New report exposes former pope’s inaction on child sexual abuse

Judy Woodruff:

A new report finds the retired pope, Pope Benedict, failed to deal adequately with sexual abuse cases when he was the leader of a German diocese decades ago.

Stephanie Sy has the latest on these revelations and what it says about the Vatican's leadership.

Stephanie Sy:

Judy, the report found that former Pope Benedict XVI failed to act in four cases of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.

This was during his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1977 and 1982. And it was the German Archdiocese which commissioned this independent investigation. Benedict's spokesperson says he is reviewing this lengthy report. But the law firm that conducted the investigation with written testimony from the former pontiff says he denied any wrongdoing.

The report identified nearly 500 sexual victims in the archdiocese between 1945 to 2019.

Chico Harlan is the Rome bureau chief for The Washington Post and has been writing about this.

Chico Harlan, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour."

So, really, from Boston to Munich, we have seen church leaders at the very top over and over again turn a blind eye to sexual abuse, cover up sexual abuse, commit sexual abuse. How bad is what former Pope Benedict is accused of doing in this report?

Chico Harlan, The Washington Post:

How bad is it?

I mean, there is a way to measure it against the standards of the time and what was known, but I think viewed at it through the modern lens of the proper way to handle sexual abuse, the only way to consider this is that he failed. He did not value the victims and the safety of young people, the safety of people attending church against the reputation.

And that has been the tripping point for leaders for all the decades. That's what all the scandals have in common. And you see that, even before this had exploded into public knowledge — this was in the late '70s and early '80s — the same problems were at the root, and, this time, it involved the man who would become pope.

Stephanie Sy:

And, specifically, this report spends a couple of hundred pages, I understand, on Reverend Peter Hullermann, who was accused of molesting — sexually abusing children in the late 1970s.

What does that have to do with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? That's what — the position he held before he was elevated to pontiff.

Chico Harlan:

Right.

So, this — of all these four cases, this is the one that had been the most known publicly beforehand. And the question was, OK, there was this — a known abuser who entered Ratzinger, or Benedict's, archdiocese. He was given some therapy and then put back on the job and continued to abuse in the subsequent years.

So, the question always was, how much did Benedict know about this? And, at the time, 10 years ago, when this first came out, it was — the blame was cast on a deputy. The deputy says now that he believes it was improbable that Benedict didn't have some knowledge about this guy's past when he was brought in and rehabilitated.

Stephanie Sy:

And Benedict, thus far, according to the law firm, has denied that he was at this meeting.

Is this the closest, this high-ranking of a Vatican official, all the way at the top, even though he was cardinal at the time, has come to being linked to a case of sexual abuse?

Chico Harlan:

This is, I guess, what you would put — categorized as mishandling or cover up, negligence.

And, yes, the accusations have been made in a very high-profile case even three years ago by this character who is famous to any Catholic, Archbishop Vigano, who was talking about the way that Benedict and Pope Francis failed in properly excavating the truths with Cardinal McCarrick.

So that was a case of cover-up. But I guess what we have seen today in the German case is something much more fitting with the pattern, the normal pattern. These were cases that at the time weren't getting attention. These were not famous priests that were involved. This was the day-to-day running of the church. And, at the time, Benedict was a cardinal, but nobody knew he'd become pope.

So this was very much what — how do you behave when no one's watching? How do you behave when the attention isn't there from the media? And we got the answer in the form of this report.

Stephanie Sy:

And, really, what you're talking about is a form of inaction, but also the fact that they were transferring these accused clergy members from dioceses to dioceses, right?

Chico Harlan:

Yes, always with the transferring.

It was better to deal with the priests by changing their job than by disciplining them.

Stephanie Sy:

And we should say that, before he was elevated to the papacy, Cardinal Ratzinger was actually in charge of the Vatican office that was meant to oversee sexual abuse cases.

So, he, more than almost anyone in the Catholic Church, was responsible for overseeing these cases for quite some time.

Chico Harlan:

So, if you're thinking about what figure of the last decades knows the most about abuse, it's probably him.

I mean, he was the very face of this secretive organ that dealt with the discipline and dealt with cases. He had his finger on that body like nobody since. And then he became pope.

So, negligence is not an excuse. He knew the problem, and it was defining his job even before he became a name known to all Catholics.

Stephanie Sy:

Chico Harlan is the Rome bureau chief for The Washington Post.

Chico, thank you for joining the "NewsHour."

Chico Harlan:

Thanks so much, Stephanie. Appreciate it.