Penance Service with Confession on 28 November 2010 (First Sunday of Advent) in the Hohen Dom in Osnabrück. Sermon by Bishop Dr. Franz-Josef Bode

[didymus]

The bishop of Osnabruck prostrated himself before the altar as penance for all the sins of the sex-abuse scandal.

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Penance Service with Confession on 28 November 2010 (First Sunday of Advent) in the Hohen Dom in Osnabrück. Sermon by Bishop Dr. Franz-Josef Bode

Yes, these strong words are fitting this evening. We cannot go on the road to Christmas without taking anything with us what we learned in the past months:

• the suffering from victims from abuse and violence
• the guilt of the perpetrators
• the darkness and the shadowy side of a church in which an atmosphere could be found which enabled obfuscation of the crimes.
• all painful experiences in which situations of trust have been abused by corporal and mental violence, the Gospel being twisted into the opposite.

Those who learned about some acts by reading letters or reports, who has listened to victims struggling to find words for it or has seen the burden they are carrying for the rest of their lives, who has seen what happened without looking the other way, those cannot do anything else but present themselves in front of the Lord. What individuals acting in the name of the Church did to the young, very young people, has to be discussed in front of God. Only in front of his eyes, when He is looking at us, in His presence, can we find out what happened in our church.

Therefore I ask the victims once again for forgiveness. And we want the counselling, we want to work it out, to offer real help and exhaust all options. But in the end the damage cannot be repaired fully. We have to give it up to God. These acts must not poison the climate in the church any more, where they could happen undiscovered.
Ten years ago, at Palm Sunday, I performed, as a bishop, an act of penance in the Dom of Osnabrück following the gesture of Pope John Paul II. Back then I didn’t realise how much it was needed. Tonight we must go a step further into the “Cleansing of Conscience”, which the Pope talked about back then. We confess the same “structural sins” in the Church, which also enabled abuse here and which has made discovery very difficult and even prevented it.

This is why I will stand at the bottom step of the sanctuary in a moment as a bishop, alone in my responsibility as a bishop, but with everybody’s prayers in my back, like we always pray during the Confiteor: “I ask to you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”