Klaus Mertes

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Klaus Mertes, 2019

Klaus Mertes (born August 18, 1954 in Bonn ) is a German Jesuit , grammar school teacher , author and editor-in-chief . From 2000 to 2011 he was rector of the Jesuit high school Canisius-Kolleg Berlin and from 2011 to 2020 he was director of the Kolleg St. Blasien .

Life

Klaus Mertes was born in 1954 as the second of five children of the Hiltrud Mertes born. Becker and Alois Mertes born in Bonn.

As the son of a diplomatic family, he spent the first eleven years of his life abroad ( Marseille , Paris , Moscow ). From 1966 to 1973 he attended the Aloisius College in Bonn- Bad Godesberg , where he was involved in the ND ( Bund Neudeutschland - Catholic Student Youth). He completed his military service from 1973 to 1975 with the staff music corps of the Bundeswehr in Siegburg . Between 1975 and 1977 he studied Slavic and Classical Philology in Bonn. He became a member of the Catholic student association Flamberg in the KV . In 1977, at the age of 23, Mertes entered the Jesuit order in Münster . After the novitiate , he studied philosophy at the University of Philosophy in Munich and theology at the Philosophical-Theological University of Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt am Main . In 1986 he was ordained a priest and then continued his classical philology studies at the University of Frankfurt am Main .

After his legal clerkship in Frankfurt am Main, he worked in the school service since 1990, initially at the Sankt Ansgar School in Hamburg . In 1994, after a year abroad ( tertiary ) in Northern Ireland, he became a teacher at the Catholic high school Canisius-Kolleg Berlin . From 2000 to May 2011 he was its rector. In addition, he continued to teach Latin and religion . Since 2008, as rector of the Canisius-Kolleg, he was also rector of the Maria Regina Martyrum Church , the memorial church of the Catholics in Germany for the victims of National Socialism.

On September 1, 2011, Mertes became director of the St. Blasien college in the Black Forest. His successor at the Canisius College was Father Tobias Zimmermann SJ. At the end of the 2019/2020 school year, Father Mertes left St. Blasien and will receive a new task from the Order after a sabbatical period, as Jesuits usually change their field of activity after ten years. His successor is Hans-Martin Rieder .

Mertes intends to take up pastoral work from autumn 2020.

Act

Writing engagement

Mertes is the author of several books and writes columns at irregular intervals in various newspapers and magazines, including - from 2003 to 2010 - in the " Tagesspiegel ". From 2007 to 2017 he was editor-in-chief of the information publication "Jesuiten", a quarterly publication of the German-speaking Jesuits. In his book “Learning Responsibility. School in the Spirit of the Retreat ”(2004) he works out as the goal of“ Ignatian pedagogy ”that the pupils“ put themselves in their own relationship to what they have learned through free and mature judgment ”. In July 2009 Mertes published the book “Contradiction from Loyalty”, in which he examines the question of how loyalty to a group relates to a criticism of the same group. Since January 1, 2018, he has been a member of the editorial team of the cultural magazine “ Voices of Time ” published by the Jesuit Order .

Public engagement

Mertes is a frequent guest in discussion groups. During his time at the Canisius College, he volunteered to deal with questions of immigration policy, especially with regard to deportation . From 2003 to 2007 he represented the Berlin Archdiocese in the Senate's hardship commission . In 2001 he was one of the founders of the Interreligious Prayer Berlin on the Gendarmenmarkt . From 2003 to 2011 he was spiritual advisor to the Association of Catholic Entrepreneurs in Berlin. Since 2010 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation on July 20, 1944 , and has been the spiritual advisory council of the Catholic Parents in Germany (KED) since 2016.

Detection of cases of abuse

At the beginning of 2010, Mertes triggered a wave of discoveries of sexual and physical abuse of young people at church - and later also at non-church - educational institutions in Germany.

After several old school students from the Canisius College in Berlin had revealed themselves to him confidentially as victims of abuse, on January 19, 2010, he sent a letter to around 600 members of the affected age groups from the 1970s and 1980s, which ended with the words: “On the part of the college I would like (...) to help break the silence (...). In deep shock and shame, I repeat my apologies to all victims of abuse by Jesuits at the Canisius College. "

This letter and the first cases of abuse became public knowledge on January 28, 2010 through the Berlin media. Encouraged by the reporting, more victims soon reported in the whole of Germany - not only from Jesuit high schools such as the Canisius College, but also from other schools. The media sensitized to the topic now picked up cases that they had reported years ago without consequences. These include, for example, the cases of abuse at the Odenwald School, which the Frankfurter Rundschau wanted to draw attention to in 1999 with the article “The paint is off”. At that time, the problem was not taken up by the other media and society, but hushed up, so that it took over 11 years for Germany to pay attention to these long-ago cases and thus to offer the victims affected a chance and a basis to deal with the inhumane experiences.

