Pope’s secretary: No comment needed on each abuse case; bishops responsible

Papal aide: pope need not comment each abuse case

BERLIN — Pope Benedict XVI’s private secretary on Tuesday defended the pope’s prolonged silence on sexual abuse in Germany’s Roman Catholic Church, while more old cases surfaced in Benedict’s former diocese near Munich.

A new report said about 15 monks and three lay educators had likely physically or sexually abused several hundred students at the Ettal Monastery boarding school in the decades before 1990.

The report’s author, special investigator Thomas Pfister, said he had communicated with more than 100 self-described victims, which he said was only “the tip of the iceberg.”

“This means that many hundreds of students — the exact number cannot be specified, of course — became victims of extremely brutal abuse,” Pfister said in the report.

One perpetrator at Ettal abused students with “sexual perversions,” Pfister said in the report, which was released Tuesday with names blacked out to protect the privacy of all parties.

Another monk worked with young children as late as 2009 and “had the opportunity, which he used, to abuse 10- to 12-year-olds,” Pfister’s report said.

Almost all of the other cases occurred before 1990, he said.

Over the past three months, hundreds of cases of sexual and physical abuse have shaken Germany’s Catholic church. Besides the alleged cases in Ettal, at least one other — that of a pedophile priest — is said to have occurred in the Munich archdiocese where Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, served as archbishop from 1977-82.

Critics have noted Benedict has not commented on the cases in his native country.

The pope’s private secretary, Georg Gaenswein, defended his silence, saying Tuesday it did “not make sense, nor is it helpful, for the Holy Father to comment personally on each case.”

In an interview with the German daily Bild, Gaenswein said it was too quickly overlooked that “various bishops and bishops conferences carry responsibility” in such cases.

He also said he doubted the recent criticism of the pope actually helped the cause.

Each case of sexual abuse must be condemned, and “no one has done so as strongly as the Holy Father and the Catholic Church,” he said

As bishop, Ratzinger in 1980 approved of a known pedophile priest’s transfer from the northern city of Essen to Munich, where the man underwent therapy but was allowed to return to ministry. The Rev. Peter Hullermann was later convicted of molesting children.

The Benedictine Ettal monastery is also in the Munich archdiocese, though it is not officially under its jurisdiction. The monastery reports directly to the Benedictine order in Rome.

Pfister launched his investigation after some 20 former students of the attached boarding school came forward in February with abuse allegations.

His research has shown “over decades in the Ettal Monastery children and youths were abused, sadistically tortured and not least also sexually abused, by monks even from the leadership at Ettal Monastery,” Pfister said in his report.

The monastery presented the report Tuesday to just a few journalists without Pfister’s presence, prompting the investigator to protest.

“The monastery’s walls are being put up again,” he told DAPD. “Openness and transparency were nothing but hollow promises.”

The archdiocese also said it was baffled by the monastery’s move.

“We are very satisfied with the special report, but very disconcerted at the monastery’s way of going about” releasing it, diocese spokesman Bernhard Kellner said.

In the statement released Monday night, the interim administrator of the Benedictine monastery, Emmeram Walter, thanked Pfister for his work.

“The report confronts us with a painful side of our past,” Walter said.

“It is an important element of coming to terms with this, and our main goal is to help the victims,” he said.