{"id":17872,"date":"2010-03-25T15:03:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T14:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/?p=17872"},"modified":"2010-03-25T15:03:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T14:03:29","slug":"vatican-fact-checking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/2010\/03\/25\/vatican-fact-checking\/","title":{"rendered":"Vatican fact checking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via NYT<\/a><\/p>\n

Top Vatican officials \u2014 including the future Pope Benedict XVI \u2014 did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.<\/p>\n

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican\u2019s chief doctrinal enforcer.<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.<\/p>\n

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee\u2019s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican\u2019s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy\u2019s dismissal.<\/p>\n

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church\u2019s own statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,\u201d Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. \u201cI ask your kind assistance in this matter.\u201d The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via NYT Top Vatican officials \u2014 including the future Pope Benedict XVI \u2014 did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a … Leggi tutto<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,31],"tags":[1001,588,247],"class_list":["post-17872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diritti","category-mondo","tag-abusi","tag-chiesa-cattolica","tag-nyt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17874,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17872\/revisions\/17874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}