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	Alleged Victim of Wisconsin Priest Says He's Shocked to Learn of Pope's Role in Case News Observer March 26, 2010 http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/25/407456/alleged-victim-of-wisconsin-priest.html MINNEAPOLIS -- Donald Marshall, 45, says he still remembers when the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy entered his cell at the Lincoln Hills School for Boys reformatory near Wausau, Wis., when Marshall was 13. "We were studying the Bible together," Marshall said. "It started out with him putting his hand on my knee. I didn't think nothing of it. ... He moved over closer and started kissing me, started fondling me." Two years ago, Marshall and three other alleged victims of Murphy's sued the Catholic Church. That suit became an international news story Thursday, when their attorneys, Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan of St. Paul, released internal church documents they'd obtained. The documents suggest that when Pope Benedict XVI was a cardinal, he and other top Vatican officials halted an effort to defrock Murphy, despite evidence that he had molested up to 200 children at a Milwaukee school for the deaf. The letters between Wisconsin bishops and the Vatican appear to show that the pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, derailed plans for a secret canonical trial of Murphy, despite the bishops' warnings that a scandal could erupt over Murphy's "crimes" against "many victims." News of those documents broke in The New York Times on Thursday, the same day CNN reported on another priest abuse case that has both international implications for the Catholic Church and a connection to Minnesota. In that case, the Rev. Francis Markey, who once served a parish in Granite Falls, Minn., is jailed in Indiana, awaiting extradition to Ireland to face the charges that he raped a boy there decades ago. From 2001 to 2005, Ratzinger headed a Vatican office called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which, among other duties, decided whether accused priests should get canonical trials. Murphy, the Wisconsin priest, taught at and later headed St. John's School for the Deaf. After parishioners accused him of abusing children, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee transferred him in 1974 to the Diocese of Superior, where he abused Marshall and other children, according to Anderson. The Superior diocese said Thursday in a statement that though Murphy was relocated there, he "was never formally associated as a priest of the Diocese of Superior and was always the responsibility of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee." Marshall said that when he complained about Murphy, the superintendent of the reformatory told him that there had been several other incidents, and that Murphy would be barred from further visits. But records indicate that Murphy continued to work in the diocese. He died in 1998, still a priest. Marshall, who repairs cars in West Allis, Wis., said Thursday that he was shocked to learn of the pope's involvement with the Murphy case. He said: "I keep asking myself, how can they live with themselves, knowing they allowed it to happen (with) Farther Murphy?" He said Ratzinger "should be ashamed of himself." Anderson estimates that over 25 years he's represented 2,500 to 3,000 victims of abuse by priests, but he had never seen or even heard of a document directly connecting a church cover-up to a future pope. He said the documents pointing to Ratzinger's office were produced during the Murphy lawsuit's discovery process. He said he was floored several weeks ago when he saw the latest documents. Anderson said the evidence "directly implicates Pope Benedict ... in the cover-up." The documents show that in 1996, Rembert G. Weakland, then Milwaukee's archbishop, wrote Ratzinger about the problems with Murphy. Ratzinger did not answer. Instead, Weakland got a reply from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who worked for Ratzinger, advising the Wisconsin bishops to hold a secret trial of Murphy. Murphy then appealed to Ratzinger for mercy, writing that he had repented his "transgressions" and at 72 was ailing. He pleaded with him to stop the trial, and Bertone halted it. Anderson said the documents are the "tip of the ice berg" - that he believes thousands of similarly shocking documents are locked in church vaults. "I hope it exposes this culture and lays them so bare that they cannot continue to commit the crimes they have" he said. Marshall said he's still Catholic. "I haven't given up on God," he said, "but as far as the church, I have no use for it." In the other case connected to Minnesota, Markey, 82, awaits extradition to Ireland to face charges that he raped a boy 40 years ago. Markey spent time in Granite Falls and Willmar in the early 1980s. There was one report that he hugged a Granite Falls boy in what the youngster interpreted as an attempt to kiss him, but the boy stopped him. The Twin Cities chapter of Voice of the Faithful has not received any other complaints, but moderator Suzanne Severson said that could change now. "That's the primary purpose in getting these names out in the public," she said. "Victims always tell us, 'I thought I was the only one.' Now people are going to start see these names and start making connections. ... I think there are people out there we haven't heard from yet." The Diocese of New Ulm issued a statement saying that in addition to a three-month interim assignment at the Church of St. Andrew in 1982, Markey filled in at other parishes in 1981 while he was assigned to a pastoral education program at Willmar State Hospital. The statement called on anyone who had been victimized by him or any church official to contact the diocese. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said it planned to ask in a news conference in Superior on Friday for anyone who was abused by Murphy to contact them. The diocese said that Bishop Peter Christianson was out of the office Thursday and would not have a statement about Murphy until he returned. Markey's anticipated extradition to Ireland comes as that heavily Catholic country reels from reports that church officials covered up widespread sexual abuse from 1975 to 2004. Last weekend, every parish in Ireland was read a letter of apology from Pope Benedict. Severson said that she wasn't surprised that the Vatican's connection to the scandal had reached Minnesota. "This has become a global situation," she said. "It's everywhere."
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