ABUSE TRACKER

Agents so far authorized 74 cases in more than 30 Kansas counties

Susan Leighnor expressed frustration on Wednesday state law enforcement agencies had yet to release findings of an investigation launched nearly four years ago by the attorney general into alleged sexual misconduct by members of the Catholic clergy in Kansas.

Leighnor, who said she was abused as a child by two Catholic priests, said she had spoken to Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents regarding her memories of what transpired at the rectory and school at Church of the Holy Cross in Hutchinson. She also has testified before the Kansas and Colorado legislatures on her experiences.

In an interview, she said a Catholic priest warned her as a child disclosing the abuse would condemn her to hell because the situation was like a person talking to a priest at confession. Confession in the Catholic church is a sacrament in which…

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Twenty years after she revealed her abuse to a friend at summer camp, Meagan Bishop is speaking out once again. This time, it’s to oppose her abuser’s plans to found a Christian halfway house in a small South Carolina town.

“David Truluck was my stepfather, and he was also my abuser,” Bishop told The Roys Report (TRR) this week.

Truluck runs Shield Ministries, which recently announced plans to open a new facility to house up to 55 men, including up to 10 sex offenders. Truluck’s wife, Melodie Truluck, co-founded the organization and is its operations manager.

As TRR previously reported, David Truluck is also a registered sex offender, who in 2003 was convicted of committing or attempting a lewd act on a child under age 16. Bishop told TRR she was the victim involved in that case.

Bishop first revealed her link to David Truluck on Wednesday at a community meeting…

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The growing demand from abroad has made child porn a $7.3 million industry in the world’s largest Muslim nation

The Indonesian government has decided to step up efforts to combat child pornography, which is proving a growing menace in the world’s largest Muslim nation with more takers from abroad.

Under the new measures, stricter punishments will be awarded to the perpetrators, Nahar, deputy for special protection of children at the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection in Indonesia, said on Jan. 4.

Nahar, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said the ministry will rope in police and the ministry of communication to keep a tab on criminal acts like distributing pornographic content involving children by tracking and blocking websites that sell child porn videos.

We are planning three strategies that include prevention, better handling and institutional strengthening, he said.

The prevention strategy includes disseminating data, conducting awareness…

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There was disappointment when the religious teacher was sentenced to life in prison by a district court in February 2022

The Indonesian Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a religious teacher convicted of raping more than a dozen students at an Islamic boarding school in Bandung, the capital of West Java province.

A three-member panel of judges presided by Sri Murwahyuni rejected the appeal of Herry Wirawan who was sentenced to death in April last year by the High Court in Bandung, according to the court’s ruling posted on its website on Jan. 4.

He was awarded life imprisonment by the Bandung District Court in February 2022 for raping 13 students aged 13-16 including eight of whom became pregnant, between 2016 and 2021.

The verdict was changed to the death sentence following an appeal from the prosecution team representing the alleged victims. The accused later appealed against the sentence.

…

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Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. will oversee case to release grand jury investigation into abuse 

The debate over the release of a massive investigation into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will be decided by a new judge, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. will oversee proceedings regarding the release of an investigation from the Maryland Office of the Attorney General detailing the “sexual abuse” and “physical torture” of more than 600 children and teens at the hands of 158 Catholic priests.

The 456-page report is the product of a four-year investigation by the attorney general’s office with the assistance of a Baltimore grand jury. Under state law, grand jury materials are confidential without a court order.

Taylor, 56, has served on the bench since 2018. Previously, he served as an assistant attorney general and was senior counsel for forensic litigation,…

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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, known most recently as the pontiff who renounced the papacy, but who was situated squarely at the centers of power during five decades of epochal change and unprecedented scandal in the global Catholic Church, died on Dec. 31 in the apartment he kept inside a Vatican monastery.

A man whose very name conjured images of a return to the theological repression of the 16th century for many, he first appeared on the church’s international stage as Joseph Ratzinger, a young German priest-theologian advocating for progressive reforms at the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.

