Pope Rat has always known about the abuse.
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MORRISONVILLE, Ill. – Matt McCormick was in the seventh grade when Father Alvin Campbell gave him a ride home from a baseball game. As they were driving along country roads, Campbell put his hand on McCormick’s thigh and “just left it there.”
It was the first time the priest had touched him. During the next three years, McCormick says, the abuse would go much further.
That was 25 years ago. Just three months ago, he learned that Pope Benedict XVI played a role in keeping his abuser in the church when CNN told him about a letter signed by the pontiff – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – refusing to defrock the pedophile priest.
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Father Campbell was convicted in 1985 of multiple charges of sexual assault, and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
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But Campbell’s bishop, Daniel Ryan, was bothered by a disturbing fact: Despite his criminal conviction and prison sentence, Campbell was still a priest – and refused to quit.
Ryan brought the case to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who today is Pope Benedict XVI. Ryan asked Benedict to forcibly remove Campbell from the priesthood.
In a personally signed letter, Ratzinger, citing Canon law, said he couldn’t defrock Campbell without Campbell’s permission – and instead suggested a local church trial, which would have taken years. It would be three more years before Bishop Ryan could persuade Campbell to request his own defrocking.
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The church says Canon law has changed:
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Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the prosecutor for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, says things have changed in the church.
“Today, Canon law has a different scenario,” Scicluna said. “This thing would not happen under [today’s] Canon Law.”
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So, now I suppose priests get defrocked for defrocking children?
disclaimer: I loved Father W at my elementary school/church. He was a wonderful man, as was Sister N, the principal of the school. It's just unfathomable to me how, as a child, it would feel to have one of the most powerful people in your young life take advantage of you that way.
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