The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Europe has moved one step closer to Pope Benedict just as he prepares to send a letter on the abuse question to the Irish faithful.
Benedict was the Archbishop of Munich in the early 1980s, and a psychiatrist says he warned the archdiocese about a priest he was treating at the time.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, told the New York Times that he told archdiocesan officials in Munich that the priest, Fr. Peter Hullerman, “desperately has to be kept away from working with children.”
Huth said he did not have direct contact with Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, about the case, nor did he know if Raztinger knew about his warnings. Hullerman had been brought to the archdiocese of Munich in 1980 for therapy with Ratzinger’s approval.
Ratzinger, who was named Archbishop of Munich in 1977, moved to Rome in early 1982 as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The psychiatrist’s warnings clearly were not heeded, and one of Ratzinger’s assistants in Munich, Fr. Gerhard Gruber, has taken the blame for putting Hullerman back to work as a priest so quickly after he went into therapy.
In 1986, Hullerman was convicted of sexual abuse of boys, but was not ordered by the church to stay away from children until 12 years later. While the German bishops have accepted their blame for hundreds of cases of abuse now coming to light, something was also deeply askew in civil society. A German court failed to give Father Hullerman a stiff jail sentence after his conviction, letting him off with five-years probation and a fine.
The sex abuse scandal rocked Ireland before Germany, and today Benedict will sign a much-awaited letter to the Irish faithful on the subject. It will be released on Saturday, and it won’t just be the Irish who are reading it.