Quote:Pope faces fresh claims of child sex abuse cover-up

Thursday, March 25 11:24 am



Pope Benedict XVI faced fresh pedophilia cover-up claims as church files suggested he failed to take action against a US priest accused of molesting up to 200 deaf boys. Skip related content

The documents obtained by The New York Times include correspondence between the accused priest, who worked at a school for deaf children in the US state of Wisconsin, and the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1996.

Ratzinger, then part of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was alerted to the accusations against Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy in two letters written to him by the Wisconsin archbishop.

But he failed to respond to the letters, and a secret canonical trial authorized by his deputy was halted after Murphy wrote to the future pope begging that the proceedings be stopped, the Times said.

"I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," Murphy wrote to the future pope, according to files. "I ask your kind assistance in this matter."

The documents contain no response from Ratzinger, and Murphy died two years later still a priest, the newspaper said.

Murphy worked at the school from 1950 to 1974, and despite multiple allegations against him was afterwards moved to another diocese where he was allowed to continue working freely with children, the Times reported.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi on Thursday issued a full statement, which had been quoted in part by the Times, defending the pope's actions.

He said the Milwaukee diocese was asked at the time to take action by "restricting Father Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts."

The matter was delegated to the archbishop "in light of the facts that Father Murphy was elderly and in very poor health, and that he was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years."

"During the mid-1970s, some of Father Murphy's victims reported his abuse to civil authorities (...) The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith was not informed of the matter until some 20 years later," said the statement.

The newly-revealed church files are included in four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, brought by five men whose lawyers handed the long-secret documents to the newspaper over opposition from the Catholic Church.

The latest revelations come amid a wave of scandals over long-running sex abuse involving Catholic clergy in several other countries, including Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The scandals have been inching closer to the pope himself.

In a case in his native Germany, the Munich and Freising diocese said recently that while archbishop there in 1980, Ratzinger approved giving church housing to a priest suspected of child sex abuse while he received "therapy."

The pope on Saturday apologized for child sex abuse carried out by Irish priests in a pastoral letter expressing "shame and remorse."

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."

Victims argued the letter did not go far enough to address the scandal.

The Wisconsin church documents, the Times said, show that three successive archbishops in the state were informed that Murphy was sexually abusing children but the incidents were never reported to authorities, either criminal or civil.

Victims of Catholic priests say they are angered not only by the scale of abuse committed by clergy, but also by what they deem a pattern of complicity and complacency by senior Vatican officials.

They say high-ranking church officials failed to take abuse claims seriously and effectively covered up crimes, rather than punishing priests and admitting their abuses.

Quote:Vatican denies Pope was involved in sex abuse cover up

The Vatican has denied claims that Pope Benedict XVI failed to defrock a US priest who was accused of molesting up to 200 deaf boys over several years.



Published: 11:01AM GMT 26 Mar 2010

The Vatican has defended the Pope over charges that he failed to act against a priest accused of abusing 200 deaf boys Photo: REUTERS
A Vatican newspaper editorial said the claims were an "ignoble" attack on the Pope and that there was no "cover-up", the BBC reports.
Archbishops had complained about Fr Lawrence Murphy in the 1990s to a Vatican office led by the future pope, but apparently received no response.
Arthur Budzinski is one of Father Murphy's alleged victims. He said that the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He said he asked the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to hear his confession, and instead the priest took him into a closet under the stairs and sexually assaulted him.
Father Murphy was also accused of molesting boys in the confessional, in dormitories, in closets and during field trips while working at the school for the deaf from the 1950s through 1974. He died in 1998 at age 72.
Allegations against Father Murphy resurfaced this week after documents obtained by The New York Times apparently showed that he was spared a defrocking in the mid-1990s because he was protected by the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the Pope.
The Vatican strongly defended its decision not to defrock Father Murphy and denounced what it called a campaign to smear the Pope and his aides.

Quote: Quote:
Originally Posted by David Guyatt
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Originally Posted by Jan Klimkowski
The Vatican strategy, as far as it can be discerned, appears to be to offer non-apology apologies where the evidence of child abuse cannot be denied, whilst denying any systemic problems and denying that the Church acted inappropriately in moving paedophile priests from parish to parish to continue abusing.

However, if there was to be a proper judicial investigation, this strategy will fail and Pope Ratzinger will end up in prison. Precisely because, once again, Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981-2005, which is the Vatican's intelligence and enforcement arm.

Ratzinger knows where all the skeletons are buried, because he was in charge of burying them.

I suspect Vatican secrecy will win the day though. I cannot imagine lawyers acting for the abused being allowed anywhere near the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

If things get too difficult the Vatican will issue a diplomatic protest note to the US State Department and the law case will go away.

This is what happened in the class action lawsuit against the Vatican for laundering Yugoslavian gold.

More recently there was some sort of arrangement with Bush not to push the Vatican about the pedophilia law suits and the Vatican wouldn't push Bush on the war crimes and atrocities. I can't recall is it was the panzer pope or the Polish pope though.

Quote:January 16, 1997, BOB note 466: "He is very afraid. He was a treasurer of the youth section of the PSC. He often met with Michel Dewolf - Philippe Sala and Jean-Paul Dumont. They tried to direct Thoma toward Opus Dei what they considered Nec Plus Ultra [Latin for "nothing further beyond"]. Under the pretext of initiation tests for Opus Dei he was brought to a Black Mass with sexual acts.

Evidence of Jacques Thoma

Quote:She talked about how members of high society regularly allow themselves to be taken up in different religious cults and sects. In one of her later testimonies X4 mentioned that members of Opus Dei had been among her most sadistic clients.

Evidence of X4

Quote:At some point Nathalie also mentioned Castle Dongelberg as a place of abuse (owned by Opus Dei). X2 also claimed that children had been abused at Dongelberg, while in other reports the castle is mentioned as a place where conspirators had organized several meetings in the 1970s and 1980s when they attempted to overthrow the Belgian state.

Evidence of Nathalie Waeterschoot