Overall, this independent report denounces systematic cover-ups of cases of violence against minors between 1945 and 2019 which, according to them, aimed “to protect the institution of the Church”.
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He was cardinal before becoming pope. The former sovereign pontiff Benedict XVI was severely implicated in an independent report, presented Thursday January 20 in Germany, on sexual assaults against minors in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he directed between 1977 and 1982. Joseph Ratzinger did nothing to remove four clergymen suspected of sexual abuse of minors, the lawyers for the report commissioned by the Church affirmed during a press conference.
In a statement sent to lawyers, the pope emeritus rejects “strictly” any responsibility, a position that the authors of the report do not consider “not credible”, said lawyer Martin Pusch. In two cases, they were members of the clergy who had committed several attacks attested, including by courts, he underlines. The two priests remained within the Church and nothing was done, he accused.
Experts said they were convinced that Mrg Ratzinger was thus aware of the pedophile past of priest Peter Hullermann, who arrived in 1980 from North Rhine-Westphalia in Bavaria, where he continued abuse for decades without being worried.
The report’s authors also singled out Cardinal Reinhard Marx, current archbishop of Munich and Freising, for being negligent in two cases of priests suspected of child molestation. Overall, the report denounces systematic cover-ups of cases of violence against minors between 1945 and 2019 aimed, according to them, at “to protect the Church institution”.
The Vatican reiterated its “feeling of shame and remorse” about this sexual violence committed by clerics on minors, after the publication of this report.