Munich, Germany, Mar 13, 2010 / 11:32 am
The vicar general of the Archdiocese of Munich has owned up to his responsibility in making the "mistaken decisions" that led to the repeated placement of an abusive priest in parishes while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop there. The former vicar general, Gerhard Gruber, said it was a "serious mistake."
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published the full text of the communique from the Archdiocese of Munich and Friesing regarding the timeline of the decisions and an apology from the former vicar general.
In it, the archdiocese explains that a group supervised by the current vicar general Monsignor Peter Beer was examining past cases of abuse when they discovered a case from the 80s in which "grave errors" were found in the treatment of information concerning a priest.
The statement proposes that "despite the accusations of sexual abuses and regardless of a sentence," a priest named simply "H.," "was repeatedly employed in the pastoral care of the vicar general of that time, Gerhard Gruber."