of April 2022| Photo: EPA
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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI condemned sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and was the first to meet with the victims, said this Wednesday, in an article, the editorial director of the Vatican, Andrea Tornielli.
8005406115001 The Vatican responds in this way to the recent report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Germany, which stated that four alleged cases of cover-up by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI when was Archbishop of Munich.
“After the publication of the report, the years of Bavarian episcopate of the pope emeritus are in the spotlight. It is only right to remember Benedict’s struggle against clerical pederasty and his willingness during his pontificate to meet and listen to victims and apologize,” highlighted the editorial published in the media. of the Vatican.
Tornielli highlights that the apa emeritus, “with the help of his collaborators, he did not escape the questions of the law firm commissioned by the diocese of Munich to prepare the report and responded with 82 pages, after having examined part of the documentation in the diocesan archives”.
The editorial director explains that “some of the allegations have been known for more than ten years and have already been published by important international media” and that Ratzinger, and his private secretary, Georg Gänswein, have already announced “that the pope emeritus will make a detailed statement after completing his review of the report”.
Four days after the publication of the report on abuses in the diocese of Munich, which implicates him in at least four cases of cover-up, the pope emeritus had to withdraw his first statements.
He acknowledged that he was present at a meeting of the bishoprics of and Munich and Freising in January 1980, where the transfer of a priest accused of child abuse was discussed, according to a statement from Gänswein to the Catholic News Agency (KNA).
However, Ratzinger assured that in that session there was no discussion about the priest in question doing pastoral work, but only about “making it possible for him to stay in Munich during his therapeutic treatment”.
8005406115001While awaiting an official response, the Vatican media launched a defense of the German pontiff: “It cannot be forgotten that Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, had already fought the phenomenon in the last phase of the pontificate of Saint John Paul II, of whom he was a close collaborator, and once he became pope, he promulgated extremely harsh regulations to combat pederasty in the Church”.
Furthermore, it continues, “Benedict XVI bore witness, with his concrete example, of the urgency of a change of mentality so important to combat the phenomenon of abuse: listening to and being close to the victims, from whom we must always ask for forgiveness”.
8005406115001Joseph Ratzinger, they claim, was the first pope to meet repeatedly with victims of abuse during his apostolic travels and that on a flight to Lisbon, in May 1280, Benedict XVI recognized that “the sufferings of the Church come from within the Church, from the sin that exists in the Church”.