Germany's clerical abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI after his former archdiocese
disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected paedophile 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 put the spotlight on Pope 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 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 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 did not 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, Father Federico Lombardi, issued a statement 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.
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, cited the document as evidence that the Vatican created a "wall of silence" around abuse cases that prevented prosecution.
Irish bishops said the document had been "widely misunderstood" by the bishops themselves to mean they should not go to police.
And lawyers for abuse victims in the United States have cited the document in arguing that the Roman Catholic Church tried to obstruct justice.
But canon lawyers insisted 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.
AP