arrest the Pope

[Irvine511]

unbelievable.

Memo to Pope Described Transfer of Pedophile Priest
By NICHOLAS KULISH and KATRIN BENNHOLD

MUNICH — The future Pope Benedict XVI was kept more closely apprised of a sexual abuse case in Germany than previous church statements have suggested, raising fresh questions about his handling of a scandal unfolding under his direct supervision before he rose to the top of the church’s hierarchy.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope and archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.

An initial statement on the matter issued earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber. But the memo, whose existence was confirmed by two church officials, shows that the future pope not only led a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the priest’s reassignment.

What part he played in the decision making, and how much interest he showed in the case of the troubled priest, who had molested multiple boys in his previous job, remains unclear. But the personnel chief who handled the matter from the beginning, the Rev. Friedrich Fahr, “always remained personally, exceptionally connected” to Cardinal Ratzinger, the church said.

The case of the German priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children. The German Archdiocese has acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made in the handling of Father Hullermann, though it attributed those mistakes to people reporting to Cardinal Ratzinger rather than to the cardinal himself.

Church officials defend Benedict by saying the memo was routine and was “unlikely to have landed on the archbishop’s desk,” according to the Rev. Lorenz Wolf, judicial vicar at the Munich Archdiocese. But Father Wolf said he could not rule out that Cardinal Ratzinger had read it.

According to Father Wolf, who spoke with Father Gruber this week at the request of The New York Times, Father Gruber, the former vicar general, said that he could not remember a detailed conversation with Cardinal Ratzinger about Father Hullermann, but that Father Gruber refused to rule out that “the name had come up.”

Benedict is well known for handling priestly abuse cases in the Vatican before he became pope. While some have criticized his role in adjudicating such cases over the past two decades, he has also won praise from victims’ advocates for taking the issue more seriously, apologizing to American victims in 2008.

The future pope’s time in Munich, in the broader sweep of his life story, has until now been viewed mostly as a steppingstone on the road to the Vatican. But this period in his career has recently come under scrutiny — particularly six decisive weeks from December 1979 to February 1980.

In that short span, a review of letters, meeting minutes and documents from personnel files shows, Father Hullermann went from disgrace and suspension from his duties in Essen to working without restrictions as a priest in Munich, despite the fact that he was described in the letter requesting his transfer as a potential “danger.”

In September 1979, the chaplain was removed from his congregation after three sets of parents told his superior, the Rev. Norbert Essink, that he had molested their sons, charges he did not deny, according to notes taken by the superior and still in Father Hullermann’s personnel file in Essen.

On Dec. 20, 1979, Munich’s personnel chief, Father Fahr, received a phone call from his counterpart in the Essen Diocese, Klaus Malangré.

There is no official record of their conversation, but in a letter to Father Fahr dated that Jan. 3, Father Malangré referred to it as part of a formal request for Father Hullermann’s transfer to Munich to see a psychiatrist there.

Sexual abuse of boys is not explicitly mentioned in the letter, but the subtext is clear. “Reports from the congregation in which he was last active made us aware that Chaplain Hullermann presented a danger that caused us to immediately withdraw him from pastoral duties,” the letter said. By pointing out that “no proceedings against Chaplain Hullermann are pending,” Father Malangré also communicated that the danger in question was serious enough that it could have merited legal consequences.

He dropped another clear hint by suggesting that Father Hullermann could teach religion “at a girls’ school.”

On Jan. 9, Father Fahr prepared a summary of the situation for top officials at the diocese, before their weekly meeting, saying that a young chaplain needed “medical-psychotherapeutic treatment in Munich” and a place to live with “an understanding colleague.” Beyond that, it presented the priest from Essen in almost glowing terms, as a “very talented man, who could be used in a variety of ways.”

Father Fahr’s role in the case has thus far received little attention, in contrast to Father Gruber’s mea culpa.

Father Wolf, who is acting as the internal legal adviser on the Hullermann case, said in an interview this week that Father Fahr was “the filter” of all information concerning Father Hullermann. He was also, according to his obituary on the archdiocese Web site, a close friend of Cardinal Ratzinger.

