According to the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI must apologize for his role in the sexual abuse scandal in the Church and accept his faults in the cover-up of cases.

“He must make a statement, he must set aside the recommendations of his advisors and say clearly and simply: I bear guilt, I have made mistakes, I ask forgiveness from those affected,” Bishop Georg Bätzing told ZDF, the German public broadcaster. 

He made the statement following the publication of the report on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising. The document, released Jan. 20, found that at least 497 people were abused in the German archdiocese between 1945 and 2019. 

Compiled by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm, it was commissioned by the archdiocese, currently led by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, in February 2020.

The report identifies 235 perpetrators of abuse, including 173 priests, 9 deacons, 5 pastoral workers, and 48 people in Catholic schools. 

The report found that on three occasions, then-Archbishop Joseph Ratizinger – now better known as Benedict XVI – failed to act accordingly, instead covering up for priests who had committed abuses and allowed them to continue working. There was a fourth case in which his actions were called into question, but the investigators cleared him of wrongdoing.

Bätzing said in his interview with ZDF that he believes Benedict’s problem throughout his ministry has been the tendency to surround himself with inadequate advisors.

The bishop criticized the former pontiff, saying he hopes “that Pope Benedict has noticed what confusion and outrage his various statements have left behind in our country.”

At the same time, Bätzing called on Benedict to distance himself from his advisers: “I hope that he will disregard his advisers” and deliver a clear statement: “I made mistakes and ask for forgiveness.” 

It is not the first time the bishop has criticized Ratzinger. The day after the publication of the report, he had said that it is now absolutely clear “quite how disastrously the Church had behaved,” including church leaders, “right up to an emeritus Pope.”

“I am ashamed that we have such a past and in order to re-establish our credibility, we must … unrelentingly face the truth however painful that may be,” Bätzing said.

After the publication of the report, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI admitted that a previous statement on his participation in a meeting that discussed an abusive priest was “objectively incorrect.”

The 95-year-old is expected to release a statement once he’s had time to read the 1,900 pages report, made available to him the day it was published.

Six days after the report came out, the Vatican released a statement, signed by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, in which he defended Benedict XVI’s record on abuse. 

The journalist argued that the report was an important contribution to “the search for justice in truth and to a collective examination of conscience on the errors of the past.”

However, he warned, “the reconstructions contained in the Munich report, which — it must be remembered — is not a judicial inquiry nor a final sentence, will help to combat pedophilia in the church if they are not reduced to the search for easy scapegoats and summary judgments.”

Though Benedict toughened legislation against clerical abuse of minors during his later years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and then as pope, many critics fault him for being late in leading the reform.

In his editorial, Torniell wrote that during the investigation, Benedict “did not evade the questions” and provided an 82-page response regarding his time leading the Munich Archdiocese.

“Predictably, it was (then-Cardinal) Ratzinger’s four-and-a-half years at the helm of the Bavarian diocese that monopolized the attention of commentators,” he said.