A burgeoning scandal on both sides of the Atlantic is threatening to tarnish the papacy following further revelations about the handling of sex abuse cases by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
The Vatican strongly defended Pope Benedict yesterday and denounced what it said was a concerted campaign to smear him and his aides for a problem that Rome insists is not unique to the Catholic Church.
The Vatican's defence came following a newspaper report that an investigation of a US priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys was stopped after an appeal to the then Cardinal Ratzinger.
Further revelations in today's New York Times said the future pope was kept more closely apprised of a German priest's sex abuse case in 1980 than previous church statements have suggested.
The case of the German priest, the Rev Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children, the Times said.
Cardinal Ratzinger was copied on a memo that told him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome paedophilia, would return to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment, the Times said. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another German parish.
Earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Munich placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger's deputy, the Rev Gerhard Gruber, the Times said.
But the memo cited by the Times says that the future pope not only led a meeting on January 15th, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the priest's reassignment.
A report in yesterday's edition of the newspaper said the pope failed to respond to pleas from a US bishop for guidance in dealing with a paedophile priest in 1996. Disciplinary proceedings against the same priest were interrupted two years later, after the priest appealed to the pope, who was then a cardinal.
According to documents provided to the New York Times by the lawyers of five men who are suing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Fr Lawrence Murphy sexually abused approximately 200 boys at a school for the deaf where he taught and was then director between 1950 and 1974.
Many of the victims complained, going so far as to pass out leaflets in front of Milwaukee cathedral, but they were ignored by police, prosecutors and three successive archbishops.
In affidavits, Fr Murphy’s victims recounted how the priest undressed them and fondled them in his office and car, in the confessional, at his mother’s house and in their dormitory beds at night.
Fr Murphy was reportedly a skilled fundraiser with a gift for communicating with the deaf through sign language.
In 1974, he was transferred to the Diocese of Superior, in northern Wisconsin. Until his death 24 years later, Fr Murphy worked in schools, parishes and a juvenile detention centre, where he is also accused of abusing a boy. At his funeral in 1998, he was laid out in priestly vestments.
Two years earlier, Archbishop Rembert Weakland alerted the Vatican to Fr Murphy’s record, in two letters addressed to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s disciplinary body, from 1981 until 2005.
Having received no response, Dr Weakland sent an urgent message to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s high court, in March 1997, asking for guidance because one of Fr Murphy’s victims was about to initiate a lawsuit.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was then Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, and is today the Vatican’s secretary of state – the equivalent of a prime minister – instructed Dr Weakland to begin secret disciplinary proceedings against Fr Murphy.
But Cardinal Bertone backtracked after Fr Murphy wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger pleading for mercy because he was old, ill and had repented. “I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Fr Murphy wrote.
There is no record of a response from Cardinal Ratzinger, but Cardinal Bertone asked the diocese to stop the process and instead use only “pastoral measures”, such as preventing Fr Murphy from celebrating Mass outside his home diocese.
In a meeting yesterday morning, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, one of Pope Benedict’s top aides, denounced a “conspiracy” against the church. Reuters news agency quoted Cardinal Martins saying that he favoured zero tolerance now, but that, “we should not be too scandalised if some bishops knew about it but kept it secret. This is what happens in every family; you don’t wash your dirty laundry in public,” he said.
The Vatican angrily attacked the media over its reporting of sexual abuse of children by priests, saying there was an "ignoble attempt" to smear Pope Benedict "at any cost."
Benedict's actions have been marked by "transparency, firmness and severity in shedding light on the various cases of sexual abuse committed by priests and clergymen," the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said in a front-page article.
It lashed out at what it said was a "prevailing trend in the media" to ignore facts and spread an image of the Catholic Church "as if it were the only one responsible for sexual abuses - an image that does not correspond to reality."