The statement is signed by Father Thomas Rouse, SSC, president of the Congregational Leaders Conference of Aotearoa New Zealand, and Cardinal John Dew, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, on behalf of their respective members.

The set of 10 commitments – along with others previously made – will become part of what the Church calls the “Tautoko Roadmap” for the path the Church is taking in response to the Royal Commission and the wishes of abuse survivors.

Te Rōpū Tautoko is the group the Church formed to coordinate Catholic engagement with the Royal Commission, following the Government in 2018 accepting Church requests for abuse in faith-based organisations to be included in the terms of reference, which were originally limited to abuse in state care.

The full statement is:

In February 2018 the Government established the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Abuse in Care for State and Faith-based institutions. Church leaders had asked to be part of the inquiry, recognising our need to acknowledge our history, and the need to learn lessons for today and the future by examining, understanding, acknowledging, and addressing the abuse that had occurred in the Church and the Church’s failures in responding. In October, a milestone was reached when the Commissioners concluded the public hearing phase of their work.  Their final report is due in June this year, with one or more interim reports expected before then.

The Catholic Church is grateful for the abuse survivors who have shared their stories with the Royal Commission. Their experiences, and the feedback we have received on our processes from a large number of survivors and some survivor groups, have led to us review and improve our Church processes to support survivors and also to create a safer Church.

Much has been done, but we are still learning as we seek to continually improve. However, we cannot just wait while the Government considers how to implement the Royal Commission’s recommendations. We have heard and listened to survivors telling us they want us to change now. The current Synod process begun by Pope Francis in 2021 has told us the Catholic community wants us to do much better in responding to survivors and ensuring a safe Church.

We acknowledge that the abuse of people in the care of the Church is real and the failures of Church leaders in responding to reports are real. The impacts of these are present today; for survivors, their whānau, for faith communities, and for society. This is not just an exercise in looking backwards. We look forwards. We will continue to improve safeguarding in all aspects of church life. There is not, and will not be, any tolerance for abuse in the Church.

There are immediate things we as Church leaders can do to achieve this. Pope Francis said in 2018 that everyone in the Church should feel involved in the Church and the societal change that is needed. Some of the change required is quite technical, but at its heart the change involves a change in approach – a different attitude, a new culture. Some things will take longer, especially those that involve others getting on board. This work involves all of us. We commit to a Roadmap of action, knowing that we do not necessarily know where this road will lead.

The following are a number of items we have recently discussed and committed to, in the light of what we have learned from the Royal Commission’s hearings. We would like to share these with you, so that you know what we are doing.

COMMITMENTS MADE

The bishops and congregational leaders of the Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand have agreed to:

(a)                 Support the option of an independent entity for survivors to report abuse and gain redress where they wish to do so.

(b)                 Support the establishment of an independent entity that reviews and monitors the Church’s redress processes for those survivors who take this option. We also support an independent process that reviews and monitors safeguarding systems of our Church institutions.

(c)                 Expedite or establish internal and external review processes for the current Catholic Church redress and safeguarding systems.

(d)                 Work towards consistency in redress responses between Catholic Church entities.

(e)                 Support the proposal for mandatory reporting of reports of abuse in care settings for children, young people, and vulnerable people; acknowledging that significant work needs to be undertaken as to how, when and to whom reports are made. We note that exemptions will need to be made for some settings to protect legal, confessional, and therapeutic privilege.

(f)                  Request that as part of the special character of schools, school boards notify proprietors of claims of serious disciplinary matters of inappropriate behaviour (whether a student, volunteer, employee, or teacher), through a regular reporting mechanism.

(g)                 Request that proprietors of schools undertake an audit, with school boards, of buildings, prizes, honorifics, and the like named after bishops, clergy, religious or lay people connected to the Catholic community and photos/portraits on display at the school.

(h)                 Develop policies to assist schools when naming buildings, prizes or other items after bishops, clergy and/or religious, and displaying photos/portraits and honorifics (such as honour boards).

(i)                   Continue to audit, with parishes; clubs, other Church organisations, buildings, awards, honorifics and similar named after bishops, clergy, religious or lay people connected to the Catholic community and photos/portraits on display.

