The German Church admitted to having destroyed evidence concerning abusive priests

The German church destroyed evidence against priests who mistreated boys. This was recognized Saturday by the President of the German Bishops 'Conference, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, at the Bishops' Summit against Pedophilia at the Vatican.

"The archives that could have documented these terrible acts and indicate the names of those responsible they were destroyed or they were not even created", said Marx during his speech on the third day of the summit, which brings together since Thursday and until tomorrow 190 hierarchs of the Catholic Church convened by Pope Francis.

"Sexual abuse of children and young people is due, in part, to the abuse of power by the administration," said the German bishop in statements cited by the agency . DPA. In this sense, Marx added that he did not believe that what had happened in Germany was "an isolated case".

"Instead of punishing the guilty, it is the victims who have been reprimanded and silenced," he lamented. "The procedures and procedures established to prosecute these crimes have been deliberately ignored, even erased or canceled," he insisted.

For his part, the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blaise Cupich, called to cancel the pontifical secret, one of the main claims of ecclesiastical abuse victims. "Many of these procedures have been concealed under the word confidentiality, but this is no longer valid: we no longer need this institution as old as the pontifical secret", a- he said at a press conference on the progress of work on the third day. from the summit against abuses.

In canon law, the pontifical secret imposes the impossibility of sharing out-of-court denunciations of crimes against faith and customs and crimes perpetrated against the sacrament of penance.

The German Catholic Church officially apologized last September after the publication of a report revealing badual badault on more than 3,600 minorsengaged for decades by members of the clergy.

The same cardinal called for public "apologies" after reading the document reporting at least 3,677 victims between 1946 and 2014, most of them under the age of 13, who were victims of violence committed by some 1,670 ecclesiastics.

"Institutional mistrust leads to conspiracy theories about an organization and the creation of myths about it, and can be avoided if the facts are exposed in a transparent way," said the religious to 190 members of the leadership of the organization. 39: Church present at the Vatican meeting