Vatican Official Defends Pope’s Handling of Case
New York Times
Published: March 31, 2010
By RACHEL DONADIO
ROME — The head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office sought Wednesday to rebut criticism that top Vatican officials, including the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI, had mishandled the case of a Wisconsin priest who sexually abused scores of deaf boys.
In a statement posted on the Vatican’s Web site, Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, criticized an article in The New York Times that raised questions about why the Vatican had not defrocked the priest, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, despite calls for action on his case from American bishops.
“It seems to me, on the other hand, that we owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors,” Cardinal Levada wrote in the lengthy statement.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became pope in 2005, was the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office when Father Murphy’s case was referred there.
Cardinal Levada’s statement also criticized editorials and editorial columns published by The Times that were critical of the pope’s handling of the sexual abuse scandal roiling the Catholic Church. He said the Times’ coverage had been “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness.”
Cardinal Levada did say, however, that Father Murphy should have been removed from the priesthood in light of evidence that he molested as many as 200 boys at a renowned Wisconsin school for the deaf, where he worked from 1950 to 1974.
“I, for one, looking back at this report agree that Fr. Murphy deserved to be dismissed from the clerical state for his egregious criminal behavior, which would normally have resulted from a canonical trial,” Cardinal Levada said in the statement.
According to documents that have emerged as part of lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, church officials began a secret canonical trial against Father Murphy, but stopped the proceedings in 1998 after Father Murphy wrote personally to the future pope, saying his health was poor and he wanted “to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood.” He died that year.
Criminal and civil authorities never pursued charges against Father Murphy, and three archbishops in Milwaukee failed to report the abuse allegations to the authorities.
Cardinal Levada said Wednesday that pursuing a canonical trial against Father Murphy “would be useless if the priest were dying.”
In addition, the cardinal said that the judicial vicar who had been presiding over the case had recently written a letter saying that “he never received any communication about suspending the trial, and would not have agreed to it.”
As the Catholic Church grapples with a sexual abuse scandal building in several countries across Europe, Pope Benedict has come under scrutiny for how he and his subordinates handled sexual abuse allegations against priests while he served as an archbishop in Germany, and later, as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
In 1980, when the pope was archbishop of Munich, he approved the transfer of an abusive priest to therapy. The priest went on to molest other boys after he returned to pastoral work in a different parish.
On Wednesday, Cardinal Levada said that although Father Murphy never faced judgment in a criminal or canonical court, the priest had not evaded it altogether.
“As a believer,” he wrote, “I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead.”