Secret documents contain serious allegations of alcoholism and sexual abuse against controversial former bishop Walter Mixa, media reports said on Monday.The Catholic Church file, which describes alcohol abuse and sexual assaults on young priests, was seen by Pope Benedict XVI before he accepted Mixa’s resignation in early May, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.
The resignation followed accusations that he beat children at a Catholic orphanage in the 1970s and 1980s and later misused Church money.
In the file, witnesses from the Bavarian bishop’s inner circle described him as a “severely alcoholic man” who had to drink throughout the day.
Other witnesses described sexual attacks on young priests during his time as a parish priest, when he would “go to confession the next morning before he celebrated mass,” daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Sunday.
The new allegations come to light following Mixa’s demands last week that the Vatican review his case.
He has also returned to the bishop’s quarters in Augsburg in defiance and accused Bavarian Archbishop Reinhard Marx, as well as the country’s top Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, of not behaving in a “brotherly” manner and pressuring him to resign over the case.
Meanwhile Mixa’s lawyer Gerhard Decker told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the press would not be likely to see the file available to the Vatican.
“That's how it was with the abuse reports against my client that led to proceedings: One called on the other as a witness and in the end it was all a misunderstanding,” he told the paper.
SIC: TL