A report on sexual abuse of minors accuses Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI of failing to act in at least four cases. The document described as a “balance of horror” describes the alleged cases of pederasty in the German archdiocese of Munich and accuses the then archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, of inaction in four cases that occurred under his hierarchy. Ratzinger, 94, has denied the allegations.
“The then archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, should be charged with mismanagement of at least four cases of sexual abuse,” said Martin Pusch, a lawyer at the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, which produced the report.
The abuses occurred between 1977 and 1982. The report mentions the current Cardinal of Munich, Reinhard Marx, who resigned last year as a gesture against abuses committed in the Catholic Church. His resignation was rejected by Pope Francis. Nearly 4,000 minors were abused by the Catholic Church in Germany in some seven decades, according to research.
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