CSNbbs

Pope's brother: I ignored physical abuse reports

Published - Mar 09 2010 08:01PM EST

By MELISSA EDDY and ALESSANDRA RIZZO - Associated Press Writers


(AP Photo/Diether Endlicher,File)
FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2006 file picture Pope Benedict XVI, right, walks with his brother priest Georg Ratzinger in Regensburg, southern Germany. The pope's brother says in a newspaper interview that he slapped pupils across the face after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also says he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir, but did nothing about it. In an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse published Tuesday March 9, 2010 , he said "repeatedly administered a slap in the face" to pupils at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir. He says it was common then and he stopped after Germany banned corporal punishment in 1980.

BERLIN— The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, said he was completely unaware of allegations of sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, part of a string of charges of sex abuse by church employees across Europe in recent days.

Responding to accusations that its policies encouraged silence about the problem, the Vatican said that the sexual abuse scandals in Germany and other countries were cause for anguish but its response has been prompt and transparent

The scandal sweeping church institutions in many European countries kept widening Tuesday.

In Austria, the head of a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg admitted to sexually abusing a child decades ago and resigned. Dutch Catholic bishops announced an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests at church schools and apologized to victims.

The German abuse allegations are particularly sensitive because Germany is the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI and because the scandals involve the prestigious choir that was led by Georg Ratzinger from 1964 till 1994.

Last week, the Regensburg Diocese said a former singer at the choir had come forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the early 1960s. And across Germany, more than 170 students have claimed they were sexually abused at several Catholic high schools.

Ratzinger has repeatedly said the sexual abuse allegations date from before his tenure as choir director. Asked in the interview Tuesday whether he knew of them, Ratzinger insisted he was not aware of the problem.

"These things were never discussed," Ratzinger told Tuesday's Passauer Neue Presse German daily. "The problem of sexual abuse that has now come to light was never spoken of."

Jakob Schoetz, a spokesman for the Regensburg diocese, told The Associated Press that Ratzinger would not comment further on the issue.

There have also been reports of severe beatings by administrators at two primary feeder schools for the choir, one in Etterzhausen and one in Peilenhofen. One director, identified as Johann M., who headed the Etterzhausen school from 1953-1992, has been cited in several allegations as being particularly abusive.

Ratzinger said boys would open up to him about being mistreated in Etterzhausen.

"But I did not have the feeling at the time that I should do something about it. Had I known with what exaggerated fierceness he was acting, I would have said something," he was quoted as saying by the German paper.

"Of course, today one condemns such actions," Ratzinger said. "I do as well. At the same time, I ask the victims for pardon."

He said he had administered corporal punishment himself.

"At the beginning I also repeatedly administered a slap in the face, but always had a bad conscience about it," Ratzinger said, adding that he was happy when corporal punishment was made illegal in 1980.

Ratzinger said a slap in the face was the easiest reaction to a failure to perform or a poor performance. How hard it was very greatly, depending on who administered it.

The 82-year-old pope and his older brother are close. Joseph Ratzinger had been planning to return to Germany and move his brother into a house with him upon retirement from the Vatican _ a plan made moot by his election as pope. He refers to his brother as his trustworthy guide and companion and says his brother helps him to accept old age with courage.

The Vatican moved to defuse criticism after the German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said Monday that a Vatican secrecy rule has played a role in a "wall of silence" surrounding sexual abuse of children. She cited a 2001 Vatican document _ drawn up by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger _ requiring even the most serious abuse cases to be first investigated internally.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi defended the main ecclesiastical institutions involved, saying they have taken up the matters "promptly and decisively."

"They have shown a desire for transparency, in a way they have accelerated bringing the problem to light by inviting the victims to speak up even when the cases dated to a while back," Lombardi told Vatican Radio.

He said "mistakes" within the church were deplorable and said the cases are pushing it church toward dealing with the problem.

"While we can't deny the gravity of the anguish the church is going through, we cannot give up doing everything possible so that in the end positive results can also be achieved," Lombardi said, citing as goals better children protection and the church's own "purification."

Lombardi declined to comment on the statement attributed to the pope's brother that he slapped people.

He noted that in Canon Law sexual abuse of minors is among the most serious offenses, and said the Vatican's document in 2001 was "a fundamental signal in calling the bishops' attention to the gravity of the problem."

A statement by the U.S. group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the Vatican's claim that Catholic institutions had been timely in their reaction "depressing and disingenuous."

"Sadly, the truth is just the reverse," Peter Isely, Midwest director of the group. "Regarding pedophile priests and corrupt bishops, the church hierarchy responds only when forced to do so by external pressures."

__

Rizzo reported from Vatican City. Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...orts/full/

Why was this moved (just for my edification)? It is not political, and so I didn't put it in the political. I really get confused on these placings.

Pope under fire for transfer, letter on sex abuse
Posted 3/12/2010 8:29 PM ET


(AP Photo/Osservatore Romano, h.o.)
In this photo released by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI, left, meets Archbishop Robert Zollitsch during an audience in his private library at the Vatican, Friday, March 12, 2010. Germany's top bishop has informed Pope Benedict XVI on cases of clerical sex abuse in the pontiff's native Germany and said the pope encouraged him to pursue the truth and assist the victims. Zollitsch said the pope was greatly dismayed and deeply moved as he was being briefed on the scandal during Friday's meeting at the Vatican.

By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY — Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes -- a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scandal Friday from the head of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who reported that the pontiff had expressed "great dismay and deep shock" over the scandal, but encouraged bishops to continue searching for the truth.

Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn't know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.

The archdiocese said there were no accusations against the chaplain, identified only as H., during his 1980-1982 spell in Munich, where he underwent therapy for suspected "sexual relations with boys." But he then moved to nearby Grafing, where he was suspended in early 1985 following new accusations of sexual abuse. The following year, he was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement late Friday noting that the Munich vicar-general who approved the priest's transfer had taken "full responsibility" for the decision, seeking to remove any question about the pontiff's potential responsibility as archbishop at the time.

Victims' advocates weren't persuaded.

"We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment," said Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Already, the scandal was inching closer to Benedict after allegations of abuse surfaced at the prestigious choir that was led by his brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 until 1994. Ratzinger has repeatedly said the sexual abuse allegations date from before his tenure as choir director and that he never heard of them, although he acknowledged slapping pupils as punishment.

The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has cited the document as evidence that the Vatican created a "wall of silence" around abuse cases that prevented prosecution. Irish bishops have said the document had been "widely misunderstood" by the bishops themselves to mean they shouldn't go to police. And lawyers for abuse victims in the United States have cited the document in arguing that the Catholic Church tried to obstruct justice.

But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse.

They stressed that the document merely concerned procedures for handling the church trial of an accused priest, and that the secrecy required by Rome for that hearing by no means extended to a ban on reporting such crimes to civil authorities.

"Canon law concerning grave crimes ... doesn't in any way interfere with or diminish the obligations of the faithful to civil laws," said Monsignor Davide Cito, a professor of canon law at Rome's Santa Croce University.

The letter doesn't tell bishops to also report the crimes to police.

But the Rev. John Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said it didn't need to. A general principle of moral theology to which every bishop should adhere is that church officials are obliged to follow civil laws where they live, he said.

Yet Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore in Northern Ireland, told a news conference this week that Irish bishops "widely misinterpreted" the directive and couldn't get a clear reading from Rome on how to proceed.

"One of the difficulties that bishops expressed was the fact that at times it wasn't always possible to get clear guidance from the Holy See and there wasn't always a consistent approach within the different Vatican departments," he said.

"Obviously, Rome is aware of this misinterpretation and the harm that this has done, or could potentially do, to the trust that the people have in how the church deals with these matters," he said.

An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic.

"An obligation to secrecy/confidentialtiy on the part of participants in a canonical process could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others," it concluded.

In the United States, Dan Shea, an attorney for several victims, has introduced the Ratzinger letter in court as evidence that the church was trying to obstruct justice. He has argued that the church impeded civil reporting by keeping the cases secret and "reserving" them for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"This is an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice," Shea told The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press reporters Geir Moulson and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.

http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/...5973.story

Vatican officials defend pope on abuse

Published - Mar 13 2010 12:37PM EST

By FRANCES D'EMILIO - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
Georg Ratzinger, 86, brother of Pope Benedict XVI, walks in front of his dwelling house in Regensburg, southern Germany, on Wednesday, March 10, 2010. The pope's brother said in an newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s.