A key moment came on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 1980. Cardinal Ratzinger presided that morning over the meeting of the diocesan council. His auxiliary bishops and department heads gathered in a conference room on the top floor of the bishop’s administrative offices, housed in a former monastery on a narrow lane in downtown Munich.

It was a busy day, with the deaths of five priests, the acquisition of a piece of art and pastoral care in Vietnamese for recent immigrants among the issues sharing the agenda with item 5d, the delicate matter of Father Hullermann’s future.

The minutes of the meeting include no references to the actual discussion that day, simply stating that a priest from Essen in need of psychiatric treatment required room and board in a Munich congregation. “The request is granted,” read the minutes, stipulating that Father Hullermann would live at St. John the Baptist Church in the northern part of the city.

Church officials have their own special name for the language in meeting minutes, which are internal but circulate among secretaries and other diocese staff members, said Father Wolf, who has a digitized archive of meeting minutes, including those for the Jan. 15 meeting. “It’s protocol-speak,” he said. “Those who know what it’s about understand, and those who don’t, don’t.”

Five days later, on Jan. 20, Cardinal Ratzinger’s office received a copy of the memo from his vicar general, Father Gruber, returning Father Hullermann to full duties, a spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed.

Father Hullermann resumed parish work practically on arrival in Munich, on Feb. 1, 1980. He was convicted in 1986 of molesting boys at another Bavarian parish.

This week, new accusations of sexual abuse emerged, both from his first assignment in a parish near Essen, in northern Germany, and from 1998 in the southern German town of Garching an der Alz.

Father Fahr died two years ago. A spokesman for the diocese in Essen said that Father Malangré was not available for an interview. Father Malangré, now 88, recently had an accident and was confused and unreliable as a witness when questioned in an internal inquiry into the handling of Father Hullermann’s case, said the spokesman, Ulrich Lota.

Father Gruber, who took responsibility for the decision to put Father Hullermann back into a parish, was not present at the Jan. 15 meeting, according to Father Wolf, and has not answered repeated interview requests.

the man failed to report a horrific crime. he aided and abetted child abuse. lock him up.

[corianderstem]

What do you even say about this? It's so shameful, disgusting and appalling.

[ShipOfFools]

The Catholic Church has been covering this up for ages. This is, IMO, what happens when you try to make someone celibate, or go against nature.

[Diemen]

I can't decide what's more appalling, that an organization that is supposed to be populated by disciples of a loving, just God would be set up in such a way that its first instinct is to cover up any wrongdoing, or that the Church views child abuse as a sin, but not a crime.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Diemen

or that the Church views child abuse as a sin, but not a crime.

bingo.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by Diemen

or that the Church views child abuse as a sin, but not a crime.

They're free to also think that the sky is yellow, but it doesn't make it so.

[Pearl]

I'm disgusted with this. I can't believe the Church cares more about standing by its celibacy rather than protecting children from monsters. It's honestly making me wonder if I should remain a Catholic or go join another church.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by Pearl

It's honestly making me wonder if I should remain a Catholic or go join another church.

I long ago stopped attending Church and contributing to it financially. I do make exceptions for funeral & wedding masses or baptisms (to me they are about respect for the deceased or the couple getting married or the baby being baptized and not about religious affiliation), and if I am visiting my parents over Christmas, I will go so as to not cause conflict in that regard. Plus I actually kind of like Christmas carols and the whole season.

But I've also felt no compulsion whatsoever to join any other church or religion; frankly I feel rather unburdened. And you can still have a rich spiritual life (if that is what you want) without institutional relationships.

That said I think some part of me will always understand Catholicism as a cultural concept given my ethnicity and the strong relationship that culture and church have in the country of my birth - even though I no longer live there and haven't lived there for almost 20 years.

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by anitram

I long ago stopped attending Church and contributing to it financially. I do make exceptions for funeral & wedding masses or baptisms (to me they are about respect for the deceased or the couple getting married or the baby being baptized and not about religious affiliation), and if I am visiting my parents over Christmas, I will go so as to not cause conflict in that regard. Plus I actually kind of like Christmas carols and the whole season.

But I've also felt no compulsion whatsoever to join any other church or religion; frankly I feel rather unburdened. And you can still have a rich spiritual life (if that is what you want) without institutional relationships.

