Claims of cover-up as Benedict visits Malta

As Pope Benedict XVI flew into Malta yesterday for his first overseas visit since the eruption of the latest clerical abuse scandal to rock the Catholic church, it emerged that new claims were to be made of a cover-up operation to clear him of responsibility.

A report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, to be published today, will say a former aide was put under heavy pressure to take the blame for an abuse scandal in the Pope's former archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

In 1980, while the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop, a priest known to be a paedophile was accepted into the archdiocese and, instead of being given therapy as planned, he was assigned to parish duties.

After the New York Times brought the case to light last month, Benedict's former vicar-general in Munich, Gerhard Gruber, accepted full responsibility for the decision.

But Der Spiegel, citing sources close to the 81-year-old prelate, says Gruber got a string of telephone calls in which church officials begged him to take the blame. After he agreed, he was sent a fax with the statement he eventually issued, the weekly will say. The priest, Father Peter Hullermann, went on to commit an offence involving a boy for which he was tried and convicted.

In Spain, meanwhile, it was reported that a cardinal who congratulated a French bishop on not reporting a paedophile abbot said he had cleared his message of congratulations with the late Pope, John Paul II.

La Verdad, a newspaper in the southern city of Murcia, said Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos revealed at the weekend that he wrote a letter to the bishop "after consulting the Pope and showing it to him".

The cardinal said the late Pontiff "authorised me to send the letter to all the bishops in the world and put it on the internet".

Pope Benedict flew out of Rome after receiving an unexpected and unconditional endorsement from Silvio Berlusconi's Government. In greetings sent to the Pontiff on his 83rd birthday on Saturday, the Italian Government blamed the scandal on an "unspeakable campaign of slander against the church and the Pope".

The statement was one of several indications that Benedict's supporters were shifting from defence to attack in their run-up to the fifth anniversary of the start of his papacy this week.

A junior minister at the Italian Ministry of Culture, Francesco Giro, was joined by six other MPs and numerous regional, provincial and local councillors in a special prayer service for the Pope yesterday in Rome.

On Benedict's first day in Malta, about 100,000 people - roughly a quarter of the nation's population - turned out to see him as he moved through the streets, Vatican officials estimated.

Some 2000 police and military have been deployed by the Maltese Government to ensure the Pope's security during his two-day visit to the island where St Paul is believed to have been welcomed after a shipwreck on his way to Rome. Tradition has it that he landed on Malta 1950 years ago, and Benedict prayed at the grotto where, according to tradition, the apostle took refuge.

Benedict, in his first speech of the trip, noted Malta's long Catholic traditions and the church's influence on the country which, in keeping with Vatican teaching, bans abortion and divorce.

He said the Maltese people "are rightly proud of the indispensable role that the Catholic faith has played in their development".

- OBSERVER, AP