VATICAN CITY | Former Pope Benoit XVI asked “forgiveness” on Tuesday for the sexual violence of minors committed by clerics when he had responsibilities in the Church, while ensuring that he had never covered up a pedophile priest.
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“I can only express, once again, to all victims of sexual abuse my deep shame, my great pain and my sincere request for forgiveness”, writes the 94-year-old German theologian in a letter in response to an independent report published on January 20 in Germany accusing him of inaction when he was Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.
“I had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. My pain is all the greater for the abuses and errors that have occurred during my mandate in different places”, adds Joseph Ratzinger, who was notably prefect of the influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981 -2005) before being elected pope (2005-2013).
The report by the firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) listing more than 400 victims of sexual violence in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising had severely implicated the pope emeritus, accusing him of having done nothing to remove four clergymen suspected of sexual violence against minors.
In a document also released by the Vatican on Tuesday, four advisers to the pope emeritus refute the accusations in the 8,000-page report they sifted through for him. “As archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any act of concealment of abuse”, assure these four advisers, referring to “inaccurate” information contained in the German report.
At the end of January, Benoit XVI had rectified his statements to the authors of the text, acknowledging having participated in a key meeting in 1980 on a German priest suspected of sexual assault, Peter Hullermann, saying he was “sorry for this error” but refuting any “bad faith “.
“Very big fault”
Saying he was “deeply affected by the fact that this error was used to doubt my honesty, even to present me as a liar”, the German theologian thanked Pope Francis, who did not speak publicly on the subject, “for the confidence, the support and the prayer” that he “expressed to him personally”.
Benoit XVI, however, confessed to having “looked straight into the eyes of the consequences of a very great fault”. And, he emphasized, “I have learned to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this great fault when we neglect it or when we do not face it with the necessary decision and responsibility, as it is happened too often and that it still happens”.
“Soon I will face the ultimate judge of my life. Although, looking back on my long life, I may have many reasons for fright and fear, my heart remains joyful”, adds Benedict XVI, who lives in retirement in a monastery in the Vatican and whose state of health appears more and more fragile.
“The words contained in the letter of Benedict XVI are those of a helpless old man, who feels that the encounter with God draws near” and “who invites the whole Church to feel as its own the bloody wound of abuse”, writes Andrea Tornielli, columnist for the official Vatican News media, who had already come to the defense of the former pope at the end of January.
“Benedict XVI has never sought to hide the evil in the Church”, also reacted his former spokesman, Federico Lombardi, seeing in this letter “the result of a deep and painful time and a sincere examination of conscience”.
After the publication of the report, which counts a total of 497 victims between 1945 and 2019, mostly young boys and adolescents and 235 presumed culprits, mainly priests, the Holy See reiterated “its feeling of shame and remorse”.