Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI reported on Monday that, contrary to what he previously reported in a written statement to German investigators, he attended a meeting on January 15, 1980 in Munich to discuss the situation of a priest then suspected of pedophilia and who was later convicted of that crime in 1986.
In a statement sent to the German Catholic news agency KNA, Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s personal secretary, said the error was “the result of an oversight in editing his statement” and that the pope emeritus had apologized.
However, Gänswein stressed that at the meeting no decision was made on the reassignment of Father Peter Hullermann to the pastoral functions and that Benedict XVI will give more statements after reading in full an investigative report, released last week, which pointed out that the pope emeritus had been informed about priests who abused children in Germany when he was archbishop of Munich and Freising, between 1977 and 1982, but did not rule out the suspects.
In statements to the German newspaper Die Zeit, the same that had published the accusations, Gänswein reported that the pope emeritus denied the accusation. Writing for the Catholic news agency Zenit, columnist and philosopher Jorge Enrique Mújica criticized alleged inconsistencies and sensationalism surrounding the report, prepared by the law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl.
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