Retired pope Benedict XVI has asked for forgiveness for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but admitted to no personal or specific wrongdoing.
His statement came after an independent report criticised his actions in four cases while he was archbishop of Munich in 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 said.
Benedict, 94, was responding to a report on January 20 from a German law firm that had been commissioned by the German church to look into how cases of sexual abuse were handled in the Munich archdiocese between 1945 and 2019.
Benedict, the former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.
The report’s authors faulted Benedict’s handling of four cases during his time as archbishop, accusing him of misconduct for having failed to restrict the ministry of the priests in the cases even after they had been convicted criminally.
The report also faulted his predecessors and successors, estimating that there had been at least 497 abuse victims over the decades and at least 235 suspected perpetrators.
The Vatican released a letter Benedict wrote to respond to the allegations, alongside a more technical reply from his team of lawyers and advisers who had provided an initial 82-page response to the law firm about his nearly five-year tenure in Munich.
The conclusion of Benedict’s advisers was resolute: “As an archbishop, cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse,” they wrote.
Furthermore, they said, the report provided no evidence that Benedict was aware of the criminal history of any of the four priests in question.
In the letter, Benedict issued what he called a “confession”, recalling that daily mass begins with believers confessing their sins and asking forgiveness for their faults and even their “grievous faults”.
Benedict noted that in his meetings with abuse victims while he was pope, “I have seen at first hand the effects of a most grievous fault”.
“And I have come to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness and responsibility, as too often happened and continues to happen,” he wrote.
“As in those meetings, once again I can only express to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness.”
His response drew swift criticism from Eckiger Tisch, a group representing German clergy abuse survivors, who said: “Joseph Ratzinger can’t bring himself simply to state that he is sorry not to have done more to protect the children entrusted to his church.”
The response will probably complicate efforts by German bishops to try to re-establish credibility with the faithful, since their demands for accountability have only increased as the church has come to terms with decades of abuse and cover-up.
The head of the German bishops conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, had previously said that Benedict needed to respond to the report by distancing himself from his lawyers and advisers.
“He must talk, and he must override his advisers and essentially say the simple sentence: ‘I incurred guilt, I made mistakes and I apologise to those affected’,” he said.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Bishop Baetzing noted that Benedict had responded.
“I am grateful to him for that and he deserves respect for it,” he wrote. The tweet did not address the substance of Benedict’s response.
