The Catholic Leadership: Covering for Child Molesters and Now Publishing Porn
Meanwhile in the US they are whining about not getting your tax dollars for their “anti trafficking” groups that are really anti-choice and part of the war on women.
The German Weltbild 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 prostitution, 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 dioceses. 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 market. 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 violence, 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’ conference, Fr Hans Langendörfer SJ, who is on the executive board of Weltbild, and the executive 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 particular 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.