AP: Ratzinger intervened in Arizona priest’s abuse case, then waited for years to defrock him

AP: Vatican waited years to defrock Arizona priest

The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church’s insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.

Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia “a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with.” There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.

The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict — as a Vatican cardinal — was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality.

“There’s no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of dangerous priests who were deemed ’satanic’ by their own bishop,” Lynne Cadigan, an attorney who represented two of Teta’s victims, said Friday.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, called the accusations “absolutely groundless” and said the facts were being misrepresented.

He said the delay in defrocking Teta was caused by a hold on appeals while the Vatican changed regulations over its handling of sex abuse cases. In the meantime, he said, cautionary measures were in place; Teta had been suspended since 1990.

“The documents show clearly and positively that those in charge at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith … have repeatedly intervened actively over the course of the 90s so that the canonic trial under way in the Tucson diocese could dutifully reach its conclusion,” Lombardi said in a statement.

In the 1990s, a church tribunal found that Teta had molested children as far back as the 1970s, and the panel determined “there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys.”

The tribunal referred Teta’s case, which included allegations that he abused boys in a confessional, to Ratzinger. The church considers cases of abuse in confessionals more serious than other molestations because they also defile the sacrament of penance.

It took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take.

Teta was accused of engaging in abuse not long after his arrival to the Diocese of Tucson in 1978. Among the eventual allegations: that he molested two boys, ages 7 and 9, in the confessional as they prepared for their First Communion.

Teta was removed from ministry by the bishop, but because the church’s most severe punishment — laicization — can only be handed down from Rome, he remained on the church payroll and was working with young people outside the church.

In a signed letter dated June 8, 1992, Ratzinger advised Moreno he was taking control of the case, according to a copy provided to the AP from Cadigan, the victims’ attorney. Five years later, no action had been taken.

“This case has already gone on for seven years,” Moreno wrote Ratzinger on April 28, 1997, adding, “I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case.”

It would be another seven years before Teta was laicized.

Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Teta was ordered defrocked in 1997. But Teta appealed, and the appeal remained on hold until the new regulations took effect in 2001.

“Starting in 2001, all the appeals that were pending were promptly taken up, and Teta’s case was one of the first to be discussed,” Lombardi said.

But this still took time, he said, because the documentation that had been presented was “especially voluminous.” The sentence was upheld and in 2004 Teta was laicized.

The case of Trupia shows the fragmented nature of how Rome handled such allegations before 2001, when Ratzinger dictated that all abuse cases must go through his Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Before then, files were sent to varied Vatican departments, as they were in the case of Trupia. Moreno suspended Trupia in 1992, but again faced delays from the Vatican in having him formally removed from the church.

Documents show at least two Vatican offices — the Congregation for the Clergy and the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Catholic Church — were involved in the case at least as early as 1995.

Moreno pleaded with the Congregation for the Clergy to do something, writing, “We have proofs of civil crimes against people who were under his priestly care” and warning Trupia could “be the source of greater scandal in the future.”

Ultimately, the case landed in Ratzinger’s office.

On Feb. 10, 2003, a day after the Arizona Daily Star reported that Trupia was living in a condo near Baltimore, driving a leather-seated Mercedes-Benz with a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, Moreno wrote to Ratzinger again.

Sick with prostate cancer and the beginning stages of Parkinson’s disease, Moreno was approved for early retirement by Pope John Paul II.

Before he was replaced, the bishop wrote Ratzinger yet again. Moreno’s replacement, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, sent similar requests to Ratzinger and his subordinates.

“My experience — and as I’ve looked at the records in our serious cases — the Vatican actually was prodding, through the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Ratzinger, to try to get this case going,” Kicanas said.

Finally, in August 2004, Trupia was laicized.

“The tragedy is that the bishops have only two choices: Follow the Vatican’s code of secrecy and delay, or leave the church,” Cadigan, the victims’ lawyer, said Friday. “It’s unfortunate that their faith demands that they sacrifice children to follow the Vatican’s directions.”

Trupia’s former attorney, Stephen A. Shechtel of Rockville, Md., said Friday that he never dealt with the church on his client’s behalf and that Trupia was aware he would be defrocked and didn’t fight it.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno’s replacement, defended the Vatican’s handling of the Arizona cases, citing the prolonged process of internal church trials that he acknowledged could be “frustratingly slow because of the seriousness of the concerns.”

Kicanas said suggestions that Ratzinger resisted addressing the issues of sexual abuse in the church were “grossly unfair.”

“Cardinal Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was always receptive, ready to listen, to hear people’s concerns,” Kicanas said. “Pope Benedict is the same man.”

Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Ben Nuckols in Baltimore contributed to this report.