Report on sexual abuse in German diocese faults retired Pope Benedict XVI

A long-awaited report on sexual abuse in Germany’s Munich diocese on Thursday faulted retired Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of four cases when he was archbishop in the 1970s and 1980s. “Sadly, we see these unsavory actions and inactions surface years later after lengthy silence by church officials and painful memories harbored by victims.” Benedict’s longtime secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, said the retired pope hadn’t yet read the report but would in the coming days. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Holy See wouldn’t comment until it had read the report in full and could give the contents “careful and detailed examination.” Benedict’s legacy as pope had already been colored by the global eruption in 2010 of the sex abuse scandal, although as a cardinal he was responsible for turning around the Vatican’s approach to the issue. 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.