By FRANCIS X. ROCCA (RNS) When the Archdiocese of Munich admitted last Friday (March 12) to “serious errors” in the case of a priest suspected of molesting a child, it flatly exonerated the man who had served as archbishop at the time, Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger, of course, is now Pope Benedict XVI, and the scores of molestation cases erupting across Europe are prompting questions about Ratzinger’s response to the problem, both before and after he was elected pope.
Gerhard Gruber, the former vicar general in Munich, said he took “full responsibility” for the 1980 decision to reassign the Rev. Peter Hullermann to another parish, even though he had been accused of sex abuse.
Six years after his return to pastoral work, Hullermann was convicted of sexually abusing minors; Hullermann was suspended Monday (March 15) by the Archdiocese of Munich.
Advocates for abuse victims and other critics say they find it hard to believe that then-Cardinal Ratzinger did not personally approve Hullermann’s reassignment. Benedict’s defenders insist it would not be unusual for an archbishop in a large diocese to delegate such decisions to an underling.
Whatever Ratzinger knew or did not know in that particular case, he went on to acquire deep knowledge of clerical sex abuse in general, long before the latest spate of revelations across Europe. That expertise evidently impressed him with the gravity of the scandal, and has shaped his approach to it as pope.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II gave Ratzinger, who had been plucked from Munich in 1982 to head the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the task of overseeing the discipline of clerical sex abusers.
Early on, Ratzinger seemed to suggest the problem might be overplayed. In 2002, he said he was “personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign” since abuse was no more an occupational hazard in the priesthood than in other professions.
Yet in practice, Ratzinger’s defenders say, his office faced the problem head-on.
In a rare interview last week with the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire, Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, the CDF official in charge of sex abuse investigations, said that a staff of 10 has examined and responded to accusations against some 3,000 alleged abusers over the last 10 years, with the heaviest caseload coming from the U.S. in the years 2003-2004.
One in five accused priests were defrocked, Scicluna said; 60 percent were disciplined with limitations on their activity as priests; and 20 percent were tried in church courts, resulting in an unspecified number of convictions.
According to Benedict’s biographer, John L. Allen, writing in “The Rise of Benedict XVI,” exposure to the gory details of molestation cases gave Ratzinger a “new appreciation for the gravity of the situation, and the need for a firm response from church authority.”
That experience also seemed to color Ratzinger’s Good Friday remarks in March 2005, a few weeks before he was elected pope, in which we deplored the “filth in the church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to (Christ)!”
Still, critics have charged that Ratzinger preserved a culture of silence that allowed bishops to cover up for abusive priests. In 2001, Ratzinger told bishops around the world that the CDF held jurisdiction over all sex abuse cases, a move that has proven especially controversial.
That letter was cited in a Texas lawsuit brought against Ratzinger by three alleged victims, who charged that the document’s imposition of “pontifical secret” on abuse cases showed Ratzinger had conspired to conceal pedophilia in the church. (The Department of Justice ruled in
2005 that Benedict’s status as a head of state gave him diplomatic immunity in that suit.)
Just last week, German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger cited the same letter in denouncing what she called the church’s “wall of silence” over sex abuse. Church officials insist that the document was never intended to impede criminal proceedings by civil authorities.
Since his election in 2005, Benedict has spoken publicly about sex abuse more than half a dozen times.
En route to the U.S. in April 2008, the pope told reporters that he was “ashamed” of clerical sex abuse of children, and would “do everything possible” to prevent it in the future. During his stop in Washington, he met with and apologized to a group of American abuse victims, and told the U.S. bishops that the crisis had been “sometimes very badly handled.”
According to Nicholas P. Cafardi, a member of the committee that developed abuse prevention policies for the U.S. bishops in 2002, Benedict has taken clerical sex abuse “much more seriously” than his predecessor.
One sign of change was the Vatican’s treatment of the Rev. Marcel Maciel, the founder of the conservative Legionaries of Christ movement that rose to favor under John Paul. In 1997, nine former Legionaries accused Maciel of sexually abusing them decades earlier, when they were studying to become priests under his authority.
Benedict, who investigated the charges as a cardinal, has never publicly addressed them; but a year into Benedict’s papacy, the Vatican announced that Maciel had been ordered to lead a “life reserved to prayer and penitence, renouncing all public ministry.”
In 2009, following revelations that Maciel had fathered at least one illegitimate child, the Vatican launched a full-scale investigation of the movement. Investigators concluded their work this month, but have yet to present a report.
In a sharp contrast to John Paul’s relatively hands-off approach, Benedict summoned all 24 serving Irish bishops in February to discuss priestly abuse that was detailed in two Irish government-sponsored reports released last year. A similar 2002 meeting between John Paul and U.S. cardinals had taken place only at the Americans’ request.
Benedict is expected to release a pastoral letter on sex abuse sometime before Easter; Cafardi said it will be the first major papal document on clerical sex abuse in modern times. The recent cases in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria have many expecting that the pope’s letter will address the issue well beyond the scandal-scarred Irish church.
“I believe (the letter) will be yet another example of his clear and decisive voice,” said a top Vatican official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, in an interview published Monday (March 15) in the Milan daily Corriere Della Sera.
“These cases cast a shadow over the whole church and we bishops have to deal with them with maximum seriousness,” Fisichella said. “The zero tolerance demanded by the pope is not an optional, it is a moral imperative.”
