Maltese Priest Defends Pope in Child Abuse Scandal, Times of Malta, March 14, 2010

Maltese Priest Defends Pope in Child Abuse Scandal

Times of Malta
March 14, 2010

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100314/local/maltese-priest-defends-pope-in-child-abuse-scanda

VATICAN CITY -- Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican official in charge of prosecuting priests alleged to have committed serious sexual crimes, has defended the Pope amid a widening child abuse scandal in his former diiocese.

He told L'Avvenire - the Italian Bishops Conference newspaper, in comments also carried by the BBC - that accusations that the Pontiff had helped cover up abuse were "false and calumnious".

He added that the future Pope "showed wisdom and firmness" in handling cases of abuse when he was head of the department in charge of Church discipline, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for four years before becoming Pope.

Mgr Scicluna with then Cardinal Ratzinger.

Mgr Scicluna admitted that since 2001, about 3,000 accusations of abuse by priests of minors had been received by Vatican officials. They involved both diocesan and religious priests and regarded acts committed over the last 50 years.

"We can say that about 60% of the cases chiefly involved sexual attraction towards adolescents of the same sex, another 30% involved heterosexual relations," he said.

"The remaining 10% were cases of paedophilia in the true sense of the term; that is, based on sexual attraction towards prepubescent children."

He said that 60% of the 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.

"It's true that there has been no formal condemnation," Mgr 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."

He also addressed accusations that the Vatican was obstructing justice by hiding reports of abuse, saying 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".

But he said Church secrecy had "never been understood as a ban on denouncing the crimes to the civil authorities".

Following a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the diocese of Munich and Freising confirmed last week that then-Archbishop Ratzinger had let the priest, known only as H, stay at a vicarage in Munich for "therapy".

H had been suspected of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform a sex act upon him in the northern city of Essen.

While he was in Munich, between February 1980 and August 1982, no wrongdoing was reported.

He was then transferred to the town of Grafing, where he was relieved of his duties in 1985 after allegations of child sex abuse, the diocese said.

In 1986, he was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence and a fine for sexually abusing minors, details of which were not given by the diocese.

Archbishop Ratzinger's former deputy, Gerhard Gruber, has taken responsibility for initially allowing H to remain within the Church, saying this had been "a bad mistake".

Speaking to the Associated Press, he added that there had been about 1,000 priests in the diocese at the time and that the archbishop "could not deal with everything".