Abuse Report
When a former pope suddenly appears as a liar
Heavily burdened by an expert opinion: the emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.
© Andrew Medichini/AP/DPA
A Munich law firm has heavily incriminated numerous high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church in an expert opinion on sexual abuse. Among them is Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He stands there as a liar.
Perhaps one or the other in the Catholic Church had hoped that the report by the Munich law firm Westpfahl, Spilker, Wastl (WSW) on cases of abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising would not be quite so devastating. After the two-hour performance, they have to state: It has exceeded all fears. The two hours in the Bavarian Economy House turned out to be what is probably the darkest hour in the Catholic Church. At the end of which a pope emeritus stands there as a liar.
The numbers: Incidents from 1945 to 2019 were examined. Overall, there were indications of sexually abusive behavior in 235 of the 261 church employees examined for the Archdiocese of Munich. Of these, 173 were priests. The study assumes 497 victims. “We are only talking about the bright field here,” said attorney Martin Pusch when presenting the 1,600-page study. The dark number of those affected is significantly larger.
But the way the Catholic Church dealt with the subject was even more disturbing than this “horrible record,” as lawyer Ulrich Wastl called it. “The frightening phenomenon of the cover-up needs to be examined,” said expert Marion Westphal. And recommended confession and repentance to the church: “It’s also and especially about individual guilt,” said Westphal.
Balance sheet of terror
And, the report leaves little doubt about that, in particular, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. loaded on himself. Between 1977 and 1982 Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich and Freising. At that time, Ratzinger had taken no action against clerics accused of sexual abuse in four cases. Two of the cases involved clergymen who are accused of having committed several acts of abuse that were also attested by state courts. Both priests remained active in pastoral care, nothing was done in terms of canon law. An interest in the victims of abuse was “not recognizable” in Ratzinger.
The experts are now also convinced that Ratzinger knew about the history of the priest Peter H., who came to Munich in 1980 from the diocese of Essen. H. was convicted as a pedophile and later committed further acts of abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich. In a statement, Ratzinger simply denied having been present at the Ordinariate meeting in January 1980, at which the appointment of Hs was decided.
“We consider Pope Benedict’s statement that he was not present at this meeting to be of little credibility,” said lawyer Ulrich Wastl. And referred to the minutes of the meeting. Unlike in such cases, Ratzinger was not listed as absent. In addition, the minutes contained statements by the then cardinal on other topics – he therefore spoke at the meeting himself.
“Benedict destroyed his life today”
So this is what it looks like when it is implied on live TV that a pope emeritus lied. The Münster canon lawyer Thomas Schüller then also sees in the report “a personal Waterloo” for the life’s work of Pope Benedict XVI. “The lying, the telling of untruths by Joseph Ratzinger is frightening,” Schüller said on Bavarian radio. “Today he destroyed his own image of life.”
The incumbent Archbishop Reinhard Marx does not give a good picture either. He stayed away from the presentation of the report, although he had been expressly invited personally. It was thanks to him that the clarification of the crimes against the resistance of the church apparatus was set in motion at all. However, the experts also found misconduct in his administration of two suspected cases that Marx did not forward to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.
The report is a devastating testimony for the Catholic diocese as a whole. Even recently, there has been no “paradigm shift” with a focus on those affected, said attorney Martin Pusch. Instead, there is a “general interest in secrecy” and the “desire to protect the church as an institution”.