 'Judas' and 'traitor to the cause of Jesus.'"
Hartmann's accusation against Groer is unique in this country. In the US, Great Britain, and France, a whole wave of outings of clergy abuse victims has hit the media in recent years.
For the two American journalists Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni, who spent two years researching dozens of US case histories into a book, the convicted clergy are both perpetrators and victims: "The crisis over child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was simply bound to happen."
Because of mandatory celibacy, "priests are not permitted real, physical, open intimacy. For some, the need for closeness becomes overwhelming and quickly turns sexual."
What could be more natural than "to gain direct access to an emotional relationship with children who look up to the priest with admiration?" Especially since sexual intercourse with adolescents – despite the threat of punishment – previously seemed to involve the lowest risk for them: Children are more easily intimidated by priestly admonitions than adults.
With his outing, Hartmann intends to set an initial spark in this country as well: "I know that this hasn't only happened to me. I would like to encourage everyone affected by it to free themselves from this nightmare."
There is indeed evidence that makes the Groer case a case beyond Hartmann's outing: When Groer suddenly discovered his love for monastic life at the end of the 1970s, relevant rumors were apparently also circulating at Göttweig Abbey, which Groer entered with ten disciples in tow. Father Ildefons Fux, the new monk's supervisor at the time, even went to the Bucklige Welt to investigate – because Groer, as the "spiritual leader" of his local force, the "Legio Mariae," had repeatedly had professional dealings in this area. Fux wanted to obtain specific names and addresses of Groer's "victims" from a seminarian at the Sachsenbrunn boys' seminary – in this case, to no avail.
The Göttweig monk himself went on to enjoy an astonishing career: today, Fux is not only the Viennese Episcopal vicar alongside Hans Hermann Groer. Within the thick walls of the Archbishop's Residence, he is also regarded as a grey eminence who pulls the strings in the background.
Whisperings behind closed doors, but also concrete indications that the Viennese archbishop likes to be physically close, are still doing the rounds today. A priest known to the editors by name told profil: "He also made a clear attempt to get close to me. I then broke off contact with him."
It is a diabolical coincidence that Kurt Krenn was asked about child abuse by priests on Vera Russwurm's talk show premiere last Thursday of all days. "That is a particularly serious sin. It's not allowed, it's evil." And: "I know of such cases. We are trying to repair the damage, to limit it and to convert the priest."
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