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  Vatican Decries Effort to Draw Pope into Clergy Abuse Scandal
Denies Benedict Tried to Cover up Cases in Germany

By Rachel Donadio and Nicholas Kulish
Boston Globe
March 14, 2010

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/03/14/vatican_decries_effort_to_draw_pope_into_clergy_abuse_scandal/?page=1

VATICAN CITY -- ROME — As new details emerged on allegations of child sexual abuse by priests in the Munich archdiocese then led by the future Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican spoke out yesterday to protect the pope against what it called an aggressive campaign against him in his native Germany.

At the same time, a high-ranking Vatican official overseeing internal investigations yesterday acknowledged that 3,000 cases of suspected abuse of minors had come to its attention in the past decade, of which 20 percent had been brought to trial in Vatican courts.

Jadranka Kosor, prime minister of Croatia, during an audience with Pope Benedict XVI yesterday at the Vatican.
Photo by Danilo Schiavella

In a note read on Vatican Radio yesterday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was "evident that in recent days there are those who have tried, with a certain aggressive tenacity, in Regensburg and in Munich, to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse." He added, "It is clear that those efforts have failed."

In Germany, a man who said he was sexually abused by a priest there in 1979 said yesterday that church officials had told him then that the priest would not be allowed to work with children again. Instead, the priest was allowed, under Benedict's watch, to resume full duties almost immediately, where he went on to abuse more children.

The Vatican also sought to defend the pope against criticism that a Vatican rule requiring secrecy in abuse cases was tantamount to obstruction of justice in civil courts.

Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, director of a tribunal inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's doctrinal arm, dismissed as "false and calumnious" accusations that Benedict covered up abuse cases when he oversaw investigations as prefect of that congregation for four years before becoming pope.

In a rare and unusually frank public interview that appeared on the front page of L'Avvenire, the Italian Bishops Conference newspaper yesterday and was circulated by the Vatican Press Office, Scicluna acknowledged that the Vatican had received about 3,000 accusations of abuse by priests of minors in the past decade, 80 percent of them from the United States.

He said that about 300 priests had been accused of pedophilia in the past nine years. The cases involved both diocesan and religious priests and regarded acts committed over the last 50 years, he said. He added that only 20 percent of priests had been tried — mostly in local dioceses but sometimes in Rome — and some of them had been acquitted.

Of the 3,000 cases, he said, "We can say that about 60 percent of the cases chiefly involved sexual attraction towards adolescents of the same sex, another 30 percent involved heterosexual relations, and the remaining 10 percent were cases of pedophilia in the true sense of the term; that is, based on sexual attraction towards prepubescent children."

He said that 60 percent of the total cases had not come to trial, largely because of the advanced age of the accused, but that they faced other "administrative and disciplinary provisions," including being required to live in seclusion and prohibition from celebrating Mass and hearing confession.

"It's true that there has been no formal condemnation," Scicluna said, adding, "It must be made absolutely clear that in these cases, some of which are particularly sensational and have caught the attention of the media, no absolution has taken place."

In Germany, where hundreds of people have come forward in the last few months with accusations of abuse by priests, new details emerged yesterday about a case in the Munich Archdiocese that the church has acknowledged it made "serious mistakes" in handling. Pope Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, was head of the archdiocese at the time.

The daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the pastor previously identified as H sexually abused an 11-year-old boy in Essen in 1979, including forcing the child to perform oral sex.

In a telephone interview yesterday, the victim, who asked to be identified as Wilfried F. to protect his anonymity, said the abuse occurred after a vacation trip to the Eifel mountains. The priest gave him alcohol, locked him in his bedroom, took off his clothes, and molested him, Wilfried F. said.

When the abuse was reported to the church, the church handled it as an internal matter without notifying the police or prosecutors.

Wilfried F. said church officials said the priest had been transferred to Munich "and that he would no longer be allowed to work with children."

The archdiocese said in a statement on Friday that the priest was moved to Munich in 1980 for therapy with the approval of Ratzinger. Vicar General Gerhard Gruber took responsibility for allowing him to return to pastoral work, where he later was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

In the interview yesterday, Scicluna also addressed accusations that the Vatican was obstructing justice by imposing secrecy on reports of abuse.

In 2001, Benedict, who was then in charge of Vatican investigations of abuse allegations, sent a letter to bishops counseling them to forward all cases of abuse of minors to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where they were to be subject to secrecy.

While dismissing the idea that the Vatican imposed secrecy "in order to hide the facts," Scicluna said that "secrecy during the investigative phase served to protect the good name of all the people involved; first and foremost, the victims themselves, then the accused priests who have the right — as everyone does — to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty."

 
 

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