German investigators have said it was “overwhelmingly likely” that Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was aware of a paedophile priest in his former Munich archdiocese and dismissed as “not credible” his claims he did not attend a key meeting where the cleric was discussed.
On Thursday, lawyers commissioned by the Catholic archdiocese of Munich and Freising presented a report identifying 497 cases of clerical sexual abuse and identified 235 perpetrators – with 42 cases now passed on to state prosecutors.
The report is based on examination of archdiocese files and identifies two cases in which prosecutors say the current archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, breached church rules and did not report abusers to the Holy See.
The report found that 40 of the perpetrator priests identified were known to their superiors at the time of their abuse yet allowed to continue their pastoral work, with many moved to new parishes unaware of their behaviour. Only a handful of priests were punished and laicised.
In the case of Benedict, who served as Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger from 1977 to 1982 in Bavaria, investigators uncovered four cases of abusing priests during that time but “no indication” the archbishop was interested in abuse victims.
In response to a catalogue of written questions, the retired pope provided an 82-page written response rejecting claims he knew of abusing priests during his time heading the archdiocese.
“We consider the information from Pope Benedict to be not credible,” said Dr Ulrich Wastl, one of the investigators at a press conference.
Presenting the four-volume report, he said it revealed a “shocking picture” of an institution that, for decades, ignored victims of clerical sexual abuse. Those who took note of survivors, he added, were usually seen “as a danger for the institution”.
Co-investigator Marion Westphal said they had uncovered a “terrible phenomenon of cover-up”. After this report, their second for the Munich archdiocese in a decade, she said the time of investigation had passed and the time of “individual guilt” had come.
The investigators declined to say what consequences, if any, the report should have for the 94-year-old former pontiff.
An entire volume of the report is devoted to one priest who was moved from the diocese of Essen to Munich-Freising in January 1980 for treatment for his paedophile tendencies.
More than two dozen men, in both dioceses, are on record as saying they were sexually abused as teenagers by the priest, identified only as Peter H, often after he gave them alcohol and showed them pornography.
When the case first came to light a decade ago, Munich and Rome moved quickly to insist Benedict, then still pope, had known nothing of the abuse during his time as archbishop.
Ahead of Thursday’s report, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, private secretary to the retired pope, insisted it was “incorrect to claim [Ratzinger] had knowledge of the previous history [claims of sexual assault] at the point of the decision to accept the priest H. He had no knowledge of this previous history.”
In his written response to investigators, the retired pope insists he did not attend a meeting on January 15th, 1980, at which the priest was accepted for therapy.
But a 2016 internal report, commissioned by the Munich archdiocese, disagrees, saying Ratzinger, “knowing the facts” about the priest accepted him and “ignored” a 1962 obligation to report the priest to Rome.
On Thursday, investigating lawyers presented details from the minutes of the January 1980 meeting at which the transfer of the priest was discussed, indicating that the archbishop attended.
The investigating lawyers said they “regretted deeply” that Cardinal Marx declined an invitation to attend Thursday’s presentation. He will make a statement in the afternoon and hold a press conference in a week’s time, after he has had time to read the 1,000-page report.