Writing about the revelations from California of Cardinal Ratzinger’s reluctance to remove from the priesthood a convicted child molester Andrew Sullivan observed that

The Pope cannot blame the local bishops this time - they desperately tried to get the priest fired.

You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But Sullivan has grievously underestimated the Vatican’s capacity for denial and shifting the blame. As it was so vividly put in Mark Fiore’s fun video cartoon ,

Benedict’s acolytes have indeed contrived to blame the local bishops, as they are said to have borne the primary responsibility for “disciplining” wayward clergy. (This blithely ignores that this was NOT a request for discipline, but an attempt to protect children from future harm. )

From the LA Times:

The Vatican insisted Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI had done nothing wrong when, earlier in his career, he hesitated to defrock a California priest who had admitted to molesting two boys.

A Vatican lawyer said that it was the local bishop, John Cummins of Oakland, who bore primary responsibility for protecting children from the abusive priest, Stephen Kiesle, and that the pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had acted appropriately when he declined to take immediate action.

“It’s the job of the bishop to discipline the priest,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey S. Lena of Berkeley, in an e-mail to The Times. “The pope is not a five star general ordering his troops around. That is simply an incorrect idea about the allocation of authority as between the pope and his fellow bishops.”

(Read the full report)

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