An internal Catholic Church document obtained by the German newspaper Die Zeit suggests that Pope Emeritus Benedict 16 covered up cases of sexual abuse against minors within the institution when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the 1980s. from crime to the time.
The case involves Father Peter H., who between 1973 and 1996 reportedly abused at least 23 boys aged between 8 and 16 while occupying different positions in the church. A 2016 ecclesiastical decree from the Archdiocese of Munich, to which Zeit had access, shows that the institution criticized the behavior of clerics, including Joseph Ratzinger —named after Pope Benedict XVI—, in the face of the abuses.
Father Peter H., whose full name was omitted from the press, was initially active in the diocese of Essen, but, faced with accusations made by family members of the abused children, he was removed. The religious was not expelled from the Church, nor did he respond to the accusations, being only referred to therapy with a diagnosis of narcissistic disorder with pederasty and exhibitionism.
On leaving Essen, he was accepted by Pope Benedict XVI into the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in January 1980. Among other points, the internal Church document obtained and released by the German media states that “the bishops in Munich and Essen did not fulfill their responsibility towards the children and young people entrusted to their pastoral care”.
The name of Pope Benedict 16, Joseph Ratzinger, is mentioned several times, according to the newspaper Zeit. “The then Archbishop Ratzinger was aware of the facts about Peter H’s admission. (…) Neither a preliminary investigation was initiated nor a criminal proceeding in the Church. Ratzinger deliberately declined to denounce the crime.”
In response to the newspaper’s investigation, Pope Benedict XVI, through a letter sent by his former personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, said that the claim that he was aware of the history of sexual assault at the time of the decision on the admission of Father Peter H. is wrong.
The argument has already been used by the religious at other times. When the Munich case came to light in 2010 after investigations by German newspapers and the American The New York Times, the local archdiocese said that the authorization to take in Peter H. was given by vicar general Gerhard Gruber, Bento 16’s subordinate at the time.
The former vicar went so far as to publicly assume responsibility for the decision and said, in a statement, that he deeply regrets that it has resulted in crimes against young people. Scholars in the Catholic Church hierarchy, however, are skeptical of this version.
In 1986, Father Peter H. was found guilty of sexually abusing 11 boys between the ages of 13 and 16 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. At the end of his sentence, however, he was reinstated in a Munich parish by the Archbishop who replaced Benedict in the local Archdiocese.
Benedict, who resigned from the papacy in 2013, went on to head the Vatican’s main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which leads investigations into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He held the post for four years before taking over as pope in 2005.
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