ZFor the first time, Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a German bishop linked to the abuse scandal. On Saturday, the Vatican and the diocese of Osnabrück announced the resignation of Osnabrück Bishop Franz-Josef Bode. “I misjudged cases, often acted hesitantly and sometimes made wrong decisions,” Bode said in a statement about his surprising decision.
“I expressly acknowledge my responsibility and my personal mistakes.” Some would have lost all trust in him. He underestimated the “extent of the irritation, especially in the diocese’s staff,” the bishop continued.
The abuse scandal did not initially seem to hit the longest-serving German bishop, who has headed his diocese since 1995, with full force. He was even doing comparatively well. In 2010, he was the first bishop to do so in a penitential service, confessing his guilt to the victims of abuse in his diocese and asking those affected for forgiveness. However, Bode’s image suddenly darkened in September 2022 when lawyers and historians from the University of Osnabrück presented the first results of their abuse study for his diocese.
Initially, Bode ruled out resigning
The authors attested to Bode “breaches of duty in the low single digits”. These were “negligent, but not intentional,” explained the Osnabrück legal scholar Hans Schulte-Nölke at the time. According to the interim report, during his term of office, Bode “leave accused persons in their positions, including those whose dangerousness could hardly be doubted, or appointed them to positions that made further opportunities for crime possible” or even entrusted them with management tasks in youth pastoral care.
Even after the year 2000, the diocese violated its obligations to prevent further criminal offenses “sometimes seriously”. Regarding Bode’s request for forgiveness from 2010, the interim report states that the promise made at the time to make full use of the aid for the victims “was not implemented in the administrative practice of his diocese towards those affected”.
In a first reaction to the study, Bode ruled out resigning. The diocese’s Catholic Council demonstratively backed him. But that could not prevent the mood in the diocese from changing, especially among the employees. The bishop faced a landslide loss of confidence.
In December 2022, he said he enjoyed a good reputation among employees as an enlightener and reformer. But this reputation has now been ruined. “Even priests ask me: why don’t you resign”. Most recently, the advisory board for those affected by the northern German dioceses of Bode reported to the Vatican in December. The panel accused him, among other things, of “completely misjudging” the descriptions of a person affected and of delaying the notification of her case to the Vatican.
Bode was a central figure in the Catholic Church in Germany: in 2017 the bishops elected him deputy chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference. He was also deputy president of the “Synodal Path” and a driving force behind the reform project. He chaired the forum on women in church offices.