The report documents hundreds of cases committed over decades, up to virtually the present.
The report on the alleged sexual abuse in the German archdiocese of Munich attributes the then archbishop and current pope emeritus Benedict XVI for not having acted in at least four known cases that occurred under his hierarchy.
The document, commissioned by the archdiocese from a team of lawyers and presented today, also highlights that Joseph Ratzinger He has “strongly” refuted these accusations.
The document considers cases of sexual abuse that occurred within the Catholic Church in that archdiocese since the postwar period and until practically today.
Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, before becoming prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office) at the Vatican.
The report documents hundreds of cases committed over decades, until practically the present, and holds the successive ecclesiastical hierarchies responsible for not having acted accordingly, at least, or even having covered them up.
The lawyers who presented the report repeatedly called the analysis of the abuse cases they addressed in their study a “balance sheet of horror.”
In two of the cases attributed to the period in which Ratzinger was at the head of that archdiocese, the abuses were allegedly committed by two clerics providing spiritual assistance and against whom no action was taken at all.
Those responsible for the report consider “Little credible” the reaction of the now pope emeritus rejecting these accusations and maintain, instead, that on the part of Ratzinger there was “no recognizable interest” in acting against them.
Likewise, the investigators are convinced that Ratzinger was aware of the case of the parish priest identified as Peter H., who in 1980 was transferred from the bishopric of Essen to that of Munich after being accused of being a pedophile and that in his new destination he continued to commit abuses.
The lawyers consider Ratzinger’s assertion that was not present at the meeting at which the transfer was decided.
Ulrich Wastl, one of them, assured that Ratzinger had “to have known the events” and that “very probably” he knew what was happening in the archdiocese.
The authors of the report lamented in their presentation the absence from the press conference of the current Cardinal of Munich, Reinhard Marx, who in 2008 commissioned a psychiatric report on H., although did not open an internal investigation.
Marx presented his resignation last year as a gesture in the face of the abuse of minors committed in the Catholic Church, a resignation that was rejected by Pope Francis.
The cardinal is expected to rule this afternoon on the contents of the report. (I)
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