The reporter was obviously so fired up about being able to bring up the Pope himself in this case, but that does not excuse his omission of important facts relevant to the story, even if such a sloppy presentation aimed at making the Church look bad is SOP in these stories.
Plaintiff's lawyer finds reason
to involve Cardinal Ratzinger
in abuse case against diocese
for a dead priest's 1970s offense
By DAVE ALTIMARI
HARTFORD, Connecticut, August 4 -
The Vatican's refusal to let the Norwich diocese remove an accused pedophile from the priesthood is expected to play a role in the upcoming trial involving a New London woman who says the priest molested her when she was 12.
[Of course, as the story goes on to show, the priest in question had already been retired for years when, the year before he died, the diocesan bishop asked the CDF to laicize him. That does not minimize his offenses in any way, but it does illustrate the arbitrariness with which bishops have tended to deal with priest offenders, even decades removed from the offenses, after the 2001-2002 explosion of revelations about such offenses by some US priests.]
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received the Norwich request days before On May 12, 2005, less than a month after Ratzinger became Pope, the Vatican responded to Cote, denying his request to laicize Fr. Thomas Shea. The letter indicates that the status quo — Shea in retirement with the restrictions not to wear a collar or say Mass — was sufficient.
It's unclear, though, if Ratzinger himself decided against laicizing Shea, who was accused of molesting as many as 15 girls at 11 different parishes throughout the Diocese of Norwich in a career that started in 1953.
"This case falls into prescription as it involves incidents which, while serious in nature, occurred over 35 years ago,'' wrote Archbishop Angelo Amato, the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Attorney Robert Reardon, representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Amato was considered Ratzinger's "right hand man" at that time and would not have sent the letter without Ratzinger's approval.
Norwich Diocese spokesman Michael Strammiello said Cote would not comment on his letter or the Vatican's response because of the pending litigation. Vatican officials could not be reached for comment.
One of Shea's accusers, using the pseudonym Jane Doe, sued the diocese in 2008 alleging that Shea made her perform oral sex on him while he was pastor of St. Joseph's Church in New London.
[WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN EXACTLY? Dates are important, in relation to the conduct of Shea afterwards, and the CDF's decision in 2008 not to defrock him. One gathers from the CDF reply that the offense took place in the early 1970s.]
Jury selection is scheduled to begin next week in Superior Court in Hartford. Shea died in a West Hartford nursing home in 2006, and
he had left active ministry years before Bishop of Norwich Rev. Michael Cote made the request to strip him of his priesthood.
As a priest in good standing, Shea was being paid by the diocese a pension of about $15,000 annually and all of his health insurance costs, including his nursing home bills.
[The fact that Shea remained 'in good standing' despite the allegations against him is not the responsibility of the Vatican but of the diocese. But if Shea was forbidden from wearing his priest's collar and to say Mass, as Amato's letter indicated, it appears the diocese did do something to discipline him. For Mons. Cote to then refer his case to the Vatican 35 years after the fact does raise questions.]
In an April 8, 2005, letter to Ratzinger, Cote wrote that the "trail of destruction caused by Thomas W. Shea is staggering." He wrote there were at least 15 credible cases of abuse by Shea of girls under the age of 18, including one girl who tried to kill herself three times before she turned 23.
[So why did not Cote take account of what the diocese had apparently meted to Shea earlier? Could this have been a case of sanctimonious post-facto grandstanding in view of the widespread but relatively new awareness at the time of this problem?]
"The psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage wrought by this man is immeasurable,'' Cote wrote. "The people who have been directly affected by his behavior as well as the entire People of God would welcome his involuntary dismissal from the clerical state."
[Again, the time period during which the offenses were committed is not mentioned. Why would Bishop Cote have moved against Shea in 2005, a man who had long been in a nursing home and in fact died the following year? The reporter has the duty to find out all such relevant background data.
It appears the Church also takes into consideration the age and physical condition of priests who come under formal accusation in the final years of their life, as it did with Marcial Maciel and with Lawrence Murphy in Milwaukee, especially if in the case of Murphy and Shea, they have not gone on to commit more offenses after leaving active ministry. One may find the Church's concept of mercy and when to apply it to priests and bishops rather questionable, but one has to look at its applications case by case.]
Cote's letter was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the office that decides whether accused priests should get so-called canonical trials that could eventually lead to their being defrocked.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, headed the Vatican office in charge of ordering canonical trials from 1981 to 2005. Only the Vatican can take away a priest's powers.
Pope Benedict has come under criticism for similar actions in other cases. Last year in Wisconsin, documents surfaced showing that a bishop sent him a letter seeking to have a priest accused of molesting deaf children defrocked. But a Church trial never occurred after the accused priest wrote a letter to the Pope asking him not to go forward with the trial.
[The reporter, of course, fails to mention the now well-known circumstances of this case - the priest, the aforementioned Fr. Murphy, committed his offenses in the 1960s, he was investigated in the early 1070s by the Milwaukee police on charges made against him who found nothing actionable, but still, the diocese forced the priest into retirement in 1972, after which no other complaints were received against him. The diocese, under a new bishop, decided to reopen his case in 1992 for something that may have involved canonical violation of the Sacrament of Penance, which therefore fell under the jurisdiction of the C,. The latter, through a letter from Mons. Tarcisio Bertone, then Secretary of the CDF, recommended that - because so much time had passed, the priest had not committed any offenses since then, and he was suffering from a terminal ailment - the diocese forego any canonical proceeding. The diocese decided it would proceed anyway but the priest died before they could do so.
"No Catholic official on the planet has more power or knowledge about clergy sex crimes than Pope Benedict. Yet he still takes virtually no steps to help and sometimes, like this case, takes steps that hurt,'' said David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
"The letters also sadly show that only after and because of lawsuits do bishops often try to oust predator priests," Clohessy said.
The Norwich Diocese fought to keep the letter to Ratzinger secret along with more than 600 pages of Shea's personnel file. Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger ruled against the Church, and many of the documents including the letter from the Pope will become evidence at the upcoming trial, according to Reardon.
While the diocese has settled other abuse cases against Shea, they have not offered to settle this case, Reardon said. Court documents show that Reardon had asked for $1.5 million to settle.
The lawsuit claims that Church officials were aware of Shea's previous behavior when they assigned him to St. Joseph's. Shea had been on sick leave from 1973 to 1975 before he was placed at St. Joseph's, records show.
Shea was ordained a priest in 1946 and served in several parishes throughout the diocese, mostly in the New London area. Shea admitted as far back as 1953 that he had kissed a girl from his parish and taken photos of her in a bathing suit, according to court records.
The lawsuit alleges that the Diocese of Norwich concealed the results of an internal investigation that determined Shea had fondled other young girls and had been sent for treatment.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/08/2012 18:13]