THE NEW YORK TIMES: The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, wanted to leave the ministry.
But in 1985, four years after the priest and his bishop first asked that he be defrocked, the future Pope Benedict XVI, then a top Vatican official, signed a letter saying that the case needed more time and that “the good of the Universal Church” had to be considered in the final decision, according to church documents released through lawsuits.
That decision did not come for two more years, the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.
As the scandal has deepened, the pope’s defenders have said that, well before he was elected pope in 2005, he grew ever more concerned about sexual abuse and weeding out pedophile priests. But the case of the California priest, the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, and the trail of documents first reported on Friday by The Associated Press, shows, in this period at least, little urgency.
The letter that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later pope, wrote in Latin in 1985, mentions Father Kiesle’s young age — 38 at the time — as one consideration in whether he should be forced from the priesthood. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was wrong to draw conclusions based on one letter, without carefully understanding the context in which it was written.
“It’s evident that it’s not an in-depth and serious use of documents,” he said. Earlier Friday, Father Lombardi suggested that the pope would be willing to meet with sexual abuse victims.
But John S. Cummins, the former bishop of Oakland who repeatedly wrote his superiors in Rome urging that the priest be defrocked, said the Vatican in that era, after the Second Vatican Council, was especially reluctant to dismiss priests because so many were abandoning the priesthood. >>> Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo | Friday, April 09, 2010
LE TEMPS: Pédophilie – Le pape a traîné des pieds pour défroquer un prêtre californien : Benoît XVI est accusé d’avoir couvert de nouveaux abus alors qu’il était encore cardinal. Le père Kiesle, qui a reconnu avoir des penchants pédophiles, avait lui-même demandé à être défroqué. Il a dû attendre plusieurs années >>> ATS/AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010
WELT ONLINE: Missbrauch – Papst wehrt sich gegen neue Vorwürfe aus USA: Als Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation soll der damalige Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger die rasche Entlassung eines pädophilen US-Geistlichen aus dem Priesteramt um Jahre verzögert haben. Das behauptet ein Opfer-Anwalt. Der Vatikan widerspricht. Ratzinger habe lediglich um mehr Zeit zur Aufklärung gebeten. >>> dpa/lac | Samstag, 10. April 2010
