Word: priestly
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...news has been relentlessly bad for the Pope. Two weeks ago, Germany was scandalized by revelations that a pedophile priest was allowed to work again with children after being transferred in 1980 to the Archdiocese of Munich, which was then headed by the future Pontiff. Over the weekend, an apology the Pope issued for sexual abuse by Irish priests was deemed insufficient by many of the victims. Now the New York Times has run an article accusing Pope Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of the Vatican's doctrinal office, of not responding to requests...
...major smuggler's crossing into Iran. Says Gretchen Peters, an author and expert on Taliban drug ties with traffickers: "Counternarcotics, just like counterinsurgency, is like playing whack-a-mole. You knock it out in one place, and it pops up somewhere else." (See pictures of Afghanistan's battlefield priest...
Then in 2008, Dr. Huth says he received a call from a church official who told him that Father H. was still working with children. Indeed, for more than 20 years, the priest worked as a curate and parish administrator in the picturesque Bavarian town of Garching an der Alz, where he had regular contact with children and had supervised 150 altar-boys. The official had stumbled across old files which raised alarm bells. "I was horrified as there was no way this man should have been near children," Dr. Huth, now 80, told TIME from his house in Munich...
Then, on March 12, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung revealed the priest's history of sexual abuse. Three days later, Father H. was suspended from all pastoral duties. The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising admitted that he'd breached a church order banning him from working with children or youths and said in a statement that "serious mistakes" were made in the 1980s. And there was one resignation. Father H's superior, prelate Josef Obermaier, stepped down after the archdiocese said he assumed responsibility for "grave errors...
...Father H affair, Dr. Huth says he thinks that Archbishop Ratzinger did not know about the case, simply because it seems unlikely that he'd be aware of everything that happened in his diocese. But the psychiatrist criticised church officials for turning a blind eye to the priest's history of abuse by not launching a thorough investigation. "Senior figures in the Catholic Church covered up the allegations of abuse in order to protect Father H and the church's image," Dr. Huth says. "The Church has an idealised, 'unworldly' attitude towards issues of sexuality...