The Vatican has said that an external review of contracts in Germany’s Cologne archdiocese must wait until Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki returns from a sabbatical.
The archdiocese disclosed Rome’s decision on Jan. 4, less than a month after it announced the review of contracts surrounding a landmark study of clerical abuse, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
The archdiocese said on Dec. 7 that Bishop Rolf Steinhäuser, who was named administrator of the archdiocese in October 2020, had “immediately” commission-ed two independent canon lawyers to study the contracts awarded by Woelki and vicar general Msgr. Markus Hofmann.
The contracts related to the 800-page Gercke Report, released in March. The study, known as the “Independent Investigation into the Handling of Sexualized Violence in the Archdiocese of Cologne,” covered the period from 1975 to 2018.