Pope implicated in Wisconsin sex abuse cover-up

A Wisconsin priest who could be responsible for the sexual abuse of up to 200 deaf boys was not held accountable by Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican officials nor anyone in the Catholic church.

Despite then-Cardinnal Ratzinger receiving many warnings from "several" bishops regarding a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, at St. John's School For The Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin, the Vatican did nothing and allowed Father Murphy to continue without recrimination before he died in 1998. The New York Times:

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.

"I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. "I ask your kind assistance in this matter." The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

The letters and church files were obtained by the New York Times through the lawyers for five men who were abused and are suing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined Murphy's violations in 2006:

The men's stories are similar. Murphy would call them to his bedroom in the school, or visit them in their dorm beds late at night, masturbate them and leave. Sometimes he would go on to other boys. Often he would say nothing. Sometimes when the boys saw him molesting other boys in the dorm room, they would cover their heads with their blankets, hug themselves tightly and weep. At times, he would take their confession in a second floor walk-in closet in the boy's dorm and molest them.

"Murphy was so powerful and it was so hard," said Geier who was molested when he was in seventh grade and said he saw more than a dozen other boys molested. "You couldn't get out. It was like a prison. I felt so confused. Here I had Father Murphy touching me. I would be like, 'God, what's right?' "

Geier said the boys received no sex education and had no idea what was happening to them. Some, he said, believed it must be all right because it was being done by a priest.

The resignation of Irish Bishop John Magee, who failed to report child-molesting priests to police, was accepted by Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday. The irony here is astounding. And of course last week the Pope delivered an unparalleled letter regarding the ongoing Irish church scandal cover-ups of the last 16 years. However, the Pope has yet to acknowledge his own handling of a German case. The hypocricy is even worse.

In 1980, Ratzinger permitted the transfer of Rev. Peter Hullermann to a psychological treatment center to undergo treatment for pedophilia. Then-cardinal Ratziner was also the archbishop of Munich and failed to report Hullermann's alleged abuse of boys to German authorities. More than 300 former Catholic school students and others have shared abuse claims since January.

According to Stern magazine, Only 17 percent of Germans polled said that they still trust the Catholic church, compared to 29 percent in late January, just before the first abuse cases there were made public.