(j)                   Request the National Safeguarding and Professional Standards Committee (NSPSC) to consider, and report back in six months, on:

(i)                   how to offer further survivor care and a support-focused approach to reports of abuse.

(ii)                 introducing more consistency and accountability for the outcomes of reports of abuse.

(iii)                the resource and other implications if the National Office for Professional Standards’ (NOPS) jurisdiction were extended beyond sexual abuse by clergy and religious.

(iv)                establishment of a role for actively monitoring safety plans or other outcomes of any disciplinary actions.

(v)                 audits of disciplinary outcomes and safety plans of living respondents.

These commitments, along with others already made, become part of what is called the Tautoko Roadmap. Te Rōpū Tautoko is the group we formed to coordinate Catholic engagement with the Commission. Members of the group are managing this Roadmap until they hand it on to others later this year, once the Royal Commission’s work is completed. We have asked our National Safeguarding and Professional Standards Committee to consider these and other matters and implement them into practice and/or planning. The actions required are not delegated to one group or even some groups. Some actions are for Church leaders, but real lasting change requires everyone within the Church to commit to safeguarding and support of survivors.

Our continued hope is that the work of the Royal Commission will help not only Church leaders but all of us in the community confront the issues of abuse. As a Church, we remain committed to break the cycle of abuse so that all people may participate in churches and communities that are safe and which nourish them to grow to their potential.

It is our expectation and requirement that every person working in the Church, paid or voluntary, will adhere to the policies and procedures that have been established to foster a culture of safeguarding and support of survivors.

The Church takes all reports of abuse seriously. Reports of abuse made about church personnel in New Zealand can be referred to the Church’s National Office for Professional Standards. Alternately, people making reports of abuse may choose to go directly to the Police, and the Church will support anyone who requires assistance to do this.

The Royal Commission, media reports, and people disclosing abuse can all be a catalyst for other people to come forward. We encourage anyone who has been abused in the care of the Church to contact us and for your experience to be heard and addressed. We are committed to responding and supporting you, to the extent that you wish to engage with the Church.

Finally, our prayers are that all who have suffered from abuse find peace and hope, and, that all people in our care are safe and free from harm. Please also pray for us, as Church leaders, as we all continue on this road.

Photo: A screenshot of Cardinal John Dew speaking at the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care last year.

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Young Aboriginal men from towns and bush communities in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia accused Bishop Saunders of sexual misconduct. The bishop has denied the allegations.

Local media reported the inquiry in February, but it was not confirmed until late September.

Brisbane’s Archbishop Coleridge is president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The Church investigation comes 14 months after police closed a three-year investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Bishop Saunders, who was not charged. While the Church’s investigation is underway, the Vatican ordered that Bishop Saunders leave the diocese, where he has continued living since resigning in August, 2021.

During 2020 and 2021, retired Bishop Peter Ingham of Wollongong travelled to Broome and interviewed parishioners, diocesan staff and volunteers about Bishop Saunders’ management style and financial management, but he did not investigate the sexual misconduct allegations due to the police investigation underway at the time.

Police have provided interviews with the accusers to Church officials.

The investigation will be conducted under a process established in 2019 by Pope Francis in a motu proprio titled, “Vos Estis Lux Mundi”, outlining procedures for reporting allegations of sexual abuse and for holding accountable bishops, eparchs and religious superiors who protect abusers.

The papal document asks the investigator to report on progress every 30 days and submit a final report within three months, but the Australian Church has gained additional time from the Vatican.

The process outlined for investigating bishops and other superiors is believed to have been used less than a dozen times anywhere in the world, with six confirmed “Vos Estis” investigations into bishops in the United States.

Its three-year trial period was over June 1, but the process appears to still be in use. It can be triggered by child abuse allegations or vulnerable adult sexual abuse allegations, the possession of child abuse material, or covering up of sexual abuse allegations by senior clerics.

“The Church’s protocols, particularly those enshrined in Pope Francis’ document ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi’, mean the outcome of a police investigation does not prevent the Church from conducting its own inquiry,” Archbishop Coleridge said.

