The Pope series: I

Este Papa é um dos maiores, se não o maior, teólogo católico (ortodoxo) vivo. Uma instituição escolher a sua maior referência intelectual como líder é pouco comum, e talvez só tenha acontecido porque este será um Papa de transição, do amado JPII para um inédito latino-americano.

Porém, tendo sido eleito também numa tentativa de estancar a hemorragia de católicos na Europa, as suas acções ao longo dos anos (e agora desvendadas) revelam-se potenciadoras do fenómeno a que pretendia pôr cobro. Católicos decentes e de boa fé afastam-se, muitas vezes formalmente, de uma instituição cujo líder defende pedófilos, diz que os preservativos quando usados aumentam o risco de transmissão do HIV, e que os Ateus foram responsáveis pelo Holocausto.

É este o Catolicismo que pretendem?

"Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican’s documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples.

In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn’t go to the police, but instead he was referred for “counselling”. The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was “untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again.” Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.

In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining he was thinking of the “good of the universal Church” and of the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age” of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger’s statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the “good of the universal Church” – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock a man called Father Lawrence C. Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical ‘trial’ – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a “spiritual retreat.” He died years later, unpunished.

These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with “in absolute secrecy… completely suppressed by perpetual silence.” That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration.” The commendation was copied to all bishops.

Some of Ratzinger’s supporters – including, extraordinarily, Ann Widdecombe – claim that, back then, there were different attitudes to paedophilia, and people didn’t know how wrong it was. In 2001? The fact they covered it up so carefully is, in fact, evidence they knew it was profoundly wrong. If they thought it was fine, why hide it?"