The stories were factually incorrect:
1) The priest was not under the authority of Cardinal Ratzinger. At the time Ratzinger was the bishop of Munich and this priest was from the diocese of Essen.
2) The priest was not assigned to a parish. He was allowed to reside in a rectory there while receiving treatment. He was not engaged in active ministry and did not have contact with children.
2a) At some point the decision was made to to let the priest help out. This decision was not made by Cardinal Ratzinger but by the Vicar General, Msgr. Gerhard Gruber. Ratzinger knew nothing about it.
3) There is absolutely no evidence that Ratzinger was aware that this was a pedophile case. He was only informed that the priest had committed a sexual indiscretion.
4) Since the priest was not under his authority, Ratzinger played absolutely no role in whether or not this priest would be returned to active ministry at any time. That was for the bishop of the Essen diocese to decide. (This occurred in 1980, before it was known that there was no cure for pedophilia. The church did the same thing the US legal system did at the time.)
5) The priest later - after Ratzinger was assigned to the Vatican - was reassigned by the bishop of Essen and was involved in another attack. This time he was punished according to German law.
Ruth Gledhill, who wrote the article on this for Britain's Sunday Times added:
The latest scandal coming out of Germany is not enough to threaten the Pope or the Church. But on top of a succession of damaging revelations it can only increase the damage being done to its moral authority on the world stage. The killer fact that could bring down the Pope or Church probably does not even exist.
The Pope is pretty unassailable. He is not elected, he is a monarch, and the centralisation that has taken place under the last two Popes has cemented that power. Pope Benedict XVI has also indicated in his three encyclicals the depths of his own integrity and intellectual rigour.
Now that you know the truth are you going to apologize for your false accusations against a holy man?
I'm not defending everything the Catholic Church did in this situation, huge mistakes were made, and I'm certainly not defending priests who did any of these crimes but the love of Christ constrains me to seek out the truth and not make false accusations about anyone but especially not fellow believers.