“I have assembled a team of people who are highly qualified to conduct this investigation in a thorough way, mindful of the particular needs of the people of the Diocese of Broome,” he said. “Their job will be to gather, as best they can, all relevant information to pursue truth and justice for everyone involved.”

The investigation comes amid increasing legal cases against the Church and some senior clerics in Australia. These include a civil suit against Cardinal George Pell, who was found guilty, but later acquitted by the High Court of Australia on charges of sexual assault against two choir boys in 1996; one of the accusers is now deceased.

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The protest on July 28 was a momentary but graphic reminder of how, when representatives of Canada’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities met Pope Francis at the Vatican in March and April, they asked him specifically for a formal repudiation of the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery”.

The phrase describes a collection of papal teachings, beginning in the 14th century, that blessed the efforts of explorers to colonise and claim the lands of any people who were not Christian, placing both the land and the people under the sovereignty of European Christian rulers.

The loss of the land, language, culture and spirituality of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and the foundation of the residential school system all can be traced to the doctrine, Indigenous leaders told reporters after their meetings with the Pope.

Asked on July 20 if the Pope was expected to say something about the “Doctrine of Discovery” while in Canada from July 24-29, Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said, “a reflection is underway in the Holy See on the Doctrine of Discovery”, and the study is nearing its conclusion. However, he said he was not certain that a statement would be completed before the papal trip ends or if the Pope would speak about it while in Canada.

Sarain Fox, an activist and member of the Batchewana First Nation near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, told Canada’s CBC News that she was one of the people holding the banner as Mass began in the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.

“It’s important for us to be recognized as human beings, so it’s not enough just to apologise. You need to talk about the root of everything,” which is the Doctrine of Discovery, Fox told CBC News.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a 2016 statement on the Doctrine of Discovery, acknowledged the connection between it and the government’s residential school policy, which forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them to schools where their language, cultures and spiritualities were suppressed.

“The attitudes and policies which deprived Indigenous people of their way of living on the land were closely related to those which assumed that it was good and appropriate to remove Indigenous children from their families and their own cultural system of education and place them in residential schools,” the Canadian bishops said.

“We are mindful that Catholics were complicit in these systems,” the bishops continued in the 2016 statement. “While many of the priests, brothers, sisters and laypeople who worked in the residential schools served with generosity, faithfulness and care, the deeply flawed policies behind the schools, and the abusive actions of some of the personnel among them, left a legacy of suffering.”

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on July 28 that the need to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery was one of the issues he discussed in separate private meetings the previous day with Pope Francis and with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

The 1493 papal bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI, often is identified as the origin of the Doctrine of Discovery, noted an article published in March in the Toronto-based Catholic Register. It divided the Americas between Spain and Portugal, giving explorers the right to claim lands not inhabited by Christians for their Christian kings and queens.

There may have been people living there, the article said, but if they weren’t Christians the land was considered terra nullius – empty land belonging to no one.

The Canadian bishops noted that even if Pope Alexander’s words could have been read as denying the rights of the Indigenous people in the “newly discovered” lands of the Americas, less than 50 years later Pope Paul III repudiated that position.

In a papal brief titled “Pastorale Officium”, Pope Paul threatened with excommunication anyone who enslaved the Indigenous people of the Americas or stole their land.

Meeting Indigenous Canadians at Fort Simpson in 1987, Pope St John Paul II said the Catholic Church upholds the “equal human dignity of all peoples”, and he insisted Pope Paul’s position against the right to enslave the Indigenous “has always been the Church’s position”.

As Pope Francis prepared to visit Canada, the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica – a journal reviewed before publication by the Vatican Secretariat of State – also touched on the issue.

“The position of the Catholic Church has long been radically critical of all forms of colonialism. In her magisterium, we find ancient and authoritative attestations affirming the dignity of Indigenous peoples, beginning with the famous ones of Paul III,” said the article by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the former papal spokesman.

“It cannot be denied, however, that there had previously been statements” that were “used to justify the appropriation of lands, in particular by ‘Catholic’ powers, in the light of the intertwining interests of evangelisation and colonisation,” he wrote.

