Third Irish bishop steps down amid sex abuse scandal

VATICAN CITY - Heads are starting to roll in the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal.

Weeks after Europe awoke to reports of clerical sex abuse in its own backyard, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Thursday of an Irish bishop who acknowledged failing to report abuse to police, while a German bishop also offered to step down. The developments appeared to be part of a new strategy by the Vatican of getting rid of bishops who sought to protect the church from scandal rather than safeguard children.

Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare is the third Irish bishop to step down since December; two more Irish bishops have offered to resign and there are mounting calls for the country's top prelate, Cardinal Sean Brady, to leave because of his handling of the case of a child rapist.

The German prelate, Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg, was accused of hitting children decades ago, as well as financial irregularities at an orphanage, allegations he denied for weeks before admitting he may have slapped children. Although he was not accused of sexual abuse, the case against Mixa focused more negative attention on a German church already shaken by scandal.

Victims' advocates were not impressed by Thursday's actions, saying a handful of resignations of low-level bishops carries no moral weight when the senior Catholic leadership has been complicit in cover-ups.

In Milwaukee, meanwhile, documents Thursday in a lawsuit aimed at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church revealed that the case of a Wisconsin priest accused of preying on boys at a school for the deaf was presented to the Vatican by a victim a year earlier than previously thought. A man identified as "John Doe 16" wrote a March 5, 1995, letter to the then-Vatican secretary of state, alleging that the Rev. Lawrence Murphy molested him for a number of years.

  A man identified in the lawsuit as “John Doe 16” of Illinois wrote a
March 5, 1995, letter to then-Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano alleging that the Rev. Lawrence Murphy molested him for a number of years. Previously, it was believed that the Vatican first learned of the allegations against Murphy in a July 1996 letter from Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland.

 Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the school from 1950 to 1974. His case drew renewed scrutiny after the recent release of documents suggesting that a Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now the pope — failed to aggressively discipline Murphy.
 

 Doe 16’s letter was released by his attorney, Jeff Anderson of St.
Paul, Minn., who provided a copy of a receipt showing the registered
letter had reached the Vatican. The man wrote Sodano again and got no response, according to Anderson.

 The Vatican dismissed the lawsuit as a publicity stunt that is entirely without merit and rehashes theories already rejected by U.S. courts.