VATICAN CITY— The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland.

It also insisted that church confidentiality doesn't prevent bishops from reporting abuse to police.

The Vatican's campaign to defend the pope's reputation and resolve in combatting clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there.

Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential.

Germany's justice minister has blamed the directive for what she called a "wall of silence" preventing prosecution.

Skeptical about the Vatican's handling of abuse, a U.S.-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the U.S. this weekend to remind people to "call police, not bishops" in cases of suspected abuse.

But the Holy See's so-called prosecutor for clergy sex abuse cases, providing some of the first statistics about his office's handling of allegations, decried what he called "false and defamatory" contentions that Benedict had promoted a "policy of cover up."

At the Vatican, rules on handling sexual abuse were "never understood as a ban on making a complaint to civil authorities," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told Italian bishops conference daily Avvenire.

But Irish bishops have said the document was widely taken to mean they shouldn't go to police. And victims' lawyers in the U.S. say the document shows the church tried to obstruct justice.

Scicluna contended that in countries that do not oblige bishops to go to authorities with allegations of abuse, "we encourage them to invite the victims to report these priests."

The Maltese prelate said the pope had taken on the "painful responsibility" of personally deciding to remove those priests involved in "particularly grave cases with heavy proof."

Those cases amounted to about 10 percent of some 3,000 cases handled by the Vatican in the last decade, what Scicluna described as a small fraction of the 400,000 priests worldwide, and cover crimes committed over the last 50 years.

Clergy in another 10 percent of the cases were defrocked upon their own request, said Scicluna, adding that among them were priests in possession of pedophilia-pornography or with criminal convictions.

Meanwhile, the scandal swirling around Benedict's brother, Georg Ratzinger, escalated with the first public allegations of abuse of choirboys during some of the 30 years he ran the boys' choir in Regensburg. Thomas Mayer told Germany's Der Spiegel weekly that he had been sexually and physically abused while a member of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir through 1992.

The pontiff's brother led the group from 1964 to 1994. Previously reported cases of sexual abuse date back to the late 1950s.

Mayer charged in Spiegel that he had been raped by older pupils. Spiegel quoted him as saying that pupils were forced to have anal sex with one another in the apartment of a prefect at the church-run boarding school attached to the choir. The Regensburg diocese has refused to comment on the report.

The Vatican spokesman, speaking to Vatican Radio and Associated Press Television News, defended Benedict.

"It's rather clear that in the last days, there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses," the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.

"For any objective observer, it's clear that these efforts have failed," Lombardi said, reiterating his statement a day earlier noting the Munich diocese has insisted that Benedict wasn't involved in the decision while archbishop there to transfer the suspected child abuser.

Lombardi told The AP that "there hasn't been in the least bit any policy of silence."

"The pope is a person whose stand on clarity, on transparency and whose decision to face these problems is above discussion," Lombardi said, citing the comments by Scicluna, who works in the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which was long headed by Benedict before his election as pontiff.

"To accuse the current pope of hiding (cases) is false and defamatory," Scicluna said.

As Vatican cardinal in charge of the policy on sex abuse, the future pope "showed wisdom and firmness in handling these cases," Scicluna said.

He said in the first years after the 2001 directive, most of the 3,000 cases came from the U.S., where dioceses across the nation were rocked by allegations by priests and systematic cover-ups by hierarchy and drained by hefty lawsuits by victims.

Only about 10 percent of the case dealt with "acts of true pedophilia," Scicluna said, while 60 percent of the cases involved priests who were sexually attracted to male adolescents. Some 30 percent of cases dealt with heterosexual abuse, he said.

How the Vatican has handled the cases since the 2001 directive provides "a very important signal to all the bishops of the church to face these problems with the required seriousness, clarity, rapidity and efficiency," Lombardi said.

The Catholic church in Switzerland has become swept up in the scandals. Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung quoted a Benedictine abbot, Martin Werlen, as saying that the Swiss bishops conference is investigating allegations by 60 people that they were victims of abuse by priests.

Shortly before becoming pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger denounced what he called "filth" in the priesthood, but so far hasn't directly commented on the cases in his homeland.

He has promised to write a letter soon to faithful in Ireland about decades of systematic abuse in church-run schools, orphanages and other institutions in that predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, where Benedict served as archbishop from 1977 to 1982, says that a working group, established last month after allegations of abuse in a church-run school, would be expanded to include an external, independent legal office.

___

Associated Press writers Melissa Eddy in Berlin and Eliane Engeler in Geneva contributed to this report.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...buse/full/

Vatican denies celibacy rule led to sex scandal

Published - Mar 14 2010 10:58AM EST

By NICOLE WINFIELD - Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY— The Vatican on Sunday denied that its celibacy requirement for priests was the root cause of the clerical sex abuse scandal convulsing the church in Europe and again defended the pope's handling of the crisis.

Suggestions that the celibacy rule was somehow responsible for the "deviant behavior" of sexually abusive priests have swirled in recent days, with opinion pieces in German newspapers blaming it for fueling abuse and even Italian commentators questioning the rule.

Much of the furor was spurred by comments from one of the pope's closest advisers, Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who called this week for an honest examination of issues like celibacy and priestly education to root out the origins of sex abuse.

"Part of it is the question of celibacy, as well as the subject of character development. And part of it is a large portion of honesty, in the church but also in society," he wrote in the online edition of his diocesan newsletter.

His office quickly stressed that Schoenborn wasn't calling into question priestly celibacy, which just this week Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed for priests as an "expression of the gift of oneself to God and others."

But Schoenborn has in the past shown himself receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the church, primarily because it limits the number of men who seek ordination.

Last June, Schoenborn personally presented the Vatican with a lay initiative signed by prominent Australian Catholics calling for the celibacy rule to be abolished and for married men to be allowed to become priests.

In the days following Schoenborn's editorial this week, several prominent prelates _ in Germany and at the Vatican _ shot down any suggestion that the celibacy rule had anything to do with the scandal, a point echoed Sunday by the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"It's been established that there's no link," said the article by Bishop Giuseppe Versaldi, an emeritus professor of canon law and psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

"First off, it's known that sexual abuse of minors is more widespread among lay people and those who are married than in the celibate priesthood," he wrote. "Secondly, research has shown that priests guilty of abuse had long before stopped observing celibacy."

The article _ subtitled "The rigor of Benedict against the filth in the Church" _ also defended Benedict as a "vigilant shepherd of his flock" in confronting the crisis decisively early on and taking charge of abuse cases himself as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican has been on the defensive ever since the first of some 170 former students from Catholic schools in Benedict's native Germany came forward with claims of physical and sexual abuse, including at a boys choir once led by the pope's brother.

Since then, claims have spread to the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland _ all while the pope was preparing a letter for Irish Catholics in response to the decades of systematic abuse in church-run schools, orphanages and other institutions in that predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The crisis reached the pope himself on Friday. The Munich archdiocese reported that when he was Munich Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, he had approved therapy for a priest suspected of abuse in the 1980s. The priest was then transferred to another location, where he was convicted of abusing minors.

The Vatican and the archdiocese stressed that Ratzinger didn't authorize the transfer and that an underling had taken "full responsibility."

Benedict didn't refer at all to the scandal Sunday during his traditional noon blessing. He spoke in general terms about the parable of the prodigal son and assured the faithful _ in German _ that God loves everyone "even when they feel estranged" and that God created forgiveness.

Later Sunday, Benedict was to visit the Lutheran church in Rome to participate in a previously scheduled ecumenical service.

The scandal has clearly shaken the Vatican, which has gone on a full-court media offensive to stem the damage. In an extraordinary move, the Vatican's chief prosecutor for sex crimes, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, detailed for the first time statistics on the number and types of cases of abuse that had been reviewed since the Vatican in 2001 ordered diocese to forward cases of suspected abusive priests to Rome to determine whether church trials were warranted.