Father Lombardi argued, however, that the mistreatment of the First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities of Canada, the expropriation of their traditional lands and the efforts to force their assimilation through the residential school system were not primarily the result of Catholic policies regarding evangelisation and colonisation.

Instead, he said, Canada’s policies regarding Indigenous people in the late 1800s flowed from the “culturally dominant” belief among the settlers that Indigenous cultures were inferior and destined for extinction, so assimilation was “the only realistic prospect of a future for them”.

New Zealand theologian Fr Mervyn Duffy, SM, said that Christianity arrived in New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814, when Anglican missionary Samuel Marsden came from Australia and preached a sermon to an assembled crowd of Maori and Europeans.

Catholic missionaries did not arrive until 25 years later, Fr Duffy said, and the churches arrived as missionaries to the Maori.

“In 1840, Britain secured sovereignty over New Zealand, not on the basis of discovery, but by the Treaty of Waitangi, which involved the consent of about 540 Maori rangatira (chiefs).”

An influx of colonists in the later 1800s transformed the country with effects that endure to this day, Fr Duffy noted.

“The negative impacts of colonisation and how to redress these is a frequent political topic. The issue is seen as between the Crown and Maori, with the churches having only a minor role, and the Anglican Church as the major player of the churches.”

Fr Duffy added that the “doctrine of discovery” is occasionally raised in New Zealand, but a local historian, Professor Paul Moon, in a 2022 article, “The Historicity of the Doctrine of Discovery in New Zealand’s Colonisation” (Te Kaharoa, Vol. 15, 2022) gave strong arguments for it not being a significant factor in Britain’s intervention in New Zealand.

Photo: Indigenous people hold a banner calling on Pope Francis to “rescind the doctrine,” an apparent reference to the so-called Doctrine of Discovery. The incident occurred during a papal Mass at the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, on July 28, 2022. (CNS photo/Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters)

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In a separate action, the Plenary Council apologised formally to victims, survivors and families of child abuse and committed to a further investigation into the systemic factors that facilitated it within the Church.

Members of the Plenary Council’s Second Assembly, which endorsed the Uluru Statement, also committed to acknowledging “in a prominent and appropriate manner the traditional custodians of the land” in each diocese and eparchy.

The bishops’ Commission for Liturgy and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council will consider Indigenous “symbols and rituals” for Catholic liturgies.

The assembly also apologised to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for “the part played by the Church in the harms they have suffered”, and committed to working toward “recognition, reconciliation and justice.”

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are among those who have been abused in Australia, including by Church officials and at Church-run schools. In 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse issued a 17-volume report documenting abuses, including in situations involving the Church.

“As a Plenary Council, we recommit the Catholic Church in Australia to responding transparently, with justice and compassion, to those who have been abused, whether they approach the Church directly or through the government’s National Redress Scheme or through civil litigation,” said the Plenary Council statement on abuse.

Local memorials for victims and survivors of child abuse will also be encouraged where appropriate, “as a tangible recognition of the harm done through abuse and the need for special care for children”.

Commenting on the assembly’s discussion on the Indigenous motions, Bishop Charles Gauci of Darwin, chair of the bishops’ Commission for Relations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, said he thought the Church was now heading in the right direction.

“It was very much about respect. It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about a journey that’s continuing to unfold,” he told The Catholic Weekly.

“What I brought up myself, specifically on behalf of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Catholic Council: Please don’t make one size fit all when it comes to Aboriginal situations. We’ve got many nationalities, many traditions.”

Between a quarter and a third of all Catholics in Bishop Gauci’s diocese are Indigenous. In his ministry, he spends a significant amount of time listening to Aboriginal people and learning about their cultures and sense of spirituality.

In response to concerns from some Catholics about incorporating Indigenous symbolism in liturgical services, Bishop Gauci said the Church has done this over the years in different cultures.

“Aboriginal people have no doubt that Christ is God, (or of) the supremacy of Christ, and that Christ brings everything to fulfilment.

