The Munich abuse report was released in January 2022 and faulted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his successors, Cardinals Friedrich Wetter and Reinhard Marx.
The study criticized the late German pope’s handling of four cases during his time in charge of the southern German archdiocese.
Benedict XVI, who strongly denied cover-up allegations, sent 82 pages of observations to investigators compiling the report.
On Tuesday, the public prosecutor’s office in the Bavarian capital of Munich said: “Insofar as suspicions arose from these events with regard to possible criminally relevant conduct by Church officials, separate preliminary investigation processes were initially entered.”
The office examined “in particular whether an ecclesiastical responsible person could have aided and abetted, through a personnel decision, an act of abuse committed later by a priest that was subject to the statute of limitations.”
In addition to Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Wetter, who served as Ratzinger’s successor until 2007 and has issued an apology, former vicar general Gerhard Gruber also had been named an accused.
