In a German newspaper article, Freiburg im Brisgau Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has admitted church orphanages did "wrong" to some children in the 1950s and 1960s and promised individual inquiries. In an article to appear on Monday, June 15, in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch says he will soon be meeting personally with some of the victims to hear their stories, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
He wrote that he was sorry "children and young people evidently suffered wrong and mental and physical suffering in Catholic orphanages". He called on Catholic charity organisations to let former orphans see their files.
The allegations in Germany have focused on corporal punishment, duress and tiring manual labour by the children, many of whom were refugees made fatherless in the Second World War.
A "round table" on the German abuses, with members to be appointed by parliament, was set to hold a third meeting in Berlin on Monday between former orphans and Germany's Lutheran and Catholic churches, which ran most of the orphanages.
Zollitsch said it was not yet possible to estimate how many of the Catholic orphans were mistreated. Research so far, and claims filed against the church, suggested the number was in the "low hundreds", he said in the article.
The orphanages brought up nearly 800,000 children in the period, when West Germany was still recovering from the devastation of the war.
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