So Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger would have protected a pedophile priest in the 1980s, according to a report published in Germany.
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Another dark day for the Catholic Church. Certainly, the report published by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), Thursday, January 20, is not the first to describe the magnitude of the sexual abuse committed by clerics, in recent decades, in a Germany regularly shaken by this type of revelation since 2010. But, pointing to the shortcomings of Joseph Ratzinger of the time when he was archbishop of Munich and Freising (1977-1982), he is the first to accuse a former Pope – Benedict XVI directly (2005- 2013), aged 94 – to have protected aggressor priests.
Long of 1,900 pages, this report based on hundreds of documents and the hearing of 56 witnesses reported 235 alleged authors of sexual assault between 1945 and 2019 in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising. In total, 497 victims were also identified, a few more boys than girls, mostly children or adolescents at the time of the facts. With regard to the future Benedict XVI, the authors believe that it has taken “bad decisions” in four cases where it did not intervene at the time when he directed the Archbishopus, while, for two of Between them, the priests involved had already been sentenced by German justice.
A case is particularly embarrassing for Ratzinger. It dates back to 1980, when Peter Hullermann, a priest of the diocese of Essen (North Rhine-Westphalia) accused of pedophilia, was transferred to Munich to follow a therapy. The future Benedict XVI has always denied having aware of the past of this priest. He states in particular not having attended the meeting which, on January 15, 1980, on his arrival in Munich. A version deemed “little credible” by the authors of the report: not only the minutes of the meeting does not say that the Archbishop was absent, but he indicated that the latter intervened on two other subjects during the . A few weeks after his transfer in Bavaria, Hullermann was again in contact with minors. Sentenced in 1986 to eighteen months in prison, he then officiated in various parishes from the region to his final suspension, in 2010, at the age of 63 years.
“shock and shame “
The impunity whose priest has enjoyed well after the departure of Ratzinger of the Archbishop, in 1982, recalls that the future Benedict XVI is far from the only prelate to have covered such acts. In reality, the five archbishops who have succeeded Munich since the end of the war are all implicated. In particular, the current prelate, Reinhard Marx, in office since 2008, accused of inaction in two cases.
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