Pope Benedict played DIRECT role in protecting priest who molested over 200 deaf boys

[Bluebear]

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — 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...

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...

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

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’s own statute of limitations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html

[Starry Messenger]

1. That's fucking evil

He should have been rotting in jail. The Church's statue of limitations be hanged. x( I'm glad their flouting of secular law is finally being exposed.

[Bluebear]

2. Really, what does "the church's" statute of limitations have to do with law?

[Starry Messenger]

7. Exactly nothing.

It's so arrogant. :grr: I can't believe they were dithering over just something ridiculous like whether he should be defrocked or not. Disgusting.

[Bluebear]

3. wrong spot

[Toasterlad]

4. Catholicism WOW!

Heckuva job, Ratzi!

[Bluebear]

5. Yet they continue to spend money to influence our domestic laws.

:puke:

[Toasterlad]

8. Indeed. Schools Closing Left and Right, While They Spend Millions Fighting teh Gay.

Which delights me, BTW. It hurts us short-term, but in the long term, the catholic church's inability to accept and enact social change will kill it.

By 2050, when the first woman priest is ordained, and the first married priest is celebrating his one year anniversary, the church will already be the powerless, anachronistic joke it should have been a few hundred years ago.

[misanthrope]

26. I have mixed feelings about this...

...I wasn't brought up Catholic and am a recovering Southern Baptist. My wife, though, is from a very, very Catholic clan.

While I find much of the Catholic church utterly contemptible, I still see them doing more for the underclass and the downtrodden than most of the Protestant Bible-thumpers I've encountered.

[pnwmom]

6. I'd love it if their decision to pull Bernard Law out of the Boston Diocese

and into the Vatican comes back to haunt them.

Law was almost certainly facing lawsuits if they hadn't gotten him out of the way.

[ruggerson]

9. and this evil nazi fucker

has the balls to regularly expound on his demented version of right and wrong.

[aquart]

10. But... but....he's infallible.

So, can you impeach a pope?

[DaveinJapan]

12. Nope. Can't remove him by any means, he is Supreme Dictator of the Holy See.

He can step down, though.

Wanna bet he won't?

By the way BlueBear, it seems we posted the same thing on top of each other but you beat me by one minute, my apologies for the mirror topic (if I'd noticed I'd just have thrown my 2 cents in here). :fistbump:

[madrchsod]

11. these people a truly evil...

betraying the fundamental teachings of christ for their sick demented pleasures.

they will not be forgiven

[Kitty Herder]

13. I think the pope needs to resign.

Do popes ever do that?

[aquart]

15. No, but inconvenient ones have been known to die.

Which I'm sure is mere coincidence.

[Bluebear]

22. !

[Mojambo]

14. Failure to act could "embarrass the church"

How about failing to act could fucking HURT innocent children!

I wish there was a hell for these fucking assholes to burn in. FUCK the Catholic Church.

[Clintonista2]

16. Yup that struck me aswell

[chollybocker]

17. Time to send in more exorcists!

But seriously, I hope to see the abuse-factory known as the vatican razed to the ground within my lifetime. Gotta have faith!

[SpiralHawk]

18. Pope Ratzinger apparently has Republicon Family Values

[Indy Lurker]

19. Something looks vaguely familiar

[BadgerKid]

20. Indeed.

[piratefish08]

21. those filthy motherfuckers.

makes me wish there was really a hell for them to rot in.

[Raschel]

23. So how are these people immune to legal consequences? They knowingly enabled molesters.

[Arugula Latte]

27. Oh, but they're infallible, remember?

x(

:grr:

[Skittles]

24. and look at how many people listen to that piece of shit pope

:puke:

[Vicar In A Tutu]

25. The Pope needs to be arrested and tried.

His status, meaningless as it is to the rational of mind and indeed faith, cannot be allowed to stand in the way of that.

[myrna minx]

28. This is so bloody evil.

:puke: