UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin
Statement by John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259
It is difficult today, with the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is retiring this month, not to think of the many victim/survivors of sexual abuse from St. John’s School for the Deaf.
It was Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger in his previous post running the powerful Doctrine for the Congregation of the Faith CDF), who was in charge of the fate of the notorious Fr. Lawrence Murphy. Murphy, Ratzinger knew, had sexually assaulted at least 200 children at the boarding school in Milwaukee. Ratzinger ordered that Murphy be left in ministry, unpunished and unprosecuted, undetected to the public, and remain a priest, with all the rights, honors, and power which the church grants only to ordained clerics, right up until his death.
Benedict never once contacted, spoke to, or apologized to the deaf victims from St. John’s
Benedict’s fateful decision with Murphy at the time left children at risk in Wisconsin and also hundreds of deaf victims without a voice in their church. Is it little wonder, then, that Benedict leaves the Papacy without really addressing, fundamentally, the sex abuse crisis in the global church?
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