Cover Up in the Catholic Church: Former Pope Benedict XVI Faulted in 4 Cases of Misconduct Related to Sexual Abuse

TW: This article discusses allegations of sexual assault in the Catholic Church.

The expanding list of sexual misconduct accusations related to the Roman Catholic Church is nothing short of alarming. Third-party researchers, many of whom have, in fact, been funded by the Catholic Church, have delved into private church records and interviewed witnesses to reveal what seems to be the tip of an iceberg with more than hundreds of thousands of alleged cases of abuse worldwide since the mid-20th century. An important preliminary step, but there is not doubt that the church has much to atone for in its collusive past. Most recently, in mid-January of 2022, a report published by German law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl accused former Pope Benedict XVI of failure to act appropriately while cognizant of numerous allegations of sexual assault. These events took place during his time as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. 

The report states that during this period, Cardinal Ratzinger, now known as Pope Beneditc XVI, “can be accused of misconduct” with regard to four cases of sexual abuse in the Church. Two of these instances involved priests who committed crimes during Ratzinger’s term. Although these criminals were punished within the German judicial system, they were permitted to continue their work as pastors and were not removed from interaction and exposure to minors or other members of the community. The report also accuses the Archbishop of permitting and welcoming a priest convicted by a court outside of Germany into service in the Munich Archdiocese. 

A final allegation relates to a known pedophaelic priest, Peter Hullerman, transferring to Munich to undergo therapy. Hullerman was accused of innappropriate sexual behaviour towards 23 boys between ages 8 and 16 during his career as a priest. In the Munich Archdiocese, Hullerman was later approved to resume pastoral work and thus enabled to commit further abuse. In 1986, he was convicted for sexual assault of a young boy. The church claims the gross error was made by a low-ranking administrator without consultation with the Archbishop. Westpfahl Spilker Wastl’s report cites minutes which strongly support Pope Benedict’s knowledge and complicity. Pope Benedict previously denied fault in all aforementioned allegations, however, after the new report’s release, the former Pope acknowledged his presence at a meeting about the pedophaelic priest in 1980. Rumors detailing the latter event first came to light just prior to his historical 2013 retirement (significant as he was the first Pope to resign in almost 600 years), though a multitude of other conflicts contributed to such a decision. Notably, a plethora of additional conflicts at the Vatican with regard to leaked internal documents of power struggles from the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, likely also played a role in his resignation.

The same report also faults Munich’s current Archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, in two cases, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s immediate successor, Cardinal Freidrich Wetter, in 21 cases. Following the report’s release, Cardinal Marx also submitted his resignation to the Vatican as a gesture to assume personal responsibility for the unaccoutability of religious leaders in the Catholic Church in matters of sexual assault. Pope Francis declined his resignation.

The failures of Pope Benedict, Cardinal Wetter, and Cardinal Marx to root out and deal with the abuses in their purview within the Church are only a small sample of what appears to have been much more common within the Catholic Church. Numerous investigators worldwide have published reports of the same genre. Between 1950 and 2020, over 216 000 children were sexually abused by French clergy members as evidenced in an independent investigation led by Jean-Marc Sauvé, concluded in October of 2021. Sauvé’s report notes the Catholic Church’s “immediate reaction to protect itself as an institution” and its portrayal of “cruel indifference” towards victims. The source of the French Catholic Institution’s problems appears to have involved a complex network of manipulated trust and authority, concealment, and shame that permitted abuse in parishes, scout groups, and even within families.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Murphy Report of 2009 unveiled excessive abuse and outstanding concealment efforts in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Between 1970 and 1990 alone, over 15 000 cases were cited, especially in Catholic orphanages and schools. Moreover, a secondary report in 2011 researching the Cloyne diocese resulted in the Vatican’s termination of its ambassador after the Irish premier accused it of obstruction of the investigation.

In 2013, the Australian government examined a series of accusations and, in February of 2017, concluded that 7% of Catholic priests had committed alleged abuse against children worshippers between 1950 and 2010. Victims reported over 4000 of these cases to church authorities, but few were investigated. The examination also reviewed testimony of another major leader in the Vatican, the former Chief of Finance Cardinal George Pell, who was later found guilty of the sexual abuse of several Melbourne choirboys in 2018. Pell was the most senior figure in the Catholic church to be convicted of such crimes before his verdict was overturned in April of 2020 on account of the jury’s failure to adequately consider all evidence. The father of one of the choir boys, a victim now deceased from a heroin overdose, “no longer has faith in [the] country’s justice system.” 

The complicity of these reports’ data is beyond unsettling. In particular, the accusations against a figurehead of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict, highlight the urgency and seriousness of the sex abuse crisis and the Church’s historical complicity within this system. As icons within Catholic society, religious leaders who exploit their high-power position must be held accountable. The continuous exposure in the media of these issues and the problems have created an environment where the Church must absolutely address it and ensure that any complicity of the past is eliminated in the future. 

The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in 2002 detailed the newspaper’s discovery of child molestation and cover up within the local Catholic Archdiocese. It even inspired an Oscar-winning film in 2015 attempting to share the stories of young victims affected by former priest John J. Geoghan’s compulsive and unabating abuse. The film had significant implications with regard to raising awareness of this pressing yet historically-contained issue within the church.

It is a promising sign that various catholic dioceses and the Vatican itself initially commissioned the investigations for most of the reports cited in this article. There exists a large number of religious leaders within the system striving to admit and correct previous mistakes in order to prevent their happening in the future. New rules, which came into effect in December of last year, prohibit under Vatican Law the acts of sexual abuse, grooming minors, child pornography, as well as the evasion of these crimes. However, it is worth mentioning that the purpose of these rules might be to determine the penalty for abuse within the walls of the church instead of at the discretion of local authorities. Nevertheless, the liberal-leaning reign of Pope Francis has, to some extent, opened the Catholic church towards deeper reflection. Pope Francis appears to be more sensitive to the socioeconomic and political state of the world in which the Catholic church continues to operate. In that regard, he must be proactive in leadership and ownership to ensure correction of abuse and impropriety within its own institution; cover ups will not be accepted in today’s world.