Mertes explained the history and motives of his decision to put an end to the silence about sexual and physical abuse and to make the victims heard in several interviews, including in the Würzburger Tagespost , in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in the Berliner Tagesspiegel and in the taz .

When asked whether his actions did not violate the presumption of innocence in favor of the accused, he replied that one must first encourage the victims of abuse to speak at all: "The victims need a basic trust with which we meet them, not the other way around." namely, do not simply assume that the victims of abuse trust an institution “whose representatives have just hurt them in the worst possible way. Sexual abuse is always an abuse of trust as well. "

In her final report at the end of May 2010, the lawyer Ursula Raue, commissioned by the Jesuit order as an external expert to investigate cases of abuse, found 205 reports of abuse at institutions of the Jesuit order. These mainly concerned the Canisius College, but also the St. Blasien College, the Aloisius College in Bonn, the St. Ansgar School in Hamburg, as well as youth facilities in Göttingen and Hanover and a college in Büren that is no longer run by the Jesuits. In addition to the 205 reports, Raue received 50 reports from victims at other facilities. A total of 12 fathers, six of whom had already died, and two secular collaborators of more than one victim were named. 32 other fathers, secular teachers or educators were named by only one victim.

In a press conference on March 30, 2010, the Bishop of Trier Stephan Ackermann , representative of the German Bishops' Conference for questions of sexual abuse of minors in the church , thanked Mertes for having "opened a door and overcome a previously prevailing speechlessness" with his approach. While the SPD awarded him the Gustav Heinemann Citizens' Prize for his commitment, comparable church honors have so far failed to materialize. Instead, Mertes sometimes experienced indirect disapproval from official church bodies; so had z. B. a local pastor to unload him from an event after the diocese leadership intervened against his participation.

In connection with the uncovering of cases of abuse, Mertes was referred to as a whistleblower in various media .

Analysis of the specific church causes of abuse

In various publications, especially his book “Lost Trust. Being Catholic in the Crisis ”(2013), Mertes examined the specific ecclesiastical background of the sexualized violence perpetrated by priests.

The elevation of the consecration office creates a sacred aura that has given priestly offenders a high level of immunity against allegations of abuse by laypeople. Against this background, Mertes commented on Pope Benedict XVI's complaint in 2018. At the end of the priestly year 2009/2010, the devil had thrown dirt in the face of the church through the abuse scandal, with the comment: If anything, then the church probably threw dirt in Jesus' face.

The “monarchical ideal of leadership” of the Roman Catholic Church does not allow the separation of powers or even external investigations into the abusive exercise of power: “Institutions cannot investigate abuse of power themselves, but rather need outside help. But their structurally conditioned arrogance thinks they can and should be able to do it themselves. ”According to Mertes, another cause of the systemic lack of transparency in the leadership of the Catholic Church is the hermeticism of elitist-clerical male associations.

Homophobia based on false ideas about the “nature” of man blocks the view that the actual injustice of the sexual violence perpetrated by priests lies in the abuse of power. Homosexuality is wrongly identified as the cause of this violence, although it is known that heterosexual men constitute the majority of abusers worldwide. Since candidates for the priesthood would have to conceal and suppress their homosexuality in order to avoid “disciplinary self-endangerment”, they could not develop “a mature relationship with their sexuality”. Sexual maturity "can only be achieved - also and especially in celibate life - if one can speak singularly about one's own sexuality in the first person."

Open letter to Cardinal Marx

With eight other personalities - theologians and well-known Catholics - he addressed an open letter to Cardinal Reinhard Marx , which was published on February 3, 2019 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . The signatories called for a "new start with sexual morality" with a "reasonable and fair assessment of homosexuality", "real separation of powers" in the church and the removal of the excesses of the ordination office and its opening up to women. They appealed to the German Bishops' Conference to give diocesan priests the freedom to choose their way of life, "so that celibacy can again credibly refer to the kingdom of heaven".

