An investigation into the abuse of children in a German diocese blames the retired pope – AP News
BERLIN – A long-awaited report on sexual abuse in Germany’s Munich diocese on Thursday faulted retired Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of four cases when he was archbishop in the 1970s and 1980s.
The archdiocese commissioned the report from law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl nearly two years ago, with a mandate to look into abuse between 1945 and 2019 and whether church officials handled allegations correctly.
Church officials weren’t informed of the results ahead of publication.
“Sadly, we see these unsavory actions and inactions surface years later after lengthy silence by church officials and painful memories harbored by victims.”
In an extraordinary gesture last year, Marx offered to resign over the Catholic Church’s “Catastrophic” mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, declaring that the scandals had brought the church to “a dead end.”
“As archbishop of Munich and Freising, I feel that I share responsibility for the church as an institution over recent decades,” he said.
“So as the serving archbishop, I apologize for the suffering that was caused to people” in church institutions, he added.
In recent months, turbulence in the Cologne archdiocese over officials’ handling of abuse allegations has convulsed the German church.
A report last year found that the archbishop of Hamburg, a former Cologne church official, neglected his duty in several cases in handling such allegations, but Francis rejected his resignation offer.
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