The Vatican has said such church trials, while secret, in no way precluded bishops from reporting abuse to civil authorities.

In the interview with the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, Scicluna suggested that the statute of limitations for church tribunals be removed altogether for such crimes. Currently the statute is 10 years after the alleged victim reaches 18.

"Practice has shown that the limit of 10 years is not enough in this kind of case," he said, noting that the Vatican in 2002 allowed exceptions to the statute on a case-by-case basis, and that such exemptions are generally granted.

___

Associated Press writer Melissa Eddy contributed to this report from Berlin.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...ndal/full/

German Priest in Church Abuse Case Is Suspended
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: March 15, 2010

MUNICH — The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.

The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.

Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction.

Benedict not only served as the archbishop of the diocese where the priest worked, but also later as the cardinal in charge of reviewing sexual abuse cases for the Vatican. Yet until the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced that Father Hullermann had been suspended on Monday, he continued to serve in a series of Bavarian parishes.

In 1980, the future pope reviewed the case of Father Hullermann, who was accused of sexually abusing boys in the Diocese of Essen, including forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The future pope approved his transfer to Munich. On Friday, a deputy took responsibility for allowing the priest to return to full pastoral duties shortly afterward. Six years later, Father Hullermann was convicted of sexually abusing children in the Bavarian town of Grafing. Father Hullermann’s identity was revealed Sunday, when a man whose marriage he was scheduled to perform in the spa town of Bad Tölz stood up in the pews and began shouting as the head of the congregation was speaking in vague terms about the scandal.

But even after the revelations of last week, parishioners there, where Father Hullermann had been working, described him glowingly, calling him friendly, down to earth and popular with churchgoers, especially children and teenagers.

Father Hullermann’s story is one of a beloved priest with a damaging secret church officials helped him hide.

School records in the town of Grafing show that he taught religion six hours a week at a public high school starting Sept. 18, 1984 — less than five years after he was moved from Essen for abusing boys. The only mention of the case in the church records there said that lay elders were informed of “criminal proceedings,” though locals said there were rumors that it had something to do with children.

Rupert Frania, the priest in charge of the congregation in Bad Tölz, where Father Hullermann spent the last year and a half, said in an interview on Sunday that his superiors did not tell them about the priest’s history of sexual abuse.

“They should have told me before,” said Father Frania, who said he first heard about Father Hullermann’s conviction last week as the story was about to become public.

The statement by the archdiocese said that there was “no evidence of recent sexual abuses, similar to those for which he was convicted in 1986.”

In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.

Repeated attempts to contact Father Hullermann at his home in Bad Tölz were unsuccessful.

“He is not here at the moment,” Father Frania said.

Significant questions remain unanswered, especially about the pope’s involvement during his time as archbishop and how closely he supervised decisions about the priest. Nor have any of the victims in Grafing as yet come forward publicly.

Even before this latest case, the European sexual-abuse scandal had deeply damaged the church’s reputation in the pope’s home country, Germany. The congregations in Bad Tölz and in Garching an der Alz, where Father Hullermann worked for 21 years, responded with shock and anger, but also with a strong defense for a priest lauded for his approachability, good humor and ability to connect with parishioners on everyday issues.

In Bad Tölz on Sunday, after the groom’s outburst, there was consternation. Churchgoers, like Eva Wankerl, who said they had come to the service on Sunday because they were expecting Father Hullermann to give the sermon, left in tears. “He was somehow so close to the people, compared to some of the others who could seem superior,” said Ms. Wankerl, 61, a pensioner.

But she also said it was time that the church stopped hiding abuse cases and questioned why priests seemed to be held to a less strict standard of morality than ordinary parishioners. “If you get divorced and remarry you can’t take communion, but someone convicted of molesting children can celebrate Mass for the rest of his life,” she said.

Indeed his year and a half in Bad Tölz seemed more plum than punishment. He lived just off the historic pedestrian thoroughfare in one of Germany’s most beautiful spa towns.

His sudden departure in 2008 from Garching, where for years he worked as the parish administrator, was an emotional affair complete with a brass band and the firing of salutes, according to a local newspaper article posted to the church Web site.

But the story of his departure takes on strange overtones in light of the revelations, describing “Hulli,” as the children nicknamed him, as “a priest to touch,” who succeeded in creating “a young church and to pass on his love of liturgy in enduring fashion to the young generation.”

When he moved to Bad Tölz, it was under the condition that he was not supposed to have dealings with children. Though he was supposed to tend to tourists, he worked with few restrictions, including celebrating Mass with altar boys.

Michael Leitenstorfer, who said his children had worked in services with Father Hullermann, strongly defended the priest. “I’ve personally experienced how Father Hullermann treated our children absolutely appropriately, but also lovingly,” he said.

Father Frania added that he had heard no accusations against Father Hullermann during his time in the parish and said that people should practice forgiveness toward him. “If we can no longer believe in forgiving sins, we might as well close the whole store,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/...anted=1&hp

Child abuse claims sweep Catholic Church in Europe

Published - Mar 15 2010 08:05PM EST

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK - Associated Press Writer


By Vincenzo Pinto, AFP/Getty Images
The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland.

DUBLIN -- It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation's demand for truth. From Ireland to Germany, Europe's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy to face its demons.

Ireland was the first in Europe to confront the church's worldwide custom of shielding pedophile priests from the law and public scandal. Now that legacy of suppressed childhood horror is being confronted in other parts of the Continent -- nowhere more poignantly than in Germany, the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI.

The recent spread of claims into the Netherlands, Austria and Italy has analysts and churchmen wondering how deep the scandal runs, which nation will be affected next, and whether a tide of lawsuits will force European dioceses to declare bankruptcy like their American cousins.

"You have to presume that the cover-up of abuse exists everywhere, to one extent or another. A new case could appear in a new country tomorrow," said David Quinn, director of a Christian think tank, the Iona Institute, that seeks to promote family values in an Ireland increasingly cool to Catholicism.

Quinn noted that stories of systemic physical, sexual and emotional abuse circulated privately in Irish society for decades, but only moved aboveground in the mid-1990s when former altar boy Andrew Madden and orphanage survivor Christine Buckley went public with lawsuits and exposes of how priests and nuns tormented them with impunity.

Floodgates opened for Irish complaints that have topped 15,000 in this country of 4 million. Three government-ordered investigations have shocked and disgusted the nation, which has footed most of the bill to settle legal claims topping euro1 billion (nearly $1.5 billion).

"A lot comes down to: When does that first victim gather the courage to come forward into the spotlight?" Quinn said. "It seems to take that trigger event, the lone voice who says what so many kept silent so long. That's basically happening now in Germany. It could happen next in Spain, Poland, anywhere."

In January, an elite Jesuit school in Berlin declared it was aware of seven child-abuse cases in its past and appointed an outside investigator, Ursula Raue, to seek testimony. Within weeks, she had gathered stories of long-suppressed woe from more than 100 ex-students abused by their Jesuit masters, and from 60 molested by parish priests.

"I always thought that at some point the wave would reach us," said Petra Dorsch-Jungsberger, a commentator on Catholic affairs and retired University of Munich communications professor.

She credited heavy German media coverage of the latest Irish abuse scandal -- a November report into decades of cover-up in the Dublin Archdiocese involving approximately 170 priests -- with inspiring similar soul-searching in Germany.

"Once the door had been opened, then many others felt they were able to step up and say: That happened to us too," she said.

In recent weeks, new German abuse claims have surfaced on a near-daily basis and spread to Pope Benedict's Bavarian heartland and the Regensberg boys' choir long directed by the pope's brother. Benedict was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich from 1977 to 1982, and questions now focus on what role, if any, the pontiff, played in handing pedophile priests to new parishes rather than to the law.

A Swiss abbot said in an interview published Saturday that 60 people have reported being victims of abuse by Catholic priests in Switzerland.

Abbot Martin Werlen of the Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln told Swiss daily Aargauer Zeitung that the allegations were reported to the Swiss Bishops Conference, which is investigating them.

The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland, and contended he has long confronted abuse cases with courage.

