Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #7

amounts of money

and opened universities and

seminaries all over the world.

Maciel controlled an annual

operating budget of $650 million,

and counted amongst his friends the

world's richest man, Carlos Slim,

Jeb Bush, Sandy Weill,

former chairman of Citigroup,

Rick Santorum, and former

CIA director William Casey.

Maciel was also a particular

favourite of Pope John Paul II

who exalted him as a holy man

and visionary.

Maciel was as connected as you

could get in Rome

and he got that way by giving

money to people.

$90,000 to Cardinal Martinez Somalo

who, at the time, was

the Head of the Congregation

that should have

investigated Maciel

He was held in great favour

by John Paul II.

For a number of reasons.

The money was certainly one of them.

And second..

he was bowing and scraping and worshiping

the Pope and the Pope apparently liked it.

But, as the song goes,

though Maciel

looked like an angel

and talked like an angel,

he was a devil in disguise.

Behind closed doors,

Maciel led a secret life.

He was a morphine addict

and a ruthless sex criminal

who abused dozens

of his legionaries.

He would visit the

monasteries every few days

and insist on being masturbated

or on having sex

with one of the boys.

Often posing

as an agent of the CIA,

he had at least two secret

mistresses and four children.

He abused some of them too.

Yet even when stories in the press

started to emerge about Maciel,

John Paul did not

investigate him,

he celebrated him.

In 1997, when Renner and I did

the investigative piece

for the Hartford Courant,

the response we got from

the Vatican.. was nothing.

To say that John Paul

was not given the information

is preposterous. He is the Pope.

People around him have

this kind of information.

One key cardinal, Angelo Sodano,

stayed close to Maciel

even as Maciel funneled millions

of dollars into the Vatican.

Sodano would be Maciel's protector

right to the end.

The Maciel case is

really a school case

in order to understand how the

machine works within the Vatican.

Marco Politi is one of Italy's most

knowledgeable Vatican-watchers.

He has also spent a considerable

amount of time with Joseph Ratzinger.

From the outside, Ratzinger is often

perceived as a stiff personality,

cold, merciless with

the dissenters in the Church.

If you see him from the inside,

in the inner circle,

it's a very warm personality,

sensitive.

So he has always been very shocked

when he has heard about

sex abuse scandals.

For him it is a horrible sin.

His first reaction is the horror

that a priest could do

something like this.

That's telling.

It wasn't, "These poor victims!"

That was not his first reaction.

His first reaction was,

"It's despoiled the priesthood!

The sacred institution!"

Yet, when he was a cardinal,

it had been his job to examine every

one of these sex abuse cases.

Ratzinger met with

John Paul every Friday

Did he stay silent or did he speak

with John Paul about Maciel.

Ratzinger would have liked to

open an investigation

but he was stopped by the Secretary

Of State, Cardinal Sodano.

Sodano's ability to protect Maciel

put Ratzinger in a difficult position

as more and more

victims of Maciel came forward.

Vatican Watch is new, it was

Ratzinger's job to investigate.

I want to ask you a question

about Father Maciel

- No, I..

- Excuse me..

But I'm not so informed

to speak about it this moment

It is even, I think, inconvenient

in this moment to come to me

There's a question whether

you cover up..

Come to me when just

a moment is given, but not not yet.

- Well, we found out..

- This is unfair.. - Signori..!

What you find in Ratzinger at that

point is a man who is troubled

by justice that had

not gone forward

and yet at the same time was trying

to balance his loyalty

to the Pope, who clearly did

not want Maciel prosecuted.

Cardinal Ratzinger waits till the

moment when John Paul II is dying.

The same day that John Paul II dies,

the Prosecutor General

of the Congregation Of Faith

flies to New York and he stays in New York

and in Mexico City for eight days,

and he gets all the material to show

that Maciel Marcial was a sex criminal.

So it is interesting,

for at least 15 years

the Vatican didn't move

a finger to investigate,

and only in the moment

when all the Vatican is stopped,

because everybody is thinking

the Pope is dead,

Cardinal Ratzinger succeeds

to get the evidence.

Cardinal Ratzinger's investigation

confirmed his suspicion of Maciel's crimes

but still he did not act.

When Benedict became Pope in 2005,

did Benedict order his trial?

Did Benedict punish him

in any way? No.

Following a Vatican to live

a life of prayer and penitence

Maciel settled in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Vatican communiqu

did not mention his victims,

or the nature of his crimes.

An earlier statement had put

an end to Maciel church trial.

And that came not

from Ratzinger's office,

but rather from the office

of Cardinal Sodano.

Not even a Pope is all-powerful

because he lives in a structure -

the Roman Curia which is

almost 2,000 years old -

and the structure

always wants to defend itself.

He searched the truth about Maciel

but he didn't get the courage

to condemn him immediately,

publicly and to defrock him.

In 1997, facing a disease that

would ultimately take his life,

Bob Bolger made this video to

memorialize Father Murphy's crimes.

He set out on a road trip with

his friends from St John's,

Arthur and Gary, to see if they could

finally hold Murphy to account.

Murphy was living at the cabin

in Boulder Junction

with a deaf housekeeper who'd

studied and worked at St John's.

Bob gave me the camera

and I videotaped it.

Bob's ringing the door bell, and

then he comes away from the door

walks around to the side of the house,

to the right, by the lake

And then Murphy came out.

And they met.

And Bob got in his face

and really let him have it.

He told him, "You need to walk

yourself right now"

"to the police station."

"Walk yourself to jail."

Don't bother me.

Don't bother me. Go on.

Then Grace got involved and was

saying, "Forget it, forgive him!"

And Bolger is like, "You don't

understand, Grace, stay out of it."

After that,

we got in the car and we left.

When I told my wife what

I had experienced with Murphy,

her heart broke for me.

When I finally told her I thought,

"Sh*t, I should never have

told my wife!"

I thought I had made a mistake.

I shouldn't have said anything,

I should've kept it to myself.

But it was too late.

We grappled with it

and my wife ultimately

took me to a psychologist.

So when I finally blew,

just let it all out,

I decided to write what turned out

to be a seven-page letter to Murphy.

I had to unleash every angry emotion

that I had ever felt

and I just regurgitated it onto

paper to Murphy.

I would call

Murphy a wolf,

because of the way he lusting

after the prey that he's stalked.

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