Wider world awaits Pope's message to Ireland

The Pope will address Ireland tomorrow in an unprecedented letter apologising for chronic Catholic child abuse.

His message will be watched closely by angry Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if he acknowledges only the abuse itself – or the decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups too.

Throughout the Catholic world, the Church is only starting to come to terms with the scale of child abuse permitted in many of its parishes and schools throughout the 20th century.

The tide of scandal has surged from Canada and Australia in the 1980s, to Ireland in the 1990s, reaching the United States at the turn of the century and finally the Pope’s German homeland today.

Commentators and victims’ rights activists agree that, to begin mending the Church’s battered image, the message to Ireland – his first pastoral letter on child abuse in the Church – must break his silence on the pivotal role of the Catholic hierarchy in shielding paedophiles from prosecution.

Including under the Pope’s own watch in Munich decades ago.

“Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person? No other person in the Church has had to deal with so many cases of abuse crossing his desk,” said the Rev. Hans Kung, a Swiss priest and dissident Catholic theologian.

“Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa,” Rev. Kung said.

The Pope, who served as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, has yet to speak about hundreds of abuse cases surfacing in Germany, particularly in his former archdiocese, since January.

The cases include the Rev. Peter Hullerman, who was already suspected of abusing boys in the western Germany city of Essen when Cardinal Ratzinger approved his transfer to Munich for private treatment in 1980. Hullerman was permitted to maintain contact with children, was convicted of abusing a boy in 1986 and was discovered last week still to be working as a priest in contact with children.

Dirk Taenzler, director of the Federation for German Catholic Youth, said his members were appalled by the revelations of past abuse in church-run schools and choirs – and wondered why the Pope had yet to address his fellow Germans as he is about to do with Ireland.

“Everyone is suffering from the Church’s bad image,” he said. “It is an issue in every congregation and everyone is trying to cope.”

The Pope’s successor in Munich, Archbishop Reinhard Marx, said the letter to Ireland “will of course affect us. The Pope always speaks for everyone. It is not so individual, for specific groups or countries. That word will also be important for us.”

He said the Pope should not be expected to take responsibility for abuses committed by individual priests. “We expect the Pope to take a stand on everything every time, but we are responsible for what happens here,” he said.

In Ireland, where the first major priest-paedophile scandal toppled the Government in 1994, victims say they are tired of hearing Church apologies that contain no acknowledgement of how bishops under Vatican direction let child molesters operate with impunity to preserve the Church from scandal.

“What we probably will get – I hope I’m wrong – are a lot of expressions of regret and sorrow and apology about the horrors of child abuse in the past. I’ve heard that so often now,” said Marie Collins, one of Ireland’s most prominent campaigners for victims’ rights. “I want to hear apologies for the actions of the Church hierarchy.”

Ms Collins, 63, was repeatedly raped by a Dublin priest, Paul McGennis, while in a children’s hospital in 1960.

Irish bishops knew at the time about McGennis’ paedophilia – including by confiscating his nude-photo collection of children - but did not bar him from the priesthood until 1997 shortly before his conviction for abusing her and another girl.

Even today, a 2001 Vatican edict authored by Cardinal Ratzinger – as leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – continues to sow confusion and anger in the wider Catholic world.

It instructed bishops to report all cases of child abuse to Vatican authorities under strict secrecy and contained no instructions on reporting crimes to police.

Some Church scholars say the instructions actually sought to encourage a Church crackdown on abusers in the ranks, not protect them, and are hopeful that tomorrow’s message to Ireland might offer a fresh start for the Church worldwide.