In 25 years of compelling the church to turn over documents, this is the first time I have actually received a trail which we knew existed and the documents demonstrate in themselves direct involvement and imposition of secrecy by the Vatican in an abuse case.
This is a direct trail of evidence that goes from the offender [Reverend Murphy] abusing 200 kids, to the Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee, his direct superior. Archbishop Weakland sought the guidance from the Vatican and contacted Cardinal Ratzinger to ask what to do. The documents show cardinal Ratzinger's office told him to use secret protocol.
There is a document called Crimen Sollicitationis [Crime of Solicitation], which originally drew guidelines for how the church dealt with priests that used the confessional booth to solicit sex from parishioners, even the young. All clerics were required to keep abuse secret and to impose secrecy on any laity which discovered the abuse.
Five years after her nephew’s murder, what Angela Harrelson misses most is hearing her phone buzz...