“If we use some of their symbols for cleansing, what’s wrong with that?” he said.

Members of the Plenary Council also participated in a communal “ritual of lament” for victims of child abuse, which involved the sprinkling of ashes on the body as a sign of repentance. Bishop Shane Mackinlay of Sandhurst, vice president of the Plenary Council, spoke about the liturgical ritual at the evening media briefing on July 4.

“Mindful of how significant this was, and how important that we give it really serious weight, we decided to set it in a liturgical context, a prayerful context,” Bishop Mackinlay said.

“Our discussion and discernment and voting on the motions was set in a lament.

“There was an extended and quite beautiful ritual that we began with, and then we had discussion interspersed with other periods of prayer, before voting, and then a longer period again at the end.”

He described it as a “good model of how these things can be done”.

More than 270 delegates – bishops, religious and laypeople – are participating in the Second Assembly. Rules for a plenary council are outlined in canon law, which determines who must be included as well as who may be included. The Australians sought permission to increase the number of laypeople, a spokesman for the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference said before the First Assembly last October.

Later this year, Plenary Council acts adopted by the Australian bishops will be sent to the Vatican for approval. When those acts are approved by the Vatican, they will be implemented in Australia and be binding on Australian Catholics.

Photo: An Indigenous man in North Sydney, Australia, plays a didgeridoo during the opening Mass of the Plenary‘s Second Assembly on July 3, 2022. (CNS photo/Giovanni Portelli, The Catholic Weekly)

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“It was a long time ago . . . . “; “It wasn’t us [my group within the Church].”; “Other institutions have done similarly . . . .”, for example. At least the “it’s only a few bad apples. . . .” response can be laid to rest. But reflex responses are not adequate by a long shot. A far better response came from Pope Francis, in his 2018 letter to the People of God on the subject of abuse. It is worth revisiting some of what he wrote, at some length.   

“Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members, and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”. . . . 

“We have realised that these wounds never disappear, and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death. . . . The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. “. . .  

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realising the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. “. . .  

“While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history.” . . . 

“Together with those efforts [to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable], every one of the baptised should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does.”. . .  

“. . .  the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. . . .  Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. . .  

The Pope had more to say about the penitential dimension of fasting and prayer in this context, and on the blight of clericalism, which has been a factor in all of this. People should read and reread his letter.  

The scale of what happened in Aotearoa New Zealand is now clearer, but even one incident of abuse is one too many. Hopefully, the publication of these figures is another step on the road to justice.  

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“Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate,” he said.

In response on February 8 to a recent report on sexual abuse cases in the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Pope Benedict also confirmed that an error in the testimony written on his behalf had been an oversight, and “was not intentionally willed and I hope may be excused”.

“To me it proved deeply hurtful that this oversight was used to cast doubt on my truthfulness, and even to label me a liar,” he said in a letter released by the Vatican on February 8.

However, the retired Pope, who headed the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1982, emphasised his feelings of great shame and sorrow for the abuse of minors and made a request for forgiveness to all victims of sexual abuse.

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” Pope Benedict wrote.

“Each individual case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable,” he said. “The victims of sexual abuse have my deepest sympathy, and I feel great sorrow for each individual case.”

The letter comes after a German law firm released a report in late January on how abuse cases were handled in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The report, compiled at the request of the archdiocese, faulted retired Pope Benedict, with lawyers accusing him of misconduct in four cases during his tenure in Munich. Lawyer Martin Pusch of the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl said the retired Pope had denied wrongdoing in all cases.

The Munich investigation followed two years of research and covered the period from 1945 to 2019, centring on who knew what about sexual abuse and when, and what action they took, if any. The report – made up of four volumes with almost 1900 pages – identified at least 497 victims and 235 abusers.

Pope Benedict had submitted an 82-page written statement to the panel conducting the investigation, and, in it, the former Pope had said he did not take part in a meeting in 1980 on the case of the repeat offender Peter H., who came to Munich from Essen.

The retired Pope amended that statement after the report came out, saying he was present at the 1980 meeting, but the meeting focused only on finding housing for Peter H. while he underwent therapy; the priest’s abusive history was not discussed, he said.

