Ratzinger and the abuse scandal: "Someone wants to destroy it"
Georg Gänswein, secretary of Benedict XVI: "Mud from those who have never loved him and his pontificate"
"There is a current that wants to destroy his person and his work, because he has never loved his person, his theology, his pontificate".
Thus the personal secretary of Benedict XVI, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, on the scandal of the abuse of the clergy in Munich at the turn of the seventies and eighties, on which Ratzinger, then archbishop, did not take action.
Following the letter from the pope emeritus on the affair, in which he expressed to all the victims "my deep shame, my great pain and my sincere request for forgiveness", Gänswein affirms that with the scandal abuses in Germany " there is an ideal opportunity for reckoning, such as the search for a damnatio memoriae ". And "unfortunately many are deceived by this vile attack, there is so much mud".
For the personal secretary of the pope emeritus, "anyone who knows him knows that the accusation of having lied is absurd. One must distinguish between making a mistake and lying".
Ratzinger was criticized for saying he was not present at the 1980 meeting, where the case was dealt with. An "unintentional editorial error", the archbishop defends.
The prelate also underlines that on the fight against pedophilia in the Church, Ratzinger "was the first to act as a cardinal and then continued the line of transparency as Pope". While Benedict XVI was writing the letter of the mea culpa, "he was thinking of the victims of abuse - affirms his secretary -. And in front of him, in front of his eyes, he had God himself".
(Unioneonline / lf)