Brody's Notes... New York Times Reports Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

The Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, with hands together, at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin in 1960.       
Photo by The New York Times

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Mar 25 | New York Times Senior Writer Laurie Goodstein and Rome based Rachel Donadio reported in yesterday's New York Times that top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit. 

According to the Times: 

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked. 

The New York Times obtained documents, which the church fought to keep secret, from Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, the lawyers for five men who have brought four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The documents include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims’ affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican. 

Vatican spokesman, Monsignor Federico Lombardi, was shown the documents and was asked by New York Times correspondent Rachel Donadio if he would to respond to questions about the case. He provided a statement saying that the priest had certainly violated “particularly vulnerable” children and the law, and that it was a “tragic case.” But then he pointed out that the Holy See was not forwarded the case until 1996, years after Wisconsin law enforcement  authorities had investigated the case and dropped it.

Lombardi emphasised that neither the Church's Code of Canon Law nor Vatican procedures issued in 1962, which instruct bishops to conduct canonical investigations and trials in secret, prohibited church officials from reporting child abuse to civil authorities. He did not address why that had never happened in this case.

Vatican observers note that included with already damaging revelations regarding a paedophile priest in Benedict's archdioceses, when he was Archbishop in Munich, Germany, and was who apparently was directed into therapy with Benedict's consent-then later re-offended against children-this latest case spells serious trouble. Added to the on-going crisis in Ireland, Brazil, Germany, and other nations this lawsuit creates a possible scenario for the Pope and the Vatican hierarchy that could lead to the abdication by the pontiff. An action that sources within the Holy See vehemently deny as possible or under any serious consideration. 

 Read The Full New York Times Article.