A number of priests in the Danish Catholic Church have been able to continue their ministry either in Denmark or abroad - despite convictions or fines for sexual crimes or detailed accusations of abusive behavior towards children and young people.
This appears from extensive documentation, including voluminous photographic material, a large amount of access to documents and conversations with a large number of sources around the Catholic community.
The revelations meet sharp criticism from experts with knowledge of the many cases of violations that have previously affected the Catholic Church.
Niels Valdemar Vinding, associate professor and religious researcher at the University of Copenhagen, calls it »surprising that such cases can continue to appear.«
»There are apparently still structural problems that have not been solved, when violators and people guilty of possessing child pornography can end up finding jobs with other churches abroad,« he says.
Leslie Griffin, law professor at the University of Nevada, calls it »a mistake« that the church places the priests in new positions abroad or simply lets them continue their work in Denmark.
»There is a risk that the offenders will continue their behaviour. In the cases you have presented to me, I believe that the church has let the priests off too easily.«
»Exclude them from working as priests in the church.«
For decades, the Catholic Church has been tormented around the globe by cases of child abuse. In 2010 the church came under fire also in Denmark when several victims came forward and told about abusive behaviour from several priests.
As a consequence, the Danish Catholic Church adopted an action plan in 2011, which states, among other things, that it is crucial to »find the potential offenders early and to exclude them from working as priests in the church.«
The Vatican's guidelines also emphasize that the church must avoid »only transferring the accused cleric«, as this is not necessarily »a sufficient solution«.
But Berlingske has identified a total of five cases where convicted or accused Catholic priests have been able to continue in the priesthood - either in the same parish or another region.
In one of the cases, the Polish priest Radoslaw Pawlowski was convicted in 2005 of possessing child pornography while he was working as a priest in Birkerød north of Copenhagen. Despite the verdict, Pawlowski continued as a priest in the town until 2010, when he got a job as a priest in the Polish town of Pabianice near Warsaw. Here he continues to regularly hold religious ceremonies with occasional participation of children and young people, photo documentation shows.
The story is somewhat similar to the case of the Polish priest Michal Gutkowski, who until 2018 was a priest at the prestigious Catholic school Niels Steensens Gymnasium in Copenhagen. In 2018, he was fined for four cases of sexual harassment against school girls.
Shortly after his dismissal, he got a job at the Catholic Jesuit Community in Gdynia, Poland, and is today the director of the Catholic European Centre of Communication and Culture near Warsaw. Photographs show that several times since 2018, Gutkowski has worked as a priest, held masses or distributed communion to children.
The three remaining cases have all previously been mentioned in Danish media.
They include the priests Hans Esmark and Stephen Holm, who were both accused in 2010 of having violated young men. Accusations which were deemed »credible« in the Catholic church's legal investigation of the various cases of abuse in the wake of the media coverage. As the cases were obsolete according to the legislation at the time, the two men were never prosecuted, and both were allowed to continue as priests in their respective churches in Denmark.
The last case concerns the German priest Reinhold Sahner, who in 2010 was accused of having acted inappropriately towards boys at Niels Steensen's Gymnasium. Sahner received an »official reprimand« from the bishop and shortly afterwards left his job as pastor of the Sacrament Church in Copenhagen. He currently works as a priest in Singapore.
None of the five mentioned priests want to comment on the story. Stephen Holm, Reinhold Sahner and Hans Esmark all previously denied the allegations.
Danish Bishop in written response
The Catholic bishop in Denmark, Czeslaw Kozon, says in a written response that »the return of two foreign priests has taken place« and that »the respective superiors have been fully informed of our knowledge«.
»In both cases, we have been assured that the priests are no longer allowed to work with children and young people,« he says.
The Bishop adds that the priests being banned from working with children »does not have to mean that other limited and controlled assignments for pastoral work are excluded«.
He states that the church closely follows the contingency plan for the prevention of abuse, which includes, among other things, »clear rules for the interaction between children and adults under church auspices.«
Berlingske has asked the Catholic Church and the Jesuit order in Poland about the reason why, according to photo documentation, the two Polish priests continue to have contact with children.
From both parties, it is said that they are aware of the cases and that the priests is allowed to have contact with children in connection with fairs or similar public activities.
»Giving communion at regular Mass, which is attended by different people and parents together with their children, is not pastoral work with minors, and in no way compromises the safety of minors,« says Wojciech Żmudziński SJ - Socius to the Provincial PMA and Delegate for Safeguarding of Children.
