Homosexuality is

 to blame for sexual abuse, not Catholic church, claims 

German cardinal

A German cardinal has sought to blame

 homosexuality for abuse in the church 

even as Pope Francis urges bishops 

to end cover-ups  CREDIT: TONY GENTIL

AGerman cardinal on
Friday provoked
anger and controversy
when he claimed the Catholic
church was not responsible
or sexual abuse by its clerics,
nd instead sought to pin the
blame on homosexuality.

“What has happened in the
 church is no different from
what is happening in society
 as a whole,” Cardinal Walter
Brandmüller said. “The real
scandal is that the Catholic
church hasn’t distinguished
 itself from the rest of society.”

A study commissioned by the
German Bishops Conference
and published last year found
that more than 3,600 children
were sexually abused by Catholic
clergy in Germany between
946 and 2014.

But Cardinal Brandmüller
claimed that only a “vanishingly 
small number” of clergy had 
committed abuses. He said 
the real problem was 
homosexuality and claimed 
it is “statistically proven” that 
there is a link between 
homosexuality and abuse.

Society “forgets or covers up
the fact that 80 per cent of
cases of sexual assault in the
church involved male youths
not children,” he told Germany’s
DPA news agency in an interview
a few days ahead of his 90th
birthday.

Cardinal Brandmüller’s outburst
 comes days after the Pope urged
Catholic bishops in the US to
confront the “sins and crimes” of
sexual abuse by the clergy and
“the efforts made to deny or
conceal them”.

“Everything we do risks being
tainted by self-referentiality, 
self-preservation and 
defensiveness, and thus doomed 
from the start,” Pope Francis 
wrote in a letter to American 
bishops ahead of a spiritual
retreat to reflect on the issue.

“As we know, the mentality that
would cover things up, far from
helping to resolve conflicts,
enabled them to fester and cause
even greater harm to the network
of relationships that today we are
called to heal and restore.”

Cardinal Brandmüller has been
one of Pope Francis’ most
outspoken critics within the
Catholic church, and is one of
four cardinals who have
repeatedly challenged the Pope’s
 teachings on love and family
life.

The cardinal’s comments were
swiftly condemned on social
media and by leading German
 commentators.

“What a shameful way for the
Catholic Church to relativise 
guilt and defame homosexuals. 
Disgraceful,” Ulf Poschardt,
 the editor of Welt newspaper, 
wrote on Twitter.