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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at St Peter's Basilica on December 8, 2015.Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

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(LifeSiteNews) – Prominent German newspapers, such as Die Zeit and Die Welt, are reporting today that a 38-year-old man is suing Pope Benedict XVI, together with his successor in the office as archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, as well as Munich’s vicar general Christoph Klingan.

The claimant says that he had been abused by the abuser priest Peter H., who came from the Diocese of Essen into the Archdiocese of Munich in 1980 in order to undergo a therapy. Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led the archdiocese of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.

Peter H. had then been given pastoral work, even though his introductory letter from the Diocese of Essen stated that he presented “a danger” and should preferably work in a “girls’ school,” and even though he had been already a convicted pedophile at that stage.

This objective negligence of the Archdiocese of Munich is now under scrutiny at the regional court of Traunstein in a civil suit. According to Die Welt, the claim of the victim’s lawyer is that Ratzinger at the time “knew about all the circumstances” and “accepted that this priest is a repeat offender.”

This abuser priest had been repeatedly the object of heated discussions about Joseph Ratzinger’s possible failures, first in 2010 when he was Pope, and then later again in 2022 when the official Munich sex abuse report was published.

Pope Benedict holds that he had no knowledge of the fact that Peter H. was an abuser priest. In 1986, after Ratzinger’s departure to Rome, the priest was condemned by a court for child abuse. Previously, in 1979, he had sexually abused an 11-year-old boy. That was before his coming to Munich.

Yet, in spite of these incidences, Peter H. continued to work in the field of pastoral work, also with children, for many years. He is said to have abused at least 23 children.

Christ&Welt, a subsection of Die Zeit, reports in tomorrow’s June 23 issue, that Peter H. has now been laicized by Pope Francis, that is, he has been removed from the clerical state.

Andreas Schulz, the lawyer of the 38-year-old victim of Peter H., now argues that even though a criminal prosecution of these old crimes might not be possible anymore, the court still at least could make a declaration that the Church acted in a negligent manner and thus bears guilt. Therefore, according to media reports, Schulz claims that the Church owes this victim restitution and should make a “declaratory action.”

The lawyer’s argumentation continues by saying that “he wishes to achieve that a secular court also states that Pope Benedict emeritus XVI is duty-bound to it [restitution], because he as archbishop has agreed to put the priest [..] back into pastoral work, even though the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising knew […] about the sexual assaults.”

In January of this year, when the official Munich sex abuse report was published, Pope Benedict came under criticism for first having denied that he had been present at the diocesan meeting which approved taking Peter H. into the Diocese of Munich. He later had to correct himself and explained that he nevertheless, in spite of his presence at that January 1980 meeting, did not know anything about the personal history of Peter H.

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