Suit Against Vatican and the Pope Reveals Details

Wisconsin families of sex abuse survivors are saying to the Vatican: It's not alright, and you will not get away with this outrage.

Suit against pope, Vatican details Wisconsin abuse

Man allegedly molested by priest accuses pontiff, senior Vatican officials of failing to protect children

By DINESH RAMDE and ERIC GORSKI, Associated Press

New documents released in the case of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting boys at a school for the deaf show the Vatican was alerted earlier than previously thought.

A letter released Thursday by the attorney in a lawsuit against the Vatican shows that one of the alleged victims wrote to a Vatican official in 1995.

That was two years before the Vatican green-lighted a secret canonical trial against the Rev. Lawrence Murphy.

Previously, it was believed that the Vatican first learned of the allegations in a 1996 letter from the Milwaukee archbishop.

Murphy was accused of molesting at least 200 deaf children from 1950 to 1975. He died in 1998.

The Vatican was studying the lawsuit and had no immediate comment.

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- An Illinois man who says he was molested by a Wisconsin priest as a child filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing Pope Benedict XVI and senior Vatican officials of failing to protect children from a man the Vatican knew was a possible child molester.

The Vatican had no immediate comment.

The plaintiff, identified in court papers as John Doe 16, said he was repeatedly molested by the Rev. Lawrence Murphy while he was a student at the Milwaukee-area St. John's School for the Deaf. The lawsuit says the abuse occurred over a number of years and included incidents where Murphy solicited sex in the confessional.

The lawsuit seeks the release of confidential Vatican files detailing clergy abuse allegations, as well as unspecified monetary damages. It also seeks a jury trial.

The lawsuit doesn't list the years of the alleged abuse. Murphy taught at the school from 1950 to 1974.

Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the school during that period. His case drew renewed scrutiny after the recent release of documents suggesting that a Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- now the Pope -- failed to aggressively discipline Murphy.

John Doe 16 said he wrote two letters to Vatican official Angelo Sodano reporting the abuse by Murphy and asking for help.

The lawsuit says Sodano, Ratzinger and fellow Vatican official Tarcisio Bertone all knew about the allegations against Murphy and conspired to keep them secret. The lawsuit says the claims are based on "information and belief" but doesn't offer proof.

"Ratzinger and Bertone each knew that their inaction and delay would cause harm to Plaintiff and other former deaf students," the lawsuit states.

The court document suggests that the Vatican failed to discipline Murphy because he was a prolific fundraiser.

The defendants are Ratzinger, Bertone, Sodano and the Holy See, identified as the state of the Vatican City. Cardinal Bertone was Ratzinger's deputy at the time of the investigation and is now the Vatican's secretary of state.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, has previously said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was only informed of the Murphy case some 20 years after the diocese knew of the allegations and after civil authorities decided to drop their investigation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the powerful office that among other things investigates clerical sex abuse.

Lombardi has said that given Murphy's age and health, and that no further allegations had been leveled against him, the Congregation suggested that the Wisconsin bishops restrict his ministry rather than stage a full-blown canonical trial against him.

The Wisconsin bishops ordered the proceedings halted, but in the end, Murphy died while still a defendant in a canonical trial.
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Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield in Vatican City contributed to this report.

Catholic Columnist Dowd Has Had Enough

With the seeming regularity of rain in April [at least in Wisconsin], each day bring a new Pope-protected-a-child-molester story.

One Catholic columnist, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, has had enough. She wants children and adult victims protected. And she wants sexism in the church eliminated.

Dowd, with her Menckenesque acid keyboard, has devoted her last five Times columns to excoriating the Pope. And rightly so.

The Pope is an criminal accessory to child rape, and should be spending his days trying to make these victims and their families whole, and not dismissing child molestation as "petty gossip" spread by Jews in New York.

[By the way the journal Politics Daily, and the victims group SNAP, the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, deserve acclaim for their humanism, eloquence and compassion in the face of continuing stonewalling from the Vatican.]

The Catholic Church remains a bigoted institution dedicated to the oppression of women, gays and child sexual abuse victims.

Writes Dowd:

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination [in Saudi Arabia]? I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.

I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.

I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.

To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen.

Negating women is at the heart of the church’s hideous — and criminal — indifference to the welfare of boys and girls in its priests’ care. Lisa Miller writes in Newsweek’s cover story about the danger of continuing to marginalize women in a disgraced church that has Mary at the center of its founding story:

‘In the Roman Catholic corporation, the senior executives live and work, as they have for a thousand years, eschewing not just marriage, but intimacy with women ... not to mention any chance to familiarize themselves with the earthy, primal messiness of families and children.’ No wonder that, having closed themselves off from women and everything maternal, they treated children as collateral damage, a necessary sacrifice to save face for Mother Church.

And the sins of the fathers just keep coming. On Friday, The Associated Press broke the latest story pointing the finger of blame directly at Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, quoting from a letter written in Latin in which he resisted pleas to defrock a California priest who had sexually molested children.

As the longtime Vatican enforcer, the archconservative Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — moved avidly to persecute dissenters. But with molesters, he was plodding and even merciful.