Abuse in the Church: Traunstein Pope trial is postponed – Bavaria

The Traunstein Regional Court has postponed the eagerly awaited oral hearing in the civil lawsuit brought by a victim of abuse against the late Pope Benedict XVI, which was announced for next week. delay. The reason given by the court in a statement on Monday was that “the legal successor to the deceased Pope Emeritus has not yet been determined”. There is also no alternative date for the hearing. It is currently being coordinated with the plaintiff, the defendants and the respective lawyers.

The court has to deal with the complaint of a man who claims to have been abused in the 1990s as an altar boy in Garching an der Alz in Upper Bavaria by the then pastor H. The case also plays a prominent role in the abuse report by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm for the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising last year, but is considered to be statute-barred from a purely criminal point of view. Nevertheless, the plaintiff and his lawyer Andreas Schulz want to bring the case before a secular court by having the churchmen responsible find out that they are liable for damages in civil proceedings.

On the one hand, the lawsuit is aimed directly at the former Garching pastor, who had already attracted attention in the diocese of Essen for pedophilic acts before he was transferred in 1980 to the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which was then led by Joseph Ratzinger and later by Friedrich Wetter. On the other hand, the lawsuit is directed against the Archdiocese as well as against Wetter and Ratzinger. Because even after he had been sentenced to probation in 1986 for abusing several young people in the parish of Grafing, the archdiocese sent the pastor on to Garching without informing the parish about the previous history.

Because the proceedings are not about a criminal assessment, but about the determination of a claim for damages, Ratzinger’s death on December 31 did not end the matter. Because instead of Ratzinger, his heirs could now be liable for damages. However, it is not yet clear to the court who exactly these heirs could be. There are no longer any close relatives, Ratzinger’s sister and brother died before him and, like him, had no descendants.

According to information from Benedict’s executor and former private secretary Georg Gänswein from an interview with the dpa, Benedict has not appointed an heir, which is why the legal succession applies according to Vatican-Italian law. The possible heirs would be written to, their answers were still pending. You could also turn down the inheritance, which according to Gänswein consists at most of money from Benedikt’s account, and thus save yourself the Traunstein process. Ratzinger’s personal belongings and the rights to his books are not part of the inheritance.

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