Sex abuse scandal reaches the Pope (again)

AP reports:

Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes - a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Actually, the sex abuse scandal reached the former Cardinal Ratzinger years ago. As I wrote in 2002:

To see that the Church is more interested in preserving its authority than in ending abuse, one need only contrast the case of the liberal Weakland with that of eight former members of the Legion of Christ, 10 a conservative international congregation that strongly defends papal authority. They have struggled for a quarter century to get Rome to take seriously their accusations that the Legion's founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had sexually abused them as seminarians. Unluckily for them, Maciel is a close ally of the Pope's doctrinal enforcer, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Even after the charges were made against Maciel, the Pope honored him and made him his special representative to a Latin American synod. When ABC News' Brian Ross asked Ratzinger about Maciel recently, Ratzinger literally slapped Ross' hand. He is not used to being questioned.

(Hat tip: Michael Crawford)