Zollner was born in Regensburg, Germany, in 1966 and has been a member of the Jesuits since the 16 September 1990. He studied philosophy and theology in Regensburg. He completed his Doctorate in Theology at University of Innsbruck, and furthered his studies in Psychology at the Institute of Psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Since 2003, he has taught at the Institute of Psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Zollner filled the role of academic Vice Rector of the Gregorian from 2010 to 2019. Zollner is regarded as one of the leading ecclesiastical experts in the field of safeguarding of minors from sexual abuse, especially in the Catholic Church. He has been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors since its creation in 2014 and president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Gregorian. In 2010–2011 he was a member of the Scientific Working Group of the “Round Table on Child Abuse” commissioned by the Federal Government of Germany. He co-authored Chiesa e pedofilia. Una ferita aperta. Un approccio psicologico-pastorale . He is also Honorary Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion of the University of Durham. Hans Zollner views safeguarding minors as one of the main tasks the Catholic Church needs to have at heart. On 1 April 2017, Pope Francis appointed him as a consultor to the Congregation for the Clergy. As of March 2017, he reported, he had visited 40 countries to address episcopal conferences on the need for developing awareness and establishing safeguarding measures. In May 2010, he co-authored an article defending the record of Pope Benedict XVI in removing priests accused of sexual abuse. The article presented data to show that sexual abuse is no higher among celibate clergy than in other areas and that media reports present an inflated picture of the scale of the problem. It decried the "moral panic" surrounding the subject of clerical sexual abuse. In 2011, when Polish church officials were downplaying the need for a commission to establish procedures for handling cases of clerical sexual abuse, he told a Polish magazine that "If the church in Poland doesn't confront this reality and doesn't take the bull by the horns, the same thing will happen which we witnessed in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Austria and recently in Belgium. If the church doesn't know how to react to such situations because it hasn't bothered to ascertain the facts, its image will suffer much more than if it had said, 'Yes, we had such cases -- they were very painful, but we tackled them.'" Addressing church workers in Australia in September 2017, Zollner said that in Australia "there seems to be almost nil trust in what the Church says.... This is not true in other parts of the world. I think you are in a pretty unique situation". He thought Europe and North America had made progress in dealing with clerical sexual abuse, but "It has not yet hit the surface of public interest and discussion and news in 75 per cent of countries, if not more. I cannot say where or when it will hit, but it will hit." In February 2019, Hans Zollner co-organized the "Abuse Summit" in Rome. The gathering consisted of Pope Francis and presidents of bishops' conferences meeting with experts on best practices for handling abuse cases in the Catholic Church.
