German Church Suspends Priest Embroiling Pope in Abuse Scandal
March 15, 2010, 3:26 PM EDTBy Patrick Donahue
March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Roman Catholic Church authorities in Germany suspended a priest whose involvement in sexual molestation in the 1980s has drawn Pope Benedict XVI into a widening abuse scandal, saying the clergyman violated the terms of his pastoral service.
The priest, identified only as “H.,” was removed with immediate effect from his duties offering pastoral services to tourists, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising said in a statement on its Web site today. The priest, who was convicted of molestation in 1986, had been ordered not to undertake activities with children and “violated those restrictions.”
H.’s background came to light three days ago, when the church in Munich announced that Pope Benedict, at the time Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, was involved in a 1980 decision to move the priest to a rectory in the Munich region for treatment.
A former vicar-general in the church administration, Gerhard Gruber, subsequently allowed the accused priest to continue pastoral duties, during which he committed further abuse. Gruber said in the March 12 statement that the decision to re-post H. was his alone and a “serious mistake.”
H. has worked as a “health-resort and tourism pastoral care giver” since 2008, the archdiocese said. It also that no new allegations of abuse had emerged since H.’s conviction 24 years ago.
The priest’s suspension was accompanied by the resignation of Josef Obermaier, the Munich church official in charge of pastoral service. Obermaier took responsibility for the “grave error,” the church said in the statement.
Benedict has struggled to contain the damage to the church’s reputation from sex-abuse scandals, now compounded by a wave of allegations of abuse by Catholic priests that has emerged in Germany this year.
A spokesman for the Vatican, Federico Lombardi, said on March 12 that the pope was “extraneous” to the events in Munich and referred to the archdiocese’s statement.
--With assistance by Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome. Editor: Fergal O’Brien, Jones Hayden
To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
