In a concerted action, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

and his legal advisor in Germany on Tuesday rejected the allegation that the then Archbishop Josef Ratzinger had covered up cases of abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising and lied to independent experts.

In a letter dated February 6, published by the Vatican press office on Tuesday afternoon, Benedict expresses his "deep shame" and "great pain" at the abuse cases and expresses his "sincere apologies to all victims of sexual abuse." .

However, he rejects the accusation that in the 82-page statement that he and his legal advisors submitted to the experts at the Munich law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW),

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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Rather, the statement erroneously stated that he had not attended the Ordinariate meeting of 15 January 1980.

"During the huge work of those days - the preparation of the statement - a mistake happened," says Benedict's letter.

This mistake was "not intentional" and "I hope, also excusable," writes Benedikt and continues: "The fact that the mistake was used to doubt my truthfulness, yes, to present myself as a liar, hit me deeply. "

The experts from the law firm WSW assume that Ratzinger, during his time as Archbishop of Munich, reinstated priests who had abused children in pastoral care.

In the report, the archbishop at the time was accused of misconduct in four cases.

In the separately published communication from Benedict's four legal advisers, who together with the emeritus pope had prepared his opinion for the WSW chancellery, it is said about the meeting in question: The participation of the then Archbishop Ratzinger in the meeting does not prove that he knew of earlier acts of abuse of the priest from Essen.

The meeting was about the transfer of the priest from North Rhine-Westphalia to Bavaria.

The priest in question is said to have later sexually assaulted several children in two Upper Bavarian communities.

Rather, the files show "that the subject of the session in question was not that the priest committed sexual abuse," write the legal advisers Carsten Brennecke, Stefan Korta, Stefan Mückl and Helmuth Pree.

In their letter, which was designed as a "fact check", the four lawyers and canonists basically affirm that the report presented by the WSW law firm on January 20th contains "no evidence of an allegation of misconduct or assistance in a cover-up".

As Archbishop of Munich-Freising, "Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in covering up acts of abuse," the legal advisors summarize their "fact check" of the WSW report, which was commissioned and paid for by the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising.

The allegations raised in the report had been rejected on behalf of Benedict's private secretary Georg Gänswein for the first time on January 24th.