Erzbistum München und Freising: Vergleich im Traunsteiner Missbrauchsprozess

In a dispute over compensation for a former minister regarding sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising has reached an agreement with the victim. A final agreement was legally established in August. The Archdiocese offered the maximum amount of compensation deemed reasonable by the court from the beginning, and the plaintiff consented to this offer.

The exact amount of the compensation is not to be disclosed "at the explicit request of the injured party." Discussions for a friendly settlement have been ongoing since the receipt of a psychiatric report in 2025. This case is one of many victims of the scandal priest H., who had been suffering from this abuse for over three years.

The lawsuit for monetary claims against the perpetrator and the diocese began in the Landgericht. The plaintiff had alleged sexual abuse by the repeat offender Priest H. in Garching an der Alz during the mid-1990s. He is now one of several victims of the scandal priest, whose case is the most well-known from the testimony presented a few years ago regarding sexual violence in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The minimum compensation demanded by the former minister at the beginning of the trial was 300,000 euros, along with damages. Pope Benedict XVI, as the defendant, was brought up in the proceedings primarily for international media attention. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was the Archbishop of Munich and Freising when the priest in question was assigned to his diocese.

He later signed a brief as Prefect of the powerful religious congregation in Rome, allowing Priest H. to celebrate Holy Communion with grape juice instead of wine. The Munich Archdiocese requested this exemption because H. was physically aggressive towards children. Critics argue that the Pope knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop the priest from continuing to serve in the ministry, where he continued to abuse children.

The trial against Ratzinger was, however, severed after his death in New Year's 2022, as his legal successor was unclear. A lawsuit against Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, Ratzinger's successor as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, was already withdrawn in 2023.