Retired pope asks pardon for abuse, however admits no wrongdoing

Retired Pope Benedict XVI requested forgiveness on Tuesday for any “grievous faults” in his dealing with of clergy intercourse abuse instances, however admitted to no private or particular wrongdoing after an impartial report criticised his actions in 4 instances whereas he was archbishop of Munich, Germany.
“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” the retired pope mentioned.
Benedict, 94, was responding to a January 20 report from a German legislation agency that had been commissioned by the German church to look into how instances of sexual abuse had been dealt with within the Munich archdiocese between 1945 and 2019.
Benedict, the previous Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.
The report’s authors faulted Benedict’s dealing with of 4 instances throughout his time as archbishop, accusing him of misconduct for having failed to limit the ministry of the monks within the instances even after that they had been convicted criminally.
The report additionally faulted his predecessors and successors, estimating that there had been not less than 497 abuse victims over the a long time and not less than 235 suspected perpetrators.

The Vatican on Tuesday launched a letter Benedict wrote to answer the allegations, alongside a extra technical reply from his group of attorneys and advisers who had supplied an preliminary 82-page response to the legislation agency about his almost five-year tenure in Munich.
The conclusion of Benedict’s advisers was determined: “As an archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse,” they wrote.
Furthermore, they mentioned, the report supplied no proof that Benedict was conscious of the prison historical past of any of the 4 monks in query.