Archdiocese of Cologne: Data from the shredded list is not gone
According to the Archdiocese of Cologne, all data from a shredded Excel spreadsheet with abusers are still available. The “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” (Saturday) quotes from a reply from the Archdiocese, namely “the physical as well as the digital list only shows data that is available elsewhere anyway and to this day”. No data was lost by shredding the printed list and deleting the digital list. According to the newspaper, the Archdiocese announced that Woelki personally destroyed the list.
It is no longer known who created the Excel list for Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki in 2015. The original files, from which the list of perpetrators was “filtered out” in 2015, would be “properly kept in the designated places”. The archdiocese did not rate the question of how the destruction of the list of perpetrators was compatible with regulations for archiving sensitive documents as “sufficiently specific” and thus as not “allowed to admit it,” the newspaper continued.
The archdiocese confirmed on Wednesday at the request of the Catholic News Agency (KNA) that a 2015 list of the names of priests accused of sexual violence had been shredded after Cardinal Woelki reviewed it. This step was taken for privacy reasons.
No memory of names
“Mr. Cardinal Woelki has no memory of which names were even on the list viewed more than seven years ago,” it said in the reply to the KNA: “He also does not know whether the list of priests who are accused of abuse will become, full war.” It was an Excel spreadsheet that listed the names of the accused clergymen and the respective payment to those affected by abuse. The document did not contain any information on the specific allegations and the status of the proceedings.
In 2015, the Archbishop did not take any action against the persons named on the list, since the Archdiocese’s specialist departments had already been affected by the cases and the list had been processed. “Cardinal Woelki trusted in the proper work of the competent, independent and qualified intervention agency,” the Archdiocese continued.
In July it became known that the Archdiocese of Cologne forwarded allegations of abuse against the original “Sternsinger” boss Winfried Pilz very late to the Diocese of Dresden-Meissen, where the priest spent his retirement. The Archdiocese sees no breach of duty by Woelki, since the cardinal did not know that the information was not passed on under his predecessor Joachim Meisner. According to the Archdiocese, Woelki no longer knows whether the name Pilz was on the 2015 list. (KNA)
08/27, 2:10 p.m.: First paragraph supplemented with further details.