The Roman Catholic church on Saturday rejected an anonymous accusation that the head of the German Bishops Conference covered up sexual abuse by a priest in the 1980s and 90s. The Freiburg diocese also said in response to the allegations that after the death of the suspected priest in 1995, the church called on potential victims to contact a therapist for help and 17 persons came forward.
Daily newspaper Badische Zeitung reported Saturday that it had obtained an anonymous letter addressed to Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, claiming he refused to contact the authorities about the accusations against the parish priest from Oberharmersbach, identified as Franz B.
The letter itself was not published by the newspaper and its authenticity could not be immediately be confirmed by The Associated Press.
The incidents happened while Zollitsch was in charge of human resources at the Freiburg diocese.
In a statement on its Web site, the Freiburg dioceses said that rumours about the priest's "immoral contact with children" could not be substantiated at the time.
Zollitsch ordered the priest into early retirement and told him to stay away from children, the paper reported.
In 1995, an abuse victim contacted the diocese. When the church confronted the priest with the accusations, saying it would inform prosecutors, the suspect committed suicide, the diocese statement said.
"However, suggestions that the abuse in Oberharmersbach was covered up and the priest was only transferred, is simply an attempt to be part of the current trend of church bashing," Vicar-General Fridolin Keck from Freiburg said in the diocese's statement.
Last week, reports emerged that while Pope Benedict XVI was archbishop of Munich in the 1980s, he approved therapy for a priest suspected of molesting boys.
The priest was then transferred to a job where he later abused more children. He was convicted in a criminal trial.
The diocese has said then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger knew about the transfer but not about the priest's continued work in Bavarian congregations after he assumed his duties at the Vatican.
Benedict rebuked Irish bishops Saturday for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse cases in that country and ordered an investigation into the Irish church.
But he laid no blame for the problem on the Vatican's policies of keeping such cases secret.
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