Shifting the blame to John Paul II doesn’t let Ratzinger off the hook

Cardinal Groer, Archbishop of Vienna, was a serial child abuser – some estimates put the number of his victims in the region of 2,000. He was still a Cardinal when he died, despite his activities being made public.

His successor, Cardinal Schoenborn, frankly admits that the person responsible for the cover-up over Groer was none other than the-soon-to-be beatified John Paul II. In his anxiousness to help the present Pope out of tight corner he now finds himself in, Schoenborn has let the cat out of the bag about JPII’s involvement, inadvertently opening the window on the Church’s culture of secrecy which led to child abuse being perpetuated ad nauseam.

The attempt to shift the blame over just one cause celebre, Cardinal Groer, to JPII does not make Benedict XVI squeaky clean, however. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence already that he has at the very least sat on his hands at times when he should have taken action. And suspicions mount, almost daily, about his role.

There is probably not much difference between the two popes’ highly questionable roles over child abuse. Both of them lauded Cardinal Law, archbishop of the largest archdiocese in the USA, after his massive cover-up of child abuse was made public. JPII belligerently refused to accept Law’s resignation despite a massive public outcry, to which even JPII had to submit in the end.

Benedict XVI later lauded Law by arranging for him to conduct a funeral mass for John Paul II. Neither Benedict XVI nor his predecessor has sacked any bishop or more senior cleric over child abuse.

See also: Why humanists shouldn’t join in the “Catholic-bashing”