By Paddy Agnew
The Irish Times
March 20, 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0320/1224266710447.html
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| Pope Benedict has written a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland which is due to be read out at Mass on Sunday. |
VATICAN BRIEFING: POPE BENEDICT XVI’s pastoral letter to the Irish faithful will be presented to the world’s media in the Vatican this morning.
Vatican senior spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi told The Irish Times he will not be accompanied by any Curia “heavyweight” but will handle the briefing, restricting his role to that of offering clarification where requested of a letter expected to address just one issue, clerical sex abuse.
Asked to comment on the controversy surrounding Cardinal Sean Brady, Fr Lombardi said the Vatican had “nothing to say”.
With the Holy See continuing to prove leak-proof, some indication of the letter’s tone came from an interview with Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano.
Asked by the daily Il Foglio to comment on the open letter written yesterday by dissident German theologian Hans Kung – who called on the pope and the church hierarchy to pronounce a “ mea culpa ” and admit responsibility on mishandling of paedophile priests – Mr Vian said: “Kung just serves up ready-made articles that do more to chase up stereotypes than to profoundly examine issues . . . Things did not happen as Kung and certain media would have us believe . . . The personal attacks by Kung on the pope . . . leave us dumbfounded because it looks like they have been made more for the benefit of the wider public than for anything else.”
Mr Kung had criticised the pope’s role in the handling of paedophile priest Peter Hullermann, allowed to return to parish duties in Munich during Benedict’s time as archbishop of Munich in the early 1980s. The dissident theologian suggested the claim that responsibility for the handling of the priest rests with vicar general of the diocese Gerhard Muller is implausible. He argued that then archbishop Ratzinger “was responsible from the administrative point of view”.
More potentially embarrassing revelations emerged about Hullermann yesterday when the psychiatrist treating him told the New York Times the archdiocese of Munich had ignored repeated warnings from him.
The psychiatrist, Dr Werner Huth, had warned he should not be allowed to work with children. Dr Huth said he had set three conditions for treating the paedophile priest, namely that Hullermann should: stay away from children; give up alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times. “I said, ‘for God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children . . . I was very unhappy about the entire story.”
But Hullermann, who had moved to the Munich archdiocese for treatment for his paedophile tendencies in 1980, was not kept away from children. In June 1986, he was convicted of the sexual abuse of other minors, fined 4,000 marks and given an 18-month suspended sentence. Dr Huth told the New York Times he did not have any direct communications with then archbishop Ratzinger, nor did he know if the archbishop knew about his warnings.
Meanwhile, a further indication of the extent of clerical sex abuse allegations sweeping the church came from a book released this week in Italy. Il Peccato Nascosto (The Hidden Sin), attempts to lift the lid on clerical sex abuse in the Italian church.
The book’s authors, journalist Luigi Irdi and lawyer Nino Marazitta, paint a picture all too familiar to Irish eyes, one of systematic mishandling of paedophile priests by bishops. The authors lamented the fact that the issue of paedophilia remains hidden beneath a “wall of silence”.
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