Benedict failed to take action against clerics in four cases of alleged sexual abuse when he was archbishop of Munich, a report commissioned by the Catholic Church has found.
www.smh.com.au
Berlin: A damning report has found the former pope, Benedict XVI, failed to take action against clerics in four cases of alleged sexual abuse when he was archbishop of Munich.
The archdiocese in 2020 asked Munich law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in its ranks between 1945 and 2019.
The report, released on Thursday (local time), said there were at least 497 victims of abuse, mainly young males. Many other cases had probably not been reported, it said.
It also found fault with the current Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, 68, in two suspected cases. Marx is not under any suspicion of having actually participated in abuse.
Cardinal Marx, whose offer of resignation last year was rejected by Pope Francis, on Thursday apologised to the victims.
“I apologise on behalf of the archdiocese for the suffering inflicted on people in the area of the church in recent decades,” he said in a statement, without referencing his own handling of cases.
The former pope, now aged 94 and called Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has been living in the Vatican
since resigning as pontiff in 2013. He has previously denied wrongdoing over the cases.
So Heer Ratzinger covered up child abuses as an Archbishop of Munich before becoming Pope...he obviously met the selection criteria for the top job within the Catholic Paedophile Network and was rewarded by living the high life at the Vatican while victims continued to suffer. He trained his apprentice Cardinal Reinhard Marx well in the Vatican policy of covering up children abuse. The current pope rejecting Marx's resignation is yet another example of the Catholic Paedophile Network putting itself above the suffering of children.
The vatican is an institution of vile, self-serving, malignant filth.