The Traunstein Regional Court has suspended proceedings in the complaint lodged against the late Pope Benedict XVI and other Church officials.
Benedict XVI’s legal representative, the law firm Hogan Lovells requested that the case be put on hold until a legal successor to Benedict has been determined, the court told Germany’s Catholic News Agency (KNA) on Tuesday, confirming media reports.
All parties involved nevertheless agreed to the planned start of the hearing on March 28, the court said, adding that this depended on whether the successor had been found by then.
Benedict’s death meant he was “no longer a party to the proceedings”, the court said. By law, his heirs would now automatically enter the process. However, the Traunstein District Court does not consider itself responsible for handling the case because “the so-called habitual residence of the deceased Pope emeritus was in the Vatican State”.
The investigative media outlet Correctiv and the Bavarian regional broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk reported that the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising had not waived “the plea of limitation” in the proceedings. In this way, the archdiocese was trying to avert the lawsuit, they reported.
The case was brought by an alleged abuse victim from Garching an der Alz in Bavaria who wants a court to determine whether Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, is or at least would have been obliged to pay damages as a result of his actions or omissions in an abuse case while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.
The lawsuit is not only directed against the former pontiff but also against the Munich Cardinal Friedrich Wetter (who was archbishop from 1982-2008) as well as the alleged perpetrator and the archdiocese of Munich and Freising as such.
The plaintiff claims to have been abused by the former priest Peter H. from Garching in a case that accounts for a large section of the abuse report conducted by Munich law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) and presented in January 2022. In it, the lawyers expressed doubts about Benedict XVI’s claim that he had known nothing of the priest’s previous history in 1980. The late Pope emeritus, however, always stuck to his account.
Originally reported by KNA Germany.
