Eichstätt/Bamberg (dpa/lby) - A Catholic pastor from the diocese of Eichstätt, who is suspected of sexual abuse, lived the last years of his life in the archdiocese of Bamberg. From the end of 2012 to July 2014, the man occasionally held services as a temporary clergyman in the Heroldsbach prayer center (Forchheim district), said a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Bamberg on Tuesday. From July 2014 until his death in October 2016, the priest then lived in Bamberg.
The Bamberg diocese leadership was not aware of the allegations of abuse against the man at the time, it said. So far, no such allegations from his time in Heroldsbach and Bamberg have been reported, said the diocese spokesman. The Archdiocese calls on potential victims of sexual assault to get in touch.
The first allegations against the pastor were made in the 1960s, when the church had posted him to Africa as a missionary. Recently it became known that decades after the first allegations of abuse against him in the diocese of Eichstätt he was said to have sexually harassed women.
According to the Eichstätt Caritas district association, witnesses accused the man of sexually assaulting him in 2011 and 2012 as the chaplain of a retirement home in Schwabach. Schwabach, which borders Nuremberg to the south, belongs to the diocese of Eichstätt. In the Schwabach retirement home St. Willibald, according to Caritas, the pastor is said to have molested both employees and residents.
