The editorial in a Vatican newspaper came on a day abuse victims protested near St Peter’s Square to demand the pope open files on paedophile clerics and defrock “predator priests”, and a cardinal spoke of a “conspiracy” against the church.
“The prevalent tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and stretch interpretations with the aim of spreading the picture of the Catholic Church as the only one responsible for sexual abuse, something which does not correspond to reality,” the Vatican newspaper said.
There was “clearly an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost,” it said.
The editorial challenged a New York Times report about the case of Rev Lawrence Murphy, accused of sexually abusing up to 200 deaf boys in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s. Among 25 internal church documents the Times posted on its website was a 1996 letter about Murphy to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Vatican’s top doctrinal official and now Pope Benedict, showing he had been informed of the case.
Ratzinger’s deputy first advised a secret disciplinary trial but reversed that in 1998 after Murphy appealed directly to Ratzinger for clemency. The priest died later that year.
The Vatican newspaper said: “There was no cover-up in the case of Father Murphy”. The Vatican said earlier he was not disciplined because church laws do not require automatic punishment.
The report came amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Europe and pressure on bishops, mostly in Ireland, to resign for failing to report cases to civil authorities.
Yesterday morning, four leaders of the US-based Survivor Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), all of whom were sexually abused by priests, held a protest and news conference outside the Vatican.
