Walter Mixa at a press conference in 2010
Photo: Rolf Haid/dpa
The public prosecutor's office in St. Gallen has opened criminal proceedings against the former Augsburg bishop Walter Mixa. This is reported by several media outlets, including the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and the “Bayerischer Rundfunk” (BR). It is said that the public prosecutor's office does not want to provide any further information about the proceedings because of the ongoing investigation.
According to a report in the Swiss newspaper "Blick", the proceedings stem from a complaint by Josef Henfling, who accused the 82-year-old of sexually harassing him in 2012. As the BR reported, Henfling described the alleged crime in an affidavit to the broadcaster.
“I was completely perplexed”
Accordingly, he worked for a Catholic television station in the summer of 2012, and the former bishop was in Switzerland because of film recordings. After a business dinner, Mixa is said to have asked the now 39-year-old to minister at a mass in a chapel in Gossau. After mass, the accused approached him, “pulled me to him, clutched my head with his two hands and kissed me on the mouth. I was completely perplexed. I released myself from his grasp and immediately left the sacristy," Henfling told BR.
He goes on to write in his affidavit: »Afterwards I went to my room, which was in the same building. Some time later, Bishop Mixa told me to visit him in his room, which was also in the same building. I didn’t comply with this request.”
When asked by BR, Mixa's lawyer said: »Our client rejects the accusation you have made in the strongest possible terms as untrue. Our client can rule out that he “tightly hugged and kissed” the person allegedly affected. Our client would never have thought of something like that. There has never been such an incident.”
In 2010, the media reported that Mixa was said to have once slapped children in care and embezzled funds, including money from the orphanage foundation, as a pastor in Schrobenhausen, Upper Bavaria. Mixa finally admitted “the odd quibble” and offered Pope Benedict XVI. his resignation. He accepted the request after just a few days. Although Mixa later recanted his statement, he did not regain leadership of the diocese.
swe