He was a bishop and cardinal who exalted the position of Catholic clergy, considering them privileged and apart from lay faithful. But he would eventually, following decades of delay, act against sexually abusive priests, after spending hours each week reading through the briefs of the global scandal when he was head of the Vatican’s…

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German theologian made history with his papal resignation

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was a scholar and longtime senior official in the Catholic Church who sought to reinvigorate Christian faith and strengthen church orthodoxy before becoming the first pontiff to resign in nearly 600 years.

A formidable theologian and arbiter of church doctrine for years under papal predecessor St. John Paul II, Benedict anchored his nearly eight-year pontificate in promoting a transcendent faith in Jesus Christ grounded in definitive truths and compatible with human reason.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires,” he cautioned in a 2005 homily shortly before he was elected. The passage would come to be used to define much of Benedict’s reign.

A formidable theologian and arbiter of church doctrine,…

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This week, Pope Francis and the Vatican will orchestrate a global celebration, honoring the life and legacy of the late Pope Benedict. Heads of state, religious leaders, and prominent Catholics will travel to Vatican City acknowledging the historical, political, and social power of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile millions of clergy abuse victims around the world will be forced to witness the rewriting of history concerning the legacy and actions of a man who may have been directly responsible for allowing their abuse.

Throughout most of his professional life, Pope Benedict was one the chief architects of the systematic cover-up of the rape and sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. As Archbishop of Munich, he concealed and transferred known abusive clergy and lied about it. As head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith under John Paul II, he acted as the Pope’s chief global fixer, shielding…

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Pontiff excoriated Ireland’s Catholic bishops for their handling of clerical child sexual abuse allegations but refused to blame Vatican

It was April 19th, 2005, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell was both euphoric and exhausted. The conclave, which concluded some time earlier, had elected Benedict XVI as Pope and, at the Irish College in Rome, Cardinal Connell told media it was “the most memorable experience of my life”.

He and the man formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger had served on many Vatican congregations together, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both shared a similar theological and philosophical outlook and both had a passion for Mozart.

Cardinal Connell was barely able to hide his delight but, scrupulously, he did not betray his oath to keep proceedings at that conclave secret even if, in his exhaustion, he was unable to hide his euphoria.

“I’ve worked with him…

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A disturbing pattern of denial and concealment emerges across sexual abuse scandals that rock secular and religious organizations. Bringing the abuse to light is a critical first step.

Locked inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses world headquarters are secret files detailing sexual abuse by members of the religious denomination. Some of those files are slowly coming to light thanks to a grand jury investigation by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office that was spurred by The Inquirer.

With Shapiro scheduled to be sworn in as Pennsylvania’s 48th governor on Jan. 17, hopefully the investigation will continue at full steam. Shapiro has been fearless in taking on influential religious institutions, starting with a 2018 grand jury report of the Roman Catholic Church that detailed decades of sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania.

Catholic Church doesn’t hold a monopoly on these horrific crimes.

Similar sexual abuse scandals have recently rocked other…

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“He essentially continued the cover-up,” says victims advocate David Clohessy of SNAP.

The priest sex-abuse scandal was the albatross around the neck of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s brief eight-year reign as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, according to Vatican analysts.  

Long-suppressed allegations that priests had been preying on children — and that the bishops covered up the crimes — were already roiling the church when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in April 2005 and took Benedict as his papal name.

Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict also apologized to the victims and then took some steps to punish the predators. 

“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,” he said in February.

But critics say that the…

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All across the world, political and religious leaders, as well as activists and former colleagues and friends, are remembering the life and legacy of the late Pope Benedict XVI, hailed as one of the greatest minds and most influential figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Though many continue to take issue with some of Benedict’s policies on issues of morality and doctrine, and critics still question his record on fighting clerical sexual abuse, by and large the world has remembered the late pontiff as someone deeply in love with God, whose writings will continue to be developed for years to come.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the world’s first German pope as a “special church leader for many, not just this country,” saying the world “has lost a formative figure of the Catholic Church, an argumentative personality, and a clever theologian.”

Speaking to Crux, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop…

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The zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy.

