The Vatican on Thursday released documentation showing Pope Benedict XVI sought as early as 1988 to find quicker ways to permanently remove priests who raped and molested children but was rebuffed.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101202/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_church_abuse
A 1988 letter from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger could serve as the Vatican's best defense to date that the future pope wanted to quickly remove pedophile priests but found himself stymied by church law.
In the letter, republished in Thursday's Vatican newspaper, Ratzinger complained that church law made it exceedingly difficult to remove abusers if they didn't request to be laicized voluntarily. He asked to get around the problem by finding "a quicker and simpler procedure" than a cumbersome church trial to punish those priests who "during their ministry were found guilty of grave and scandalous behavior."
He was turned down on the grounds that the priests' ability to defend themselves would be compromised.
The documentation was included in an article in L'Osservatore Romano explaining an upcoming revision of church law, which was last updated in 1983.
Got that? The (still relatively new) Pope didn't cover up the sex abuse scandal or protect abusive priests. In fact, more than two decades ago, before he was Pope, he tried to kick the molesters out of his church.
According to the mainstream media, Islamophobia is bad, and Judeo-Christophobia is good, so I guess good news about the Pope is bad news.
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