Pope ‘failed to act’ on sex abuse
Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of failing to act on complaints from two archbishops in the US about a priest who allegedly abused 200 deaf boys.
The Vatican newspaper said the move was an “ignoble attempt” to smear the Pope.
As a cardinal heading the Vatican office that dealt with sex abuse cases, the future pontiff allegedly failed to respond to letters about the case.
A church trial of the priest was halted after he wrote to the then Cardinal Ratzinger pleading ill health.
The Holy See has recently been plagued by abuse cover-up claims in Europe, echoing a similar scandal that hit the Church in the US eight years ago.
ANALYSIS
David Willey, BBC Vatican correspondent
Hardly a day goes by without new allegations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests somewhere in the world being reported in the media.
The Pope’s spokesman defended Benedict, saying the Vatican department which the future pontiff was in charge of had not been informed of these latest allegations until 1996 – 20 years after the priest’s victims first informed the police.
But the Vatican’s rather lame excuse for lack of any action is that canon law, as Church law is called, “does not envision automatic penalties”.
The Catholic Church teaches that paedophilia is a grave sin, but the evidence is that accused priests were usually moved to another parish rather than punished.
While the Pope is now promoting a policy of zero tolerance to clerical abuse, the suspicion remains that for many years he failed to react to the damning evidence which arrived on his desk.
For more than 20 years before he was made pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – the Vatican office with responsibility, among other issues, for response to child abuse cases.
Two archbishops wrote letters in 1996 to the Vatican office led by Cardinal Ratzinger calling for disciplinary proceedings against Fr Lawrence Murphy, according to Church and Vatican documents.
Fr Murphy was a popular priest who is believed to have molested some 200 boys at St John’s School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, between 1950 and 1974.
A canonical trial authorised by Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy was halted after Fr Murphy wrote to the future pope asking that proceedings be stopped.
The accused priest said in the letter that he was ill and wanted to live out the remainder of his time in the “dignity of my priesthood”.
Victims say Fr Murphy – who died in 1998 – assaulted boys while hearing their confessions, in his office, his car, at his mother’s house and in their dormitory beds.
He was quietly moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes and schools, according to one lawsuit.
Lawsuits have been filed on behalf of five men alleging the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in Wisconsin did not take sufficient action against the priest.
‘Fall on the sword’
At a news conference on Thursday in Milwaukee, one of the victims, Arthur Budzinski, said Fr Murphy had begun to assault him when he was 12.
Neither the clerical authorities, nor the police had intervened when he reported it, the 61-year-old said.
Mr Budzinski was asked through a sign language interpreter what he wanted to see happen now.
“Ratzinger can have all of the colonels and lieutenants they want fall on the sword for him, but eventually he has to ‘fess up,” the interpreter said.
Meanwhile, members of a group of clerical abuse victims who denounced Benedict’s handling of the case in a news conference outside the Vatican were briefly detained by Italian police for not having a permit.
‘Despicable intention’
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said there was no cover-up, denouncing the allegations as “clearly an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost”.
The Pope’s official spokesman, Federico Lombardi, called it a “tragic case”, but said there was no provision in Church law for automatic punishment.
He noted that police did investigate the allegations at the time but did not press charges.
The papal spokesman said the Murphy case had only reached the Vatican in 1996 – two decades after the Milwaukee diocese first learned of the allegations and two years before the priest died.
The diocese was asked to take action by “restricting Father Murphy’s public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts”, he added.
Last week the Pope issued an unprecedented letter to Ireland addressing the 16 years of clerical cover-up scandals.
He has yet to comment on his handling of a child sex abuse case involving a German priest, which developed while Benedict was overseeing the Munich archdiocese.
The Rev Peter Hullermann had been accused of abusing boys when the now Pope approved his 1980 transfer to Munich to receive psychological treatment for paedophilia.
The disgraced priest was convicted in 1986 of abusing a youth, but stayed within the Church for another two decades.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/8587082.stm
Published: 2010/03/25 19:44:30 GMT
© BBC MMX
Is it all possible that the failures were / are INTENDED because of the long existing plans to impose the third mainline religion / created by the very circles who set out to become Lords and Masters of all and everything on earth?
