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Cologne (dpa) - The Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki wants to present the consequences of the abuse report published last week on Tuesday.

The report showed that, due to the files still available in the Archdiocese of Cologne, 314 people - mostly boys under the age of 14 - had been victims of sexual violence between 1975 and 2018.

The appraiser Björn Gercke stated that “for decades nobody has apparently dared to report such cases”.

The filing of the largest German diocese was criticized as extremely inadequate.

Gercke accused several of those in charge of the archdiocese of breach of duty, such as the former head of personnel and today's Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Heße, and Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died in 2017.

Immediately after the presentation of the report, Cardinal Woelki - who himself was not incriminated - had the Cologne auxiliary bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp and the church judge Günter Assenmacher leave of absence.

On the same day, Archbishop Heße asked the Pope to be released.

The next day, the Cologne auxiliary bishop Ansgar Puff was given leave of absence by Woelki at his own request.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210322-99-926426 / 3