On Jan. 24, retired Pope Benedict XVI admitted that he did attend a meeting in Munich in 1980 where an abusive priest was discussed, saying an earlier denial was the result of an editing mistake, according to NBC News.
The admission came days after a report into sexual abuse in Germany faulted Benedict for his lack of action against four abusive priests when he was archbishop of Munich in the 1970s and 1980s, The Chicago Tribune reported.
Law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl produced the report, which said Benedict strongly denied any wrongdoing. The firm looked into abuse between 1945 and 2019 to see if church officials handled allegations correctly, and examined church files and spoke with witnesses.
In a statement published and translated by the German Catholic paper Die Tagespost and the Catholic News Agency, Archbishop Georg Ganswein said that Benedict “would like to make it clear now that, contrary to what was stated during the hearing, he did attend the Ordinariate meeting on Jan. 15, 1980.”
The report, commissioned by the archdiocese, said there were at least 497 victims of abuse—mainly young males.