Memberships

From 2008 to 2016, Mertes was an elected “individual” member of the General Assembly of the Central Committee of German Catholics .

honors and awards

Publications

Books

As an author
As editor
As translator
Book contributions

Newspaper articles

  • The silence. Why abuse is so difficult to clarify in: Die Zeit No. 11, March 3, 2016, p. 54.
  • Curl and let suffer. How does spiritual abuse work? Deeds, perpetrators, victims. An analysis, in: Publik-Forum No. 8/2016, p. 28f

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Mertes SJ new director at the college ( Memento from November 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  2. ^ Rektorenkarusell - German Jesuit schools under new management ( Memento of January 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Domradio.de, January 12, 2011.
  3. ^ Father Mertes adopted in Berlin
  4. ↑ jesuiten.org: Kolleg St. Blasien gets a new rector , jesuiten.org, January 14, 2020.
  5. ↑ Volker Hasenauer: "Jesuit Klaus Mertes gives up leadership of the St. Blasien college" on domradio.de from June 22, 2020
  6. ↑ Klaus Mertes SJ
  7. ^ Voices of the times - editors. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
  8. ↑ See http://www.friedensgebet-berlin.de./
  9. ↑ Heinz Withake adopted as a spiritual adviser to the KED , communication from the Münster diocese of January 20, 2016; Catholic parenthood in Germany. About us.
  10. ↑ Jens Anker, Michael Behrendt: "The silence must be broken" . In: Berliner Morgenpost, January 28, 2010, accessed on November 27, 2019.
  11. ↑ Documented: The Canisius Rector's Letter , Der Tagesspiegel, January 29, 2010.
  12. ↑ See e.g. B. Susanne Vieth-Entus: Students at Jesuit grammar school abused for years , Der Tagesspiegel from January 28, 2010
  13. ↑ Arno Widmann: We don't want to know . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of March 17, 2010
  14. ↑ Jörg Schindler: The paint is off , Frankfurter Rundschau from November 17, 1999.
  15. ↑ DokZentrum ansTageslicht.de: Father Klaus Mertes SJ clarifies sexual abuse in 2010 , accessed on March 15, 2012.
  16. ↑ Regina Einig: "Ultimately, guidelines require the victim to trust the institution" - Interview, Die Tagespost of February 6, 2010.
  17. ↑ Antje Schmelcher: Abuse of Jesuit schools - “The Church did not listen” - Interview, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from February 6, 2010.
  18. ↑ Claudia Keller: “There is something so ridiculous about the myth of the Canisius College” - Interview, Der Tagesspiegel of February 7, 2010.
  19. ↑ Felix Lee, Plutonia Plarre: Father Mertes on abuse - "The focus is on the victims" - Interview, the daily newspaper of February 7, 2010.
  20. ↑ See “Guidelines ultimately require the victim to trust the institution” - Interview, Die Tagespost of February 6, 2010.
  21. ^ Zeit Online: Jesuits Admit Cover-up of Abuse, May 27, 2010, online
  22. ^ Daniel Deckers : Catholic counseling center for victims of abuse . In: FAZ of March 31, 2010, p. 4.
  23. ↑ Matthias Drobinski: Victims who fall out of perception . Southgerman newspaper. January 9, 2013. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
  24. ↑ Ilka Piepgras: The Promised One . Time online. November 17, 2012. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
  25. ↑ Derek Scally: Whistleblower priest fears schism in church . In: Irish Times , April 5, 2010
  26. ↑ Ulrike Bieritz: “Those who know about it become accomplices” . ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg , January 26, 2014
  27. ↑ See Lost Trust, pp. 84–84.
  28. ↑ Evelyn Finger et al .: Das Schweigen , Die Zeit, September 26, 2018.
  29. ↑ Lost Trust, p. 76.
  30. ↑ Lost Trust, p. 81.
  31. ↑ See Thoughts on the Approach to Homophobia in the Catholic Church , theologie.geschichte, Vol. 11 (2016).
  32. ↑ Lost Trust, p. 138.
  33. ↑ Considerations for coming to terms with homophobia in the Catholic Church .
  34. ↑ Considerations for coming to terms with homophobia in the Catholic Church .
  35. ^ "Open letter to Cardinal Marx: Demand for upheaval in the Church" , domradio.de , February 3, 2019.
  36. ↑ Gustav Heinemann Citizen Prize for Father Klaus Mertes: "I will continue to trust"
  37. ↑ Klaus Mertes receives the Ferdinand Tönnies Medal from the Science Information Service (idw-online.de); Retrieved March 5, 2013
  38. ↑ Jesuit Mertes receives an honorary doctorate , kathisch.de from May 15, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Mertes, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mertes, Klaus Johannes Maria (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious, Jesuit, former director of the Jesuit college in St. Blasien, author and editor-in-chief
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn