The pope and sexually abusive clergy

This is a copy of a letter posted on the CBS News blog. It's a report of the pope's previous handling of sexual abusive clergy. Note how he gets tough on abusers- just when the media gets a whiff of what's going on.

News reporting of the latest scandals in Ireland and Germany involving supervision of and inquiry into pedophile priests and others by the Vatican and several Papal administrations is missing a significant context. It would seem the press has largely forgotten or ignored some critical past history. It's compelling backdrop. It reveals that Pope Benedict XVI has, for at least a decade, had first hand knowledge of the dramatic pedophilia-sexual abuse involvement of one of the church's most powerful and influential former leaders, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado. He was the founder and superior general of the Legionaries of Christ. Marceil's incredible sexual assault history dated back decades, according to a plethora of news reports. In 2001, according to The Hartford Courant, the Rome-based Legion, specializing in education, had 480 priests and 2,500 seminarians, active in 20 countries on four continents. It operated schools in Latin America, Europe and the United States, including a minor seminary in Cheshire, Conn.

A former Hartford Courant investigative reporting colleague and good friend of mine, the late Gerald Renner, and Jason Berry, a National Catholic Register reporter, collected affidavits from those affiliated with the church, all alleged victims of Marcial Maciel's conduct. They implicated Maciel, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, in molesting 9 former male students between the ages of 10 and 16 while they were attending church schools. The story and follow-on articles first appeared in The Courant in 1997 when Pope John Paul II reigned. Maciel, the former Pope and the church leadership essentially denied the overwhelming truth of the in depth articles for years. The Vatican hired two high priced lawyers to check into the stories, attorneys who offered the press little insight into the situation, Renner told me after the stories appeared.

But, eventually those horrifying allegations helped ignite an inquiry of Maciel supervised by Cardinal Joseph Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. However, that so called investigation, despite overwhelming evidence of misconduct unearthed by Renner and Berry, did not lead to any discipline for Marciel. Years later, say past news reports, after he became Pope in April 2005, Benedict had several opportunities to take action against Maciel, but once again did nothing. It wasn't until after Renner and Berry wrote a book on the scandal, "Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II," that he did. The book detailed what Berry and Renner believed was a cover up of Maciel's alleged sex abuses. They wrote about the punishment of one priest who tried to expose the wrongdoing. Benedict's punitive action came in May 2006 when he approved restrictions on Maciel's ministry. Interestingly, the ruling arrived about the time when Renner's and Barry's book was to be translated into Spanish, the language of those who were long time potential witnesses to the Maciel scandal.

So Pope Benedict is certainly not virginal when it comes to knowledge of the cover ups of abusive sexual activity by priests or other higher level members of the Catholic Church.

Sincerely,

T. Dennie Williams
Freelance Writer
PO Box 511, 56 Brush Hill Road, Litchfield, Ct. 06759
Telephone 860-567-0280
email denniew@optonline.net