Pope's Letter Is Smoking Gun

As you must know by now, the Pope has been accused of trying to hide child abuse by pedophile priests rather then kicking those priests out of the church and turning them over to the proper authorities -- both as a Cardinal and later as head of the church's agency to discipline priests for unacceptable conduct. Until now, his underlings in the church have been trying to shield the Pope by claiming that he knew nothing and the wrongdoing was by those working for him.

That is an ridiculous argument since he should have known what his subordinates were doing if he was even mildly competent. Be that as it may, the AP has now come into possession of a letter from the Pope with his signature clearly on it, in which he comes down on the side of not firing a pedophile priest because it might mean bad publicity for the church. This is the smoking gun that proves his knowledge of and participation in the cover-up of pedophile priests.

In 1978, Priest Stephan Kiesle pled no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct and received three years probation. That was a good deal for the pedophile priest, because he had tied up two young boys and molested them in a San Francisco church rectory. When his probation was over in 1981, the diocese submitted papers to the Vatican to defrock the priest and kick him out of the priesthood.

Now this should have been a cut-and-dried case. The priest was known to be a pedophile and had already pled guilty and completed his sentence. I would think that common sense would dictate that the church would want to disassociate themselves from this criminal as soon as possible -- but that was not the Vatican's reaction.

It took the Vatican four years to respond to the diocese's request, and that response came in the form of a letter from Cardinal Ratzinger (the current Pope). That letter, written in Latin in 1985, did NOT give the diocese the authority to defrock the pedophile priest. Instead, the Cardinal outlined reasons why this should not happen.

The future pope said that although the arguments for removing the priest are of "grave significance", they must consider the "good of the universal church". He went on to say they must also consider the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful , particularly the young age (of the priest)." The priest was 38 years old at that time.

In plain language, Cardinal Ratzinger said the fear of bad publicity for the church was more important than kicking the pedophile out of the priesthood. That was an amazingly unethical and immoral decision for a high-ranking church official to make. It took another two years and repeated appeals from the American diocese before the priest was finally defrocked in 1987 -- after he had resumed duties as a youth minister.

This letter, which the Vatican admits bears the signature of Cardinal Ratzinger, should remove any doubt as to whether the current Pope was complicit in protecting pedophile priests to avoid bad publicity for the church. The attempted cover-up of the Pope's actions by his subordinates will no longer pass the smell test.

This Pope does not have the ethics or morality to be the moral guide for millions of christians. It is time for him to resign (and we know that is possible by canon law because two past Popes have resigned). Delaying his resignation any further is nothing short of a slap in the face to all the victims of the pedophile priests.