Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 400 priests for abusing kids

[dragon]

Thats a lot of priest out of a job, but is still most likely a drop in the bucket.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A document obtained by The Associated Press on Friday shows Pope Benedict XVI defrocked nearly 400 priests over just two years for sexually molesting children.

The statistics for 2011 and 2012 show a dramatic increase over the 171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first provided details on the number of priests who have been defrocked. Prior to that, it had only publicly revealed the number of alleged cases of sexual abuse it had received and the number of trials it had authorized.

While it's not clear why the numbers spiked in 2011, it could be because 2010 saw a new explosion in the number of cases reported in the media in Europe and beyond.

The document was prepared from data the Vatican had been collecting and was compiled to help the Holy See defend itself before a U.N. committee this week in Geneva.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, referred to just one of the statistics in the course of eight hours of oftentimes pointed criticism and questioning from the U.N. human rights committee.

The statistics were compiled from the Vatican's own annual reports about the activities of its various offices, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles sex abuse cases. Although public, the annual reports are not readily available or sold outside Rome and are usually found in Vatican offices or Catholic university libraries.

An AP review of the reference books shows a remarkable evolution in the Holy See's in-house procedures to discipline pedophiles since 2001, when the Vatican ordered bishops to send cases of all credibly accused priests to Rome for review.

Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took action after determining that bishops around the world weren't following church law to put accused clerics on trial in church tribunals. Bishops routinely moved problem priests from parish to parish rather than subject them to canonical trials — or turn them into police.

For centuries, the church has had its own in-house procedures to deal with priests who sexually abuse children. One of the chief accusations from victims is that bishops put the church's own procedures ahead of civil law enforcement by often suggesting victims keep accusations quiet while they are dealt with internally.

The maximum penalty for a priest convicted by a church tribunal is essentially losing his job: being defrocked, or removed from the clerical state. There are no jail terms and nothing to prevent an offender from raping again.

According to the 2001 norms Ratzinger pushed through and subsequent updates, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reviews each case sent to Rome and then instructs bishops how to proceed, either by launching an administrative process against the priest if the evidence is overwhelming or a church trial. At every step of the way the priest is allowed to defend himself.

The Congregation started reporting numbers only in 2005, which is where Tomasi's spreadsheet starts off. U.N. officials said Friday that the committee has not received the document.

In 2005, the Congregation authorized bishops to launch church trials against 21 accused clerics, and reported that its appeals court had handled two cases. It didn't say what the verdicts were, according to the annual reports cited by the spreadsheet.

In 2006, the number of canonical trials authorized doubled to 43 and eight appeals cases were heard. And for the first time, the Congregation revealed publicly the number of cases reported to it: 362, though that figure includes a handful of non-abuse related canonical crimes.

A similar number of cases were reported in 2007 — 365 — but again the Congregation didn't specify how many were abuse-related. Vatican officials, however, have said that it received between 300-400 cases a year in these years following the 2002 explosion of U.S. sex abuse cases in the U.S. In 2007, 23 cases were sent to dioceses for trial.

By 2008, the tone of the Vatican's entry had changed. Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, traveled to the scandal-hit United States that year and is quoted in the annual report as telling reporters en route that he was "mortified" by the scale of abuse and simply couldn't comprehend "how priests could fail in such a way."

That year's entry was also notable for another reason: For the first time, an official Vatican document made clear that nothing in the church process precluded victims from reporting abuse to police.

There was also another first in 2008, a critical year as abuse lawsuits in the U.S. naming the Holy See as a defendant were heating up: For the first time, the Vatican revealed the number of priests who had been defrocked: 68. Some 191 new cases were reported.

A year later, the number of defrocked priests rose to 103, while some 223 new cases were received, the vast majority of them abuse-related.

The year 2010 was another milestone in the sex abuse saga, with the explosion of thousands of cases reported in the media across Europe and beyond. Some 527 cases were reported to the Congregation. No figures were given that year for the number of defrocked priests, rather the Congregation described new church laws put in place to more easily and quickly remove them.

By 2011, with the new streamlined laws in place, the number of defrocked priests rose dramatically: 260 priests were removed in one year only, while 404 new cases of child abuse were reported. In addition to those defrocked, another 419 priests had lesser penalties imposed on them for abuse-related crimes.

In 2012, the last year for which statistics are available, the number of defrockings dropped to 124, with another 418 new cases reported.

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[Raw Shark]

Good on Ratzy. I wouldn'tve expected this from him.

