Source: Agence France-Presse

A US man claiming he was abused by a predator priest accused of molesting scores of deaf boys said Thursday Pope Benedict XVI knew about the latest sex scandal to rock the church and should be held accountable for it.

“The pope knew about this. He should be held accountable,” Arthur Budzinski said outside the Archdiocese of Milwaukee after a New York Times report said Vatican officials, including the future pope, failed to act on warnings that Father Lawrence Murphy was abusing boys at a school for the deaf here.

Murphy is believed to have molested as many as 200 boys at St John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin between 1950 and 1974.

The New York Times published documents Thursday which show that top Vatican officials, including then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who was elected pope in 2005 — never took action against Murphy, despite many warnings from US bishops.

Budzinski, who is deaf and attended St John’s, said in sign language, which was spoken to reporters by his daughter, that Murphy would come into the boys’ dorm at night, take them into a closet and sexually molest them.

Budzinski, who is now 62, said he told then archbishop of Milwaukee William Cousins and other officials about the abuse in 1974.

The archbishop shouted at him and Budzinski “left the meeting crying,” he said.

According to the documents published in the New York Times, in the 1990s — years after the alleged offenses occurred — then Archbishop of Milwaukee Rembert Weakland and another Wisconsin bishop wrote “directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope,” about Murphy.

Ratzinger failed to respond to the letter, and a canonical trial authorized by his deputy was halted after Murphy wrote to Ratzinger begging that the proceedings be stopped, the Times said.

“While church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal,” the newspaper said.

Murphy died in 1998, having never been defrocked.

The allegations that the Vatican turned a blind eye to Murphy’s abuse follow months of other child sex scandals coming to light in Brazil, Ireland, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, as well as the pope’s native Germany.

Two revelations in Germany concerned the pope and his brother Georg, the first having authorized lodging for a known abuser and the second having headed a boys’ choir whose members had earlier suffered abuse.



The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.

The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.

Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction.

Benedict not only served as the archbishop of the diocese where the priest worked, but also later as the cardinal in charge of reviewing sexual abuse cases for the Vatican. Yet until the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced that Father Hullermann had been suspended on Monday, he continued to serve in a series of Bavarian parishes.

In 1980, the future pope reviewed the case of Father Hullermann, who was accused of sexually abusing boys in the Diocese of Essen, including forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The future pope approved his transfer to Munich. On Friday, a deputy took responsibility for allowing the priest to return to full pastoral duties shortly afterward. Six years later, Father Hullermann was convicted of sexually abusing children in the Bavarian town of Grafing. Father Hullermann’s identity was revealed Sunday, when a man whose marriage he was scheduled to perform in the spa town of Bad Tölz stood up in the pews and began shouting as the head of the congregation was speaking in vague terms about the scandal.

But even after the revelations of last week, parishioners there, where Father Hullermann had been working, described him glowingly, calling him friendly, down to earth and popular with churchgoers, especially children and teenagers.

Father Hullermann’s story is one of a beloved priest with a damaging secret church officials helped him hide.

School records in the town of Grafing show that he taught religion six hours a week at a public high school starting Sept. 18, 1984 — less than five years after he was moved from Essen for abusing boys. The only mention of the case in the church records there said that lay elders were informed of “criminal proceedings,” though locals said there were rumors that it had something to do with children.

Rupert Frania, the priest in charge of the congregation in Bad Tölz, where Father Hullermann spent the last year and a half, said in an interview on Sunday that his superiors did not tell them about the priest’s history of sexual abuse.

“They should have told me before,” said Father Frania, who said he first heard about Father Hullermann’s conviction last week as the story was about to become public.

The statement by the archdiocese said that there was “no evidence of recent sexual abuses, similar to those for which he was convicted in 1986.”

In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.

Repeated attempts to contact Father Hullermann at his home in Bad Tölz were unsuccessful.

“He is not here at the moment,” Father Frania said.

Significant questions remain unanswered, especially about the pope’s involvement during his time as archbishop and how closely he supervised decisions about the priest. Nor have any of the victims in Grafing as yet come forward publicly.

Even before this latest case, the European sexual-abuse scandal had deeply damaged the church’s reputation in the pope’s home country, Germany. The congregations in Bad Tölz and in Garching an der Alz, where Father Hullermann worked for 21 years, responded with shock and anger, but also with a strong defense for a priest lauded for his approachability, good humor and ability to connect with parishioners on everyday issues.

Read the rest of the story at: German Priest in
Church Abuse Case Is Suspended (NY Times)

CNN on Peter Hullermann and the involvement of Pope Benedict XVI