Clergy abuse lawsuit against Pope, Cardinal praises cover up, clergy abuse Chile and Belgium

"I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration," the Colombian (Cardinal) wrote to Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux.

New Lawsuit Shows Letters to Vatican on Sexual Abuse Earlier Than Previously Thought By LAURIE GOODSTEIN April 22, 2010 Documents released in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Pope Benedict XVI show that the Vatican was informed more than a year earlier than previously thought about the case of a priest who molested deaf boys for two decades at a boarding school in Wisconsin.
One victim of the priest wrote two letters to the Vatican’s secretary of state in 1995 asking Pope John Paul II himself to read his anguished letters and “excommunicate” the priest, the Rev. Lawrence Murphy.

Father Murphy, who died in 1998, admitted to a psychologist hired by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that he had molested 34 children when he worked at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wis., from 1952 to 1974. Church officials concluded that there might have been as many as 200 victims.
The Vatican had previously said that the first notice it had about Father Murphy was when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — received a letter about the case in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee.

The letter writer, whose name was excised, is now the unnamed plaintiff in the latest lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer who has brought hundreds of sexual abuse cases against the Roman Catholic Church. The victim said he never received a response.
What makes this lawsuit unusual is that it names as defendants Pope Benedict; the Vatican’s current secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; a former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano; and the Holy See. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/us/23priest.html


Pride and wickedness Embattled and arrogant to the last, a Colombian cardinal implicates Pope John Paul II in the cover-up Austen Ivereigh Wednesday 21 April 2010
Cardinal Castrillón was no ordinary official. From 1996 to 2006, he headed the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome, the department which safeguards the interests and rights of priests. In September 2001, he wrote to a French bishop to praise him for refusing to turn over an abusive priest to the police. The letter could not have been clearer or more damning.

"I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration," the Colombian wrote to Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux. "You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest."

The last was a reference to the fact that Bishop Pican had received a suspended three-month sentence for refusing to report the crimes of Fr René Bissey, claiming that to do so would have violated the confessional (in fact, he had learned of the abuse from one of the victim's mothers). Nor, when Cardinal Castrillón wrote the letter, could he have been in any doubt about the priest's guilt. He had been jailed the year before for 18 years for the sexual abuse of 11 boys.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/21/religion-castrillon-coverup-johnpaul2



Chilean priest allegedly abused 5 young men AP Apr 22, 2010 SANTIAGO, Chile – A Chilean prosecutor on Thursday announced a criminal investigation of a popular retired priest accused of sexually abusing five young men in his parish residence.
The allegations were lodged late last year and confirmed by the archbishop of Santiago only this week, as Chile's Roman Catholic leadership appealed publicly for forgiveness for alleged abuses involving 20 clergy members. Five of them have been convicted and 15 others are under investigation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_chile_church_abuse


Belgium's Catholic bishop of Bruges quits over abuse 4/23/10 The bishop of the Belgian city of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, has resigned after admitting sexual abuse of a boy earlier in his career. Bishop Vangheluwe, 73, said the abuse had happened when he was a simple priest and continued when he started as a bishop, a Vatican statement said. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the resignation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8639253.stm