That statement, issued on January 24 on Pope Benedict’s behalf by his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, said the error of incorrectly stating the retired pope had not been at the meeting “was not done out of bad faith, but was the result of an oversight in the editing of his statement”.

In his February 8 response, the retired Pope said there was a “small group of friends who selflessly compiled on my behalf my 82-page testimony for the Munich law firm, which I would have been unable to write by myself”.

“In addition to responding to the questions posed by the law firm, this also demanded reading and analysing almost 8000 pages of documents in digital format. These assistants then helped me to study and analyse the almost 2000 pages of expert opinions,” he wrote, adding that those results were published as an appendix to his letter.

He said that during this “massive” amount of work in establishing his position, “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”.

This error should not “detract from the care and diligence” with which his friends helped formulate his response, he said.

And while it was “deeply hurtful” for the oversight to have been used to cast doubt on him, Pope Benedict wrote, “I have been greatly moved by the varied expressions of trust, the heartfelt testimonies and the moving letters of encouragement sent to me by so many persons”.

He dedicated the rest of his two-page letter to the importance of “confession”, noting that each day at the beginning of Mass “we publicly implore the living God to forgive” the sins committed through “our fault, through our most grievous fault”.

“It is clear to me that the words ‘most grievous’ do not apply each day and to every person in the same way,” he wrote. “They tell me with consolation that, however great my fault may be today, the Lord forgives me, if I sincerely allow myself to be examined by him and am really prepared to change.”

He said that he has “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”.

“Once again I can only express to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness,” he said.

Together with the Pope’s letter, the Vatican published an “analysis” of the Munich report’s assessment that then-Cardinal Ratzinger allegedly mishandled abuse allegations on four occasions when he led the German archdiocese. The analysis was compiled by a small team of canon lawyers and other experts who had helped craft the original 82-page response during the initial phase of the investigation.

This team’s response focused primarily on the case of “priest X”, the serial abuser also known as Peter H. It said the Munich report’s assessment did “not correspond to the truth”, because the now-retired pontiff “was neither aware that priest X was an abuser, nor that he was included in pastoral activity”.

According to the Munich report, then-Cardinal Ratzinger “employed this priest in pastoral activity, even though he was aware of the abuses committed by him, and thus would have covered up his sexual abuses”.

However, records of the key 1980 meeting indicated that sexual abuse committed by the priest was not discussed, the team said, and the reason for accommodating priest X in Munich for therapy there “was not mentioned”.

Pope Benedict did not knowingly perjure himself, as the Munich report claimed, when he initially denied being present at the 1980 meeting, the team said.

It had been a “transcription error” and Pope Benedict “did not notice” it given the time constraints, it said. The minutes of the 1980 meeting were included in statements made by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, so it would make no sense “for him to intentionally deny his presence at the meeting.”

There is also no evidence behind the report’s “allegation of misconduct or conspiracy in any cover-up,” the team said. “As an archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse.”

Photo: Pope Benedict XVI is pictured during his final general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican in 2013 (CNS Photo)

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“He did attend the meeting on January 15, 1980,” said a statement issued on Pope Benedict’s behalf by his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein.

“The statement to the contrary was therefore objectively incorrect. He would like to emphasise that this was not done out of bad faith but was the result of an oversight in the editing of his statement,” the archbishop said on January 24.

The 94-year-old Pope Benedict, he said, is still going through an almost 1900-page report, which was released on January 20, and looked at the handling of cases in the archdiocese between 1945 and 2019. The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.

The report identified 497 victims and 235 abusers, but the lawyers who conducted the study say they’re convinced the real numbers are much higher. In the report, the lawyers said that, on four occasions, then-Cardinal Ratzinger mishandled abuse allegations.

Particularly regarding the case of repeat offender Peter H., a priest sent to Munich from Essen in 1980, lawyer Ulrich Wastl described Pope Benedict’s statements as “not very credible”.

The law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, conducted the investigation for the archdiocese; the retired Pope had sent an 82-page statement to the investigators while they were doing the investigation.

