COLOGNE, Germany (CNS): The German Catholic Church has admitted that it employed slave labourers during the Nazi regime.
Following revelations by a July 20 German television program, including interviews with former slave labourers who worked at Church institutions, a Church spokesman, Rudolph Hammerschmidt, said initial investigations had shown that the Church employed slave labourers.
He said there would be more investigations and that the bishops would decide at a late August meeting whether the Church should contribute to a slave labour compensation fund recently set up by government and industry.
However, he said documents available in the central Church archives gave evidence only of the Church’s concern for the spiritual welfare of slave labourers. None showed that Church institutions may have employed them.