For a member of the Catholic clergy, the election to the papacy represents the zenith of his influence — his pontificate, the period of most influential and consequential activity. This was not the case for Pope Benedict XVI, who died Saturday at age 95. It wasn’t because he was the first pope in modern Catholicism to renounce the papal office. It’s because the zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy. His pontificate was, paradoxically, not the peak but almost an interlude.

Joseph Ratzinger became a brand in the 1970s when his interpretation of Vatican II — which updated the Church’s traditions, including ending the requirement that Mass be said in Latin and opening up…

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For Immediate Release, 12/31/2022

Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered for his failure to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests. When he resigned as Pope, he left hundreds of culpable bishops in power and a culture of secrecy intact.

The tragedy is that in refusing to enact needed reforms, he ended up hurting the faith he cherished. Had he punished cover-up and abuse as sternly as he did doctrinal violations, the Church’s abuse crisis might have ended under his watch.

Benedict’s public statements on the crisis sparked hope. When he traveled to the US in April 2008, he promised that the Church would do “whatever possible to help, to assist, to heal” victims. In February 2010, meeting with Irish bishops, he called child sexual abuse “heinous.” A month later,…

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A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a $121 million reorganization plan for one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. as it tries to stem financial losses from clergy abuse claims that date back decades.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma confirmed the agreement during a hearing in which he commended the parties for working through what had been an arduous process.

In a statement, Archbishop John C. Wester thanked the panel of abuse survivors who represented fellow survivors in their claims against the archdiocese. He described it as challenging work as the group continued to deal with the aftermath of their own abuse.

“While I hope and pray that the bankruptcy outcome will bring a measure of justice and relief to the victims of clergy sexual abuse, I realize that nothing can ever compensate them for the criminal…

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His efforts to rid the church of what he called “filth” went further than those of John Paul II, but he was reluctant to hold bishops accountable.

The clerical sex abuse scandal broke under Pope John Paul II in the years that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who would later become Pope Benedict XVI — headed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which handled the cases of priests accused of abusing children.

Presented with case files, Cardinal Ratzinger sometimes set disciplinary measures in motion, even having accused priests defrocked. But other times, the record shows, he took the side of the accused priests and failed to listen to the victims or their warnings that an abuser could violate more young people.

When Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, the scandal exploded publicly throughout the global church. It continues to reverberate, causing some to lose faith and presenting challenges for the church’s current leadership.

During his time as…

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The Archdiocese of New York recently was ordered to turn over more than 120 pages of confidential files related to an internal investigation of sexual abuse claims against Howard J. Hubbard, who was bishop of the Albany diocese from 1977 to 2014.

The ruling by state Supreme Court Justice L. Michael Mackey capped a roughly two-year period in which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Hubbard and the New York archdiocese have lost a series of court decisions in which they sought to limit the materials that would be turned over to attorneys for hundreds of alleged victims of child sexual abuse. 

The records included the psychological treatment records of suspected pedophile priests, a lengthy deposition of Hubbard that took place over four days in April 2021 and, now, the archdiocese’s internal records on Hubbard’s “Vos estis lux mundi” investigation — initiated under a 2019 directive from Pope Francis that established…

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A victim of clerical sex abuse during the time the late pope Benedict was archbishop of Munich launched the lawsuit in June.

A 38-year-old German man who says he was abused by a known predatory priest has been allowed to continue his civil lawsuit against the late Pope Benedict XVI’s eventual heirs. In November, Benedict said he would defend himself in the case in front of a German court. Benedict died Dec. 31 at the age of 95 and had secured a law firm which will continue to represent his estate.

Andrea Titz, spokesperson for the Traunstein Court in Bavaria, confirmed that the suit, which accuses the former pope, of willfully ignoring complaints about Father Peter Hullermann, who allegedly abused the victim when he was just 11 years old.

The victim, who uses the pseudonym Julian Schwarz, said that the priest showed him pornography and forced him to have sexual intercourse and…

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Almost ten years after making history for resigning from the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger—Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI—has died at the age of ninety-five, in the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where he had been living since May 2013.