That said I think some part of me will always understand Catholicism as a cultural concept given my ethnicity and the strong relationship that culture and church have in the country of my birth - even though I no longer live there and haven't lived there for almost 20 years.

Same here. Even if I do leave the Church, part of me will always feel Catholic. I'll probably still get my ashes on Ash Wednesday and honor the Virgin Mary. I currently attend a faith sharing group at my church and if I do leave the Church, I'll probably keep going to those meetings simply because I like the people.

But with all the abuse going on and the cover-ups, I just can't find it in my conscience to continue attending its services and considering myself part of the institution.

It will be hard for my parents to accept me leaving Catholicism. When I first brought it up they flipped out. They said all other religions have their abuse problems, but the media doesn't report them because the media is anti-Catholic. My parents, particularly my dad, tends to believe Catholicism is the one true church, a belief that I never held.

[Vincent Vega]

This is just one of a great number of cases that are currently uncovered. It started about a month ago when the principal of the Canisius College here in Berlin, a private school of the Jesuit order, made public the abuse of several dozen of children by two former teachers at that school in the 1980s and early 90s, who were later transferred to other schools and did the same there. The principal became teacher at that school in the late 1990s and often heard rumours. He then used about every chance he had, e.g. reunions of former students, to approach them and discretely tell them if something happened to them, or they knew about it, he would be there to make it public. He was then promoted to become the principal, and when he had enough information to feel save and go forward he did so.
Since then more and more abuse cases through priests, Catholic teachers etc. became public, some dating back to the 1950s, but some also committed very recently. I have no clue, but it most approach 100 victims or so. It's a lot.
The church is only very slowly becoming active in investigating, and this article, I think, also makes it pretty apparent what kind of parallel society that is we have here, called the Catholic church. They really think they are above law and can handle everything internally, and the leader of the German Bishop Conference a few days ago even admitted systematic cover-ups of priests who abused girls and boys.
The Pope sent out a pastoral letter a few days ago to Ireland, without a word on the cases being uncovered here or in Austria or in any other country. I don't think he truly cares the least bit.
The celibacy most certainly is one of the key factors, but the Catholic church is still denying it. Even more despicable. A German theologian is a strong critic of celibacy for more than two decades now. And about 20 years ago today's pope revoked his licence to teach Catholic theology for his views on the dangers of celibacy.

Pope Forgives Molested Children | The Onion - America's Finest News Source This Onion article, from 2002 and about the cases in the US, is pretty relevant again, and I cannot help but think that this is not even far from the truth as regards the real view by the Catholic church.

[Jive Turkey]

YouTube - The catholic boat

[nathan1977]

YouTube - THE LEAST OF THESE - apology

Best I can say.

[AliEnvy]

I repeat (from another thread recently):

But I didn't and will not baptize my children into a church that would sooner protect its financial assets than its most vulnerable members (amongst many objectionable practices).

[financeguy]

YouTube - Joan Osborne - One Of Us

[Billy Rotten]

If the church is a disease, these are its festering, contagious sores.

[Irvine511]

deaf kids!?!?!?!?! what does it take??!?!?

For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID CALLENDER

They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.

They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.

This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest.

“That man should have been in prison for a very long time, but he was lucky,” Steven Geier, one of Father Murphy’s victims, said Thursday. “What about me? I wasn’t supposed to touch girls. What gave him the right to be able to do that? Father Murphy constantly thought about sex with children, and he got away with it.”

Young victims of sexual abuse are often so confused, ashamed or traumatized that they wait years to report the violations. Some never say a word. One of the remarkable aspects of the Father Murphy case is that young victims began alerting the authorities in the mid-1950s, when sexual abuse was hardly even a part of the public vocabulary.

In his ranch house in Madison, where he lives with his wife, Ann, and two dachshunds, Mr. Geier said through an interpreter that he entered St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wis., when he was 9. His father had helped build a Catholic church in rural Dane County, and his aunt was a nun. His family wanted him to get a good education in a Catholic school.

Mr. Geier, now 59, said that between the ages of 14 and 15, starting around 1965, Father Murphy molested him four times in a closet at the school. The priest, a hearing man fluent in sign language, said that God wanted him to teach the boy about sex but that he had to keep it quiet because it was under the sacrament of confession. Mr. Geier said he felt sick.

