Pope under fire for transfer, letter on sex abuse

(March 13, 2010) Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children. The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret. The revelations have put the spotlight on Pope Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes _ a position he held until his 2005 election as pope. Pope Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scandal Friday from the head of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who reported that the pontiff had expressed great dismay and deep shock» over the scandal, but encouraged bishops to continue searching for the truth. The German scandals are among several to have rocked the Catholic Church lately, notably in Ireland last year, and now Austria and The Netherlands as well. Germany’s shock revelations began in late January when an elite Jesuit school in Berlin admitted systematic sexual abuse of pupils by two priests in the 1970s and 1980s. Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Pope Benedict was archbishop. The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, issued a statement late Friday noting that the Munich vicar-general who approved the priest's transfer had taken full responsibility for the decision, seeking to remove any question about the pontiff's potential responsibility as archbishop at the time. The president of the German Bishops' Conference has also announced that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is examining the rules adopted by the Episcopal Conferences around the world to tackle the scandal of sexual abuse of minors, with the aim of bringing about a revision of regulations in force in the universal Church.