Vatican says bid to link pope to abuse issue failed

Pope Benedict XVI waves during his weekly audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican February 17, 2010.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican rallied around Pope Benedict Saturday, dismissing suggestions he had tried to cover up priestly child abuse in Germany.

"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," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.

"To any objective observer, it's clear that these attempts have failed."

The pope's former diocese in Bavaria said Friday he was involved in a decision in 1980 to move a priest there who was suspected of child abuse.

The pontiff -- then Joseph Ratzinger -- jointly agreed to the priest undergoing therapy at a rectory in the diocese of Munich and Freising, where he was archbishop from 1977 to 1981.

However, rather than sending the priest for therapy as had been agreed, the diocese's then vicar general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a Munich parish without restrictions. Gruber took full responsibility for the decision, the diocese said. A vicar general is a bishop's deputy responsible for the general management of the diocese.

Friday the head of Germany's Catholic Church briefed journalists about the situation in Germany, where more than 100 reports have emerged of abuse at Catholic institutions, including one linked to the prestigious Regensburg choir run by the pope's brother from 1964 to 1994.

Robert Zollitsch said the Church's top doctrinal body was studying the norms for dealing with abuse cases adopted by the Church in nations around the world with a view to coming up with a standard set of norms for the whole Catholic Church.

3,000 SEXUAL MISCONDUCT CASES

The Vatican defended the pontiff vigorously Saturday, with Lombardi's comments accompanying a separate interview by the Holy See's official prosecutor, or "promoter of justice."

Monsignor Charles. J. Scicluna told the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire that accusations the pope had helped cover up abuse were "false and calumnious."

The Vatican's disciplinary office had dealt with 3,000 cases of sexual misconduct since 2001, covering "crimes" committed over the last 50 years, Scicluna said.

However only about 300 of these involved "pedophilia in the true sense of the term," meaning abuse base on attraction to prepubescent children. About 60 percent of the cases concerned adolescents and the rest involved heterosexual relations.

A full trial had been completed for 20 percent of the cases and only 10 percent had resulted in the pope dismissing the offender from the priesthood.

Lombardi said Canon (Church) rules for controlling and punishing abuse did not create the conditions for any cover up and were, on the contrary, vigorous and severe.

"It is right to remember that all of this was set up by cardinal Ratzinger when he was prefect of the Congregation," Lombardi said.

"His line has always been one of rigor and consistency in tackling even the most difficult situations."

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; editing by Matthew Jones)