In separate interviews, both the Holy See's spokesman and its prosecutor for sex abuse of minors by clergy sought to defend the pope.

"It's rather clear that in the last days, there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.

It's inevitable that all bishops of the day, including Ratzinger, handled abuse complaints against priests in-house, said the Rev. Fergus O'Donoghue, editor of the Irish Jesuit journal Studies.

"The pope was no different to any other bishop at time. The church policy was to keep it all quiet -- to help people, but to avoid scandal. Avoiding scandal was a huge issue for the church," he said. "Of course there was cover-up," he added. But worse was "the systematic lack of concern for the victims."

In the Netherlands, a former Catholic boarding-school abuse victim is leading a campaign for accountability. Bert Smeets, 58, has formed Mea Culpa, a victims group that has collected testimony from hundreds of abuse victims and is mulling a class-action lawsuit against the Dutch church.

The church has apologized to the victims and set up an inquiry headed by a former government minister, a Protestant. Smeets dismisses that effort as "a typical Vatican cover-up." He said the pressure on the church came from aggressive investigations into abuse in Ireland and the U.S.

In other predominantly Catholic areas of Europe, child-abuse scandals have tarnished individual priests and even a Polish archbishop, but have not mushroomed into a mass movement. In Spain, more than a dozen priests have been convicted of child abuse in recent decades and two potentially larger-scale cases are attracting attention.

Ireland was until relatively recently the most enthusiastically Catholic country in Europe. Its half-dozen seminaries exported priests worldwide. All but one of those seminaries is closed now, illustrating the rapid falloff in Mass attendance as the economy has advanced and secularism has spread.

Quinn, the Dublin think-tank director, noted that a few Irish dioceses are openly warning that they're struggling to pay bills stemming from abuse claims. In the southeast diocese of Kells, the archbishop's house has had to be remortgaged.

"The church is asset-rich but cash-poor," Quinn said, noting that it's the biggest property owner in Ireland but has comparatively little cash in the bank. He said the Vatican, too, has less money on tap than resides in the endowment fund of a typical top-tier U.S. university.

___

Associated Press Writers Melissa Eddy in Berlin, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...rope/full/

Vatican offers 3 reasons it's not liable for abuse

Published - Mar 30 2010 04:28PM EST

By NICOLE WINFIELD - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Benedict XVI handles a staff with crucifix during a memorial Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II, Monday, March 29, 2010.

VATICAN CITY— Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that the church hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him deposed.

Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."

The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or secret documents subpoenaed.

The preview of the legal defense was submitted last month in U.S. District Court in Louisville. The Vatican's strategy is to be formally filed in the coming weeks. Vatican officials declined to comment on Tuesday.

Plaintiffs in the Kentucky suit argue that U.S. diocesan bishops were employees of the Holy See, and that Rome was therefore responsible for their alleged wrongdoing in failing to report abuse.

They say a 1962 Vatican document mandated that bishops not report sex abuse cases to police. The Vatican has argued that there is nothing in the document that precluded bishops from calling police.

With the U.S. scandal reinvigorated by reports of abuse in Europe and scrutiny of Benedict's handling of abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich, the Kentucky case and another in Oregon have taken on greater significance. Lawyers as far away as Australia have said they plan to use similar strategies.

At the same time though, the hurdles remain enormously high to force a foreign government to turn over confidential documents, let alone to subject a head of state to questioning by U.S. lawyers, experts say.

The United States considers the Vatican a sovereign state _ the two have had diplomatic relations since 1984. In 2007, U.S. District Court Judge John Heyburn rejected an initial request by the plaintiffs to depose Benedict.

"They will not be able to depose the pope," said Joseph Dellapenna, a professor at Villanova University Law School an author of "Suing Foreign Governments and their Corporations."

"But lower level officials could very well be deposed and there could be subpoenas for documents as part of discovery," he said.

McMurry last week filed a new court motion seeking to depose the pope; Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, currently Vatican secretary of state but for years the pope's deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal William Levada, an American who currently heads the Congregation; and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican's representative in the U.S.

On Tuesday, McMurry filed a memorandum in support of his demand to depose the pope based on documents publicly released last week detailing the role of the Congregation in shutting down a canonical trial for a Wisconsin priest who allegedly molested up to 200 deaf boys.

"These documents confirm that the CDF, under Pope Benedict XVI's lead, discouraged prosecution of accused clergy and encouraged secrecy to protect the reputation of the church," wrote McMurry, who represented 243 sex abuse victims that settled with the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2003 for $25.3 million.

Jeffrey Lena, the reclusive architect of the Vatican's legal strategy in the U.S., is seeking to have the court rule on the Vatican's other defenses before allowing the pope to be deposed, in hopes that the suit will be dismissed. Lena noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that when a defendant enjoys immunity, a court shouldn't allow a "discovery fishing expedition on claims that are baseless or speculative."

Lena also has argued that the pope's deposition would violate the Vatican's own laws on confidentiality, and would set a bad precedent for U.S. officials.

"If Pope Benedict XVI is ordered to testify by a U.S. court, foreign courts could feel empowered to order discovery against the president of the United States regarding, for example, such issues as CIA renditions," Lena wrote in a 2008 brief.

McMurry is eager to find out what the Vatican knew and did, in particular, about Rev. Louis Miller, who was removed from the priesthood in 2004 by the late Pope John Paul II. Miller pleaded guilty in 2003 to sexually abusing one of the Kentucky defendants and other children in the 1970s. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence.

In a deposition transcription obtained by The Associated Press, Miller said he had offered to resign as early as 1962 to his then-Archbishop John Floersh, and that two subsequent archbishops knew of his crimes but continued to keep him as a priest, moving him from parish to parish.

In explaining why he wanted to resign, Miller said: "I just knew that the crime was so horrendous in my own mind that I didn't feel that I was worthy to remain a priest."

But he said Floersh was "compassionate," kept him on, and told him, "You will always be a good priest."

Crucial to the Kentucky lawsuit is the 1962 document "Crimen Sollicitationis" _ Latin for "crimes of solicitation." It describes how church authorities should deal procedurally with cases of abuse of children by priests, cases where sex is solicited in the confessional _ a particularly heinous crime under canon law _ and cases of homosexuality and bestiality.

McMurry argues that the document imposed the highest level of secrecy on such matters and reflected a Vatican policy barring bishops from reporting abuse to police.

Lena declined to comment Tuesday, but he has tried to shoot down McMurry's theory by arguing that McMurry's own expert witness, canon lawyer Thomas P. Doyle, has rejected theories that Crimen was proof of a cover-up.

The plaintiffs, Lena wrote in a 2008 motion, "fail to offer any facts in support of their theory that Crimen caused their injuries, nor indeed any facts that Crimen was ever in the possession of the Louisville archdiocese or used in Kentucky."

McMurry insisted Tuesday that Crimen is a smoking gun.

"The fact is, this document and its predecessors make it an excommunicable offense to reveal any knowledge of allegations that a priest has sexually abused," he said in an e-mail.

The existence of Crimen did not become publicly known until 2003, when a lawyer noticed a reference to the document while reading a 2001 letter written by Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. McMurry is seeking to subpoena Ratzinger's letter, which instructed all bishops to send cases of clerical sex abuse to him and to keep the proceedings secret.

In 2008, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead for Kentucky lawsuit to continue, ruling that an exception to sovereign immunity, which shields most foreign governments from U.S. lawsuits, should be applied.

The 6th Circuit eliminated most of the plaintiffs claims' in its late 2008 ruling before returning it to district court.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...buse/full/

1963 letter indicates former pope knew of abuse

Published - Mar 31 2010 04:59PM EST

By GILLIAN FLACCUS - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Manuel Vega former Los Angeles Police officer and alleged victim of clergy sex abuse speaks during a news conference outside of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles Wednesday March 31, 2010.

LOS ANGELES— The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday.

In the Aug. 27, 1963 letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders.

The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request of the pope and summarizes Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests after his Vatican visit.

A message left with the Paraclete order at one of their two existing facilities in Missouri was not returned. A number for the second facility was disconnected.

Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, defended the church and said it was unlikely Paul VI ever saw the letter.

