The number of Catholics leaving the church, centred on Cologne, has reached a record 1,000 a month. But Protestants are also voting with their feet.

The Cologne archdiocese's "sluggish" efforts to clear up the abuse scandal were driving Protestants out of the Church, President Manfred Rekowski of the Protestant Church in the Rhineland told the Evangelical Press Service (epd).

"There is such a thing as a joint ecumenical liability. It is stressful and I hope things will be cleared up soon", Rekowski said.

"Anything that gives the impression of being obscure or that the Church has only little interest in clearing up abuse is fatal."

The Cologne crisis was triggered by the refusal of Cardinal Woelki to publish the report he commissioned on how priestly sexual abuse had been handled in the archdiocese.

In December, Woekli asked Pope Francis to examine the accusations made against him. He has pledged to issue a new report on the investigation's findings in March. The cardinal said the report will "name those responsible".

He is also being faulted for not investigating serious allegations against a Düsseldorf priest alleged to have abused a boy of kindergarten age in the late 1970s. After he was appointed Archbishop of Cologne in 2014, he decided not to notify Rome. Woekli reasoned the priest, who has since died, was suffering from advanced dementia and the scandal would benefit nobody.

Meanwhile, Germany's secular panel on sexualized violence against children says Cologne's Catholic archdiocese has "severely damaged" moves to own up to its abusive past.

Cologne's archbishopric "severely damaged" the process of owning up to decades of sexualized violence against children in its ranks. This is demanded by victims and lay Catholics, a top secular German panel found on Monday.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse — a commission mandated by parliament since 2016 to probe cases across German society — decried the diocese's own internal review, saying this must be done instead by outsiders.

Sources

• The Tablet
• DW

She says however that the State is still consulting on the terms of reference and there is room for someone to have their say if they thought the Government was doing an "absolute disservice."

Ardern's comments came after calls for the Church to be included.

Critics say Ardern is going back on a pre-election promise.

The terms of the upcoming Royal Commission on abuse in state care excludes institutions such as churches - unless children were sent to them by the state.

Ardern said there is a significant difference between a child sent to a church-run institution by the state rather than by their parents.

Ardern told Morning Report the reason they made the distinction was that for thousands of children between the 1950s and late 1990s, the state was essentially a parent - therefore the state needed to take responsibility.

Ardern said church institutions will still be covered by the inquiry by virtue of the State sending them there.

"There is no doubt that there will be religious institutions who will be brought into the remit of this inquiry by virtue of the fact that children in state care may have in some form been sent there.

"This inquiry allows us to look into both what occurred to that child via the state, the state's role in seeking to respond when that abuse was often raised and they didn't always respond to it but also what actually happened with those institutions too."

Ardern said the reason the government was focusing on children in state care was that the State called for the inquiry.

"The original impetus for this and what the Human Rights Commission pushed for, what those victims and survivors pushed for, did come from the place of 'you are the state and you have to be responsible for us so please undertake this piece of work'.

"They were also worried that, if we strayed too broadly, their case and their situation would be diluted and the state's responsibility would be diluted.

"For the children who came from state care they wanted us to focus on our responsibilities."

Source

• RNZ