Pope Benedict XVI asks for forgiveness, denies wrongdoing in Vatican letter

Almost three weeks after a report on sexual abuse covered up in the Catholic church placed some of the blame on retired Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican released a letter from Benedict. In the letter, which was written Sunday and released Tuesday, Benedict asked forgiveness Tuesday for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but denied any personal or specific wrongdoing.

“An oversight occurred regarding my participation in the chancery meeting of 15 January 1980. This error, which regrettably was verified, was not intentionally willed and I hope may be excused,” Benedict said in the Vatican letter. “To me it proved deeply hurtful that this oversight was used to cast doubt on my truthfulness, and even to label me a liar.”

The report revealed four sexual abuse cases Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, mishandled in his time as archbishop of Germany’s Munich diocese from 1977-1982. Two of those cases involved perpetrators who were punished by the judicial system but were kept in pastoral work without express limits on what they were allowed to do. In a third case, a cleric who had been convicted by a court outside Germany was put into service in the Munich archdiocese.

“I have seen at first hand the effects of a most grievous fault. And I have come to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness and responsibility, as too often happened and continues to happen,” Benedict said in the Vatican letter. “All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate. Each individual case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable. The victims of sexual abuse have my deepest sympathy and I feel great sorrow for each individual case.”

However, Benedict’s Vatican letter did not contain specific sin or fault, and it came alongside a letter from his lawyers who wrote “as an archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse.” In that letter, the lawyers said the authors of the report provided no evidence that Benedict was aware of the criminal history of any of the four priests in question.