BishopAccountability.org
	Pope Benedict's (Formerly Known As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) Record on Clergy Sexual Abuse: Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests April 10, 2008 http://snapnetwork.org/Papal%20visit%202008/040808_benedicts_record_on_sexual_abuse.html - In 2002, when the clergy sexual abuse crisis exploded in the United States, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger blamed the scandals on an "intentional, manipulated...desire to discredit the church" by the media. - He and his spokesmen have time and time again minimized the crisis by repeating discredited estimates on the number of pedophile priests. - In 2002, he "watered down" the rules for confronting priest sex abuse established by U.S. bishops earlier that year in Dallas. Cardinal Ratzinger, then Pope John Paul's closest adviser, called for measures that weakened the role of lay review boards and seemingly promoted a view that church law trumps criminal law. - He has kept the most notorious of all American bishops in handling clergy sexual abuse on the job in the literal and figurative center of Catholic power. That's Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former archbishop of Boston, whom the Vatican plucked for a prominent position in Rome after Law resigned over public outcry because of his cover-ups of predator priests. - He ignored repeated complaints from eight Legion of Christ seminarians who came forward in 1998 to say the order's founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, sexually abused them. Cardinal Ratzinger slapped ABC-TV investigative reporter Brian Ross on the wrist (literally) for asking a question about the case. (In 2006, Pope Benedict "invited" Maciel to live "a life of prayer and penance" but prohibited a church trial.) - Since becoming pope, he hasn't disciplined or spoken out against a single U.S. bishop who failed to enforce the 2002 policy on child sexual abuse. Among these bishops is Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. George's failure to heed warnings about pedophile priest Daniel McCormack led to more children being abused in between 2004 and 2005. McCormack was arrested in 2006 and sent to prison last July. - He ignored the 2004 Dallas Morning News report on 'Runaway Priests' about several proven, admitted and credibly accused U.S. pedophile priests who fled the country only to live and work in and around the Vatican. - He hasn't disciplined or spoken out against dioceses or religious orders, including St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., which allows a convicted clergy sex offender to repeatedly lead retreats on its grounds and misleads the public about its so-called monitoring of predator monks. In fact, the pope just welcomed the abbot and others from the abbey to the Vatican last week to promote a Bible the abbey publishes. -He's done little or nothing for clergy abuse victims outside the United States. The scandals emerged sooner in the U.S. because of more aggressive journalism, more sophisticated law enforcement and a more independent judiciary. The bulk of the world's Catholic kids (roughly 94%) are even more vulnerable than American kids are to pedophile priests. Yet the Pope has done virtually nothing to protect them. - He refused to visit Boston, the epicenter of the on-going clergy sex scandals, during his first U.S. trip. Catholic commentators say this is because the pope didn't want the predator priest revelations to dominate his trip. But could it be that he didn't want to shine a spotlight on the bishops failures and, consequently, his own?
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