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  Vatican Watcher Warns of "Nightmare Scenario" If Sex Scandal Widens

By Peter O'Neil
Montreal Gazette
March 17, 2010

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Vatican+watcher+warns+nightmare+scenario+scandal+widens/2693867/story.html

Pope Benedict XVI waves to faithful from his Papamobile as he arrives for his weekly general audience on March 17, 2010 at St Peter's square at The Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI said the same day he was set to sign a pastoral letter to Ireland's Roman Catholics about the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked their country.
Photo by Andreas Solaro, AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI announced Wednesday he'll issue a pastoral letter later this week aimed at bringing "repentance, healing and renewal" to the Roman Catholic Church that has been rocked by a growing child sex abuse scandal.

The letter will be directed primarily at Ireland's Catholic Church, though it is expected to touch on the abuse revelations emerging in several other European countries — most notably in the Pope's homeland of Germany.

While the Pope has taken several measures —_that have won praise from observers — to deal with the abuse, one prominent Vatican analyst warned Wednesday of a "nightmare scenario" if further revelations in Germany put at risk his moral authority to manage what the analyst called the church's worst crisis of the past century.

"As you know, in recent months the Church in Ireland has been severely shaken as a result of the child abuse crisis," Benedict, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square on St Patrick's Day.

"I ask all of you to read it for yourselves, with an open heart and in a spirit of faith. My hope is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal."

His announcement coincided with an emotional apology by Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland, who was a note-taker at a 1975 meeting where child victims of a notorious serial pedophile priest took secrecy vows.

"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologize to you with all my heart," he said at a sermon at Armagh Cathedral in Northern Ireland.

The emerging scandal in Germany has touched indirectly on the pope as a result of one of the many abuse allegations involving two-thirds of the country's 27 dioceses.

It was reported last week that the pope, then Munich's Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, approved giving church housing and therapy in 1980 to Father Peter Hullermann, who was suspected of sexually abusing children.

Hullermann was then given pastoral duties two years later in a Bavarian town, though the transfer took place after Ratzinger had been transferred to the Vatican. In 1986 Hullermann was fined and given a suspended sentence for abusing children, though he continued serving as a priest.

Pope Benedict XVI has also been embarrassed by revelations relating to a boarding school in Regensburg, linked to the local cathedral's thousand-year-old choir.

The choir was run from 1964 to 1994 by Georg Ratzinger, the pope's brother, who has denied knowledge of sex abuse at the boarding school.

American journalist John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Register and an analyst for CNN and National Public Radio, said Wednesday that Benedict's link to the Hullermann case appears "marginal."

Allen also said Benedict has received high marks since his 2005 election for his handling of the actual abuse of children by priests. He has apologized, launched a zero-tolerance policy, met with victims and disciplined priests.

But the Holy Father has been less favourably viewed for his efforts to ensure the accountability of bishops who failed to deal with the abuse.

Allen said the history of sex abuse scandals dating back to the early 1990s suggests that there will be further revelations in Germany.

"The nightmare scenario would be that if there are additional revelations about his record in Munich, that it could ultimately call into question his moral authority to lead the church out of this crisis," said Allen, author of The Rise of Benedict XVI.

But he said any speculation of a possible resignation are ill-conceived, since there have been only five over the past 2,000 years — and the last was in the 15th century.

"I would put that up there in terms of order of probability with our colliding with another planet," said Allen, who described the scandal as the church's worst crisis in at least a century.

 
 

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