The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including “the good of the universal church,” according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.
The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978.
Read it all. This one ran on the front page of the local paper here this morning; I would be interested if that also happened with your local paper if you know–KSH..
We had a variation of this story on page A3 of the San Diego Union-Tribune, written jointly by the Washington Post and the AP, but when I went online to get the link, it does not appear on the U-T online site, only the AP story cited in Kendall’s post exists there. Very strange.