Munich Abuse Hype: Ratzinger Would Have Been Better Off Keeping Quiet
But the lawyer Martin Pusch who belongs to a profession not known for their love of truth, considers his statements "not very credible". He accuses Ratzinger of misconduct in four instances.
The most important case is an Essen priest, convicted of homosexual abuse. In the early 1980s, Munich's Archdiocese took him in. There he committed further abuses until 2008.
Ratzinger has repeatedly emphasised that he "knew nothing" of the priest's previous history at the time of his admission in Munich and that he was not present at the corresponding ordinariate meeting.
This is contradicted by the corresponding minutes, which mention how "the Cardinal" also reported at the said meeting on the funeral service for the deceased Cardinal Alfred Bengsch of Berlin and confidential discussions with John Paul II about the theologian Hans Küng.
The case had already boiled up in 2010. At that time, the former Vicar General Gerhard Gruber took sole responsibility. Later he explained that he had been pushed into doing so. Gruber does not doubt that Ratzinger knew the circumstances that led to the priest’s re-assignment. The study deals with 235 alleged perpetrators - 173 of them priests - and 497 mostly male victims.
The report paints a completely distorted picture of the facts by projecting today's abuse hysteria, which is mostly confined to priests, back into history. At that time, abuses were not tackled with today's standards. In circles to which today's oligarch media belong, child abuse was publicly practised and its legalisation sought.
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