Born in Bavaria, Germany, on April 16, 1927, Ratzinger had a remarkable impact on the life and intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church, not only as pope, but also as one of the most influential theologians at Vatican II. After publishing major works commenting positively on the documents of Vatican II during the council and in the late 1960s, his insights affected the reception of the council from the 1970s onward, as his anti-progressive views—often expressed with a contrarian spirit—became inseparable from his persona, even after his election to the papacy in 2005.

As a powerful doctrinal policy-maker in the era following Vatican II, Ratzinger was in many ways the alter-ego of Pope John…

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A quiet hush covered the vast expanse of St. Peter’s Square even though it was filled with thousands of people slowly winding their way around the colonnade into St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their last respects to the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Outdoor souvenir sellers were well-stocked with rosaries Jan. 2, but they seemed to have been caught off guard with a plethora of touristy tchotchkes and few to no images or mementos of the late pope.

A damp chill hung in the air at 9 in the morning when the doors of the basilica opened to the public on the first of three days to view the pope’s body.

Special accommodations, however, were made for officials of the Roman Curia, Vatican staff and dignitaries who were allowed access from the back of the basilica and offered a place to sit or kneel on either side of the pope’s…

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“Today a loving God called Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI home to his eternal reward for a lifetime of dedicated service to the Church. That service included 71 years as a priest, 28 years as a Cardinal, and nearly eight years leading the Catholic Church as the Bishop of Rome and Successor to St. Peter. His life and his pontificate were based in a deep and abiding faith and an extraordinary record of theological scholarship. In the years leading to the Second Vatican Council and at the Council itself, Father Joseph Ratzinger made substantial contributions to the renewal of Catholic theology, and he played a significant role in the drafting of key conciliar documents. Pope John Paul II called Cardinal Ratzinger to Rome to serve as the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that role, he proved to be an invaluable contributor throughout the pontificate of his predecessor. Pope Benedict XVI’s…

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Lawmakers around the United States have tried to grant justice to victims of decades-old incidents of child sexual abuse by giving them extra time to file lawsuits. Now some of the defendants in these cases, including church and youth organizations, are finding a safe haven: America’s bankruptcy courts.

In New York, nearly 11,000 cases flooded state courts, many seeking to hold Catholic dioceses responsible for sexual abuse by clergy, after a 2019 law suspended statutes of limitations that would have otherwise barred many of the lawsuits. In response, four New York dioceses that collectively faced more than 500 sexual-abuse claims filed for bankruptcy. That halted the cases — and blocked those from anyone who might sue later — and forced the plaintiffs to negotiate a one-time settlement for all abuse claims in bankruptcy court.Advertisement · Scroll to continue

The pattern has taken hold across the United States, a Reuters review…

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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose death at 95 was announced Saturday, was a powerful intellectual force who shaped the Catholic Church’s theology for more than a quarter century before shocking the world by resigning in 2013.

While not quite unprecedented, Benedict’s resignation was highly unusual. Popes typically hold office until death, and the last pope to step down was Gregory XII, who quit in 1415 to end a civil war within the church.  

Bookended by globally popular and charismatic popes – St. John Paul II and Pope Francis – Benedict cut a different figure. Friends and biographers described him as quiet and scholarly, more at home among theological tomes than adoring crowds.

In typical fashion, Benedict announced his unexpected resignation in Latin. He was 85 at the time and cited his advanced age as ill-suited for the demands…

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As the world marks the death of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, his record on the clerical abuse scandals that have rocked Catholicism for the past three decades inevitably forms part of any evaluation of his legacy.

For many abuse survivors and their advocates, it’s axiomatic that Benedict was the public face of denial and cover-up. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, for instance, declared in a Dec. 31 statement that “any celebration that marks the life of abuse enablers like Benedict must end.”

“Honoring Pope Benedict XVI now is not only wrong. It is shameful,” the group said. “Pope Benedict XVI is taking decades of the church’s darkest secrets to his grave with him.”

Arguably the one person on the planet best positioned to assess the late pontiff’s performance, however, has a very different take.

