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....
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.
And this is not ex-Cardinal Ratzinger's first encounter with the sex abuse scandal.
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.... 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.
It looks to me as though this will quickly devolve into "what did he know, and when did he know it" territory. From the same article:
There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the [Munich] 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."
Finally, there is an interesting wrinkle that may affect the financial aspect of how this all plays out.
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.
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