Victoria Brownworth

Holy Week is the most solemn and reflective period on the Christian calendar. But in the wake of a global sex-abuse scandal, many Catholics are wondering if their church hierarchy is even capable of reflection.
 The near-daily revelations about priest sex abuse has Catholics like myself reeling. Reporters were camped outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Philadelphia on Palm Sunday querying local Catholics about their response to the widening scandal. Philadelphia had been one of the flash points for pedophile priests and former D.A. Lynne Abraham empaneled a three-year Grand Jury investigation of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
 That investigation, which ended in 2005, had uncovered 63 pedophile priests engaged in what Abraham called, “systematic and sadistic rape, sodomy and abuse” of boys and girls in the Archdiocese.
 Among the nearly 300 reports of abuse, some of the more horrific revelations from the 418-page report included an 11-year-old girl whose priest obtained an abortion for her after his repeated assaults on her resulted in pregnancy, a girl sexually assaulted by her parish priest while she lay in traction in a hospital and two boys repeatedly assaulted by a priest who forced them into his rectory bed on a near-daily basis. 
 The pattern that has been revealed in numerous subsequent investigations–offending priests being moved from parish to parish without notifying the new parish that the priest was a pedophile–was perpetrated for more than 40 years in the Philadelphia archdiocese, according to the report.
 In 2005, newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, virtually dismissed the priest abuse scandals as an American problem associated with homosexuality. His response was to issue orders regarding homosexual priests in the U.S., which in no way addressed the scandal.  
 Over the past five years, more and more child abuse has been revealed, culminating in last month’s discovery that the Pope himself, while a Cardinal and an Archbishop, may have covered up serious cases of child sexual abuse in Germany.
  The stories from the past few weeks have been particularly gruesome, including as they do details about a priest who assaulted more than 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and a priest in Germany who targeted numerous children, male and female, over a period of 20 years. 
 For years the Pope has behaved as if the priest abuse scandal was confined to the U.S. and what the Vatican has always portrayed as a somewhat renegade component of the Catholic Church. Americans are known for their “cafeteria style” Catholicism–choosing tenets to accept and ignoring others, most notably in the areas of reproductive rights and homosexuality.
 Thus the Pope’s chastizing of the American church and wrongly linking the pedophile problem to alleged gay priests, as if the priest abuse scandal were anomalous to the U.S. and caused by rampant homosexuality in the American Catholic priesthood, suddenly seems even more false than it did when the Pope first leveled those charges.
 The psychiatrist who treated Father Peter Hullerman from Essen, Germany, whose case has raised questions about the Pope’s own involvement in covering up the scandal, told NPR on March 29 that it was the worst case he had ever seen, noting that the priest considered himself the victim of the Church because he was told to enter therapy and that he never stopped abusing children, even after he was sentenced to probation and ordered into treatment.
  Pedophilia is a mental illness in which adults obsessively choose child sexual partners. While all pedophiles have gender preferences, many choose their victims based primarily on availability rather than on specific gender.
 Media and the Vatican have focused on the male victims of pedophile priests. But, as was discovered in the grand jury investigation into the priest abuse scandal in Philadelphia, nearly half of all priest abuse victims have been girls. Boys have simply been more accessible to pedophile priests than have girls.
 That accessibility of children to priests in Catholic schools, Catholic youth programs and choirs has made it even easier for pedophile priests to abuse the children in their care. As the revelations of the past few weeks have made painfully clear, the hierarchy of the Church aided and abetted the crimes against thousands of child victims.
 In March, the Pope issued a letter about the broadening scandal which has now revealed thousands of victims in Ireland, Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and other countries. Last year’s reports from Ireland and those of the past few months from Australia and Germany show that the abuse is global and as pandemic in these other countries as it has been in the U.S.
 For those victims and other Catholics hoping for comfort or leadership from the Pope in this Church crisis, none has been forthcoming. In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Pope barely mentioned the scandal and when he did, noted that he would not be “intimidated by petty gossip” and likened himself to Christ suffering.
 The day before his sermon there had been protests in various cities worldwide demanding both the Pope’s resignation and his arrest. There are serious allegations facing not just the Church, but the Pope himself.
 It was the Pope–formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger–who approved the move of Fr. Hullerman from Essen to Munich for therapy. But once in Munich, Hullerman abused other children. Hullerman continued to serve as a priest–and in proximity to children despite his actual legal conviction for child sexual abuse and his own psychiatrist’s admonition that he never be around children–until March 14, 2010.
 The story about his abuse of children–as well as the Pope’s involvement in the crimes–had broken in German newspapers a few days prior to Hullerman’s final dismissal over 30 years after he was first moved to Munich.
 I want the Pope to resign. But a pope has not been removed from the papacy in nearly 600 years, and it seems unlikely that Pope Benedict XVI will resign, even though he has shown repeatedly throughout this scandal that he is unable to lead the Church and is, as his Palm Sunday sermon indicated, oblivious to the implications of the scandal or even his own involvement.
 Reports–not simply allegations without substantiation–of thousands of children being sexually assaulted by priests, including some directly under then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s watch, represent a horrific pattern of crimes. And let there be no mistake: were these men not priests, they would all be in prison. Imagine a lay teacher sexually assaulting girls and boys for years. Would that teacher be moved by the school district from school to school to avoid prosecution? Or would the local principal and school district have that teacher arrested and charged?
 The Pope is acting as if sexual assault by a priest is part of growing up Catholic. Many survivors of this abuse–male and female–have stated publically how damaging it has been to them throughout their lives. Not merely the pain, secrecy and shame, but the knowledge that their own Church failed them.
 At the very least, Pope Benedict XVI has shown himself to be dismissive about the victims of this pandemic abuse of children which was, if not outright sanctioned by the Church, covered up, with the offending priests protected from prosecution–always at the expense of their many victims.
 It must be recalled that the Pope was the man in charge of dealing with the pedophile priest scandal while he was Cardinal Ratzinger. But other than paying off victims to avoid court actions, what exactly did then-Cardinal Ratzinger do to end the abuse and bring the perpetrators to justice? 
 Apparently, as Fr. Hullerman’s case makes quite clear, nothing.
 That the Pope would use the occasion of Palm Sunday to absolve himself and refer to the very real charges of sexual crimes against children as “petty gossip” is outrageous. Were the Pope a politician instead of a religious leader, he would be forced to resign on the basis of that statement alone. Given the compendia of charges leveled against both the Pope himself and the Church in this scandal, it is difficult to imagine how he continues to stay on as Pope in any effective way. Or why Catholics would want him to do so.
 I am one of many Catholics who do not. I think the Pope should resign immediately. I think he should apologize to the thousands, possibly millions, of victims of priests who were rarely even admonished by the Church and who were allowed to continue–as in the case of Fr. Hullerman–to abuse children for ten, 20, 30 or more years while continuing to benefit from the Church’s protection and succor while their victims were left to suffer, some to the point of committing suicide.
 Pope Benedict XVI’s hubris in implying that his suffering from this scandal was in any way comparable to Christ’s suffering is yet another outrage. Catholics believe that Christ died for their sins, that his suffering was from the sins–or crimes–of others. The Pope’s suffering, if there is any, has been brought on by the revelations of the sins/crimes he has allowed to continue under his watch, first as cardinal, now as pope.
 A leader takes responsibility for those he leads. At every turn Pope Benedict XVI has shirked his responsibility and blamed priests, bishops and archbishops and even victims for this scandal. The Pope is the leader of the Catholic Church. If he cannot lead, if he cannot take responsibility, then he needs to step down. The victims deserve no less. —VAB