Germany’s Catholic Church on Tuesday apologised to thousands of victims of sexual assault by clergy, with the institution’s top cardinal saying perpetrators must be brought to justice. The dismay expressed by the head of the German Bishops’ Conference came as the institution published a damning report showing that in Germany, almost 3,700 minors — mainly boys — were assaulted between 1946 and 2014. “Sexual abuse is a persistent problem and not a historical problem” in the Catholic Church, said Harald Dressing, a professor at the Mannheim Institute of Psychology, who coordinated the research commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference.
