Cologne Archdiocese to pay €300k in abuse damages.

The Archdiocese of Cologne has been ordered by a German court to pay €300,000 in damages to an abuse victim for crimes committed in the 1970s, a far higher sum than Germany's Catholic Church dioceses have paid in voluntary, symbolic compensation payments in the past. The archdiocese did not contest the allegations of at least 320 instances of abuse by a priest against the plaintiff, 64-year-old Georg Menne, in the 1970s. The priest in question had confessed publicly before his death.