For four days, Pope Francis will speak in Rome with the leaders of the Episcopal Conferences about abuse in the Catholic Church. More than a hundred dignitaries from all over the world will attend plenary sessions and workshops starting this Thursday, discussing and holding talks with abuse victims.

There will be bishops in whose countries child marriage is legitimate or where homosexuality is punishable by death. They come from regions where child sexual abuse is perceived differently than in Germany. It will be one of the conference's major challenges to address such global differences while formulating church standards in dealing with abuse.

How much freedom will the Pope grant to the national Bishops' Conferences? Will it promote decentralization, emancipation from Rome in structural reforms to prevent abuse?

In Germany, the situation is tense after the publication of the abuse study in autumn 2018. It is fermenting in the Catholic communities. In an open letter to the head of the Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, theologians and lay people have urged the urgency of structural reforms. The cardinal owed them an answer.

On SPIEGEL ONLINE, three of the signatories explain what they think the catholic church needs to change, so that abuse can be sustainably curtailed.

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Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes

Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes made abuses in 2010 in the Catholic Church public. He heads the College of Saint Blasien today.

"Most of the Catholics I know take the abuse issue very seriously and have done a great deal of work on reprocessing, but now I'm experiencing people at the church base getting tired of asking questions and not getting answers Fatigue is then interpreted by parts of the German clergy in Rome as a lack of faith, that is a monstrous defamation.

The MHG study has provided an empirical basis for the fact that there are not only individual offenders in the church, but also a line failure. The Catholics at the base can not solve that, that must tackle the line itself. More and more believers refuse to be held responsible for those responsible. And not only the German bishops have failed, there is also a line failure in Rome.

We need to establish an independent administrative and disciplinary jurisdiction in the church. This is the first and most important step towards more separation of powers. For example, the US Bishops' Conference has suggested relieving the bishops of the decision to transfer suspects to state law enforcement agencies and leaving them to independent lay bodies. I think that's a good idea.

Criminals are punished by law. Even bishops who knowingly covered up acts and thus prosecuted, should have to answer to secular courts. But you also need a disciplinary discipline within the church, for example, to suspend clerics or to depose bishops. The key problem of abuse is power, and this can only be achieved with the separation of powers .

I can only advise all Catholics to trust in their own powers, because they have them. It also means that they come out of dependency thinking, believing that only the people at the top of the hierarchy can make a difference. This is also an authoritarian pattern.

There are two different interpretive patterns of abuse in the Church through all layers: some say it is a systemic problem. The others think that both the gay clerics and the lack of obedience to the ecclesiastical authorities are to blame. These divergent views are also disrupting the clergy. I think there is an opinion asked.

It would be great if the Pope would say in consultation with the bishops: 'Stop talking about the gay lobby, such an interpretation is inappropriate.' Because gay bashing is part of the problem , not the solution. "

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Bettina Jarasch (Alliance 90 / The Greens)

Bettina Jarasch is a Green Party member in Berlin and a member of the Central Committee of Catholics

"After the abuse study was published in my community, it was very quiet at first, there was no loud outcry, basically, since 2010, we had an idea of ​​what had happened.

In conversations, it quickly became clear that there was little point in waiting for an adequate response from the bishops. We laymen must now become active . After all, it is also about our church. And if we can not change the world, maybe our pastoral space. Why not form an equal leadership team of clerics and laymen? From women and men?

Many of us feel that we are experiencing a turn of events. Others are afraid of change, they understand church as a spiritual, not as a political space. But I have long observed that many Catholics do not believe because of, but in spite of their church.

Much of what comes from Rome has nothing to do with one's own reality of life; clericalism in the Church is a huge problem. We are dealing with a gang of men who, because of their spiritual authority, do not have to account for their actions, either in the courts or in other people. And who should now voluntarily restrict their power?

If you want to fight clericalism, you have to move in basically different structures in the church. But even where it would be possible to make a difference without the Vatican, it is in the limelight: The Catholic Church in Germany is currently undergoing major fusion processes, large parishes are being formed. Why not use women as managing directors with personnel responsibility? Then the structure would have broken up without women having to be priestesses. But even this does not seem wanted.

Women would be good for the church system - because they are stirring it up, but also because they would make it more diverse and just. I know theologians who are excellent priestesses. It is a permanent offense that they can not be. I wish for a synodal church , with commissions and advisory councils in which bishops, priests and lay people come together and make binding arrangements.

I wonder if it is clear to the German bishops that things do not go on in this country. The patience of the people is exhausted. The Catholic Church is losing its livelihood - the people who carry it. "

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Ansgar Wucherpfennig, Rector of the Catholic University Sankt Georgen

Ansgar Wucherpfennig is rector of the Philosophical-Theological College Sankt Georgen

"Confidence in the church is so shaken both internally and externally that we can not afford to go through reforms." A global solution that embraces the whole Catholic Church will probably be hard to achieve in four days of deliberations That's why we need culturally and linguistically bound solutions, and it's up to the Pope to release this possibility.

I trust that Francis will initiate a salutary decentralization , giving powers to the National Episcopal Conferences, which will enable them to act independently against abuse. However, one should not expect a finished master copy from Rome.

What I have heard from Francis is: He gives freedom and does not draw his authority card against independent engagement. This diversity also corresponds to the image of the Church in the New Testament. Therein lies the big opportunity in the crisis that we currently have.

I trust very much the bishops, but also many Catholic laity and theologians who are ready to support the reform concerns. The responses to our open letter have shown that there is not just frustration, but a lot of will to give church a responsible form. Believers are now seeing a window of opportunity. We need transparent procedures that detect, combat and sanction abuse and cover-ups. "