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Former Pope Benedict XVI in the sights of a report on pedocrime in Germany

2022-01-20T03:49:06.097Z


The expertise, which lists cases of sexual assault against children between 1945 and 2019 in two archbishoprics, intends to point the responsibility of clergymen who closed their eyes.


What did he know?

A long-awaited report on sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church in Bavaria is set to clarify Thursday, Jan. 20, whether Pontiff Emeritus Benedict XVI and other high-ranking clergymen once covered up a pedophile priest.

Read alsoWhy the report on pedophilia in the Church is so awaited

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 assault 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 failures of the Church in the treatment of cases of pedocrime.

In 1980, a vicar from North Rhine-Westphalia, Peter Hullermann, was accused of serious sexual assaults on minors.

The Church “fixes” the problem by transferring it.

He arrives in Bavaria, where, despite psychiatric therapy, he continues his 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 child crime broke out in the Catholic Church in Germany.

"Hollow Words"

The Hullermann case plays a central role in the report of the lawyers of the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW). Vicar General Gerhard Gruber took responsibility and said in 2010 that Joseph Ratzinger had no knowledge of the priest's past. An assertion that his private secretary Georg Gänswein recently reiterated to the weekly

Die Zeit

. 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. The reform group of lay people and theologians “Wir sind Kirche” hopes for a lot.

"An admission by Ratzinger to have been personally and through his office an accomplice in the suffering of many young people (...) would be a necessary signal of humility, as well as an example for many bishops and leaders"

, judge- he.

The Munich investigation constitutes a new chapter in the elucidation of acts of pedocrime that affect the Catholic Church throughout the world. In Germany, it remains the first confession, even if its faithful flee it en masse: they fell to 22.2 million in 2020, a reduction of 400,000 compared to 2019 and 2.5 million compared to 2010. There is 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. 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. Tuesday,Matthias Katsch, who heads the victims' association Eckiger Tisch, again demanded

“appropriate compensation”

instead of

“empty words”

.

Read alsoChild crime in the Church: earthquake expected with the Sauvé report

It remains to be seen what consequences the revelations of the Munich lawyers will have.

Cardinal Marx must officially react to it on January 27.

Last year, the Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Hesse, implicated for negligence in the treatment of cases of pedophilia in the diocese of Cologne where he had officiated, had submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, who refused it.

Archbishop Marx had also resigned in June to

"share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse committed"

.

There too, the pope declined.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-01-20

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