In the statement, the former Pope had said he did not take part in a decisive meeting on the case of Peter H. But, at the news conference where the legal report was presented, Wastl read out the minutes of that meeting. In it, then-Archbishop Ratzinger is mentioned in several places as a rapporteur on other topics.

Once the retired Pope has had the time to thoroughly read the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report, Archbishop Ganswein said, “he will explain” how the editing error occurred.

“He is very sorry for this mistake and asks pardon,” the archbishop said.

At the same time, Archbishop Ganswein said, the retired Pope’s assertion that “in this meeting no decision was made about a pastoral assignment of the priest in question” remains “objectively correct”.

The 1980 meeting, he said, dealt only with “the request to provide him (Peter H.) with accommodation during his therapeutic treatment in Munich”, a request that was granted. Later the priest was assigned to provide pastoral care in Bavaria and continued to sexually abuse minors.

Archbishop Ganswein assured the people of the archdiocese of Pope Benedict’s closeness, “especially in these days”, and his support of efforts “to clarify the situation”.

“He is thinking especially of the victims who have experienced sexual abuse and indifference,” he said.

Photo: St John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ride in the popemobile during a visit to Germany in 1980. The cardinal – now retired Pope Benedict XVI – headed the Archdiocese of Munich 1977-1981. (CNS photo)

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“If you are tempted to think that by confirming your mission and not accepting your resignation, this bishop of Rome – your brother who loves you – does not understand you, think of what Peter felt before the Lord when, in his own way, he presented him with his resignation: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinner.’ And listen to the answer: ‘Shepherd my sheep,'” the Pope wrote to Cardinal Marx.

The German cardinal, who is only 67, announced on June 4 that he had submitted his resignation to Pope Francis because he believed bishops must begin to accept responsibility for the institutional failures of the Church in handling the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

Pope Francis wrote a long reply to the cardinal on June 10, and the Vatican press office published the letter the same day.

“I agree with you in describing as a catastrophe the sad history of sexual abuse and the way the Church dealt with it until recently,” the Pope wrote. “To realise this hypocrisy in our way of living the faith is a grace; it is a first step that we must take.”

“We must take on this history, both personally and communally,” Pope Francis said. “We cannot remain indifferent before this crime.”

Pope Francis said not everyone in the Church agrees that the gravity of the crimes committed by members of the Church and the lack of appropriate responses by Church leaders should put all of them “in crisis”.

However, “it is the only way, because making ‘resolutions’ to change one’s life without ‘putting the meat on the grill’ leads to nothing”, the Pope said, using a common Argentinian expression.

While what happened in the past “must be interpreted with the hermeneutics of the time in which they occurred”, the Pope said, it “does not exempt us from taking charge and assuming them as the history of the ‘sin that besieges us'”.

Every bishop of the Church, he said, should “ask himself, ‘What should I do in the face of this catastrophe?'”

Popes and Catholic bishops have apologised formally for “so many historical errors of the past”, even when they were not personally involved, the Pope said. “And we are being asked to adopt this same attitude today.”

But ensuring real change requires the leaders to “enter into crisis and let themselves be reformed by the Lord”, Pope Francis wrote. “Otherwise, we will be nothing more than ‘reform ideologues’ who do not put their own flesh at stake.”

“You say well in your letter that burying the past leads nowhere,” the Pope told Cardinal Marx. “Silence, omissions, giving too much weight to the prestige of institutions only lead to personal and historical failure, and to living with the burden of ‘having skeletons in the closet’, as the saying goes.”

“It is urgent to ‘ventilate’ this reality” of abuse and failure to react promptly and appropriately, he said.

True reform, he said, will require every bishop to “let the Spirit lead us to the desert of desolation, to the cross and to the Resurrection. It is the path of the Spirit that we must follow, and the starting point is humble confession: We have made a mistake; we have sinned.”

As a Church, the Pope said, “we must ask for the grace of shame”.

Photo: Cardinal Reinhard Marx (CNS Photo).

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Cruz, James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo, all victims of then-Father Fernando Karadima, met with Pope Francis in 2018, several weeks after the Pope wrote a letter in which he said he had been mistaken in his initial assessment of the situation in Chile, and asking forgiveness of the survivors and others he offended.

