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	Small Town in Shock As Priest's Past Is Revealed By Derek Scally The Irish Times March 17, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0317/1224266441447.html FOR HIS parishioners in rural Bavaria, Germany’s last bastion of the Catholic faith, Fr Peter Hullermann was the perfect priest. Five days ago, his past caught up with him and, as headlines appeared connecting him with child abuse convictions in 1980 and 1986, the grey-haired, heavy-set priest vanished. The shock sits deep in Garching, a small town of 9,000 in rural Bavaria, where Fr Hullermann served for 20 years until he was moved on in 2008 with only vague explanations. Today parishioners feel betrayed that church leaders failed to tell them the real reason for his departure. In 1980, Fr Hullermann was charged with abusing young boys and sent to Bavaria to undergo therapy, housed in a presbytery in Grafing near Munich with the permission of the then archbishop, Joseph Ratzinger. Six years later, with Joseph Ratzinger now a cardinal in the Vatican, Fr Hullermann was convicted again of child abuse despite being banned from pastoral work and given an 18-month suspended sentence. In 1988 he was moved to Garching in rural Bavaria, 90km east of Munich, where parishioners praised his “outstanding work”. They knew nothing of his past, nor that one of his former victims contacted him in 2008 demanding compensation. Munich’s new archbishop, Reinhard Marx, hearing of the case for the first time, withdrew Fr Hullermann from Garching, sent him for psychological tests and posted him to the spa town of Bad Tolz. He served there for just 18 months before disappearing at the weekend. “The shock will last a while, no doubt at all, and it has certainly prompted many of us to ask questions about the church as an institution,” said Wolfgang Reichenwaller, mayor of Garching. “We have no great expectation of hearing any more from the church. At least you Irish are better off: you’re getting a letter from the Pope.” While locals are struggling to understand their popular priest’s hidden past, Mr Reichenwaller says few have any plans to change their church-going habits. Instead, like many German Catholics, they are waiting to see how German bishops tighten their existing abuse regulations in response to Germany’s growing clerical abuse scandal. Mayor Reichenwaller says that Garching locals are puzzled by the media interest in Fr Hullermann.
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