"The fact of the matter is, the prevailing ideas at the time about how to deal with abusive behavior were not adequate," Tamberg said. "Clearly, society and the church have evolved new understandings of what causes sexually abusive behavior and how to deal with it."

Fitzgerald opens the five-page letter by thanking the pope for an audience the day before and says he is summarizing his thoughts at the pope's request on the "problem of the problem priest" after 20 years working in to treat them.

He tells Paul VI that treatment for priests who have succumbed to "abnormal, homosexual tendencies" should include psychiatric, as well as spiritual, counseling _ but goes on to warn about the dangers of leaving those individuals in ministry.

"Personally, I am not sanguine of the return of priests to active duty who have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young," Fitzgerald wrote.

"Where there is indication of incorrigibility, because of the tremendous scandal given, I would most earnestly recommend total laicization," he wrote. "I say 'total' ... because when these men are taken before civil authority, the non-Catholic world definitely blames the discipline of celibacy for the perversion of these men."

The letter proves that Vatican officials knew about clergy abuse decades ago and should have done more to protect children, said Tony DeMarco, an attorney for clergy abuse victims in Los Angeles.

The church has come under fire for transferring priests accused of sexual abuse to other parishes, rather than reporting the abuse to civil authorities and removing them from ministry.

"It shows without a shadow of a doubt that ... how pervasive the problem was was communicated to the pope. He was able to share with him their knowledge of how pervasive this problems was, how destructive this problem was," DeMarco said.

"He says the solution is to take them out of the priesthood period, not shuffle them around, not pass them from diocese to diocese."

The letter was released in Los Angeles by attorneys who represented more than 500 victims of clergy abuse in their record-breaking $660 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2008.

It's among thousands of pages of clergy abuse documents that are to be released as a condition of the settlement after review and approval by a judge overseeing the process.

The letter released Wednesday is different from a 1957 letter made public last year in which Fitzgerald seeks help from the Bishop of Manchester, N.H. in finding a placement for a priest leaving the treatment program.

Attorneys also released a 250-page, redacted transcript of the 2007 deposition of the Rev. Joseph McNamara, who took over the Paraclete after Fitzgerald.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...buse/full/

Cardinals defend pope on church sex abuse scandal

Published - Apr 01 2010 03:08PM EST

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Ronald Zak)
A woman ignites a candle before a complaint mass about abuse in the Roman Catholic church at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Austria, Wednesday, March 31, 2010.

VATICAN CITY— Cardinals across Europe used their Holy Thursday sermons to defend Pope Benedict XVI from accusations he played a role in covering up sex abuse scandals, and an increasingly angry Vatican sought to deflect any criticism in the Western media.

The relationship between the church and the media has become increasingly bitter as the scandal buffeting the 1 billion-member church has touched the pontiff himself. On Wednesday, the church singled out The New York Times for criticism in an unusually harsh attack.

Western news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported extensively on the burgeoning scandal, and new details have emerged on an almost daily basis.

On Holy Thursday, Benedict first celebrated a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica dedicated to the union between the pope and the world's priests. In the late afternoon, he washed the feet of 12 priests in a ceremony symbolizing humility and commemorating Christ's Last Supper with his 12 apostles on the evening before his Good Friday crucifixion.

Although there were expectations by some that the pope would address the crisis, Benedict made no reference to the scandal at either ceremony.

Venice's Cardinal Angelo Scola expressed solidarity with Benedict in his Holy Thursday homily in the lagoon city, describing him as a victim of "deceitful accusations." He praised the pope as seeking to remove all "dirt" from the priesthood.

Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz said the church should take notice of individual tragedies and treat sex abuse cases very seriously, but at the same time, he criticized the media for "targeting the whole church, targeting the pope, and to that we must say `no' in the name of truth and in the name of justice."

And Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, speaking of Benedict's long years as head of a Vatican office that investigates abuse, said the future pope "had a very clear line of not covering up but clearing up."

He had also reflected on the issue at a Wednesday evening service:

"I admit that I often feel a sense of injustice these days. Why is the church being excoriated? Isn't there also abuse elsewhere? ... And then I'm tempted to say: 'Yes, the media just don't like the church! Maybe there's even a conspiracy against the church?' But then I feel in my heart that no, that's not it."

The church on Wednesday presented its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent revelations regarding sex abuse _ a story in the Times on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on the press. Last week, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaperdenounced what it said was a "clear and despicable intention" by the media to strike at Benedict "at any cost."

On Thursday, the newspaper carried a story on its front page on German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcoming efforts to stem sex abuse, headlining "German chancellor praises the Catholic church."

In the article posted Wednesday on the Vatican's Web site, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote: "I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, The New York Times, as a paragon of fairness."

Levada, an American, said the newspaper wrongly used the case of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to find fault in Benedict's handling of abuse cases.

A Times spokeswoman defended the articles and said no one has cast doubt on the reported facts.

"The allegations of abuse within the Catholic church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions," said Diane McNulty. "Any role the current pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story."

The Vatican newspaper also carried a front-page commentary to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Benedict's predecessor, the much beloved Pope John Paul II.

The article said John Paul wanted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to work by his side from the early years of his papacy. John Paul brought the archbishop of Munich to Rome to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful office that among other things investigates clerical sex abuse.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...ndal/full/

Pope Sees Sex Scandal As Test; Bishops Urge Reform
Thursday, April 01, 2010
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press


(AP Photo)
Pope Benedict XVI

Vatican City (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI sees the priestly sex scandal as a "test for him and the church," his spokesman said Wednesday, as bishops around Europe used Holy Week's solemn call for penitence to pledge transparency in dealing with the abuse of children.

But amid such signs of humility, a senior cleric also mounted a sharp counterattack to the allegations now swirling around the papacy. In an article, the official accused the New York Times of faulting the pope unfairly for his treatment of past abuse allegations.

Swiss bishops urged victims to consider filing criminal complaints. German bishops opened a hot line for victims. Danish bishops launched an inquiry into decades-old claims. And Austria's senior cleric, Cardinal Christophe Schoenborn, admitted church guilt as he presided over a service for victims billed as a sign of repentance.

"Thank you for breaking your silence," Schoenborn told the victims. "A lot has been broken open. There is less looking away. But there is still a lot to do."

A week after Pope Benedict XVI excoriated Irish bishops for gross errors of judgment in handling cases of priests who rape children, European bishops one after another admitted to mistakes, reached out to victims and promised to act when they learn about abuse.

Their mea culpas and pledges to be more open and cooperative with police echoed American bishops' initial responses when the U.S. priest-abuse scandal emerged in 2002. They come amid mounting public outrage over a new wave of abuse claims across Europe and what victims say has been a pattern of cover-up by bishops and the Vatican itself.

And they were all announced during the most solemn week of the church's liturgical calendar. As the Swiss bishops noted Wednesday, Holy Week is a period of penance, when the faithful are supposed to admit their guilt, examine wrongdoing, find ways to improve and ask God and people for forgiveness.

Benedict himself was experiencing a Holy Week of "humility and penitence," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told The Associated Press.

Asked how Benedict was responding to the scandal swirling around the Vatican, Lombardi replied: "The pope is a person of faith. He sees this as a test for him and the church."

Lombardi stressed, though, that the 82-year-old pontiff was holding up fine physically during the grueling Holy Week schedule.

Benedict is to celebrate an evening Holy Thursday service in which he will wash the feet of 12 priests in a symbol of humility. The service commemorates Jesus' washing the feet of his 12 apostles before the Last Supper.

After presiding over the Good Friday Way of the Cross commemoration at Rome's torch-lit Coliseum, Benedict will celebrate a late-night Easter Vigil on Saturday and then Easter on Sunday, when the faithful commemorate Jesus' resurrection -- a time of rebirth and renewal.

On Wednesday, the church offered its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent stories regarding sex abuse, on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.

Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said in an article posted on the Vatican's Web site that a lengthy trial for the Rev. Lawrence Murphy would have been "useless" because the priest was dying by the time his diocese initiated a canonical trial.