“First thing in the morning,” Mr. Geier said, “we took communion, and as he passed out the communion wafers, I thought about how many boys did he touch with those hands and all of the germs, all of the filth of his hands.”

Father Murphy may have molested as many as 200 boys while he worked at the school from 1950 to 1974, according to the accounts of victims and a social worker hired by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to interview him.

Mr. Geier said he first tried to tell the priest at his home parish in Madison, where he served as an altar boy, in 1966 when he was just 16. But the priest, he said, told him he did not want to hear about it, and to just forget about it. He told another priest while he was still a teenager, and yet a third priest years later, after he married.

That priest, the Rev. Tom Schroeder, 72, who led Masses for the deaf in Madison from 1970 to 1992, said in an interview Friday that he remembered Mr. Geier’s telling him about Father Murphy. Father Schroeder said that he told a nun, who told another nun who was a dormitory supervisor at St. John’s, but that the supervisor did not believe it and nothing ever came of it.

“I assumed that if enough people told her, she would finally believe it,” Father Schroeder said.

Internal church correspondence unearthed in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and given to The New York Times, which made it public it this week, included a letter from the Rev. David Walsh, who served as a chaplain for the deaf in Chicago, saying that teenage students at St. John’s had told him in the late 1950s about Father Murphy’s abuse.

Father Walsh said he told Archbishop Albert Gregory Meyer of Milwaukee, who sent Father Murphy on a retreat and then put him back in the school to undo “the harm he had done.”

In the 1970s, a group of former students who were in a vocational rehabilitation program in Milwaukee began telling their hearing supervisors about Father Murphy, a sequence of events reported in two articles in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2006.

Among the supervisors was John Conway, now the deputy administrator of workers’ compensation for the State of Wisconsin. Mr. Conway, the students and others collected affidavits from 15 to 20 former students about Father Murphy’s violations. They were granted a meeting with Archbishop William E. Cousins.

“In my extreme naïveté,” said Mr. Conway in an interview on Friday, “I told them the archbishop would take care of this.”

He said they were surprised to find the room packed with people, including several nuns and teachers from the school, two priests who said they were representing the apostolic delegate in Chicago, and Father Murphy himself.

Arthur Budzinski and Gary Smith, two more victims of Father Murphy, said in an interview last week that they remember seeing Archbishop Cousins yell, and Father Murphy staring at the floor. The deaf men and their advocates were told that Father Murphy, the school’s director and top fund-raiser, was too valuable to be let go, so he would be given only administrative duties.

They were outraged. They distributed “Wanted” posters with Father Murphy’s face outside the cathedral in Milwaukee. They went to the police departments in Milwaukee, where they were told it was not the correct jurisdiction, and in St. Francis, where the school was located, Mr. Conway said. They also went to the office of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney of Milwaukee County, and spoke with his assistant, William Gardner.

“A criminal priest was an oxymoron to them,” Mr. Conway said. “They said they’ll refer it to the archdiocese.”

Calls to Mr. McCann and Mr. Gardner this week were not returned.

Mr. Conway said it was only when they filed a lawsuit that the archdiocese removed Father Murphy from St. John’s and sent him to northern Wisconsin to live at his family’s summer house. The lawsuit was withdrawn. Mr. Smith, one of two of the plaintiffs whose cases were still within the statute of limitations, received a settlement of $2,000, he and Mr. Conway said.

Father Murphy continued working in parishes and schools, with deaf people, and leading youth retreats in the Diocese of Superior for the next 24 years.

[A stor]

Originally Posted by Pearl

I'm disgusted with this. I can't believe the Church cares more about standing by its celibacy rather than protecting children from monsters. It's honestly making me wonder if I should remain a Catholic or go join another church.

I have the same feelings. I only attend mass for spiritual reasons.

The above story makes me sick to my stomach.

[A_Wanderer]

How can any ethical person continue to support the Catholic Church?

[A_Wanderer]

Here is a supporter of the Church, blaming the families.

YouTube - Bill Donohue Blames Parents For Church's Child Sex Abuse

[corianderstem]

ugh, Bill Donohue. Isn't he pretty much considered the Fred Phelps of the church supporters?