The Fall Guy

Earlier today, there were reports in the German media that the former Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Munich anbd Freising claims that he was forced to publicly accept responsibility for reassigning a priest with abuse allegations in 1980.  That priest went on to abuse children after being reassigned.  The Archbishop at the time was Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI.

Obviously, the more media outlets will pick up on this and claim the the former Vicar General's recent statement is proof that Pope Benedict was directly involved in sheltering a priest that was known to sexually abuse children and that the Pope used his influence to get the former Vicar General to take the fall.

We do not really know the details about the priest in question.  It could very well be that then-Archbishop Ratzinger was not actively involved in the reassignment of this priest.  The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is a pretty large archdiocese. 

Having been involved in politics for many years, I would suggest the follwing likely scenario.  Then-Archbishop Ratzinger was not actively involved in the reassignment of his priests.  In most dioceses, the Vicar General does have primary responsibility for coordinating priest assignments.  Yes, the Bishop may sign off on the assignments.  However, that is more a formality than anything else.  The fact that Archbishop Ratzinger might have signed off on an assignment does not mean he was activley involved in the assignment. 

As one might expect, the Vatican communications machine might be a bit jittery these days.  My guess would be that a few mid-level "Vaticancrats", in a panic and without the knowledge of Pope Benedict, took action to make sure that there would be no evidence of a direct link (a link that likely never existed) to this priest being reassigned and the current Pope.  Thus, to be safe, they made sure that the former Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, was commanded to "take one for the team" by publicly stating that the reassignment of the priest in question was his responsibility completely and that then-Archbishop Ratzinger was in no way involved, accept for possibly signing off on a list of assignments that include the assignement of the priest in question (and there is no evidence that even that happened).  My guess would be that the situation described by the former Vicar General was accurate.  However, now that there may be evidence of pressure on the former Vicar General, we will have a circus main event for a few more days.