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted March 16, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Gruber fell on his sword, except, actually there was no sword. What will he suffer for this? I hope he can be sued for every penny he’s worth, but we’ll see. It would be really good if he could be charged and convicted for abetting sex abuse but I suspect he checked the statute of limitations on that one before he spoke.
I hope, but doubt, that they then sent all the evidence to the civil authorities who were the ones who should have been conducting trials.
Yes, Benedict should be indicted. I hope Germany has the stones to do it.
The real question is, will he order all church records opened to prosecutors and the public?
posted March 16, 2010 at 7:42 pm
A guy named Curtis Walker has been sexually assaulting developmentally disabled individuals for at least 4 years. It is called the Bernard Fineson Residence Showering residents is his favorite chore and this guy shows no signs of slowing down. He is the manager of a group home on 16th St in Manhattan. He has been open about his sexuality and makes no apologies to the staff. Our state has no laws to protect the developementally disabled so there is no way to legally confront him. Every poulation is vulnerable. Stories like these are sad indeed.
posted March 16, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Benny is, as I have stated many times already since this stuff started, guilty in helping to keep the secrets. He deserves some kind of punishment just like the actual priests. He is so NOT special and doesn’t deserve any special treatment, IMO.
posted March 16, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Christopher Hitchens (disclosure: he is one of those ATHEISTS!) has written the following in his regular column on Slate:
After [Ratzinger's] promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church’s own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated “in the most secretive way … restrained by a perpetual silence … and everyone … is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication.” (End of excerpt from Hitchens’ commentary.)
If this is true, then it means that Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, placed the reputation of the church above the need to reveal the truth. I am not Catholic, but I wonder how sincere Catholics must feel at this situation. Is it possible that the decision to keep everything secret was a bizarre application of the idea that what is said in the confessional must be kept secret?
posted March 16, 2010 at 10:32 pm
It is true. The letter is called “Crimen sollicitationis” and here’s the Wikipedia article on it.
They went to great length to keep the information out of the hands of the public and of the authorities, whom they should have told immediately.
posted March 16, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Dan-
I am not sure what your post has to do with the article.
When you write “his sexuality” are you suggesting that there is some sexuality that relates to assaulting developmentally disabled individuals?
Are you suggesting that NY has no laws regarding assault? What exactly do you mean by “sexually assaulting developmentally disabled individuals”?
posted March 16, 2010 at 11:49 pm
nnmns,
Thanks for the link. Of interest, it contained this statement:
“These matters are confidential only to the procedures within the Church, but do not preclude in any way for these matters to be brought to civil authorities for proper legal adjudication. The charter for the Protection of Children and Young People of June, 2002, approved by the Vatican, requires that credible allegations of sexual abuse of children be reported to legal authorities.”
So as an official matter, it seems that these crimes should have been reported. Yet that policy was apparently not carried out.
posted March 17, 2010 at 4:30 am
H4C the Wikipedia article also contained the comment “An oath of secrecy was to be taken not only by the members of the tribunal but also by the person or persons denouncing the priest, by the witnesses, and by the accused priest himself, who was free to discuss it only with his defence counsel (Section 13 of the document).”
So the accuser was unable, probably on pain of going to Hell (which was hotter at that time), of telling the authorities if they made the mistake of going first to the Church they’d always been told would take care of them.
posted March 17, 2010 at 4:43 am
One of my favorite parts is the oath they took (take?):
Emphasis mine.
So only the Pope could let the secret out. Think what these people still know and are deathly afraid to reveal.
posted March 17, 2010 at 12:49 pm
“The real question is, will he [the Pope] order all church records opened to prosecutors and the public? “
I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that one. It is, after all, against Vatican policy to do so.
posted March 17, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Since the Catholic bishops, who were instrumental in hiding these transgressions from the public, are opposed to health care reform because they think some t is uncrossed on keeping public funds from paying for abortion, I thought it pertinent to report what some Catholic nuns are saying:
This is such a breath of fresh air, and so courageous, and I for one am enjoying the apoplexy that must be going on in Rome.
But the important thing is to get that reform passed. It’s not my perfect bill, it’s surely not anyone’s perfect bill but it’s a good bill and it addresses a crying need and it will alleviate a real budget problem that we’ll have if nothing is done and, finally, if it doesn’t get done now it won’t get done for a very long time.
posted March 17, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Oops, it’s Brazil now, too!
And it goes on with other cases there.
Where will it stop? Or does anyone think it will stop any time soon?
82?!
posted March 17, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Where will it stop? nnmns
There are alot of countries where the RCC has “invaded”. This could go on for many, many years. And as awful as it sounds…it is probably still happening in some places in spite of all this negative publicity.
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posted March 25, 2010 at 9:52 am
The waves of accumulating scandal hitting the roman catholic church will look a mere trifle compared to the ‘perfect storm’ that is shortly coming. For these growing, worldwide sexual scandals and endemic institutional corruption, having destroyed virtually any remaining ‘moral’ authority or presumption to understand human nature, are just setting the stage for the ‘churches’ worst nightmare: the questioning of it’s very origins! And that has already begun on the web. Not by any atheist ravings, but with first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel/moral teachings of Christ. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Law, Baptism, the Trinity and the Resurrection. This is not reformation but revolution. We may very well come to ‘remember’ the church as two thousands years of hubris, intellectual, theological self deception, retailing a counterfeit copy of revealed truth. Check it at: http://www.energon.org.uk