THE ROMAN Catholic Church in Germany has released a report detailing its use of slave labour during the Nazi era. The report commissioned in 2000 by the German Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference found that during the war church institutions employed 4,829 civilians and 1,075 prisoners of war as slave labourers.<\/p>\n
The Archbishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl Lehmann said the 700-page history entitled “Forced Labour in the Catholic Church 1939-1945″ found that 776 church hospitals, homes, monasteries, farms and gardens were provided with slave labour imported from Russia, Poland and the Ukraine by the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe comparatively small number of labourers, many of whom spent barely a year working in Catholic institutions, doesn’t even amount to a thousandth of the estimated total of 13 million forced labourers employed throughout the Reich,” Cardinal Lehmann said at a press conference broadcast on German television on April 8.<\/p>\n
“But it remains an historical burden which will continue to challenge our church in the future. There is no collective guilt, but as Christians and as a church we are aware of the responsibility that results from the burden of the past,\u201d\u009d the former president of the German Catholic Bishops Conference said.<\/p>\n