After abuse scandal: BR radio council chief Prelate Wolf leaves office

Dhe Chairman of the Broadcasting Council of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, Prelate Lorenz Wolf, is retiring from his office for the time being. The Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, said Wolf – the official of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising – had informed him “that he wanted to rest all his offices and tasks”.

The Munich abuse report has thus led to a first provisional personnel consequence. With his many offices and tasks, Wolf is considered one of the most powerful leading Catholic churchmen in Bavaria. Marx said he wrote to Wolf, who was heavily criticized in the report presented a week ago by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW). The latter replied that he would “take a position in due course”. The archbishop said he was happy for Wolf to rest his posts until then.

The office of the BR Broadcasting Council said on request that Wolf had “already handed over the chairmanship to his deputy until further notice”. Godehard Ruppert is to chair the next meeting of the committee on February 3rd. The President of the Virtual University of Bavaria sits on the committee as a representative of the Bavarian universities.

Lorenz Wolf has been publicly criticized for days. The expert opinion of the Munich law firm had weighed heavily on him. He is said to have made a significant contribution to covering up and downplaying serious abuse crimes. As official, Wolf is the highest church judge in the archdiocese, and he has also been head of the Bavarian Catholic Office since 2009. In this function, he is the link between the Catholic Church and the state government, the Bavarian state parliament and associations and institutions from business and society.

Several members of the BR broadcasting council had called for Wolf’s resignation, including the media policy spokesman for the Bavarian FDP parliamentary group, Helmut Markwort. The former “Focus” editor-in-chief said that Wolf had disqualified himself from working in the Broadcasting Council through his cover-up work: “He lacks the necessary character and credibility that the fee payers can demand.” Wolf has not yet commented on the allegations that the be raised against him in the expert opinion of the law firm WSW. In addition to his function as official of the Archdiocese and head of the Bavarian Catholic Office, the theologian and lawyer is also Catholic school commissioner in the Free State, cathedral dean in Munich and a member of the ARD committee chairpersons’ conference, the board of trustees of the Munich University of Philosophy and the advisory board of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing.