SNAP Aotearoa Responds To Death Of Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. During that time, he was irrefutably more concerned about the church’s deteriorating image than he was about caring for victims and survivors of clerical child sexual abuse.

Prior to becoming pope, as Archbishop of Munich and Freising he covered up clerical child sexual abuse and knowingly kept abusers in ministry.

As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he fostered the Vatican’s policies of secrecy and coverup, resulting in allowing more children to be harmed.

He also gave false testimony during an investigation into sexual abuse in Germany’s Catholic Church (Westphal Spilker Wastl).

While he lived, he was never held to account.

People can pay tribute to whatever good he did. However, it would be disingenuous to ignore his immense wrongdoing. It would also be entirely inappropriate to eulogise such an enabler of clerical child sexual abuse.

Asking God on his deathbed for forgiveness for the “wrongs” he committed during his life, after not having right those wrongs when there was an opportunity to do so during life, remains inadequate.

This is an opportunity for Pope Francis, the current head of the Catholic Church, to courageously confront the truth, call out the wrongdoing of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI and what occurred on Benedict’s watch.

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