Can anyone really accept that the RCC really represents the teachings of Jesus Christ, when one considers the following:-
1. Where be any reference to CHRISTIAN CHURCH in the title of the RCC?
2. How on earth can the RCC justify its assertions over the centuries, two millennia almost, that the Apostle Peter, was the first Bishop of Rome?
3. The fact was and remains that Peter ‘the Apostle’, denounced Christ three times, according to the scripts passed on to mankind through ‘the New Testament’. Furthermore, he, the Apostle Peter, WAS a contemporary of Jesus Christ but another ’set about promoting the teachings’ of Christ, some two decades later, AND THE OTHER ENDED his life in dungeons in Rome, for reasons one does not have to elaborate.
4. The other I allude to above, was Paul of Tarsus. He was called to Jerusalem by the followers / successors of the fraudsters who came along with their creation, some three centuries before ‘the promised Messiah’ (J.C) and through their vile creation the assertions about the alleged creator of all and everything, the God written of and about in their vile scripts / scernarios, such as ‘The Tower of Babel’ script where one reads of and explicit ACT (actions) by the alleged creator of all. The ACT in itself making it abundantly clear that the ploy of ‘Divide & Manipulate, Manage, Control’ the sons of men WAS BORN OF SUCH EVIL MINDS as the creators of the Old Testament…. RUBBISH, did engage in some 300 years before the ‘arrival’ birth of ‘the Messiah written of in the Old Testament.
5. One HAS TO & MUST consider the fact that Paul of Tarsus (at least two decades after the passing of J.C) was called back to Jerusalem in order to go and arrest the indoctrinated followers of the Old Testament RUBBISH, who on accepting J.C as the Messiah they had been hearing of and about (from the succesors of the creators, and the promoters of Old Testament RUBBISH) were NOT attending / congregating in synagogues (NOTE: one needs to read the Acts of The Apostles in the New Testament) BUT HE (Paul of Tarsus) SAW THE LIGHT (the error of such propositions as the arrest and punishment of those who were REFUSING to cnogregate before the religious leaders of the Hebrews, whom J.C addressed / accused as ‘of THEIR FATHER THE DEVIL >St John’s Gospel (one of the 3 or 4 who are said to have passed on to mankind the material referred to as St. John’s Gospel.
THE VATICAN and any RCC agent / representative is called upont to justify the falsehoods promoted about Peter the Apostle wjo allegedly was the first Bishop of Rome when in fact the promoter and creator of Christ’s teachinhgs was eliminated by the Romans who also distributed the followers of the Old Testament RUBBISH in all corners of their empire for obvious reasons >TO PROMOTE the alleged creator of all ane everything as concocted by the fraudsters who came along with THEIR Old Testament RUBBISH…. including many vile (anagram of evil) scenarios and scripts some of which I point to in a webpage where I relate and address elements and issues RELEVANT TO THE FAMILY OF HUMANS.
Finally I beg to draw attention to a fax transmission / communication to the editor of the London Evening Standard at:
http://www.uk-human-rights.org/media.htm
When I challenged the editor to address and deal with historical realities (as recorded for posterity) relevant to the parts of the RCC in many criminal acts over the centuries including the rivers of blood by persons who were aspiring to be accepted as Anbassadors / agents on earth of the one and only, and as Lords and Masters of the targeted suckers, the sons of men on earth.
Odd it never was to me that the creators and promoters of such RUBBISH, as through the Old Testament mankind was fed with, NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED to refer to the inhabitants of ‘planet’ earth as ‘the successors of Adam and Eve’, the first humans allegedly created by the one and only in his image… the last element leading to the logical observation “because they would be programmed and conditioned to act and behave as the evil one, who came down to earth in order to stop the sons (no daughters) of men (no women) in accordance with the fraudsters who came along with their Old Testament RUBBISH, and through it aiming to become Lords & Maters of all and evryrthing, care of the multitude of religions created and founded on their RUBBISH…. the very religions ALSO PART OF THE DIFFERENT TONGUES written of in the Old Testament Tower of Babel script.
WAKE UP FRIENDS and recognise that YOU have been fooled long enough by lousy actors.