Former pope Benedict XVI has expressed 'shock and shame' at child sex abuse carried out in his diocese in the 1980s after a report found he knowingly failed to take action against the priests involved.
Benedict - who was the archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982 - has 'strictly' denied any responsibility in the four cases of abuse, said lawyer Martin Pusch of Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), which was commissioned by the church to carry out the probe.
The ex-pontiff's assistant Georg Ganswein told Vatican News: 'The Pope Emeritus, as he has already repeated several times during the years of his pontificate, expresses his shock and shame at the abuse of minors committed by clerics.'
He added that Benedict had no knowledge of the content of the report until this afternoon.
But the experts do not consider this credible, Pusch said.
Two of the cases where Benedict allegedly failed to act involved clergymen who had committed several proven acts of abuse but were allowed to continue with pastoral duties, Pusch said.
An interest in the abuse victims was 'not recognisable' in Benedict, he added.
In one case, a now notorious paedophile priest named Peter Hullermann was transferred to Munich from Essen in western Germany where he had been accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy.
Hullermann was reassigned to pastoral duties despite his history and continued to reoffend for many years.
A bombshell report has accused former Pope Benedict (pictured during a weekly audience in the Vatican when he was the pontiff) of misconduct over his handling of four cases of sexual abuse by priests while he was an archbishop in Germany
The law firm, which was commissioned to draw up the report by the Munich archdiocese, said that Benedict - whose civilian name is Josef Ratzinger (pictured in the Vatican after being elected Pope in April 2005) - strongly denies any wrongdoing
Benedict, 94 - whose civilian name is Josef Ratzinger - in 2013 became the first pope to step down from the role in 600 years and now lives a secluded life in a former convent inside the grounds of the Vatican.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni emphasised that it must still examine the report, 'the contents of which are not currently known', but reiterated the Vatican's 'sense of shame and remorse for the abuse of minors committed by clerics'.
Pusch said Benedict had initially shown a 'defensive attitude' when responding to questions for the investigation. However, he later changed his attitude and gave a detailed written statement.
The Munich report, which examined the years 1945 to 2019, found indications of sexually abusive behaviour in 235 people it investigated, including 173 priests.
The lawyers also accused Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the current archbishop of Munich and Freising, of failing to act in two cases of suspected abuse.
Marx had last year offered Pope Francis his resignation over the church's 'institutional and systemic failure' in its handling of child sex abuse scandals.
However, Pope Francis rejected his offer, urging the cardinal known for his reforms to stay and help shape change in the Catholic Church.
The reformist Catholic group 'Wir sind Kirche' (We are Church) said the report offered 'frightening insights into the lack of sense of responsibility of clerical office holders'.
It called on Benedict to 'face up to his ecclesiastical and moral responsibility instead of making more and more denials that are not very credible'.
The Catholic Church has been embroiled in a series of sexual abuse scandals in countries around the world, including Australia, Chile, France, Ireland and the United States.
In Germany, a string of reports in recent years have exposed widespread abuse of children by clergymen.
Benedict, (pictured in 1980) who served as the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, also approved the transfer of a suspected paedophile priest to the archdiocese to undergo therapy in 1980
A study commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference in 2018 concluded that 1,670 clergymen in the country had committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014.
However, the real number of victims is thought to be much higher.
Another report published last year exposed the scope of abuse committed by priests in Germany's top diocese of Cologne.
The abuse scandal has thwarted the Catholic Church's efforts to spearhead broad reforms in Germany.
It counted 22.2 million members in 2020 and is still the largest religion in the country, but the number is 2.5 million fewer than in 2010 when the first major wave of paedophile abuse cases came to light.
Payouts for victims of abuse were increased in 2020 to up to 50,000 euros ($56,700), from around 5,000 euros previously, but campaigners say the sum is still inadequate.
Matthias Katsch, a spokesman for the Eckiger Tisch victims' group, called the report 'shocking'.
It was 'impressive and very moving' to see the lawyers 'take apart this edifice of lies that has been erected to protect Benedict XVI', he said.
The report also faulted the current archbishop, a prominent ally of Pope Francis, in two cases.
The archdiocese and the law firm said that top church officials were informed of the results ahead of its publication. The archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, declined an invitation to attend the presentation.
In an extraordinary gesture last year, Marx offered to resign over the Catholic Church's 'catastrophic' mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, declaring that the scandals had brought the church to 'a dead end.'
Francis swiftly rejected the offer but said a process of reform was necessary and that every bishop must take responsibility for the 'catastrophe' of the abuse crisis.
In 2018, a church-commissioned report concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014.
More than half of the victims were 13 or younger, and nearly a third served as altar boys. However, the real number of victims is thought to be much higher.
In recent months, turbulence in the Cologne archdiocese over officials' handling of abuse allegations has convulsed the German church.
The current Munich archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, (pictured in February 2019) declined an invitation to attend the presentation
A picture of three Church officials investigated in the report was posted on the side of a van at a demonstration ahead of the report's release today in Munich
A report last year found that the archbishop of Hamburg, a former Cologne church official, neglected his duty in several cases in handling such allegations, but Francis rejected his resignation offer.
That report cleared Cologne's archbishop, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, of wrongdoing. But Woelki's handling of the issue infuriated many Catholics.
He had kept under wraps a first report on church officials' actions, drawn up by the same firm that produced the Munich report, citing legal concerns.
In September, the pope gave Woelki a several-month 'spiritual timeout' after what the Vatican called 'major errors' of communication.
Marx, a reformist who sits on powerful financial and political committees at the Vatican, has been the archbishop of Munich and Freising since 2008.
The abuse scandal has thwarted the Catholic Church's efforts to spearhead broad reforms in Germany.
It counted 22.2 million members in 2020 and is still the largest religion in the country, but the number is 2.5 million fewer than in 2010 when the first major wave of paedophile abuse cases came to light.
Payouts for victims of abuse were increased in 2020 to up to 50,000 euros ($56,700), from around 5,000 euros previously, but campaigners say the sum is still inadequate.
Ahead of the publication of the Munich report, the Eckiger Tisch victims' group called for 'compensation instead of hollow words'.
'Far too many children and young people have fallen victim' to a system 'shaped by abuse of power, intransparency and despotism', said Matthias Katsch, a spokesman for the group.
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