• Vatican German cardinal resigns over "failure" of church in "catastrophe of sexual abuse"

The

Pope Francisco

rejected the resignation of the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, presented as a gesture to

take responsibility to abuse

of minors by members of the German institution, although he valued his decision and admitted that " the

whole Church is in crisis "because of these scandals, in a letter published today.

Cardinal Marx, former president of the German Bishops' Conference and a

close associate of Francis

as he belongs to the cardinal commission that advises him, caused a real earthquake in the Catholic Church last Friday by presenting his resignation.

This decision came as a "sign of the assumption of responsibilities" after the devastating report on the abuse of minors and cover-ups in the period between 1975 and 2018 by priests of the Archdiocese of Cologne

"Dear brother, first of all thank you for your courage. It is a Christian courage that does not fear the cross, does not fear to be overwhelmed in front of the tremendous reality of sin", the Pope's letter begins.

The Pontiff assures that "the whole Church is in crisis because of the abuse issue" and acknowledges that the "

ostrich policy does not lead to anything

." "Sociologisms, psychologisms, do not work," he adds. Francis agrees with Cardinal Marx in describing as a "catastrophe" the "sad history of sexual abuse and the way the Church dealt with it until recently." Thus he points out that the first step must be "to realize this hypocrisy."

In the letter, he emphasizes that "silences, omissions, giving too much weight to the prestige of the Institutions only lead to personal and historical failure", and lead to living "with the weight of having skeletons in the closet".

The Pope says that it is "urgent to air this reality of the abuses and how the Church proceeded."

For this reason, he invites the whole Church to make a "humble confession":

"We have been wrong, we have sinned

. Polls and the power of institutions will not save us. The prestige of our Church that tends to hide its sins will not save us. Neither the power of money nor the opinion of the media will save us (so many times we are too dependent on them) ".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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