The Reinhard Marx Impulse Survey
one of the members of the cardinal’s council who assists Pope Francis, a leading exponent of the progressive wing hostile to Ratzinger.
But they both failed to eradicate the phenomenon
Apparently, the quiet of the monastery where Joseph Ratzinger retired since May 2013, after his resignation, is the same as ever. Behind the electric gate that protects the privacy of the most mysterious and inaccessible place in the Vatican Gardens, the Pope Emeritus continues his life as always assisted by four consecrated women, the Memores, and by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his private secretary and prefect of the House pontifical. But for a few days, in reality, that quiet has cracked.
News from Germany on some old cases of pedophilia took Benedict by surprise; and in a moment of weakness, while he is now struggling to speak and goes out more and more rarely for the little walks he was used to taking near the Fountain of the Kite. There is a report of about a thousand pages concerning abuses that were allegedly committed in the diocese of Munich between 1945 and 2019. And four hundred pages would concern the period in which Ratzinger was archbishop of the city, from 1977 to 1982. But the Pope emeritus has not yet received them.
The defense brief prepared by the team of lawyers would be over eighty pages long. And, from what filters from the monastery, the answers should remove any shadow on the responsibilities of Benedict XVI. They should, because in reality, analyzing some of the questions posed by the authors, the circle of the Pope Emeritus saw at least “the intention” of pointing out responsibility and guilt. The investigation was conducted at the instigation of Reinhard Marx, the current archbishop of Munich: one of the members of the cardinal’s council who assists Pope Francis, a leading exponent of the progressive wing hostile to Ratzinger.
And this risks casting new shadows on the Vatican. It refers to the lacerations that have been recorded for years in the German episcopate between “orthodox” and “liberals”, albeit with all the approximation that the two terms evoke. They manifested themselves on relations with the homosexual community; on the possibility of abolishing the celibacy of priests; on the female priesthood. When the controversial Synod on the Amazon was held in Rome at the end of 2019, the real cultural and financial direction was attributed by traditionalist Catholics not so much to the Brazilian bishops, but to the progressive strand of the German Church.
And in early 2020, the altolà to priestly celibacy that Benedict gave in an essay contained in a book by traditionalist cardinal Robert Sarah caused a stir: an editorial mess that sounded like criticism of his successor. Now, an internal rift is also hinted at on the report from Munich. The former prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, but not only, sees in what is happening “yet another global wave of mud against the Church for facts dating back forty years”, he argues. “I fear that behind it there may also be the wing of the German Church which, unable to strike Benedict on the doctrinal level, does so in another way”.
Maybe, but in reality Marx himself is suspected in the report of having behaved incorrectly in a couple of cases. The effect is however devastating: above all because it touches the Pope Emeritus who was the first to understand how much public opinion in the world, and in particular in the West, would no longer tolerate the crime of pedophilia after the end of the Cold War. As a cardinal and then as Pope he hardly challenged the “culture of secrecy”, clashing with the most backward and compromised circles of the Curia and Vatican diplomacy.
In September 2018, Monsignor Gänswein spoke of pedophilia as the “11 September of the Catholic Church”, referring to the Al Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. And in April 2019, Ratzinger published eighteen pages of “Notes” against the “moral collapse” of the Church after the world summit on pedophilia wanted by Francis in Rome. The investigation in Germany seems to obscure all of this. However, it projects a blade of ambiguity on the way Benedict has acted. It re-proposes the curse of an “infinite scandal” for which, sooner or later, the leaders of the Church are called to answer even after decades.
It is a consequence of the inability to devise a strategy that prevents accusations, and demonstrates a willingness to move on. On this, neither the papacy of Francis nor that of Benedict XVI has managed to show real progress. The Church finds herself, once again, a “global defendant”: even with Ratzinger forced to defend himself from slanderous accusations. It will be interesting to see if the affair will allow us to go beyond “the sense of shame and remorse for the abuse of minors committed by clerics”, as a spokesman for the Holy See said yesterday. Or if it will become just a pretext to use pedophilia scandals as ammunition for the next Conclave.
January 21, 2022 (change January 21, 2022 | 07:43)
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