[KlavoHunter]

Holy shit, the Pope is on an ass-kicking rampage.

[SCRawl]

Holy shit, the Pope is on an ass-kicking rampage.

Well, it was the *last* pope who is referenced in this article for his work in 2008 and 2009.

[Thanas]

Good on Ratzy. I wouldn'tve expected this from him.

Why not? He got a lot of shit from the media but his actual work was pretty good. Started the disciplinary reforms and had a pretty decent administration overall, including the best exit a pope recently had. And he probably was the smartest pope we had in this century, just going by his academic credentials.

(Also, changed the title for better accuracy)

[Simon_Jester]

I think Benedict XVI's reputation as a 'conservative' pope creates the perception that he must have been acting wrongly or incompetently.

[LaCroix]

Actually, defrocking priests for having broken the celibate (and in some cases by pederastic means, too) sounds like a thing a conservative pope would do. Why should you have the flock lead by a wolf?

Pope JP2 tried to keep the issue under control by moving these priests to someplace "safe", but it is common knowledge by now that this wasn't working, as the people just found new victims. Ratzinger wasn't one to use a broken tool - he'd keep things secret, just the same, but throw the people out to stop them causing him trouble.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not at all surprised by this. What I'm getting at is more of an impression-based reaction. The sort of thing that'd happen, at least on this website, with people who don't have intense familiarity with the general character of the papacy*. We hear "Francis I is a liberalizing pope who acknowledges the Big Bang happened," and that presses our 'good guy' buttons so we assume he must have done other good things. We hear "Benedict XVI is a conservative pope who [insert stuff here]." And we go "RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVE BADNO!"

So our expectations are (or can be) subconsciously colored by the fact that we instinctively expect religious conservatives to be wrong all the time. Bias is bias.

*And you really do know more about the typical conduct of the pope if you live in Central Europe than in the US, as a rule, I bet...

[Lord Revan]

I think Benedict XVI's reputation as a 'conservative' pope creates the perception that he must have been acting wrongly or incompetently.

I wonder how much if it at least here is due thinking that if someone is "conservative" it must and I mean absolutely must, mean that they're cartoonishly evil. At least that's the impression I get when reading N&P.

it seems to me that alot of people are willfully blind to their own bias when it comes to things like this.

[Siege]

It sure didn't help that Benedict had no sense of PR and kept saying offensive shit at inopportune moments because he completely failed to grasp the idea that not everyone listening was a professor of theology fully accepting the tenets of catholic dogma. There's always plenty people who want to like the pope. John Paul II was regressive by most standards but he only had to wave and smile and people ate out of his hand. I think he understood that as long as the pope did not say awful, actively alienating things in front of an open microphone the church would get away with murder. Meanwhile Benedict was up front about his (and the church's) conservative views and he got excoriated for it. Now Francis is back to the JPII style of running things, but I would caution anyone from concluding this is a brand new church. Because Roman Catholicism didn't survive 2000 years by turning on a dime every time the wind changed.

[Thanas]

It sure didn't help that Benedict had no sense of PR and kept saying offensive shit at inopportune moments because he completely failed to grasp the idea that not everyone listening was a professor of theology fully accepting the tenets of catholic dogma.

To expand on that, remember the brouhaha over his remarks on the muslim logos? Essentially done by people who literally did not understand what he was saying in an anniversary lecture of the Regensburg University. Because he was using concepts you would need a full knowledge of Platonic philosophy, ancient greek and ancient/modern theological concepts. It was probably the finest intellectual speech I ever heard from a pope. It truly was a joy as an intellectual thought exercise. Though the whole public and media only heard (and probably understood) two or three sentences and focused on that.

Benedikt was a great professor, not that great of a communicator.

[Raw Shark]

Good on Ratzy. I wouldn'tve expected this from him.

Why not? He got a lot of shit from the media but his actual work was pretty good. Started the disciplinary reforms and had a pretty decent administration overall, including the best exit a pope recently had. And he probably was the smartest pope we had in this century, just going by his academic credentials. [snip]

Honestly, probably a three-way split between ignorance about the guy's career, liberal / ex-Catholic bias, and that pedotastic leer of his. He just didn't look like a guy who would persecute the kiddie-feelers to me, and after I heard he was bringing back classes on exorcism at seminaries I kind of checked out on him.

[Eternal_Freedom]

At least Benedict was open and honest aboutthe crazy shit he said, rather than just muttering it quietly and letting it seep into people's heads. If that's what he believed or thought, fine, I'd rather have it out in the open than hidden.