THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD
Publisher owned by German Church accused of selling pornography
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt and Robert Mickens
THE GERMANWeltbild publishing group, which is one of Europe’s major booksellers and is entirely owned by the Catholic Church, is facing mounting accusations that it is selling erotic, satanist and pornographic titles. On Monday the Pope himself appeared to
make reference to the furore, when he told the new German ambassador to the Holy See that he would make sure the Catholic Church in Germany was more decisive in fighting prostitution and the spread of pornography. In his welcoming address to Reinhard Schweppe, Pope Benedict XVI said: “The time has come vigorously to restrict prosti- tution, as also the dissemination of material which has an erotic or pornographic content, especially via the internet.” In comments that are being seen as referring to the Weltbild affair, the Pope then told Mr Schweppe: “The Holy See will pay due heed to seeing that the necessary commitment on the part of the German Church regarding these defects is undertaken with greater energy and clarity.” Weltbild is co-owned by 15 German dioce- ses. With 6,400 employees and an annual turnover of €1.7 billion (£1.46bn), it is the third largest mail-order bookseller in Germany and has a 20 per cent share of the book mar- ket. It is the number two in online sales after Amazon and also sells CDs and DVDs. In mid-October the German book trade journal buchreport revealed in its newsletter
that Weltbild’s mail-order business included titles on satanism, books which glorified vio- lence, and pornography. If one put “erotics” in
www.weltbild.de’s search engine, 2,500 titles appeared,
www.buchreport.de said. The secretary of the German bishops’ con-
ference, Fr Hans Langendörfer SJ, who is on the executive board of Weltbild, and the exec- utive board’s chairman, Klaus Donaubauer, immediately countered that those responsible had been asked to step up efforts to filter out “unsuitable products”. Weltbild had a partic- ular responsibility to society and regularly checked its products to see if they conformed to “the Christian values of Weltbild’s owners (i.e. the Catholic Church)”, they underlined. Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich told
the press that if the bishops heard of porno- graphic titles or titles which glorified violence the matter was immediately investigated and the titles stopped. “There are filter systems that can prevent such literature from being disseminated,” he said. But as protests from conservative Catholic groups grew, and more dubious titles on
The Pope with the new German ambassador to the Holy See, Reinhard Schweppe. Photo: CNS
www.weltbild.de were found and their names published, the German bishops admitted that a “filtering failure” had allowed dubious titles to stray into Weltbild’s lists. Weltbild’s man- agement has meanwhile threatened to sue certain far-right online networks for slander for publishing headlines such as “Catholic Church earns a fortune with porn”. The Catholic Church bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago. In 1998 it merged with five other publishing houses. In 2008, at the height of its success, the German bishops con- sidered selling the concern. The Weltbild group’s chairman, Carel Halff, said then that the size of the company had “gone beyond the bishops’ original concept”. At that time Weltbild had 7,400 employees and a turnover of €1.94bn, while one of its subsidiaries,
www.buecher.de, listed 4,364 erotic titles. Criticism from conservative Catholics regard- ing these titles is said to have persuaded the bishops to try to sell. But their efforts came to nothing, apparently, because they were not offered the sum they were hoping for. ■In his address to the new German ambas- sador on Monday Pope Benedict defended the Vatican’s active lobbying against legalised abortion and embryonic research, saying it was based on upholding universal moral truths and not an attempt to impose Catholic faith on non-believers. “If the Holy See intervenes in the legislative field”, the Pope told Mr Schweppe, “it does so to defend values which are basically there for all to see as truths of human existence.”
Boy’s kidnapping highlights problem of growth in child trafficking
PAKISTAN’S CATHOLICChurch – including Caritas Pakistan – is demanding stricter laws against child trafficking after a kidnapped altar boy escaped captivity, writes Ellen Teague. The vicar general of the Archdiocese of
Lahore, Fr Andrew Nisari, condemned child trafficking and urged prayers for victims last weekend as Sameer Samuel attended Mass with his family at Lahore’s Sacred Heart Cathedral. Fr Nisari described Sameer’s escape as “miraculous” and warned parents to “always keep track of your children and make sure they know your cell-phone numbers”. Nine-year-old Sameer was abducted outside the cathedral on 23 October and was missing for 10 days before turning up 200 miles away in northern Punjab. “After failing to sell me
and becoming unnerved by media reports, the kidnapper tried to kill me by throwing me in the Indus River,” Sameer said. “I managed to grab a branch and was later pulled out by a priest who took me to the Christian settlement where I contacted my parents and asked for my First Communion,” he added. Child trafficking cases in Pakistan have increased considerably this year as Pakistan remains a major conduit for the trade from South Asia to the Middle East and Europe. “Increasing poverty is making women and children extremely vulnerable and it’s an issue affecting Christians and Muslims,” reports Amir Irfan of Caritas Pakistan, which last year highlighted the trafficking of children to
the United Arab Emirates to work as camel jockeys. At its recent national conference in
Islamabad, the Pakistan-based Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child high- lighted the case of a 12-year-old Christian girl tortured to death in January 2010 by her Muslim employer. According to its annual report, 1,216 cases of child sexual abuse were documented in Pakistan in the first six months of last year. Of these, 125 boys and girls were sexually abused after being abducted, while 55 were eventually murdered. The British Pakistani Christian Association gives the figure of more than 700 cases reported annually of Christian girls kidnapped and forced into Islamic marriage.
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