One of Europe’s leading theological thinkers has accused the Pope of
being
complicit in a Vatican cover-up of child abuse scandals in the Roman
Catholic Church.
“No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knows as much about abuse
cases –
knowledge that is ex officio, derived from his office,” Hans Küng
said in an interview with Swiss television.
Professor Küng – a long-standing critic of the Vatican – said that the
Pope’s
involvement in hiding clerical molestation of children dated back at
least
to his 24 years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith in
Rome .
“This Vatican authority has for a long time centralised [information
about]
all abuse cases so that they can be concealed, classified as top
secret,”
the 82-year old Swiss theologian said.
He has been a close observer of Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI
–
since they were theology professors at the University of Tübingen in the
1960s. Both were theological advisers to the Second Vatican Council,
which
concluded in 1965.
Professor Küng’s clinching piece of documentary evidence against his old
university colleague is contained in a diocesal letter, dated March 18,
2001, on child abuse, “De delictis gravioribus” (“about serious
offences”).
Signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the document establishes guidelines
for
dealing with priests suspected of abuse:
“In tribunals established by ordinaries or hierarchs, the functions of
judge,
promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be
performed for these cases only by priests. When the trial in the
tribunal is
finished in any fashion, all the acts of the case are to be transmitted ex
officio as soon as possible to the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the
Faith," it says.
Professor Küng argues that the Pope is acting hypocritically by calling
bishops to order because for the past ten years such offences have been
officially regulated behind closed doors.
“He cannot now wag his finger at the bishops and say 'you did not do
enough!'
He gave the instructions himself – as boss of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith and again as Pope.”
The Vatican has argued that it is a serious misunderstanding to cast the
2001
document as part of the Church’s supposed “culture of silence”.
A German church official tried to play down Professor Küng’s utterances,
arguing in essence that the theologian has "form” with the Pope.
After their stint in Tübingen together, Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger
went
separate ways: Professor Ratzinger, upset at the radical questioning of
doctrine during the 1968 student disturbances, moved to the more
conservative Regensburg; Professor Küng began openly to question the
infallibility of the Pope and urge a discussion about the celibacy of
priests.
In 1979 the Vatican stripped him of his right to teach Catholic
theology.
But Professor Küng remains a morally powerful figure in Europe – even
Tony
Blair came to Tübingen to pay his respects – and his highlighting of the
2001 document has fed into a public debate in Germany about how much the
Pope knows personally about the abuse cases.
Only 17 per cent of Germans still trust the Catholic Church, according
to a
study by the FORSA sampling institute. At the end of January, 29 per
cent of
Germans trusted the Church and 38 per cent trusted the Bavarian-born
Pope
Benedict.
“Abuse: what did the Pope know?” was the front page headline of Der
Tagesspiegel on Thursday – next to a picture of the 2001 document.
It is clear that the Pope certainly knew about the practice of
transferring
paedophile priests form parish to parish.
As Archbishop Ratzinger, head of the Diocesan Council of Munich, he
presided
over a meeting on January 15, 1980 that discussed the case of Father
Peter
Hullermann.
Father Hullermann had forced an 11-year-old to have oral sex and had
assaulted
three other children. The parents had been persuaded not to press
charges
and the police had not been informed. Instead he was supposed to be
moved
out of the diocese of Essen, to Archbishop Ratzinger’s territory in
southern
Germany.
Archbishop Ratzinger formally approved the transfer and ordered him to
undergo
therapy. Again, the police were not informed. Within a fortnight however
the
chaplain was taking on pastoral duties again. Whether the Archbishop
knew of
this is unclear.
Advice from Father Hullermann's therapist that the priest should not be
allowed to work with children, and should be under close supervision,
was
ignored by the Archbishop's staff.
Over the next two decades, Father Hullermann persistently re-offended.
Only
once did it come to court: in 1986 he was given an 18-month suspended
prison
sentence. By this time, Cardinal Ratzinger was established in Rome and
presumably was not following the details of Father Hullermann’s career.
Informally, on his regular visits to his brother Georg – choirmaster of
the
Regensburger Domspatzen – he may have heard reports of abuse. Georg
Ratzinger himself says that he had “heard stories” about the boarding
school
in Etterzhausen that prepared children for the choir. No action was
taken.
Through the 1990s, a pattern seems to have established itself in both
Cardinal
Ratzinger's Vatican department, but also in the dioceses: priests who
abused
children had sinned, were required to repent and needed help and
solidarity
from within the Church.
Open trial and imprisonment would hurt the church as an institution. The
option of defrocking an offending priest was also only rarely applied.
This
week's revelations about an American
priest who molested up to 200 deaf pupils falls into this category:
proceedings leading to a canonical trial against the priest were broken
off
after he applied for leniency to Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996.
But by 2001 enough accounts of priestly abuse worldwide were reaching
Rome to
justify the drafting of a diocesal letter and the definition of child
abuse
as a grave offence.
The letter was, on the one hand, an affirmation of existing practice:
that is,
internal disciplining of errant priests. And on the other hand, a clear
centralisation of information in Rome.
The Vatican wanted not only an overview but also control. Yet critics
say that
no significant action was taken on the accumulated information. It
should
have been plain, at least from 2001, that Irish paedophile priests were
being moved to US parishes.
That information must have been available to the Congregation of the
Doctrine
of the Faith. And to its head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7075618.ece?print=yes&randnum=1269534905675
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