Pope remains silent on church child sex abuse scandal

Mar 14, 2010, 13:16 GMT

Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday chose not to comment on ongoing child sex abuse scandals at church institutions across Europe.

The pope, who often opts to comment on current events at the close of his public Sunday prayers, ended the prayers this week with no further commentary.

The Vatican had warned Saturday against attempts to drag the pope into a widening sexual abuse scandal involving priests in the pontiff's native Germany. Those reports have only been intensified by similar allegations of abuse at church facilities in Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The allegations have hit close to home after revelations of sexual abuse in a choir directed by the pope's brother in Regensburg and the activities of a paedophile priest in the Munich diocese where the pope once served as archbishop.

Around 150 cases of sexual abuse have been reported at more than 20 German Catholic schools, some dating back to the 1950s. Of those, around 100 victims are from one school, in the southern German town of Ettal.

On Saturday, the scandal moved closer to the pope himself when the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung linked the pope to a paedophile priest when the pontiff was archbishop of Munich in 1980.

The report said the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had permitted the priest to move to Munich from another diocese where he had been accused of sexually abusing children.

The priest was allowed to continue working with young people, and was later charged with sex offences and convicted, the report said. But there was no evidence the archbishop was involved in the decision to let the cleric continue doing youth work, it added.