The future Pope Benedict XVI, dealing with a request to defrock a child-molesting priest in California, was handling it as a dismissal from the priesthood ”” not an abuse case ”” and acted “expeditiously” by the standards of the time, a Vatican lawyer said in a statement released Saturday.
The Vatican issued the remarks a day after reports emerged that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, signed a letter to the priest’s bishop saying the matter needed more time and that the “good of the Universal Church” had to be taken into account. It took two years for the man, the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, to be removed from the priesthood.
The bishop, John S. Cummins, wrote to Pope John Paul II in 1981, saying that the priest had been criminally charged with molesting six boys ages 11 to 13 several years earlier and that he was asking to be dismissed. He wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger at least three more times, to provide information and check on the case’s status.
Damian Thompson has more here. The media really are involved in a witch hunt and I am angry that a good Pope is under such constant and unreasonable attack
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100033774/journalists-abandon-standards-to-attack-the-pope-you-can-say-that-again/
Amen, RPP. We need to daily lift up Pope Benedict XVI in prayer.