Benedict, as Munich Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, did nothing against clerics accused of abuse in four cases, the experts said on Thursday in Munich. In a statement, Benedict “strictly” denied his responsibility, but the experts do not consider this to be credible.
Two of the cases in which the experts see Ratzinger’s misconduct involved clergymen who are accused of having committed several acts of abuse that were also attested by state courts. Both priests remained active in pastoral care, nothing was done in terms of canon law. An interest in the victims of abuse was “not recognizable” in Ratzinger. The later Pope was Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and then moved to the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican.
The experts are now also convinced that Ratzinger knew about the history of the priest Peter H., who came to Munich in 1980 from the diocese of Essen. H. was convicted as a pedophile and later committed further acts of abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich.
Attorney Martin Pusch said that Ratzinger initially showed an “initial defensiveness” when preparing the report. However, he later gave it up and made a detailed written statement.
The report also accuses the incumbent Archbishop Reinhard Marx of inactivity. Despite the large number of reports, it can only be stated in a “relatively small number” that the cardinal dealt directly with cases of abuse at all, said Pusch. In addition, Marx is accused of concrete incorrect behavior in two suspected cases.
The former Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, has been accused of 21 counts of misconduct in dealing with sexual abuse. Wetter did not deny the cases, but misconduct on his part, said Pusch.
The study of sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in Germany lists at least 497 victims. The law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) announced that the majority of these were male children and adolescents between 1945 and 2019. She had prepared the report on behalf of the archdiocese. According to the study, there were at least 235 alleged perpetrators – including 173 priests and nine deacons. However, this is only the so-called bright field. It can be assumed that the number of unreported cases is significantly larger, the law firm said.
Source: Nachrichten
