At Thursday’s news conference in Munich, lawyers investigating the abuse challenged Benedict’s claim in an 82-page statement that he had no recollection of attending a meeting in 1980 to discuss the case of an abusive priest.
They said this contradicted the documents in their possession.
In a statement Monday, the pope emeritus’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, said that Benedict XVI did attend the meeting, but that the omission “was the result of an oversight in editing the statement” and “was not He did it in bad faith.”
Gänswein said that at the 1980 meeting no decision was made about a new assignment for the priest, only a request to provide him with accommodation during therapeutic treatment.
“He (the pope emeritus) is very sorry for this mistake and asks to be excused,” Gänswein said.
He said Benedict planned to explain how the error occurred after he finished examining the nearly 2,000-page report, submitted electronically last Thursday.
Benedict XVI, 94, ill and living in the Vatican, resigned from the papacy in 2013.
“He is carefully reading the statements therein, which fill him with shame and pain for the suffering inflicted on the victims,” Gänswein said. A full review “will take some time due to his age and health,” he added.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; edited in Spanish by Benjamín Mejías Valencia)
Source From: Ambito
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