The other shoe just dropped. After a week of harsh denunciations and howls of protest, a German psychiatrist has come forward to state that senior officials in the Archdiocese of Munich ignored repeated warnings about a sexually abusive priest in the Archdiocese of Munich. Dr. Werner Huth gave explicit warnings in oral and written form, so it’s going to be difficult for the Pontiff to deny his most senior officials weren’t warned.
“I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ ” the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, said in a telephone interview from Munich. “I was very unhappy about the entire story.”
This is bad, very bad for the 82 year old German Pope. It amounts to the cover-up of the cover-up. I find it hard to imagine how those Vatican insiders could’ve made such a full throated defense of the Pope as Archbishop of Munich while at the same time knowing full well the German psychiatrist was lurking in the shadows waiting to tell the truth about the sexually abusive priest. The Vatican’s defensive posture all but assured the psychiatrist would eventually come forward to tell his side of the story. While the psychiatrist stated he hadn’t had any direct communication with Ratzinger, the priest was allowed to begin parish work almost immediately after commencing therapy in Munich, in spite of the psychiatrist’s warnings. According to the NY Times, “In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy.
Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.”
In his telephone interview, Dr. Huth noted that he set three conditions upon which the priest could work in ministry: “that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times.”
Unlike last week when news first broke about the Pope’s involvement with a sexually abusive priest, there has been no Vatican comment, no comment from the former Vicar General, and no reaction from the Pope himself. After all, there’s not much to say this time.