Officials Say Attempts to Link the Pontiff to Abuses Have Failed
By Gavin Jones
The Province
March 14, 2010
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Vatican+closes+ranks+around+Pope/2681543/story.html
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican rallied around Pope Benedict on Saturday, dismissing suggestions he had tried to cover up priestly child abuse in Germany.
"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched -- with notable tenacity in Regensburg and Munich -- for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the question of the abuses," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
"To any objective observer, it's clear that these attempts have failed."
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| The famed Domspatzen (Cathedral Sparrows) choir (left) pictured performing in the southern German city of Regensburg in 2007, has been linked to the Catholic Church's widening sex-abuse scandal. The choir was run for 30 years by the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger |
The pope's former diocese in Bavaria said on Friday he was involved in a decision in 1980 to move a priest there who was suspected of child abuse.
The pontiff -- then Joseph Ratzinger -- jointly agreed to the priest undergoing therapy at a rectory in the diocese of Munich and Freising, where he was archbishop from 1977 to 1981.
However, rather than sending the priest for therapy as had been agreed, the diocese's then vicar general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a Munich parish without restrictions.
Gruber took full responsibility for the decision, the diocese said. A vicar-general is a bishop's deputy responsible for the general management of the diocese.
On Friday, the head of Germany's Catholic Church briefed journalists about the situation in Germany, where more than 100 reports have emerged of abuse at Catholic institutions.
They include a boarding school
linked to the prestigious Domspatzen ( "Cathedral Sparrows"), Regensburg cathedral's thousand-year-old choir, run by the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 to 1994.
Robert Zollitsch said the Church's top doctrinal body was studying the norms for dealing with abuse cases adopted by the church in nations around the world with a view to coming up with a standard set of norms for the whole Catholic Church.
The Vatican defended the pontiff vigorously on Saturday, with Lombardi's comments accompanying a separate interview by the Holy See's official prosecutor, or "promoter of justice".
Monsignor Charles. J. Scicluna told the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire that accusations the pope had helped cover up abuse were "false and calumnious."
The Vatican's disciplinary office had dealt with 3,000 cases of sexual misconduct since 2001, covering "crimes" committed over the last 50 years, Scicluna said.
However, only about 300 of these involved "pedophilia in the true sense of the term," meaning abuse based on attraction to prepubescent children.
About 60 per cent of the cases concerned adolescents and the rest involved heterosexual relations.
A full trial had been completed for 20 per cent of the cases and only 10 per cent had resulted in the pope dismissing the offender from the priesthood.
Lombardi said church rules for controlling and punishing abuse did not create the conditions for any cover up and were, on the contrary, vigorous and severe.
"It is right to remember that all of this was set up by cardinal Ratzinger when he was prefect of the Congregation," Lombardi said.
"His line has always been one of rigour and consistency in tackling even the most difficult situations."
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