Public prosecutors in Munich are investigating 42 cases of alleged misconduct by leading members of the German Catholic Church in connection with an explosive new report on sexual abuse in the Munich and Freising Archdiocese.
The law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), which prepared the report on behalf of the archdiocese, provided 41 cases to the public prosecutor’s office in August 2021 and another in November 2021.
Anne Leiding, the spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, told dpa.
The report’s release on Thursday had sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church, reaching all the way to the Vatican.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who resides at the Vatican after resigning in 2013, is one of three German cardinals accused of misconduct in relation to the sexual abuse allegations.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he served as the Archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1977 and 1982.
Ratzinger and his immediate successor, Friedrich Wetter, were both accused of direct and personal misconducts in the report, which counts at least 497 victims and 235 alleged perpetrators from 1945 up to 2019.
Ratzinger’s alleged misconduct relates to four cases of abuse, Wetter’s is 21.
The current archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, was accused of formal misconduct in relation to two cases.
Regarding the Munich prosecutors’ investigations, Leiding said, “They exclusively concern church officials who are still alive and have been transmitted in a strictly anonymised format.
“If on this basis, ` suspicions arise with regard to potentially criminally relevant behaviours on the part of the church leaders in charge,’’ she said.
The relevant documents would be requested from the law firm and if necessary passed on to the relevant public prosecutors’ offices, she said.
Critics have long accused Benedict of failing to act on abuse in the clergy.
They have focused on the case of a priest from the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia.
Benedict has repeatedly stressed that he did not attend a meeting in 1980 where it was decided that the priest, who had abused boys in the Diocese of Essen, should be transferred to Bavaria.
But the law firm submitted minutes of meeting according to which Ratzinger had indeed taken part in the meeting.
“The damage to Benedict’s reputation is great, precisely because he had always shown himself to be a fighter against sexual abuse in the church,’’ Catholic theologian Daniel Bogner told dpa.
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a prominent member of the Catholic Church in Germany and founder of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute, lent his support to the pope emeritus in a Friday newspaper interview.
“You see, I have not read (the report), but it is clear to me that as Archbishop Ratzinger he did not knowingly do anything wrong,’’ Müller, the former Bishop of Regensburg, told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
“In Germany, and not only there, but people are also interested in harming Joseph Ratzinger,’’ he told the newspaper, insinuating that he was targeted for his orthodox position on Catholic doctrine.
Franz-Josef Overbeck, the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Essen, called for action to be taken.
“We see clearly today that responsibility must be taken. This means “that the Vatican, that Pope Benedict also take a stand on this,’’ he told Germany’s ZDF broadcaster.
Pope Francis on Friday called for a strict application of the Canon Law to combat abuse in the Catholic Church.
“The Church, with the help of God, is pushing forward with the commitment to do justice to the victims of abuse by our members by applying with special attention and rigour the Canon Law provided,’’ Francis said.
He made the comments at the Apostolic Palace while receiving representatives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican authority that deals with abuse.
Francis pointed to recent reforms which make it easier to hold abusers in the Church accountable.
“This alone cannot be enough to curb the phenomenon, but it is an important step toward restoring justice, making amends for the scandal and changing a perpetrator,’’ the 85-year-old pontiff said.
On Thursday, the Holy See spokesperson, Matteo Bruni, spoke of the Vatican’s “sense of shame and remorse for the abuse committed by some of its clergy against minors’’ and said that the report would be looked at in detail.
UpshotReports with agency reports
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