Church Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope/Cardinal apologizes for child abuse 'failures'

Church Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope
By NICHOLAS KULISH and RACHEL DONADIO
Copyright by Reurers
Published: March 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/world/europe/13pope.html?ref=global-home


BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he had no comment beyond the statement by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he said showed the “nonresponsibility” of the pope in the matter.

The expanding abuse inquiry had come ever closer to Benedict as new accusations in Germany surfaced almost daily since the first reports in January. On Friday the pope met with the chief bishop of Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, to discuss the church investigations and media reports.

Problems in the German church have already come close to the pope, whose brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, 86, directed a choir connected to a boarding school where two former students have come forward with abuse claims. In an interview this week, Monsignor Ratzinger, who directed the choir from 1964 to 1994, said the accusations dated from before his tenure. He also apologized for slapping students.

At a news conference following a one-on-one meeting with Benedict on Friday, Archbishop Zollitsch said the pope was “greatly upset” and “deeply moved” by the abuse allegations, and had urged the German church to seek the truth and help the victims.

The meeting and news conference occurred before the statement from the Munich archdiocese.

Archbishop Zollitsch said the German church had vowed to investigate all allegations of abuse, encouraging victims to identify themselves even if the abuse happened decades ago. In recent weeks, hundreds of people who say they were abuse victims have come forward.

“The cases are growing every day,” said Thomas Pfister, a lawyer appointed by the German church to investigate abuse cases in the Ettal monastery boarding school in Bavaria. He said more than 100 people had contacted him so far.

“Every day I receive e-mails from around the world from people who have been abused,” Mr. Pfister said, adding that the school had posted his e-mail address on its Web site to encourage this. “There has been a very big silence. Now they want to have a voice.”

Experts said the scandals could undermine Benedict’s moral authority, especially because they cut particularly close to the pope himself. As head of the Vatican’s main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he led Vatican investigations into abuse for four years before assuming the papacy in 2005.

“What is at stake, and at great risk, is Benedict’s central project for the ‘re-Christianization’ of Christendom, his desire to have Europe return to its Christian roots,” said David Gibson, the author of a biography of Benedict and a religion commentator for Politicsdaily.com. “But if the root itself is seen as rotten, then his influence will be badly compromised.”

When a sex abuse scandal broke in Boston church in 2002, Pope Benedict — then Cardinal Ratzinger — was among the Vatican officials who made statements that minimized the problem and accused the news media of blowing it out of proportion.

But as the abuse case files landed on his desk at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his colleagues said he was deeply disturbed by what he learned. On his first visit to the United States as pope, Benedict met with abuse victims from Boston and said he was “deeply ashamed” by priests who had harmed children.

But victims’ advocates accuse the pope of doing little to discipline the bishops who permitted abusers to continue serving in ministry. The case in Munich, which was brought to the attention of the diocese by the daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, was a result of “serious mistakes,” the archdiocese said in its statement.

In Munich case, a priest from Essen, “despite allegations of sexual abuse, and in spite of a conviction — was repeatedly assigned work in the sphere of pastoral care by the then-Vicar General Gerhard Gruber,” who worked under Benedict when he was the archbishop.

The priest, identified only with the initial “H,” was moved to Munich in January 1980, where he was supposed to undergo therapy, a decision that was taken “with the approval of the archbishop,” according to the archdiocese’s statement. Benedict was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.

The former vicar general took full responsibility for the decision to reinstate the priest to pastoral work. “I deeply regret that this decision resulted in offenses against youths and apologize to all who were harmed by it,” he said, according to a statement posted on the archdiocese’s Web site.

There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the case.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church, said the vicar general’s claim was not credible.

“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”

It is unclear how many cases have come to light. At the news conference, the archbishop said that the Bishops Conference had sent a questionnaire to dioceses to determine which kinds of abuse cases emerged, not how many, and was awaiting a response.

The scandal is not limited to Germany. This week, two dioceses in Austria suspended five priests pending investigations into allegations they had molested students. The church in the Netherlands has said it would open an investigation after more than 200 people came forward in recent weeks.

