Pope Benedict faces Child Abuse Cover-up Queries

This Pope has step down. As someone who grew up a Catholic, I find Ratzinger's actions as a Cardinal unacceptable. It is time for a revolution in the Catholic church by parishioners. Pedophile priests should not only be expelled from the church but prosecuted. Additionally, the vow of celibacy should be abandoned. It creates an unnatural lifestyle that has tragic consequences.

Questions are being raised about whether Pope Benedict was personally involved in covering up a case of child sex abuse by a Roman Catholic priest.

Documents seen by the New York Times newspaper suggest that in the 1990s, long before he became Pope, he failed to respond to letters about a US case.

Fr Lawrence Murphy, of Wisconsin, was accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys.

Defending itself, the Vatican said US civil authorities had investigated and dropped the case.

For more than 20 years before he was made Pope, Joseph Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith - the Vatican office with responsibility, among other issues, for the Church's response to child abuse cases.

Allegations that the Church sought to cover up child abuse by Catholic priests in Europe have haunted the Vatican for months.

'So friendly'

The documents seen by the New York Times suggest that in 1996, the then Cardinal Ratzinger twice failed to respond to letters sent to him personally.

They concerned the Rev Lawrence Murphy, who worked at a Wisconsin school for deaf children from the 1950s.

Three archbishops of Wisconsin were told Fr Murphy was sexually abusing boys but those allegations were not reported to civil authorities at the time.

Alleged victims quoted by the New York Times gave accounts of the priest pulling down their trousers and touching them in his office, his car, his mother's country house, on class excursions and fund-raising trips, and in their dormitory beds at night.

"If he was a real mean guy, I would have stayed away," said Arthur Budzinski, 61, a former pupil of at St John's School for the Deaf, in St Francis, in the Diocese of Milwaukee.

"But he was so friendly, and so nice and understanding. I knew he was wrong, but I couldn't really believe it."

According to the New York Times, Fr Murphy was quietly moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes and schools. He died in 1998, still a priest.