The pope under fire

The wave of sexual-abuse scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church has reached the Vatican, after officials conceded that Pope Benedict XVI had once approved the transfer of a German priest who’d been caught molesting boys. In 1980, the pope, then the archbishop of Munich, approved sending the priest to therapy. After leaving the therapy program, the priest, Peter Hullerman, returned to a parish and was again accused of abuse. A deputy to the then-archbishop has taken responsibility for the decision to let Hullerman return to a parish.

The Vatican complained of a smear campaign against the pope. But a new wave of allegations of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests continued to spread across Europe, with more than 300 people coming forward in Germany alone. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said the church should conduct “an unflinching examination’’ into the abuse crisis, including studying whether the celibacy requirement for priests was a factor.

How sadly familiar, said Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle. Just as it did a decade ago in the U.S., the Vatican

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is attacking “anyone who could possibly hint that the pope knew about anything, anywhere.” Clearly, the Vatican is more interested in the “institutional imperative to protect the top guy” than in “protecting innocent children from the predations of its priests.”

The campaign against the pope is “grossly misleading,” said Phil Lawler in CatholicCulture.org. There’s no evidence that he knew Hullerman was a pedophile, and everyone involved agrees that the decision to transfer him was not made by Benedict. Clearly, “a grievous mistake” was made, but suggestions that the pope knowingly “put a pedophile back in circulation” are “an outrageous distortion.”

No, they’re not, said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com. In fact, this pope has a long record of just this sort of “coverup.” In 2001, the pope, then a high Vatican official, issued a memo warning bishops that investigations of abuse charges should be conducted “in the most secretive way” and that those involved should be “restrained by a perpetual silence” or face excommunication. The pope apparently believes the real problem isn’t the rape and torture of children but “the reporting of the rape and torture.”