According to Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, it was Benedict XVI who first began to…

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Pontiff was very emotional during 2010 meeting – Lawrence Grech

A victim of clerical abuse said his surprise meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Malta in 2010 together with his apology had restored victims’ faith in the church.

“At the time, many of us had lost our faith completely but that changed during our personal meetings with Pope Benedict,” Grech told Times of Malta on Sunday.

“Those few moments that we spent with him in private restored our faith. It was a very powerful and emotional meeting.”

Pope Benedict, who spent almost eight years leading the Catholic Church before he resigned in 2013, died on Saturday at the age of 95.

As crowds visited St Peter’s Basilica to express their sorrow at the news of his death, for many Maltese the highlight of his papacy was his 27-hour visit to the island on April 17 and 18, 2010.

But, for Grech, the…

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[Via NDTV]

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

Benedict XVI was the first pope to confront the scourge of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic church, but only after a career in which he himself was accused of covering it up.

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

His actions were a marked change from his predecessor John Paul II, who took decades to respond to what became an avalanche of allegations about paedophile priests around the world, from Australia to Chile, France and the United States.

But his successor Pope Francis has gone much further, raising…

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[Via MSN]

Gianna Recio “came into this world fighting,” as her mother says in recounting the first moments in the life of her oldest child — born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

Growing up on San Antonio’s South Side, Gianna wore boy’s clothes. But she always insisted she was a girl, decades before she heard the word “transgender.”

At St. Leo the Great Catholic School, she was teased for her femininity. When a priest told her she was special and loved by God, the words stuck with her. He said he wanted to counsel her to bolster her self-esteem. Their private sessions turned into sexual abuse. It lasted two years.

The priest made Gianna believe that she and her family would burn in hell if she told anyone what was happening, she said. She would hide beneath the church pews, praying that he wouldn’t find her.

For…

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Four years after an Oakland priest seemingly vanished after being accused of sexually abusing two minors, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has new answers on what happened to Fr. Alexander Castillo, in addition to a never-before published letter where the priest professes his innocence and blames another clergy member for his suspension

Oakland priest Father Alexander Castillo seemingly vanished in the months after he was accused of sexually abusing a minor. Yet four years later, the Diocese of Oakland still won’t answer many basic questions about the incident, details about what happened, where Castillo is today, and whether the priest might be a danger to children elsewhere.

While the Diocese remains silent, a letter written by Castillo in the wake of his suspension, and exclusively obtained by NBC Bay Area recently, sheds new light on the priest’s frame of mind just before he left the country. Castillo maintains his innocence…

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For more than a decade, Ernie Cox went online to search the faces of priests who had been accused of child sexual abuse, looking for one man.

He’d only seen the priest one day in the late 1960s when, the former altar boy alleges, the priest sexually abused him before and after mass at a Contra Costa County church. The boy was 12. The priest was visiting Immaculate Heart of Mary from another parish, and Cox, now 67, didn’t remember his name.

A few weeks ago, a friend who knew of Cox’s experience forwarded him a recent story in The Chronicle about allegations against a priest at the same parish in the small city of Brentwood. When Cox later found the late Father John G. Garcia’s face in an old black-and-white photo on the website of a local newspaper, he said, he was stricken by recognition. No other priest’s picture had…

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The first pope to resign was Celestine V, born Pietro Da Morrone, who was living the life of a pious hermit when he was elevated to the papacy in 1294, in his 80s, to break a two-year deadlock in the College of Cardinals. Feeling overmastered by the job, he soon resigned in the expectation that he could return to his monastic existence. Instead, he was imprisoned by his successor, Boniface VIII, who feared that some rival faction might make Celestine an antipope.

The former pontiff died after about a year in captivity; his successor, one of the most ambitious of medieval popes, eventually fell into a disastrous struggle with the king of France that ended with Boniface temporarily imprisoned in the weeks before his death.

The strange afterlife of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, which ended with his death on Saturday at 95, was not quite so wild or dramatic. But…

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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is rightly credited with having been one of the 20th century’s most prolific Catholic theologians, a teacher-pope who preached the faith via volumes of books, sermons and speeches. But he rarely got credit for another important aspect of his legacy: having done more than anyone before him to turn the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse.

