What did he know?
A long-awaited report on sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church in Bavaria is set to clarify on Thursday whether Pontiff Emeritus Benedict XVI and other high-ranking clergymen once covered up a pedophile priest.
The objective of this expertise led by a Munich law firm, which must be presented around 10 a.m. (GMT), aims above all to identify cases of sexual abuse against children between 1945 and 2019 in the Archdiocese of Munich. and Freising.
The authors also intend to point the responsibility of ecclesiastics who turned a blind eye to the attacks, thus allowing them to reproduce for decades.
Among the high dignitaries of this archdiocese are the current Cardinal Reinhard Marx, representative of the report, his predecessor Friedrich Wetter, and Joseph Ratzinger, future Pope Benedict XVI, who directed it between 1977 and 1982. a case considered symptomatic of the serious failings of the Church in dealing with cases of pedophilia.
The Peter Hullermann affair, a central role in the report
In 1980, a vicar from North Rhine-Westphalia, Peter Hullermann, was accused of serious sexual abuse of minors.
The Church “solves” the problem by transferring it.
He arrives in Bavaria, where, despite psychiatric therapy, he continues the abuse.
In 1986, a court sentenced him to a suspended prison sentence.
But he was again transferred to another Bavarian town where he officiated as a priest for twenty years, and would then have reoffended.
In 2010, under the pontificate of Benedict XVI, he was finally forced to retire.
That same year, the first major revelations of pedophilia broke out in the Catholic Church in Germany.
The Hullermann case plays a central role in the Munich report.
Vicar General Gerhard Gruber took responsibility and said in 2010 that whoever would become the future Pope Benedict XVI had no knowledge of the priest's past.
The 94-year-old pontiff emeritus, who has lived in seclusion in the Vatican since his resignation in 2013, sent the lawyers a detailed 82-page position paper on the subject, the content of which is eagerly awaited.
Towards compensation for victims
The Munich investigation constitutes a new chapter in the elucidation of acts of pedophilia affecting the Catholic Church throughout the world.
Four years ago, a report revealed that at least 3,677 children had been sexually abused since 1946 by more than a thousand German clergy.
Most have never been sanctioned.
Since then, each diocese has commissioned local surveys.
Read alsoCompensation for victims of sexual abuse in the Church: "I'm not expecting much"
After an official apology, the Church has set compensation - deemed insufficient by the victims - of up to 50,000 euros per person, against 5,000 euros so far.
On Tuesday, Matthias Katsch, who heads the victims' association Eckiger Tisch, again demanded "appropriate compensation" instead of "empty words".
It remains to be seen what consequences the revelations of the Munich lawyers will have.