To many observers, the situation in Europe looked unsettlingly similar to that in the United States a decade ago, when a trickle of isolated abuse cases steadily grew into a widespread phenomenon that upended — and bankrupted — many American dioceses.

But in Europe, unlike in common-law countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, defendants cannot sue the church for negligence.

“When this first started to break in the United States in the mid-to-late ’80s and our bishops went to Rome for help in dealing with it, they were basically told, ‘This is an American problem,’ ” said Nicholas Cafardi, a canon law expert and emeritus dean of the Duquesne University School of Law.

“But human nature being human nature, it wasn’t logical to say this only exists in the common-law countries,” Mr. Cafardi added. “Our legal system brought it to light more quickly. In fact it’s not an American or common-law problem, it’s a human problem.”


Nicholas Kulish reported from Berlin, and Rachel Donadio from Rome. Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York, and Gaia Pianigiani from Rome.







Cardinal apologizes for child abuse 'failures'
Copyright by CNN News
March 17, 2010 11:20 a.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/17/catholic.ireland.abuse/index.html?hpt=T1


(CNN) -- The head of the Irish Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, admitted Wednesday that the church's response to abuse had been "hopelessly inadequate."

"The church must continue to deal with the enormity of the hurt caused by abuse of children by some clergy ... and the hopelessly inadequate response to that abuse in the past," Brady said Wednesday.

Church leaders must "own up to and take responsibility for any mismanagement or cover-up of child abuse," he said.
The cardinal also apologized for his role in the church's investigation into an abusive priest in 1975.

"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 St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Ireland.

The deeply Catholic country has been badly shaken by a government-backed report that found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he has finished writing his official statement, or pastoral letter, on the child abuse scandal facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

He will sign the letter Friday and send it "soon after," Benedict told the faithful in an address on St. Patrick's Day.
"My hope is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal," he said.

Brady has been under fire over the investigation into the Rev. Brendan Smyth, one of the country's most notorious child-abusing priests.

Brady's office said Tuesday the cardinal -- then a priest and teacher with a doctorate in canon law -- had been asked to investigate two complaints against Smyth in 1975 but had no decision-making power. He reported his findings to Bishop Francis McKiernan, his office said, and McKiernan recommended Smyth get psychiatric help.

But John Kelly, founder of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said Brady should not have remained silent about what he learned in the course of investigating Smyth, who later was convicted of dozens of counts of child abuse in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Smyth died in prison.

"He's basically using the Nuremberg defense -- he was carrying out orders," Kelly said, in reference to the justification many Nazis used in their war crimes trials after World War II.

There has been particular outrage over the revelation that two boys who filed complaints against Smyth were asked to sign confidentiality statements as part of Brady's investigation.

The oaths of secrecy were "to avoid potential collusion" between the two boys as church officials investigated the case, the Catholic Communications Office said this week.

Despite his criticism of Brady, Kelly said it would not necessarily do any good for the cardinal to resign.

"He's lost all moral authority to lead, but by replacing him, it won't resolve the problem," Kelly said, arguing the Vatican would "just replace guys with other guys."

The best solution, he said, would be for the Roman Catholic Church to let secular authorities deal with accusations of abuse, rather than trying to handle them itself.

"They have to accept secular authority, and they can get on with the business of religion," Kelly said. "It would be in the church's own interest. Resignations in themselves aren't the answer."

Four Irish bishops tendered their resignations in the wake of the government-backed report.

The pope has been under fire since it was revealed a priest suspected of abusing children was allowed to move into his diocese when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1980.

The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising said in a statement Monday it must have been clear at the time that the priest -- whom multiple sources identified to CNN as Peter Hullermann -- was coming to get therapy for allegedly molesting children. He was convicted of abuse in 1986 after Ratzinger moved to Rome. Hullermann was suspended Monday.

Hundreds of allegations of sexual or physical abuse of children by Catholic clergy have come to light in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands this year