John Cooney: Unholy ghosts of clerical sex abuse stalk Pope's homeland
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POPE Benedict has been calling on the Holy Spirit to guide the Irish bishops out of the nightmarish cycle of child clerical sexual abuse scandals -- the scandals that have shattered their moral authority and brought them to Rome in search of healing and renewal at the two-day special summit that ends this afternoon.
But lodged in the Bavarian Pope's mind is the even more horrendous prospect of his having to confront an unholy ghost, in the guise of clerical paedophilia, that for decades has blighted generations of school children in his native Germany.
Indeed, some commentators here are suggesting the time and energy being devoted by the 83-year-old Pope to resolve 'the Irish problem' is a trial-run for an ever bigger crisis: daily he hears more tragic revelations from the land of his birth of a spiralling series of child sexual abuse atrocities.
The influential 'Der Spiegel' has published a sensational piece of investigative journalism claiming the German church's "wall of silence appears to be crumbling".
So acute is 'the German problem' that it is being described as "the beginning of an earthquake of proportions which have so far only been seen in the American and Irish church." Germany is the next Ireland.
With parents in shock at discovering that their Catholic schools, which were meant to provide their children with moral guidance, were play-grounds for paedophile priests, the Bishops' Conference of Germany is being forced to address the sex scandals at a meeting next week.
As calls grow for a Murphy or Ryan-style investigation, the conference's chairman, Archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, has so far failed to offer any convincing apology or act decisively to give victims redress for 'the sins of the Fathers'.
Just as Cardinal Desmond Connell refused to take part in Mary Raftery's television documentary, 'Cardinal Secrets,' so has Archbishop Zollitsch declined to be interviewed by 'Der Spiegel'.
The cracks in the wall first surfaced in Berlin when an elite Jesuit high school, Canisius College, disclosed that a number of members of the order abused students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s.
As in Ireland, after the publicity surrounding the notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth, a surge of previously unknown victims have come forward to tell their harrowing stories of abuse.
Other cracks in the wall have spread to two other prestigious colleges, the St Ansgar School in Hamburg, and the St Blasien College in the Black Forest, where more former students accused three Jesuit priests of molesting them as children and adolescents.
According to a 'Der Spiegel' survey of Germany's 27 dioceses at least 94 priests and laity are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995.
Just 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to the magazine's questionnaire.
Even worse, a group called the Round Table for Care in Children's Homes has published an interim report showing that more than 150 victims of sexual abuse had come forward with their stories in recent months.
These stories could be straight out of those told by survivors of Ireland's industrial schools in the Ryan Report.
For instance, one woman tells of how, as a 15-year-old girl, she was forced to sit in the confessional and watch a priest masturbate.
When she tried to get away from him, she was beaten by the nuns who ran the home.
The same pattern of secrecy, suppression and shielding of offending priests, as is documented in the damning Ferns and Dublin reports, is also starkly emerging in German dioceses.
For example, in the archdiocese of Cologne, one priest died before the accusations could be clarified, another priest was sentenced, but three cases were dropped.
Ominously for Pope Benedict, the files are likely to land on his desk from the overcrowded office of Cardinal William Levada, his successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously known as 'The Inquisition'.
Already, Benedict's own track record when prefect of the doctrinal watchdog under Pope John Paul II is being questioned.
The Joseph Ratzinger being recalled in the German media is that of a conservative academic who sees the crimes against children as "the ultimate, most egregious expression of a culture of godlessness, (which) unfortunately not even clerics are immune to".
In a recent address, Pope Benedict's recommendation to his priests was to simply follow the example set by St Dominic and devote themselves fully to prayer and learning.
"For those who have already fallen prey to 'weaknesses of the flesh'," writes 'Der Spiegel', "the Pope offers the relative leniency of an internal church proceeding," held in secrecy and in Latin.
Ironically, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's policy of removing priests suspected of abuse and his full cooperation with gardai in seeking prosecutions of priest offenders could be the way forward for the German pontiff.
A success in Ireland could be applied to Germany.
But if Benedict's letter to the Catholics of Ireland harks back to the Irish Celtic equivalents of St Dominic, he will land himself in deeper trouble in both Ireland and Germany.
- John Cooney
Irish Independent
