Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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IN January this year it was reported that a court case in Germany against the late Pope Benedict XVI will continue in spite of his death.

He was accused of covering up sexual abuse committed by a priest during his time as Archbishop of Munich and Freising.

The case, according to Religion News Service, raises the possibility that, if his surviving relatives get a chunk of his cash they could wind up facing massive compensation claims.

RNS reported:

One cousin has already refused to accept the inheritance; four others have not yet responded. If they are smart, they will turn it down as well.

It pointed out that, by accepting the money, an heir also takes over any legal claims against the deceased, according to estate laws in Germany, where the cousins all live.

Said Martina Holzinger, the daughter and legal guardian of a now 88-year-old Ratzinger cousin who has refused the unexpected gift:

We didn’t expect this inheritance, and our lives are just fine without it.

Without even knowing how much the inheritance would be, the prospect of taking on the scandal that darkened Ratzinger’s legacy was too much for Holzinger:

I could get the shakes just thinking about how much I would have to pay out.

Problems date back to 1980

According to RNS, the former Pope’s problems began in 1980 when he was Archbishop of Munich, and the Rev. Peter Hullermann was transferred to the Bavarian state capital from Essen.

Hullermann had been accused of eight cases of abusing children in Essen, but while Munich was informed of his record, the public was not.

After some “therapy”—the church’s standard response at the time to paedophile priests—Hullermann was sent back into normal ministry near Munich, with no mention of his past problems.

That gave him access to minors once again, and by 1986 he received an 18-month suspended sentence from a local court for sexually abusing 11 boys.

Then the priest was sent to Garching an der Alz, near the Austrian border, and the abuse continued. In 2008, he was transferred again, to Bad Tölz, a spa town south of Munich. There, in 2010, he was suspended as a priest and finally defrocked in 2022.

The former Pope denied knowing about Hullermann until January 2022, when a report on sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese showed he had attended a 1980 meeting about Hullermann’s transfer and approved it.

The report, ordered by the archdiocese itself, accused him of probably lying to the investigators. They concluded Ratzinger had failed to act in four separate abuse cases.

Two months after his death, Bavarian Radio reported the Hullermann case had also followed Ratzinger to Rome, where he became an influential adviser to Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Andreas Perr, now 39, claimed he’d been sexually abused by Hullermann in the 1990s in Garching an der Alz.

Since criminal charges were beyond the statute of limitations, Perr filed a civil suit for 50,000 euros in damages from the heirs and another 300,000 euros from the Munich Archdiocese.

In addition, he asked the defendants to pay any future costs resulting from the abuse.

Ratzinger reportedly earned royalties from the many books he wrote and salaries from universities where he was a theology professor. He also had a comfortable income during his time as Archbishop of Munich.

Image via YouTube

In his initial letter to Ratzinger’s cousins, his “longtime assistant”, Archbishop “gorgeous” Georg Gänswein, above, revealed neither how much money was at stake nor how many cousins survived to share it. He also made clear that neither book royalties nor personal items were part of the package.

Nobody knows what those future costs arising from the abuse case will amount to.

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