Catholic Church of the German city of Aichstät apologized for the burning of “witches” after 400 years of silence. The Independent newspaper reports about it.
From the 15th to the 18th century, hundreds of people were brutally tortured and killed in this Bavarian city on suspicion of witchcraft. Only now the Catholic Church of Eichstet has apologized for the murders. Archbishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke called these events “a bleeding wound in the history of the church” and promised to erect a plaque in memory of the victims.
In total, about 60 thousand people were executed in Europe on suspicion of witchcraft, 25 thousand of them – on the territory of modern Germany. Most of the victims were women, but there were also men and children among them.
The campaign for the rehabilitation of the victims of the “witch hunt” in Germany began in 2011 at the initiative of the priest Hartmut Hegeler. Since then, the authorities in over 50 German cities, including Cologne and Leipzig, have posthumously rehabilitated those executed on charges of witchcraft and installed memorial plaques and monuments in their honor, and in some cases even renamed streets.