While the decree severely limits active participation in the German Catholic Church, it does hold out some hope for anyone considering a return to the fold.
Prof Pfeiffer went public about his concerns, telling German media that Church officials had hampered his team's research efforts by continually intervening.
Although the measures laid out in the decree are similar to excommunication from the church, German observers say the word is carefully avoided in the decree.
Plus, you have to sit through a rather lengthy church service in German on hardback chairs.
"This decree at this moment of time is really the wrong signal by the German bishops who know that the Catholic church is in a deep crisis, " Christian Weisner from the grassroots Catholic campaign group We are Church told the BBC.
The German interior ministry says members of the Coptic church expressed their concerns even before the New Year's Day suicide attack.
It is supplying a cabin run by Bournemouth's Churches Together at the town's German Christmas market and increasingly selling direct at church meetings.
Speaking to the German national broadcaster ZDF, he accused the Church of seeking to censor the research and trying to dictate the make-up of his team.
The German-born Pope added that the Roman Catholic Church remained committed to fighting anti-Semitism.
His German ancestry connects him to Europe, where the church is losing ground.
The German Bishops' Conference, part of the Catholic Church, called the ruling a "victory for human dignity, " and said it strengthened its view that a human being begins life at the moment of conception.
Even now, German names are common and the Lutheran faith dominates this church-going town.
Benedict, who spoke first in Italian, also gave greetings in French, German and English, among other languages, reflecting the Church's global reach.
The trail, which is thought to have attracted in the region of a thousand visitors last year, will take in venues such as St German's Cathedral, the Isle Gallery and Patrick Church.
His team consisted of retired prosecutors and judges and was allowed access to personnel records on Church employees going back more than a decade, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports.
Amid a collapse of the church's influence and following in Europe, the German pontiff had called on Catholics to hunker down and cultivate a "creative minority" whose embrace of doctrine was sound enough to resist the pull of secular trends across the continent.
Benedict, a German, was, at 78, the oldest Pope ever installed as the leader of Catholic Church.
FORBES: Pope Benedict Steps Down: Full Text Of His Resignation Letter
Father Moretti recalls families among packed church services that were held in four languages: French, Spanish, English and German.
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