Cardinal Reinhard Marx has admitted that the Church’s greatest failure in the handling of clerical sexual abuse had been to overlook the victims.
“That in itself is unforgiveable. We simply did not see their suffering,” Marx said. “I as the archdiocesan archbishop am morally responsible.”
However, speaking at press conference in Munich, he insisted there were “systemic reasons” behind their suffering. Whoever – after the publication of the Munich Abuse Report on 20 January - “still denies that there are systemic reasons” in the Church for hushing up abuse, had not yet understood that reappraising the abuse “will not succeed without church renewal,” he said. The way forward was through the German and Pope Francis’ worldwide synodal process.
Marx said he did not want to comment on Pope Emeritus Benedict’s correction of what he had said in the Munich report.
On 24 January, Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, published a declaration in Benedict’s name underlining that Benedict had taken part after all in a meeting on 15 January 1980 at which the repeat offender Fr Peter Hullermann had been discussed. Benedict declared in his submission to the report that he distinctly remembered that he had not taken part in that meeting. The Pope Emeritus apologised for the mistake and said he will be making a further statement.
On a talk show on German TV on 30 January, the bishops’ conference president Georg Batzing said Benedict “must override his advisers and just say: ‘I am guilty, I made mistakes and I ask the victims for forgiveness’.”
Benedict’s biographer, Peter Seewald, claimed the Pope Emeritus had been “persuaded to make a false statement” by members of the team working with him on the 82-page statement he made for the Report. “One of Benedict’s team made a slapdash mistake [and] the fatal error went round the world as the emeritus Pope’s lie”.
Meanwhile as soon as the Munich Report, which found that 173 priests had sexually abused 497 victims over the past 70 years, was published, German registry offices, above all but not only in Bavaria, were flooded with requests for appointments from Catholics wanting to officially leave the Church. The Munich office said opening hours would be extended and two extra employees had been taken on.