Word: priests
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...become deeply personal: many of the latest scandals are rooted in his native Germany, and they have dragged in his own brother, who headed a famous Bavarian choir at a school where young boys were allegedly abused. Benedict himself stands accused of poorly handling the case of a pedophile priest when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the early 1980s. While there's virtually no chance of the Pope himself being brought down - the last time a Pontiff bowed out in disgrace was in 1046 (Gregory VI, for financial impropriety) - it is entirely possible the scandals will permanently...
Trouble in the Old World The chain of scandals now tightening around the Vatican began in Ireland last year with the publication of two government-commissioned reports concerning sexual abuse by priests and at schools and orphanages run by the church. Four of Ireland's 24 bishops offered their resignation. Since then, the Irish Primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, has admitted he met two young victims of a pedophile priest in 1975 and asked them to sign an oath of silence. The priest went on to molest children for almost two decades before being arrested and sent to prison. Brady...
...Times posted its story on the accused priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who died in 1998, the Holy See responded on the Web. In a statement linked on the Vatican's brand new Twitter account, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Papal spokesman, declared, "By sexually abusing children who were hearing-impaired, Father Murphy violated the law and, more importantly, the sacred trust that his victims had placed in him." But Lombardi defended the decision not to remove Murphy from the "clerical state," saying the priest was "elderly and in very poor health" and that he was "living in seclusion...
...life "in the dignity of my priesthood," noting his ill health and the years that had passed since the accusations. After about two years of back-and-forth arguments, according to the Times, Bertone told the Milwaukee Archdiocese to take "pastoral" rather than disciplinary action regarding Murphy. The priest died soon after, at the age of 72, and was buried in his clerical vestments...
Still, the Pope is the Pope, a global leader with very few equals in terms of pomp, history and circumstance. His links, however indirect, to specific cases of sexual abuse will necessarily catch the attention of both Catholics and non-Catholics. Another priest acknowledged that Benedict being specifically named in the Milwaukee and German cases just makes the news all the more troubling. "It's so volatile right now," he says. "Many of the faithful who were losing confidence in their bishops, now, it's in the Church Universal. What you read in paper: it's a real crucifixion...