German Bishops' Conference
After the construction of the Berlin Wall the ordinaries in the East German Democratic Republic (GDR) were unable to participate in the Fulda Conference of Bishops.Since 1972 three sees had their seat in East Germany, the dioceses of Berlin and of Dresden-Meissen and the Apostolic Administration of Görlitz.On 25 September 2018,[1] the national Episcopal Conference threw the presentation of a self-commissioned study from which resulted at least 3.700 cases of sexual abuse in Germany from 1946 to 2014.[3] In 2010, the New York Times published the allegations of sexual abuses committed by a priest of the Munich diocese in the 80s.[4] The conference's maxim that, where other creatures are concerned, "we can speak of the priority of [their] being over [their] being useful" was commended by Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato si'.