The week after Pope Francis toughened up the rules on setting up new orders it became clear that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI distanced himself from an order that he helped establish and recognised in 1977 when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising.
Pope Francis ruled last week that new religious orders must receive Vatican approval before being established. His amendment to canon law means that local bishops will now need written permission from the Holy See before approving the setting up of communities of religious in their diocese. It signals that bishops will be required to undertake a more credible and rigorous discernment than previously.
Now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has expressed regret for his original support for the Catholic Integrated Community (CIC).
In an article in the October issue of the German theological monthly Herder Korrespondenz, on the serious abuse in the CIC, Benedict said, “I was obviously not informed – or even deceived – about some of the things in the inner life of the CIC, something I deeply regret. As Archbishop of Munich and Freising, I saw it as my official duty to accompany the CIC and watch over its orthodoxy. At first, I did not realise that in the attempt integrally to shape the things of daily life from the faith, terrible distortions of the faith were possible.”
The CIC was accused of serious spiritual abuse in an investigation by the archdiocese of Munich and Freising in October 2019. The results of the investigation have not been published but are in the possession of Herder Korrespondenz.
The investigation found that CIC members’ relationships and marriages had been manipulated and dissolved for years by the community. “The community assembly decided when a couple was allowed to have children and when not. The decision whether or not they were allowed to have children was sometimes postponed for so long, that in the end it was no longer possible for them to have any – a wound that could not be healed.” Married couples were forced to separate, their children were taken from them or they were expelled.
All the members of the CIC have now resigned.
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