Levada was critical of The New York Times, which first published details of the decision last week. He said the paper wrongly used the case to find find fault in Benedict's handling of abuse cases. A Times spokeswoman defended the articles and said no one has cast doubt on the reported facts.

While clerical abuse has for years roiled the church in the U.S. and Ireland, mainland Europe woke up to the issue in its backyard earlier this year with the first wave of reports from Benedict's native Germany that boys had been abused at a church-run school. Since then, hundreds of people have come forward with claims of abuse -- most dating back decades -- in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Swiss bishops were taking Holy Week's intentions to heart in admitting Wednesday they had underestimated the problem. They are now telling victims to consider filing criminal complaints.

"It is important to us that unconditional transparency is brought to the past," the Swiss bishops said in a statement. They urged all abusers to "stand before God and the people whom they have wronged and report to the relevant authorities."

Switzerland, home of the Swiss Guard papal protectors, is considering creating a central registry of pedophile priests to prevent them from coming into contact with children. Swiss bishops are divided over the proposal.

In Austria, Cardinal Schoenborn celebrated a Wednesday evening service for abuse victims in a sign of repentance. During the service, which featured accounts of abuse, readings and musical interludes, Schoenborn acknowledged church guilt and thanked victims for coming forward.

Schoenborn, who has taken a lead in denouncing the scandal and demanding reforms, was named Vienna archbishop in 1995, tasked to clean up the mess in the diocese after Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced to resign as archbishop over allegations he molested youths at a monastery in the 1970s.

Amid renewed outrage over the European scandal, Schoenborn announced over the weekend the creation of a church-funded but independent and clergy-free commission headed by a woman to suggest ways to strengthen church guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse.

In Switzerland and Germany, bishops are considering mandatory or automatic reporting requirements for bishops. In Switzerland, civil servants such as teachers are required to inform police of possible sexual abuse cases, but the clergy are not.

Germany's bishops' guidelines for dealing with abuse, which church leaders have held up as a model for Europe, say accused priests are advised to contact law enforcement on their own if there are "proven cases" of abuse. But there are no requirements for church authorities to do so, and Germany's justice minister has criticized the guidelines.

In February, German bishops announced they would revise the guidelines by summer. Bishops in Benedict's native Bavaria are lobbying for an automatic relay of all suspected cases and say they'll do so whether the full conference agrees or not.

Even the small Catholic communities in the Nordic countries, which are predominantly Lutheran, are taking a very public stand: The Catholic Church in Denmark announced Wednesday that it will revisit allegations of sexual abuse that had not been reported to police.

Stockholm Bishop Anders Aborelius urged all Catholic bishops to do whatever is in their power to help victims of sexual abuse obtain redress.

In Italy, the bishops' conference ended its annual meeting with a vague pledge of cooperation with civil authorities. Italian politicians have rallied to defend the pope as news reports raised questions about his response to abuse cases he oversaw when he held lower positions within the church.

The measures enacted and promised to date in Europe still fall short of the zero-tolerance policy adopted by U.S. bishops after the clerical abuse scandal exploded in 2002.

The U.S. policy, approved by the Vatican as church law in the U.S., bars credibly accused priests from any public church work while claims against them are under investigation. Diocesan review boards, comprised mostly of lay people, help bishops oversee cases. Clergy found guilty are permanently barred from public ministry and, in some cases, ousted from the priesthood.

The U.S. policy does not specifically order all bishops to notify civil authorities when claims are made. Instead it instructs bishops to comply with state laws for reporting abuse, and to cooperate with authorities. All dioceses were also instructed to advise victims of their right to contact authorities themselves.

The Rev. Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, said the Europeans could learn from the American experience, "particularly in their zero-tolerance policy for abusers, their creation of an office for child protection and their willingness to apologize to victims."

But even with a Vatican-approved policy on the books, advocates for victims and church leaders disagree over how closely the policy has been followed. And even with all the reforms, the American church is still paying the price for the problem.

American dioceses have paid more than $2.7 billion for settlements and other costs since 1950, according to tallies by the bishops and news reports.

------

Associated Press Writers Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva, Victor L. Simpson in Vatican City, Rachel Zoll in New York, Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin, Richard Steed in Copenhagen, Ian MacDougall in Oslo and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63625

Vatican Slams N.Y. Times for 'Attack' on Pope
FOXNews.com
A senior cleric mounts a sharp counterattack to the abuse allegations now swirling around the papacy.


Mar. 31: Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges the crowd in St. Peter's Square.

Pope Benedict XVI sees the priestly sex scandal as a "test for him and the church," his spokesman said Wednesday, as bishops around Europe used Holy Week's solemn call for penitence to pledge transparency in dealing with the abuse of children.

But amid such signs of humility, a senior cleric also mounted a sharp counterattack to the allegations now swirling around the papacy. In an article, the official accused the New York Times of faulting the pope unfairly for his treatment of past abuse allegations.

Cardinal William J. Levada, the former Archbishop of San Francisco and a close aide to the pope, attacked the newspaper's main story on the abuse scandal last week and an editorial as "deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness" and defended the way the Church and the Vatican had handled the Murphy case.

"I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on," said a 20-paragraph statement written by Levada.

The Times responded, saying its reports were "based on meticulous reporting and documents."


Archbishop William J. Levada said that a lengthy trial for the Rev. Lawrence Murphy would have been "useless" because the priest was dying by the time his diocese initiated a canonical trial.

"Some of the particulars were confirmed by the Church, and so far no one has cast doubt on the facts we reported," the newspaper said in a statement issued late Wednesday.

"The allegations of abuse within the Catholic Church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions. Any role the current pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story."

Swiss bishops urged victims to consider filing criminal complaints. German bishops opened a hot line for victims. Danish bishops launched an inquiry into decades-old claims. And Austria's senior cleric, Cardinal Christophe Schoenborn, admitted church guilt as he presided over a service for victims billed as a sign of repentance.

"Thank you for breaking your silence," Schoenborn told the victims. "A lot has been broken open. There is less looking away. But there is still a lot to do."

A week after Pope Benedict XVI excoriated Irish bishops for gross errors of judgment in handling cases of priests who rape children, European bishops one after another admitted to mistakes, reached out to victims and promised to act when they learn about abuse.

Their mea culpas and pledges to be more open and cooperative with police echoed American bishops' initial responses when the U.S. priest-abuse scandal emerged in 2002. They come amid mounting public outrage over a new wave of abuse claims across Europe and what victims say has been a pattern of cover-up by bishops and the Vatican itself.

And they were all announced during the most solemn week of the church's liturgical calendar. As the Swiss bishops noted Wednesday, Holy Week is a period of penance, when the faithful are supposed to admit their guilt, examine wrongdoing, find ways to improve and ask God and people for forgiveness.

Benedict himself was experiencing a Holy Week of "humility and penitence," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told The Associated Press.

Asked how Benedict was responding to the scandal swirling around the Vatican, Lombardi replied: "The pope is a person of faith. He sees this as a test for him and the church."

Lombardi stressed, though, that the 82-year-old pontiff was holding up fine physically during the grueling Holy Week schedule.

Benedict is to celebrate an evening Holy Thursday service in which he will wash the feet of 12 priests in a symbol of humility. The service commemorates Jesus' washing the feet of his 12 apostles before the Last Supper.

"As priests, we are called in fellowship with Jesus Christ, to be men of peace, we are called to oppose violence and trust in the greater power of love," Benedict said in his homily in St. Peter's Basilica.

Later, he will celebrate an evening Holy Thursday service in which he will wash the feet of 12 priests in a symbol of humility. The service commemorates Jesus' washing the feet of his 12 apostles before the Last Supper.

After presiding over the Good Friday Way of the Cross commemoration at Rome's torch-lit Coliseum, Benedict will celebrate a late-night Easter Vigil on Saturday and then Easter on Sunday, when the faithful commemorate Jesus' resurrection -- a time of rebirth and renewal.

On Wednesday, the church offered its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent stories regarding sex abuse, on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.

Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said in an article posted on the Vatican's Web site that a lengthy trial for the Rev. Lawrence Murphy would have been "useless" because the priest was dying by the time his diocese initiated a canonical trial.

