* come hide here, said the future Pope to the priest accused of child molesting

Pope Benedict, sexual abuse facilitator

Nicholas Kulish writes in the NYT (3/23/10) …

• The investigation into sexual abuse by clergy members in Germany expanded Monday to take in four more priests and two nuns in the Regensburg Diocese in Bavaria after new victims came forward there, the diocese said Monday.
• The widening scandal has cast a shadow on the Vatican, with allegations touching Pepe Benedict’s former archdiocese.
• The claims of sexual abuse in Regensburg have attracted particular attention because the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, directed a choir there from 1964 to 1994, raising questions about whether he would have known about sexual abuse at a school linked to the choir. Monsignor Ratzinger has said that he knew nothing about the sexual abuse, and he apologized for slapping students during his tenure.
• The pope himself has come under fire because a priest accused of molesting boys was allowed to transfer to an archdiocese overseen by Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, in the 1980s. The priest was allowed to return to pastoral work, including work with children, and was later convicted of further incidents of sexual abuse.

read the entire story at … http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/world/europe/23germany.html

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