Pope faces child abuse cover up query

[Elessarina]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8587082.stm

Questions are being raised about whether Pope Benedict was personally involved in covering up a case of child sex abuse by a Roman Catholic priest.

Documents seen by the New York Times newspaper allege that in the 1990s, long before he became Pope, he failed to respond to letters about a US case.

Fr Lawrence Murphy, of Wisconsin, was accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys.

Defending itself, the Vatican said US civil authorities had investigated and dropped the case.

For more than 20 years before he was made Pope, Joseph Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith - the Vatican office with responsibility, among other issues, for the Church's response to child abuse cases.

Allegations that the Church sought to cover up child abuse by Catholic priests in Europe have haunted the Vatican for months.

'So friendly'

The documents seen by the New York Times suggest that in 1996, the then Cardinal Ratzinger twice failed to respond to letters sent to him personally.


Instead of removing [Fr Murphy] from the priesthood, they just gave him a free pass

Jeff Anderson
US lawyer
They concerned the Rev Lawrence Murphy, who worked at a Wisconsin school for deaf children from the 1950s.

Three archbishops of Wisconsin were told Fr Murphy was sexually abusing boys but those allegations were not reported to civil authorities at the time.

Alleged victims quoted by the New York Times gave accounts of the priest pulling down their trousers and touching them in his office, his car, his mother's country house, on class excursions and fund-raising trips, and in their dormitory beds at night.

"If he was a real mean guy, I would have stayed away," said Arthur Budzinski, 61, a former pupil of at St John's School for the Deaf, in St Francis, in the Diocese of Milwaukee.

"But he was so friendly, and so nice and understanding. I knew he was wrong, but I couldn't really believe it."

According to the New York Times, Fr Murphy 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. He died in 1998, still a priest.

Two lawyers have filed lawsuits on behalf of five men alleging the Archdiocese of Milwaukee did not take sufficient action against the priest.

One of the lawyers, Jeff Anderson, told the Associated Press news agency that the documents they had obtained on Fr Murphy, and shown to the New York Times, showed the Vatican was more concerned about possible publicity than about the abuse allegations.

"Instead of removing him from the priesthood, they just gave him a free pass," he said.

'Tragic case'

The Pope's official spokesman, Federico Lombardi, called it a "tragic case" but pointed out that the Vatican had become involved only in 1996, after US civil authorities had dropped the case.

"During the mid-1970s, some of Fr Murphy's victims reported his abuse to civil authorities," the Rev Lombardi said in a statement.

"The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith was not informed of the matter until some 20 years later."

The Milwaukee diocese was asked to take action by "restricting Fr Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts", the Rev Lombardi added.

He also said that Fr Murphy's poor health and a lack of more recent allegations had been factors in the decision not to defrock him.

But the Vatican's decision not to carry out its own investigation is the question that brings the now Pope's own involvement centre stage, says BBC religious affairs correspondent Christopher Landau.

Victims of sexual abuse by priests have long argued that the Church has been more interested in protecting its reputation and helping its priests than seeking justice for victims, our correspondent adds.

Fr Murphy died in 1998, with - in the Church's view - no official blemish on his priestly record.

But questions about why Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to concerns being raised by American archbishops still demand answers, our correspondent says.

And such questions mean that this sexual abuse crisis continues to have an impact at the very highest level in the Roman Catholic church, he adds.

[maiforpeace]

:pissed:

[The Dawktor]

I wish the Authorities all the luck in the world in trying to get the old fecker!

[Animavore]

Sigh.

[Pappa]

If it was a chess club, claiming they had the right to use their own special committee to investigate accusations of child sex abuse in secret, we'd have the entire club shut down and all it's adult members dragged into court... but it's the church... so it's OK. :pissed:

[owtth]

Time for Evil Pope Thread?

[Pappa]

Time for Evil Pope Thread?

Isn't it always?

[Tigger]

Time for Evil Pope Thread?

Isn't it always?

Is that the beginnings of a horn he's got on his head there?
Or a horn for likkle boys, maybe.

[owtth]

I see the Vatican are going on the offensive attacking the media for being ignoble

Having said that can it be considered a cover up if you just ignore the problem, which seems to be what happened in this particular case?

[Shuggy]

The Dominion, Wellington New Zealand, March 29, 2010

Church has lost its moral authority
TWELVE days ago Father Peter Murnane, a Catholic priest, and two other men were acquitted of charges of burglary and wilful damage at the Waihopai spybase. The trio admitted attacking the base, but successfully argued that they were acting for the greater good because spybases contributed to unspeakable evils such as torture, war and weapons of mass destruction.
The not guilty verdict has prompted many readers to question the jury's rationality, but few would doubt Father Murnane's good intentions. The Catholic priesthood has a history of throwing up social crusaders.
What the church sorely lacks, however, is crusaders prepared to tackle its own appalling record of sexual abuse of children. Put bluntly, the church is an organisation that harbours child abusers, covers up child abuse and facilitates child abuse by transferring paedophiles to dioceses in which their offending is not known.
A few days ago Pope Benedict XVI apologised to Irish Catholics for "sinful and criminal" sexual abuse by clergy and reprimanded Ireland's bishops for "grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership". The apology followed the publication of two Irish government reports revealing decades of systematic sex abuse of hundreds of thousands of Irish children. However, the Pope announced no sackings and did not order bishops and priests to report sexual abuse to the police, as victims' groups have demanded. Cardinal Sean Brady remains head of the church in Ireland despite having been a witness to a secret tribunal in 1975 at which two children abused by a priest, who went on to abuse scores more children, were made to take a vow of silence.
For that matter, the Pope himself remains head of the church despite allegations in the German magazine Der Spiegel that he knew in 1980, while archbishop of Munich and Freising, that a colleague had been accused of sexually abusing three boys but did not report him to the police. The colleague, allowed to return to pastoral work, went on to abuse other minors.
The Irish and German cases are not isolated incidents. Priests and members of other Catholic orders have done irreparable harm to children in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the Netherlands and Austria - harm that will ripple through families and communities for generations.
Children too small to defend themselves have been preyed upon by those they were taught to trust and the church has, as one of the Irish government reports found, engaged in "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets". By putting its interests ahead of the interests of children, the church has surrendered any claims it had to moral authority.
Until it puts its own house in order by reporting all cases of sexual abuse, historic and present, to temporal authorities and co-operating fully with investigations, its leaders are in no position to lecture anyone about abortion, contraception, sex outside marriage, spybases or anything else.

[Shuggy]

Is that the beginnings of a horn he's got on his head there?

Here too:

http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archive ... nedict.jpg[/imgc]

[Rum]

Have you every tried to imagine his pale, tiny, shrivelled willy?

Too late. You have read that now!

:twisted:

[SPMaximus]

Have you every tried to imagine his pale, tiny, shrivelled willy?

Too late. You have read that now!

:twisted:

Willy the shriveled dog