Retired Pope Benedict XVI Asks for Forgiveness Over Handling of Sex-Abuse Cases

An accompanying document from his legal professionals rebutted certain charges of coverup, perjury and insensitivity to abuse victims created from the 94-yr-previous Benedict past thirty day period in a church-sponsored probe on historic sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising. The probe faulted the then-archbishop in numerous circumstances for failing to examine, willpower or take away abusive monks.

Benedict’s legal professionals mentioned that in none of the scenarios in problem did the long run pope know that the priests had been even suspected of sexual abuse. His attorneys also mentioned that an mistake in his prepared solutions to the Munich investigators, which led to accusations of inaccurate testimony, was due to a “transcription mistake.”

Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abuse situations about the earth, described Benedict’s reaction as “a deep disappointment and missed prospect.”

“The former pope had the opportunity to do anything brave and history-switching today. He could have become the initial pope to acknowledge to deliberate coverup and enabling of sexual abuse. By so executing, he would have established an example of radical truth-telling for other church leaders, like

Pope Francis

himself,” Ms. Barrett Doyle reported.

The Vatican, where the retired pope life, did not immediately respond to a ask for for comment on Tuesday.

The controversy has left a shadow on Benedict’s legacy of fighting sexual abuse, which was just one of the signature leads to of his job as a cardinal and pope just after he left Munich for the Vatican.

For much more than two a long time right before his election as pope in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the Vatican’s anti-abuse czar. In that position, he pushed

St. John Paul II

to bolster the church’s response to the problem, centralizing prosecution of clerical abuse cases at the Vatican and enhancing penalties to consist of defrocking, or dismissal from the priesthood.

As pope, Benedict extended the statute of limitations for abuse of minors and Vatican judges in the course of his pontificate rarely at any time decreased the sentences of defrocked abusers on appeal.

By distinction with John Paul, who hardly ever satisfied with abuse victims, Benedict satisfied quite a few situations with groups of victims throughout his travels, including to the U.S. in 2008.

Even in retirement, he referred to as for additional rigor in prosecuting conditions of clerical intercourse abuse by church authorities.

“An overemphasis on the legal rights of the accused has at instances created it basically difficult to convict abusers and that mentality stays widespread,” he wrote in an essay printed in 2019. The same essay stirred controversy by suggesting that much of the blame for the church’s abuse disaster lay with the sexual revolution in wider Western tradition.

But the blot on Benedict’s popularity stems from his time as Munich archbishop amongst 1977 and 1982.

“A relaxed evaluation of his time in Munich displays that he could have and ought to have produced the oversight of priests his priority and scaled back on other engagements. Primarily based on flawed judgment, he trustworthy fellow monks who permit him down, and who protected up abuse and enabled abuse,” stated Ulrich Lehner, a professor of theology at the College of Notre Dame.

Mr. Lehner reported that Cardinal Ratzinger realized from his issues and, as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office environment, “he did not delegate, but tackled the difficulty, even against considerable resistance from the pope and other cardinals.”

The Munich probe is not the initially time that Benedict has stood accused of mishandling instances of abuse. 1 of the cases in query was documented all through Benedict’s pontificate, in 2010. At the time, the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising mentioned that his then-prime adviser experienced taken entire obligation for reinstating a priest with a file of abuse to ministry in 1980.

Clerical sexual abuse has continued to haunt the management of the church more than the dozen of many years because, including in in-depth historical scientific studies of the trouble in Germany, France and the U.S.

In 2020, a Vatican report showed that 3 successive popes, which includes Benedict, experienced unsuccessful to willpower the U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick inspite of popular experiences of his sexual misconduct. Mr. McCarrick, who has denied wrongdoing, became the initially cardinal in present day periods to be taken off from the priesthood in 2019, following a Vatican court found him guilty of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with older people.

Produce to Francis X. Rocca at [email protected]