Catholic Church: Internal document is said to be former Pope Benedict XVI. incriminate in abuse scandal

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Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

in 2020

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Sven Hoppe / dpa

In the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, the former pontiff Benedict XVI may now also get involved.

in focus.

As "Die Zeit" reports, an internal document of the Catholic Church incriminates the Pope emeritus.

In the case in question, the question is whether Benedict XVI. knew about the past of priest H. from Gelsenkirchen when he accepted and installed him in his diocese. H. is said to have abused underage boys many times. In 1980 the clergyman moved from the Diocese of Essen to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, was at its head.

“Die Zeit” quoted from an extrajudicial decree of the Church Court of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on May 9, 2016. It reads: “The then Archbishop Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and his ordinarian council were aware of the facts and were ready to accept Priest H. “With regard to several bishops in whose term of office H. was active, the church judges state that they“ deliberately waived sanctioning the crime ”.

Benedict claims not to have known anything about H's previous history

Benedikt's private secretary Georg Gänswein denied this in a statement.

"The claim that he (Benedict) had knowledge of the prehistory at the time of the decision on the admission of Priest H. is wrong," Gänswein told Die Zeit.

In the week after next (from January 17th) an eagerly awaited report on how the archbishopric has dealt with allegations of abuse will be presented in Munich.

It was drawn up by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW).

It was commissioned by Cardinal Reinhard Marx from Munich.

The report examines the years 1945 to 2019 and thus also includes the term of office of Ratzinger, who led the archbishopric from 1977 to 1982 before Pope John Paul II called him to Rome.

Later Cardinal Marx also transferred Priest H.

It has long been known that H. was one of those cases in which a priest was repeatedly accused, but was simply transferred on by his superiors. According to the »Zeit« report, Cardinal Marx also did the same at the beginning, and in 2008 he transferred him to the course pastoral care in Bad Tölz. It was not until 2010 that H. was temporarily retired by Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck from Essen.

Two years later, Marx, in alliance with Overbeck, recommended that H. also be removed from the priesthood, and that without church criminal proceedings.

Marx's reason for this was: “The H. case caused a worldwide sensation in the media, as it was assumed that the then Archbishop of Munich and Freising, now Pope Benedict XVI, was at least partly responsible for H. Although these allegations were invalidated it must be expected that they will be picked up again in the event of church criminal proceedings. "

H. was never dismissed from the church

In the end, however, the discharge from the priesthood did not come about. The Munich ecclesiastical court justified this in the aforementioned decree of 2016 with the fact that H. could not be blamed on H. Rather, the ecclesiastical authorities were "informed about the defendant's illness and most of his offenses at all times". "Nevertheless, they used H. repeatedly in areas in which he had to do child and youth work." Today H. lives in the Ruhr area again, reported "Die Zeit".

The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising reported on the article that we ask for your understanding that they do not want to anticipate the forthcoming report by Westpfahl Spilker Wastl: »All files available to the Ordinariate, including the H. case, were WSW for the preparation of the report Provided, the results of the investigation by WSW are not known to the Archbishop's Ordinariate. "

fek / dpa