Letters place Pope at centre of child abuse scandal
Secret documents today placed Pope Benedict XVI at the centre of allegations of cover-up by the Catholic church of a priest sex abuse scandal in the United States.
Letters from the Vatican show that the enforcement department headed by the pontiff, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, took control of the efforts to bring paedophile priest Father Lawrence Murphy to justice, first ordering in 1997 that a church trial could only go ahead in conditions of total secrecy and then changing tack in 1998 and quashing it....
Dr. Alan Cairns | 8/3/2009
