Pope did not punish priest who abused 200 deaf boys

Pope Benedict XVI failed to dismiss an American priest who molested more than 200 deaf boys in his care, despite direct pleas from bishops in the 1990s, it has emerged. The revelation brings the scandal over the concealment of abuse which has rocked the Catholic Church in recent months closer than it has ever been to the man who at the time was just Cardinal Ratzinger.

The New York Times revealed today that letters sent to Ratzinger by Wisconsin bishops dealing with a priest who worked at a deaf school, the Rev Lawrence C Murphy, have come to light as part of a lawsuit being brought by five men against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. They show, says the NYT, that Vatican officials' "highest priority was protecting the church from scandal".

Murphy taught at, and then became director of, St John's School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, from 1950 to 1974. He is alleged to have abused more than 200 boys in his care – in dormitories, on school trips and even in his mother's home.

One victim was Arthur Budzinski, first abused at the age of 12 when Murphy was giving him confession. Now 61, he says: "If he was a real mean guy, I would have stayed away, but he was so friendly, and so nice and understanding. I knew he was wrong, but I couldn't really believe it."
 
Another former pupil, Gary Smith, says he was molested 50 or 60 times. By the time he left the school, he says he was a "very, very angry man". With other victims, the two men spent more than three decades trying to have Murphy prosecuted. They even handed out leaflets outside Milwaukee cathedral, but the authorities refused to credit their claims.

Asked about the letters recently, a Vatican spokesman said Murphy had certainly violated "particularly vulnerable" children and described the case as "tragic".

Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin, told that Murphy was sexually abusing children, failed to report him to the police. Instead, they moved him quietly to another diocese in 1974. There he continued to work with children and young people.

In the 1990s, local church authorities sought guidance from the Vatican's 'Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith', the office which still decides whether accused priests should be defrocked - headed from 1981 to 2005 by Ratzinger.

Two of the letters to the man who is now Pope, dating from 1996, went unanswered. Eventually, his second-in-command advised that Murphy should face a canonical trial, and be defrocked if found guilty. Murphy himself then wrote to Ratzinger pleading illness.

"I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," he said. "I ask your kind assistance in this matter." The trial was duly stopped, and Murphy remained a priest until his death in 1998. ·