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Pope Too Busy To Be Bothered By Child Molesters

03/12/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
When Pope Benedict was still Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, his office approved the rehousing of a known pedophile. According to his deputy, vicar-general Gerhard Gruber, the incident that happened in the early 1980′s was not the direct action of now Pope Benedict, but rather his own actions with regards to rehousing this man who is accused of having forced a boy to perform sex acts upon him. The man was sent to a Munich vicarage for “therapy” before being sent back to the active priesthood.

In 1985, the man, known only as H, was removed from his position when more accusations of child molestation arose. At the time, he was given a suspended sentence and a fine for unspecified acts of sexual molestation.

“The repeated employment of H in priestly spiritual duties was a bad mistake. . .I assume all responsibility. . .You have to know that we had some 1,000 priests in the diocese at the time. . . The cardinal [Joseph Ratzinger] could not deal with everything, he had to rely on his vicar-general [deputy],” stated Gruber. Of course, in Ireland and the United States, the transfer and treatment of pedophile priests was often handled exclusively by the Archbishop directly and was not handled by their deputies. In fact, the reason why the four Irish bishops were forced to resign earlier this year is that they were complicit in the sexual abuse of minors by not pursuing the cases handed to them in greater depth. Instead, they were passed off to the Archbishop, if they were reported at all.

Prior to 1980, the man known as H was suspected of sexually molesting an eleven year old boy in the city of Essen. While he was confined to the vicarage between 1980 and 1982, no incidents were reported to have occurred, and he was transferred to the town of Grafing. In 1985, H was removed from the priesthood and charged and later convicted of sexual molestation. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine.

The Vatican and the diocese that Pope Benedict use to oversee have refused to name the priest. This is par for the course since, in Ireland, they fought tooth and nail to prevent the names of the priests who had molested children in that nation from being made public.

Pope Benedict, then Archbishop Ratzinger, served as archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, and left just before H was returned to his position in the priesthood. His replacement in the position, Archbishop Fredrich Wetter would serve in that position until 2007, and removed H from the priesthood.

Pope Benedict’s former diocese rehoused abuser priest