"God's Rottweiler" Benedict Was Rocked by the Scandal of Sex Abuse Priests

By Ross Lydall
London Evening Standard
February 11, 2013

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/gods-rottweiler-benedict-was-rocked-by-the-scandal-of-sex-abuse-priests-8490375.html

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was 78 and looking forward to retirement when John Paul II died in 2005 and he found himself next in line to become Pope, despite praying that he be spared the post.

He had been John Paul’s Vatican “fixer” for 24 years, earning himself the nickname “God’s rottweiler” for heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — once called the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

He was the oldest Pope to take office since Clement XII in 1730 and was renowned as a hardline conservative with views that were to land him in repeated controversy throughout his eight years. Born in Bavaria in 1927, he was the eighth German to become Pope.

But his appointment was overshadowed by the revelation he was a member of the Hitler Youth, though he said this was required of all young Germans at the time. During the Second World War he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in Munich.

He deserted the army towards the end of the war and was briefly held as a prisoner-of-war in 1945. Ordained as a priest in 1951, he taught as a university lecturer in Germany then became Cardinal of Munich in 1977.

In 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took responsibility for all sex abuse cases involving the church, leading to accusations on his becoming Pope that he had failed to comprehend the scale and seriousness of the charges.

The flood of allegations and lawsuits peaked in 2009 and 2010, with the Vatican accused of prevaricating over punishing paedophile priests or moving them to new posts where abuse continued.

Benedict made a written public apology to Irish abuse victims, admitting in 2010 that there had been “serious mistakes” by the Vatican and that he was “truly sorry”.

But throughout his reign Benedict provoked controversy with ill-judged remarks as he travelled across the world, seemingly out of touch to changing morals and attitudes.

Even his visit to Britain in 2010 was dogged by the “Protest the Pope” group, which demanded he hand the Vatican’s sex files to the police and modernise his stance on women’s rights and contraception. In personal terms, Benedict, who plays the piano and whose love of cats saw him care for the strays of Rome, has a reputation as a charming and shy man but a cerebral disciplinarian who was unafraid to crack down on liberals and dissidents within the church.

His pronouncements before becoming Pope included labelling homosexuality a “more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil”. But he adopted a softer stance on becoming pontiff, leading him to be dubbed “Benedict the Benign”.

The Pope’s 2009 visit to Africa was overshadowed by a row sparked by comments he made while flying to the continent in which he rejected condoms in the fight against Aids.

In 2009 he lifted the excommunication on renegade English cleric Richard Williamson who had made controversial comments about the Holocaust.

Perhaps his biggest setback as Pope was during his visit to Germany in 2006 when he sparked anger across the Muslim world by repeating the description of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as “evil and inhuman”.