Uh huh. It happened a few decades ago and the Pope, then archbishop of Munich, was involved in reassigning a paedophile priest and shuffling him around as seemingly every other Catholic diocese in the world has done. But he's being set up. Right. The bigger concern for the church is that more and more similar scandals are being aired out throughout Europe. It was the Irish scandal that triggered the German (and possibly Dutch) scandal. People are watching these events closely and have been disgusted by the actions of church leadership.
This obviously cuts close to the top leadership of the church so it's very likely going to receive more intense scrutiny and higher coverage. The church should be worried much more about the victims in these cases and their responsibility than throwing this back on the media. The media didn't create these scandals out of thin air. They were created by and covered up by the church for a long time. They have no one to blame other than themselves for failing to address serious problems. Live with it and quit blaming everyone else.
The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.
Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.
"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed."