While clerical abuse has for years roiled the church in the U.S. and Ireland, mainland Europe woke up to the issue in its backyard earlier this year with the first wave of reports from Benedict's native Germany that boys had been abused at a church-run school. Since then, hundreds of people have come forward with claims of abuse -- most dating back decades -- in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Swiss bishops were taking Holy Week's intentions to heart in admitting Wednesday they had underestimated the problem. They are now telling victims to consider filing criminal complaints.

"It is important to us that unconditional transparency is brought to the past," the Swiss bishops said in a statement. They urged all abusers to "stand before God and the people whom they have wronged and report to the relevant authorities."

Switzerland, home of the Swiss Guard papal protectors, is considering creating a central registry of pedophile priests to prevent them from coming into contact with children. Swiss bishops are divided over the proposal.

In Austria, Cardinal Schoenborn celebrated a Wednesday evening service for abuse victims in a sign of repentance. During the service, which featured accounts of abuse, readings and musical interludes, Schoenborn acknowledged church guilt and thanked victims for coming forward.

Schoenborn, who has taken a lead in denouncing the scandal and demanding reforms, was named Vienna archbishop in 1995, tasked to clean up the mess in the diocese after Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced to resign as archbishop over allegations he molested youths at a monastery in the 1970s.

Amid renewed outrage over the European scandal, Schoenborn announced over the weekend the creation of a church-funded but independent and clergy-free commission headed by a woman to suggest ways to strengthen church guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse.

In Switzerland and Germany, bishops are considering mandatory or automatic reporting requirements for bishops. In Switzerland, civil servants such as teachers are required to inform police of possible sexual abuse cases, but the clergy are not.

Germany's bishops' guidelines for dealing with abuse, which church leaders have held up as a model for Europe, say accused priests are advised to contact law enforcement on their own if there are "proven cases" of abuse. But there are no requirements for church authorities to do so, and Germany's justice minister has criticized the guidelines.

In February, German bishops announced they would revise the guidelines by summer. Bishops in Benedict's native Bavaria are lobbying for an automatic relay of all suspected cases and say they'll do so whether the full conference agrees or not.

Even the small Catholic communities in the Nordic countries, which are predominantly Lutheran, are taking a very public stand: The Catholic Church in Denmark announced Wednesday that it will revisit allegations of sexual abuse that had not been reported to police.

Stockholm Bishop Anders Aborelius urged all Catholic bishops to do whatever is in their power to help victims of sexual abuse obtain redress.

In Italy, the bishops' conference ended its annual meeting with a vague pledge of cooperation with civil authorities. Italian politicians have rallied to defend the pope as news reports raised questions about his response to abuse cases he oversaw when he held lower positions within the church.

The measures enacted and promised to date in Europe still fall short of the zero-tolerance policy adopted by U.S. bishops after the clerical abuse scandal exploded in 2002.

The U.S. policy, approved by the Vatican as church law in the U.S., bars credibly accused priests from any public church work while claims against them are under investigation. Diocesan review boards, comprised mostly of lay people, help bishops oversee cases. Clergy found guilty are permanently barred from public ministry and, in some cases, ousted from the priesthood.

The U.S. policy does not specifically order all bishops to notify civil authorities when claims are made. Instead it instructs bishops to comply with state laws for reporting abuse, and to cooperate with authorities. All dioceses were also instructed to advise victims of their right to contact authorities themselves.

The Rev. Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, said the Europeans could learn from the American experience, "particularly in their zero-tolerance policy for abusers, their creation of an office for child protection and their willingness to apologize to victims."

But even with a Vatican-approved policy on the books, advocates for victims and church leaders disagree over how closely the policy has been followed. And even with all the reforms, the American church is still paying the price for the problem.

American dioceses have paid more than $2.7 billion for settlements and other costs since 1950, according to tallies by the bishops and news reports.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/01/...tack-pope/

Pope's preacher: Accusations akin to anti-Semitism

Published - Apr 02 2010 03:27PM EST

By FRANCES D'EMILIO - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa delivers the Good Friday homily during a service celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Friday, April 2, 2010. Cantalamessa, the pontiff's personal preacher, likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to ''collective violence'' suffered by the Jews. The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday homily with the pope listening in St. Peter's Basilica that a Jewish friend wrote to him to say the accusations remind him of the ''more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.''

VATICAN CITY— At a solemn Good Friday service, Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher said allegations that the pontiff covered up sex abuse cases by Catholic clergymen reminded him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism."

Within hours, a Vatican spokesman sought to distance the pope from his preacher's remarks after both Jews and a leading abuse victims group reacted sharply, criticizing the comparison with violence that culminated in the Holocaust to the accusations made against Benedict.

The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days, saying the church has been singled out and collectively stereotyped for the problem of pedophilia, which it says is a society-wide issue.

Good Friday is a particularly delicate day in a decades-long effort by Jews and Catholics to overcome a legacy of mistrust. Particularly harmful to the relations was the long-held Catholic belief that Jews were collectively responsible for executing Christ. A landmark achievement of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s was a declaration stating the Jews should not be blamed for the crucifixion.

As the pope listened in a hushed St. Peter's Basilica, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa likened accusations against the pontiff and the Catholic church in sex abuse scandals in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

Benedict, 82, looked weary as he sat near the central altar at the early evening prayer service.

Cantalamessa, in his reflections for the pope on the Catholic church's most solemn day, said he was inspired by a letter from an unidentified Jewish friend who was upset by the "attacks" against Benedict.

Jews "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms," said Cantalamessa, a Franciscan priest.

Quoting from the letter, Cantalamessa said his Jewish friend was following "with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world."

"The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he said, quoting from the letter.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, later contacted The Associated Press and said Cantalamessa wasn't speaking as a Vatican official when he compared "attacks'" on the pope to "collective" violence against Jews.

Such parallelism can "lead to misunderstandings and is not an official position of the Catholic church," Lombardi said, adding that Cantalamessa was speaking about a letter from a friend who lived through a "painful experience."

Benedict didn't speak after the homily but chanted prayers in a tired voice. He leaned up to remove a red cloth covering a tall crucifix, which was passed to him by an aide. He took off his shoes, knelt and prayed before the cross.

Two hours later, Benedict, wearing a red cloak in the breezy night, knelt in silent prayer at the Colosseum as he watched the faithful carry a tall crucifix in Rome's traditional torchlit Way of the Cross procession that commemorates Christ's suffering and death. Thousands of people clutching prayerbooks and candles crowded around the ancient arena.

Victims say Benedict _ both as a former archbishop of Munich and later as a Vatican cardinal directing the Holy See's policy on handling abuse cases _ was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality basically devised to protect church hierarchy.

Cantalamessa's likening the accusations to the Holocaust rankled U.S. Jewish leaders.

"Shame on Father Cantalamessa," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, in a statement. "The Vatican is entitled to defend itself, but the comparison with anti-Semitic persecution is offensive and unsustainable. We are sorely disappointed."

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, who said he recently had "cordial" talks at the Vatican with church and other Jewish leaders as part of efforts on both sides to improve Catholic-Jewish relations, sounded dismayed.

"It's an unfortunate use of language to make this comparison, since the collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of 6 million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault," said Greenebaum, U.S. director of interreligious relations for the American Jewish Committee.

German Jewish leader Stephan Kramer described Cantalamessa's remarks as unheard-of "insolence."

"It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust," said Kramer, general secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, in an interview with the AP in Berlin.

Painful memories of the strained relations between the two religions were raised earlier in Benedict's papacy, when he favored a revival of the pre-Vatican Council version of the Tridentine Mass, which includes a prayer for the conversion of Jews.

Cantalamessa in his sermon said there was no need to dwell on the scandals. He referred to the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying "unfortunately, not a few elements of the clergy are stained" by the violence. Still, he said, "there is sufficient talk outside of here."

A vocal U.S.-based victims lobby, SNAP, reacted scathingly to the sermon.

"It's heartbreaking to see yet another smart, high-ranking Vatican official making such callous remarks that insult both abuse victims and Jewish people," said David Clohessy of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's morally wrong to equate actual physical violence and hatred against a large group of innocent people with mere public scrutiny of a small group of complicit officials."

