An independent report published on Thursday (20) accuses Pope Emeritus Benedict of covering up cases of sexual abuse against children in Germany’s Catholic Church. Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 and 1982, Joseph Ratzinger —Benedict XVI’s name — would not have stopped a priest from abusing four boys, according to the report’s authors.
“He knew the facts,” said Martin Pusch, who was part of the investigation, according to CNN. “We believe he can be accused of misconduct in four cases. Two of them are related to abuses committed during his tenure and punished by the state. In both episodes, the perpetrators remained active in pastoral care,” said the lawyer, from the office. Westpfahl Spiker Wastl.
The investigation was commissioned by the archdiocese and counted at least 497 victims of abuse, mainly young males, between the years 1945 and 2019. The number, although scandalous, could be even higher, as researchers point out that there may be hundreds of other cases that were never reported.
Part of the task of the lawyers responsible for the report was to find out which church officials were aware of the episodes of violence and what steps, if any, were taken to curb the practice.
For obvious reasons, there was particular interest in evaluating Ratzinger’s conduct during the five years he spent at the head of the archdiocese. “In a total of four cases, we have reached a consensus that there was an omission,” Pusch said, adding that the pope emeritus had “strictly” denied responsibility in response to the allegations.
The experts said they were convinced that Ratzinger was aware that Father Peter Hullerman had abused him for decades without being bothered. In 1986, Hullermann was sentenced to prison with the possibility of parole. Then he was transferred to another city, where he allegedly repeated the abuse.
Only in 2010, the priest was forced to leave ecclesiastical life. At the time, Benedict was pope and, in response to the scandal, said he never knew about Hullermann’s past — a version that investigators now dispute.
Spokespersons for Benedict have not yet made public comments on the report. The 94-year-old has lived in the Vatican since he abdicated as head of the Catholic Church in 2013. He once headed the Vatican’s main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which leads investigations into sexual abuse in the church. . He held the post for four years before assuming the papacy in 2005.
Without mentioning the pope emeritus, the Vatican said it would review the entirety of the report and expressed solidarity with the victims. “By reiterating the feeling of shame and remorse for the abuse of minors by the clergy, the Holy See assures its closeness to all victims and confirms the path it has taken to protect the little ones and guarantee them a safe environment.”
Earlier this month, an internal Catholic Church document obtained by German newspaper Die Zeit had already suggested that Benedict covered up cases of sexual abuse against minors within the institution in the 1980s. The pope emeritus, however, denied that he had knowledge of the crime at the time.
The case involves the same priest Peter Hullermann, who, between 1973 and 1996, allegedly abused at least 23 boys aged between 8 and 16 while in different positions in the church. A 2016 ecclesiastical decree of the Archdiocese of Munich, to which Zeit had access, shows that the institution criticized the behavior of clerics, including Ratzinger, in the face of abuse.
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