Pope ‘failed to act’ on US sex abuse claims

The documents, obtained by the New York Times, emerge as Pope Benedict faces other accusations that, as the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer and previously as an archbishop in Germany, he did not discipline priests accused of sexual abuse, or alert the relevant civilian authorities.

In a case in his native Germany, the Munich and Freising diocese said recently that, while archbishop there in 1980, Pope Benedict agreed to church housing for a priest suspected of child sex abuse while he received “therapy.”

Yesterday, the Pope accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne over his handling of clerical sex abuse allegations. Bishop Magee, from Newry, Co Down, faced criticism after the Church’s watchdog found that he took minimal action over accusations against two priests. It branded his child protection as dangerous, focusing on the needs of the accused rather than the victims.

The Milwaukee documents, which include letters between bishops and the Vatican, and victims’ affidavits, are to form part of four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

According to The Times, the documents reveal that three successive archibshops in Wisconsin failed to report sexual abuse claims against Father Murphy to the police. One of Father Murphy’s alleged victims, Arthur Budzinski, who was first molested at the age of 12, said he spent more than 30 years, with other former students of thd school, trying to raise the alarm about Father Murphy. Attempts included handing out leaflets outside the Milwaukee cathedral.

Father Murphy was never disciplined by the church. Instead, in 1974 he was quietly moved from the school to northern Wisconsin where he continued to work in schools and, according to one lawsuit, a juvenile detention centre.

In 1993, with scores of complaints about Father Murphy in front of him, Archbishop Weakland asked a social worker who specialised in sexual abuse to evaluate the priest. The social worker came back to say that Father Murphy had admitted abusing about 200 boys but felt no remorse.

The Archbishop appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger and, when his letters received no answer, to a different Vatican office warning them that a failure to act could lead to “true scandal”. However his appeals to the Vatican to defrock Father Murphy came to nothing after the priest wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger.

Father Murphy died in 1998, still a priest.