"The Catholic hierarchy has engaged in and still engages in widely documented, self-serving and ongoing cover-ups of devastating clergy sex crimes. That's why church records are being disclosed, predator priests are being exposed and Catholic officials feel besieged."

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on the Vatican based at Georgetown University in Washington, also criticized Cantalamessa's homily as "not helpful."

"You know, you wish that people in the Vatican had at least some idea of how what they say will be perceived by an audience outside of the Vatican clergy," he said.

Reese added that it's important to note that the Vatican spokesman distanced the pope from Cantalamessa's comments and that the homily did acknowledge children have been abused by priests.

While Cantalamessa delivered his ringing defense of the pontiff, the church in Benedict's native Germany made the unusually frank admission that it failed to help victims of clerical abuse because it wanted to protect its reputation.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German bishops' conference, said clerics neglected helping victims because of a "wrongly intended desire to protect the church's reputation."

___

Associated Press writers Eric Gorski in Denver, Brett Zongker in Washington and Victor L. Simpson in Rome contributed to this story.

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AP: Vatican waited years to defrock Arizona priest

Published - Apr 03 2010 09:21AM EST

By MATT SEDENSKY - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
Pope Benedict XVI greets the faithful at the end of the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) torchlight procession celebrated in front of the Colosseum on Good Friday in Rome, Friday, April 2, 2010. The evening Via Crucis procession at the ancient Colosseum amphitheater is a Rome tradition that draws a large crowd of faithful, including many of the pilgrims who flock to the Italian capital for Holy Week ceremonies before Easter Sunday.

The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church's insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.

Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.

The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict _ as a Vatican cardinal _ was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality.

"There's no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of dangerous priests who were deemed 'satanic' by their own bishop," Lynne Cadigan, an attorney who represented two of Teta's victims, said Friday.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, called the accusations "absolutely groundless" and said the facts were being misrepresented.

He said the delay in defrocking Teta was caused by a hold on appeals while the Vatican changed regulations over its handling of sex abuse cases. In the meantime, he said, cautionary measures were in place; Teta had been suspended since 1990.

"The documents show clearly and positively that those in charge at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith ... have repeatedly intervened actively over the course of the 90s so that the canonic trial under way in the Tucson diocese could dutifully reach its conclusion," Lombardi said in a statement.

In the 1990s, a church tribunal found that Teta had molested children as far back as the 1970s, and the panel determined "there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys."

The tribunal referred Teta's case, which included allegations that he abused boys in a confessional, to Ratzinger. The church considers cases of abuse in confessionals more serious than other molestations because they also defile the sacrament of penance.

It took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take.

Teta was accused of engaging in abuse not long after his arrival to the Diocese of Tucson in 1978. Among the eventual allegations: that he molested two boys, ages 7 and 9, in the confessional as they prepared for their First Communion.

Teta was removed from ministry by the bishop, but because the church's most severe punishment _ laicization _ can only be handed down from Rome, he remained on the church payroll and was working with young people outside the church.

In a signed letter dated June 8, 1992, Ratzinger advised Moreno he was taking control of the case, according to a copy provided to the AP from Cadigan, the victims' attorney. Five years later, no action had been taken.

"This case has already gone on for seven years," Moreno wrote Ratzinger on April 28, 1997, adding, "I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case."

It would be another seven years before Teta was laicized.

Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Teta was ordered defrocked in 1997. But Teta appealed, and the appeal remained on hold until the new regulations took effect in 2001.

"Starting in 2001, all the appeals that were pending were promptly taken up, and Teta's case was one of the first to be discussed," Lombardi said.

But this still took time, he said, because the documentation that had been presented was "especially voluminous." The sentence was upheld and in 2004 Teta was laicized.

The case of Trupia shows the fragmented nature of how Rome handled such allegations before 2001, when Ratzinger dictated that all abuse cases must go through his Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Before then, files were sent to varied Vatican departments, as they were in the case of Trupia. Moreno suspended Trupia in 1992, but again faced delays from the Vatican in having him formally removed from the church.

Documents show at least two Vatican offices _ the Congregation for the Clergy and the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Catholic Church _ were involved in the case at least as early as 1995.

Moreno pleaded with the Congregation for the Clergy to do something, writing, "We have proofs of civil crimes against people who were under his priestly care" and warning Trupia could "be the source of greater scandal in the future."

Ultimately, the case landed in Ratzinger's office.

On Feb. 10, 2003, a day after the Arizona Daily Star reported that Trupia was living in a condo near Baltimore, driving a leather-seated Mercedes-Benz with a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, Moreno wrote to Ratzinger again.

Sick with prostate cancer and the beginning stages of Parkinson's disease, Moreno was approved for early retirement by Pope John Paul II.

Before he was replaced, the bishop wrote Ratzinger yet again. Moreno's replacement, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, sent similar requests to Ratzinger and his subordinates.

"My experience _ and as I've looked at the records in our serious cases _ the Vatican actually was prodding, through the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Ratzinger, to try to get this case going," Kicanas said.

Finally, in August 2004, Trupia was laicized.

"The tragedy is that the bishops have only two choices: Follow the Vatican's code of secrecy and delay, or leave the church," Cadigan, the victims' lawyer, said Friday. "It's unfortunate that their faith demands that they sacrifice children to follow the Vatican's directions."

Trupia's former attorney, Stephen A. Shechtel of Rockville, Md., said Friday that he never dealt with the church on his client's behalf and that Trupia was aware he would be defrocked and didn't fight it.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno's replacement, defended the Vatican's handling of the Arizona cases, citing the prolonged process of internal church trials that he acknowledged could be "frustratingly slow because of the seriousness of the concerns."

Kicanas said suggestions that Ratzinger resisted addressing the issues of sexual abuse in the church were "grossly unfair."

"Cardinal Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was always receptive, ready to listen, to hear people's concerns," Kicanas said. "Pope Benedict is the same man."

___

Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Ben Nuckols in Baltimore contributed to this report.

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Anglican leader: Irish church lost its credibility

Published - Apr 03 2010 09:53AM EST

By JENNIFER QUINN - Associated Press Writer


Commenting for the first time on the crisis gripping the Catholic Church, Dr Rowan Williams said the revelations had been a "colossal trauma" for Ireland in particular.

LONDON— The Roman Catholic church in Ireland has lost its credibility because of its mishandling of abuse by priests, the leader of the Anglican church said in remarks released Saturday. A leading Catholic archbishop said he was "stunned" by the comments.

It was the first time Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, has spoken publicly on the crisis engulfing the Catholic church. The remarks come ahead of a planned visit to England and Scotland by Pope Benedict XVI later this year.

"I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now," Williams told the BBC. "And an institution so deeply bound into the life of a society, suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility _ that's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland, I think."

The interview with Williams, recorded March 26, is to be aired Monday on the BBC's "Start the Week" program. His remarks were part of a general discussion of religion to mark Easter.

The Catholic church has been on the defensive over accusations leaders protected child abusers for decades in many countries.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said he had "rarely felt personally so discouraged" as when he heard Williams' opinions.

"I have been more than forthright in addressing the failures of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I still shudder when I think of the harm that was caused to abused children. I recognize that their church failed them," a statement, posted on the archdiocese's Web site, said. "Those working for renewal in the Catholic Church in Ireland did not need this comment on this Easter weekend and do not deserve it."

Relations between the two churches were strained last year after the Vatican invited conservative Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. How many will take up the offer is still unknown.

"I don't think it's going to be a big deal for the Church of England, I must say," Williams said. "I think there'll be a few people who will take advantage of it _ and they'll take advantage of it because they believe they ought to be in communion with the bishop of Rome. And I can only say fine, God bless them."

Williams said he would meet with the pope at Lambeth Palace, that he would be welcomed as "as a valued partner, and that's about it."

In the interview, Williams said Christian institutions, faced with the choice of self-protection or revealing potentially damaging secrets, have decided to keep quiet to preserve their credibility.

"We've learned that that is damaging, it's wrong, it's dishonest and it requires that very hard recognition ... which ought to be natural for the Christian church based as it is on repentance and honesty," he said.

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