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	Archbishop Rips Coverage of Pope, Abuse By Dan Horn Cincinnati Enquirer April 15, 2010 http://news.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100414/NEWS01/4150327/Schnurr+rips+coverage+of+pope++abuse The Archbishop of Cincinnati sent a letter to the region's half million Catholics this week decrying media coverage of Pope Benedict XVI and challenging claims that the pope failed to take swift action against abusive priests. The statement from Archbishop Dennis Schnurr adds him to the growing list of bishops and Catholic leaders who have come to the defense of a pope who is under fire for decisions he may have made decades ago, first as a bishop and later as a cardinal. Schnurr's letter opens with an acknowledgement that April is national Child Abuse Prevention Month and that the church has, in the past, failed to adequately protect children from sexually abusive priests and church employees. But after apologizing for those lapses, Schnurr criticizes recent secular media coverage of the pope and urges Catholics to seek more information from religious publications, their church and the Vatican. "The Church welcomes honest reporting, even when it is critical of the Church and painful," Schnurr wrote. "However, much of the reporting in this instance has been neither fair nor accurate." His comments echo those of Vatican officials and other bishops who have said some of the negative coverage of the pope has been based on bad information or misunderstandings about how the church hierarchy works. Covington Bishop Roger Foys raised similar concerns after saying Mass on Sunday at Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington. "He was cautioning people to read the stories carefully and to seek more information," said Foys' spokesman, Tim Fitzgerald. "The media may have some of their facts scrambled." Some victims' advocates say the bishops might have a point about at least some of the recent coverage. But the leader of a Cincinnati victims' group took issue with one passage of Schnurr's letter, in which the archbishop suggested that a lack of knowledge about pedophilia may have contributed to the church's past mistakes. "That's a cop out," said Dan Frondorf, leader of the Cincinnati chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It doesn't excuse the fact that they allowed crimes to continue." Frondorf said Schnurr's defense of the pope amounted to him "jumping on the bandwagon to protect his boss." Sixteen archdiocesan priests have been suspended or permanently removed from ministry in the past decade because of abuse allegations. The archdiocese has spent almost $6 million since 2004 on legal fees, counseling for victims and a victim's compensation fund, and it spent close to $3 million more on background checks and other child protection measures. Schnurr said the mishandling of abusive priests was due in part to a lack of knowledge about abusers and advice from psychologists who believed it was harmful to victims if society and families overreacted to sexual abuse. "I was not a bishop at that time, but this kind of advice informed the inadequate decisions many bishops made in those years," he wrote. "We now know better." Schnurr's media criticism focused on reports that Pope Benedict XVI failed to act against abusers when he was head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Schnurr noted that abuse cases from the 1980s and 1990s would not have been the then-cardinal's responsibility because that office did not, at the time, handle abuse cases. Other reports have questioned whether the pope, while a bishop in Germany, ignored or delayed taking action against an abusive priest there. In that case, according to the New York Times, the future pope was kept apprised when the priest was transferred to a new assignment after undergoing therapy for pedophilia. Schnurr's letter, which will appear in church bulletins in the coming weeks, asks Catholics to keep an open mind about the allegations. "I urge you not to form judgments based on secular press accounts alone," he said. Contact: dhorn@enquirer.com
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