In a tweet after the appointment was announced, Cruz thanked the Pope and said the assignment “renews my commitment to continue working to end the scourge of abuse and for so many survivors who still do not have justice”.

The Vatican announced the appointment on March 24, and said Pope Francis also had extended by one year the three-year terms of 15 commission members, but made no mention of the terms of the commission president, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, nor the group’s secretary, Msgr Robert Oliver.

Terrence Donilon, secretary for communications at Archdiocese of Boston, told Catholic News Service that Msgr. Oliver, a priest of the archdiocese, “will be completing his service with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and returning home to the archdiocese”.

Cardinal O’Malley, he said, “is working with the Council of Cardinals to create a new structure, which includes establishing it as a new office within the Holy See. In the meantime, the term limits of the commission members had expired and will be extended for a year”.

As for the cardinal’s role, Donilon said, “Cardinal Sean serves as president of the commission at the pleasure of the Holy Father”.

The members whose terms were renewed are: Benyam Dawit Mezmur, an Ethiopian who was chair of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2015-17; Indian Sister Arina Gonsalves, a certified counselor and consultant on abuse cases; Neville Owen, a judge and former chair of the Australian Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council; Sinalelea Fe’ao, chief education officer for the Diocese of Tonga and Niue; and Myriam Wijlens, a canon law professor from the Netherlands.

Also: Ernesto Caffo, an Italian professor of child and adolescent psychiatry and member of the board of directors of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children; Sister Jane Bertelsen, a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood, who has worked for 20 years in developing child-protection policies in Australia and England; Teresa Kettelkamp, former executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection; and Nelson Giovanelli Dos Santos, the Brazilian co-founder of the Fazenda da Esperanca and an expert in the rehabilitation of youth.

And, finally: Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, director of the Centre for Child Protection at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University; Gabriel Dy-Liacco, a psychotherapist from the Philippines; Auxiliary Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera of Bogota, Colombia; Hannah Suchocka, professor of law and former prime minister of Poland; Sister of Charity Kayula Lesa of Zambia, who has worked with refugees and in the prevention of human trafficking; and Precious Blood Sister Hermenegild Makoro, former secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference.

Pope Francis formally established the pontifical commission in March, 2014. The body of experts, with input from survivors, is meant to make proposals and spearhead initiatives to improve safeguarding norms and procedures. It remains an advisory body for the Pope, and it offers concrete assistance to every level of the Church worldwide.

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Speaking on behalf of Church leaders, Cardinal John Dew, Archbishop of Wellington and President of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, gave the apology in Auckland today during a hearing of the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care.

Addressing the victims and survivors of abuse, Cardinal Dew said: “I apologise to you, on behalf of the bishops and congregational leaders of the Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand. I also apologise to you on behalf of those who preceded us as bishops and congregational leaders. We offer no excuses for their actions, or for ours, that have caused you harm.”

Cardinal Dew said he, his fellow bishops and the leaders of the Church’s religious orders and congregations had heard and acknowledged victims and survivors who had spoken out over many years and at the royal commission.

“You have spoken of abuse perpetrated by bishops, priests, brothers, sisters, and lay people in the Catholic Church. People you should have been able to trust. We have heard you and acknowledge that we have caused you pain, hurt, and trauma, and that this continues to impact you. Any kind of abuse is unacceptable and indefensible. We are deeply sorry.”

Cardinal Dew acknowledged that systems and culture of the Church allowed abuse to occur. “These systems and culture failed you and must change. We apologise for the times that we or our predecessors protected the Church and not you.”

The bishops and congregational leaders understood and appreciated proposals from individuals and groups calling for an independent body to provide redress: “We will listen to and work with all parties who are considering and developing these proposals and continue to work with the Commission as it deliberates.

The Catholic Church and other faith-based bodies asked to be part of the royal commission, which is investigating the abuse of children, young people and vulnerable adults while in the care of state and faith institutions.

Photo: A screen-shot of Cardinal Dew delivering the apology at the hearing

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