Former Pope Benedict XVI asked “forgiveness” on Tuesday for the sexual violence against minors committed by clerics when he had responsibilities in the Church, while ensuring that he had never covered up a paedocriminal, a position which disappointed the associations. of victims.
“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 dated of Sunday and published Tuesday by the Vatican, in response to an independent report published on January 20 in Germany and 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 notably served as prefect of the influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981 -2005) before being pope (2005-2013).
The report by the firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) listing 497 victims between 1945 and 2019 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 violence sexual abuse of minors.
In a document also sent by the Vatican, four advisers to the former pope refute the accusations in the 8,000-page report. “As archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any act of concealment of abuse”, they assure, denouncing “inaccurate” information and the absence of “evidence”.
“Permanent relativizations”
But this rare public statement did not convince the victims’ associations, the American network “Snap” regretting the “lack of frankness” of Benedict XVI and a “wasted opportunity” for redemption.
For the German branch of the reform group “Wir sind Kirche” (“We are the Church”), which brings together lay people and theologians, this letter “brings nothing new. Ratzinger continues to present himself as a victim who has been “drawn into a very big fault”. He is still not ready to face global responsibility […] which falls to a bishop”.
The same disappointment for the victims’ association Eckiger Tisch: this declaration “is added to the list of permanent relativizations of the Church in cases of sexual abuse: there have been acts and faults, but no one endorses concrete responsibilities.
“We could have expected him to express a request for forgiveness for the specific case of Munich” because “there is nevertheless an objective responsibility” of the bishop that he was, analyzes for AFP the Italian Vaticanist journalist Iacopo Scaramuzzi.
If he “also did some good things” on this issue – “he accepted criticism, set up new standards, met victims” and “was much more rigorous than John Paul II” -, he ” is mistaken in the analysis by saying that the problem came from the sexual revolution”.
“Very big mistake”
At the end of January, Benedict XVI corrected his statements and admitted 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”.
Faced with the criticisms that “deeply affected” him, he thanked Pope Francis – who has not spoken publicly on the subject – “for the confidence, the support and the prayer” that he “has given him personally expressed.
However, he confessed to having faced “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 Benedict XVI’s letter are those of a helpless old man, who feels that the encounter with God is approaching”, writes Andrea Tornielli, columnist for the official media Vatican News, who had already defended the former pope at the end of January.