Church in Switzerland says pope’s letter enough
The Swiss Bishops Conference says the church in Switzerland does not need to take further steps on sex abuse, saying a letter released by the pope on Saturday was enough.
A spokesman for the Bishops Conference told the Swiss News Agency the interests of victims were already top priority for the church.
Walter Müller on Saturday said the pastoral letter, addressed to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, was relevant to Switzerland as well.
“The letter confirmed the directives the church established in 2002 for cases of sexual abuse,” Müller said.
Pope Benedict XVI slammed Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgment” in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered an investigation into the Irish church but did not mention any Vatican responsibility.
On Friday Chur diocese in eastern Switzerland said it was looking into ten new possible cases of sexual abuse by priests.
The abbot of a monastery in the diocese said at least three of the 77 monks at Einsiedeln, in canton Schwyz, had committed acts of abuse since he took up office in December 2001 but no legal action had been taken in any of the cases.
“The victims or their representatives said expressly that they did not want it,” Abbot Martin Werlen told Swiss television. There had also been two cases of abuse at the monastery school in the 1970s, resulting in one monk being moved to another post.
A priest from Chur resigned on Wednesday after admitting to sexually abusing children in the 1970s.
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