As cardinal and pope, Benedict pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests, and he sacked hundreds of them. He was the first pontiff to meet with abuse survivors. And he reversed his revered predecessor on the most egregious case of the 20th century Catholic Church, finally taking action against a serial pedophile who was adored by St. John Paul II’s inner circle.

But much more needed to be done, and following his death Saturday, abuse survivors and their advocates made clear they…

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The 265th pope of the Catholic Church was a hard-line conservative who tried to root out corruption and abuse—but retreated from the battle when it mattered most.

With 1.3 billion followers, the Roman Catholic Church is the world’s largest organization. Islam has 1.97 billion adherents but no comparable infrastructure. Google has greater reach—in cyberspace.

The Church of Rome has a vast network of parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals, and missions. The governing of this global operation in the 107-acre Vatican City has become a narrative of lengthening scandals in recent decades. Pope Benedict XVI, a pivotal figure in this story, wanted national churches in lockstep obedience to Rome on moral teaching.

In 2013, after eight years in the Apostolic Palace, the German-born Joseph Ratzinger became the first Supreme Pontiff in 600 years to retire. The most powerful and controversial theologian of his era became emeritus pope for nine years, until his death at…

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I first met Joseph Ratzinger in June 1994 when he was the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. No, I was not being interrogated by the Grand Inquisitor. This was long before I got in trouble with the Vatican as editor-in-chief of America magazine. I was in Rome to interview him and other church officials for my book, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. 

I almost missed the interview. Cardinal Ratzinger was sick the day of our appointment. When I arrived, I was asked whether I wanted to meet with the congregation’s secretary. I agreed, figuring it was better than nothing. When I was ushered into his presence, I hadn’t gotten a word out before the secretary, Archbishop Alberto Bovone, assaulted me with questions: “Who are you?” “What are you doing here?” “I will…

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Speaking with the Register, the German cardinal theologian reflects on the profound legacy of the late Pope Emeritus.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller has paid tribute to the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, describing him as a “great thinker” and a “true Doctor of the Church for today.”

The prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also described the late Joseph Ratzinger, who died at Dec. 31 at 9:34 am in Rome, as a man of great sensitivity, humor, and humility who possessed “deep wisdom as a partaker in God’s love.”

In this interview with the Register, the German cardinal theologian — who founded the Benedict XVI Institute to make available Joseph Ratzinger’s collected works — discusses Benedict XVI’s legacy to the Church, responds to some of his critics, and reflects on how his passing might affect the highly criticized German Synodal Path.

Your Eminence, what is the greatest…

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Following the announcement of the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Saturday at the age of 95, we look back at his long life and its main highlights with the following official biography.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, was born at Marktl am Inn, Diocese of Passau (Germany) on 16 April 1927 (Holy Saturday) and was baptised on the same day.

His father, a Police Commissioner, belonged to an old family of farmers from Lower Bavaria of modest economic resources. His mother was the daughter of artisans from Rimsting on the shore of Lake Chiem. Before marrying, she worked as a cook in a number of hotels.

Joseph spent his childhood and adolescence in Traunstein, a small village near the Austrian border, thirty kilometres from Salzburg. In this environment, which he himself has defined as “Mozartian”, he received his Christian, cultural and human formation.

His youthful years were…

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Pope Francis led tributes to his predecessor on Saturday, after Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died in a monastery in the Vatican at the age of 95.

“We are moved as we recall him as such a noble person, so kind and we feel such gratitude in our hearts, gratitude to god for giving him to the church, and to the world,” Francis said in Saint Peter’s Basilica while leading traditional vespers ceremony ahead of New Year’s Day.

“Gratitude to him for all the good he accomplished and above all for his witness of faith and prayer, especially in these last years of his life. Only God knows the value of his sacrifices for the good of the church,” Francis added.

Benedict, who was the first pontiff in almost 600 years to resign his position, rather than hold office for life, passed away on Saturday, according to…

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