US: The Vatican promoted an American priest through its diplomatic ranks despite being told a number of times that he had sexually abused a young girl.
Mgr Daniel Pater (50) has resigned from the No 2 position at the Vatican's nunciature in India. The woman he abused as a girl in the US has spoken publicly about her ordeal.
Bishop James Harvey, head of Pope John Paul's personal staff for the past five years, was told in 1995 and 1999 that Mgr Pater had abused the girl, but did nothing about it.
A spokeswoman for the Cincinnati archdiocese where the abuse took place said Mgr Pater admitted 10 years ago to a sexual relationship with an Ohio girl that began in 1980 when she was 14. "The Vatican knew the status of the case," the spokeswoman told the Dallas Morning News.
Though the monsignor was never charged with the offence, the abuse amounted to statutory rape. In 1995 Mgr Pater reached a confidential settlement with the abused woman. He spent time at the St Luke's Institute in Maryland, for priests with abuse problems, after she complained in 1993, before he was posted back to Zaire in 1994.
Bishop Harvey acknowledged last week that he had been told in the past about Mgr Pater's history but had not acted because he "presumed . . . that there wasn't anything to it, or the accusations were false . . . I just presumed that when he continued everything was OK," he said.
Bishop Harvey is said to be the most powerful American at the Vatican, having been in Rome for about 20 years. Cardinal Law of Boston stayed with him last December when he came to tender his resignation to the Pope. The bishop said he had never spoken about Mgr Pater to the Pope, whom he sees almost daily.
A friend of the bishop, Mgr Lawrence Breslin, pastor of the Cincinnati parish where the abuse took place and who had been on the staff of the North American College in Rome, said he first told Bishop Harvey about the case in 1995.
Bishop Harvey responded, he said, that higher-ranking officials in the Vatican state department knew the priest "had some problems in the States, and it'd pass over."
Mgr Breslin says he replied: "It's not going to pass over". He said that during a second conversation in 1999 Bishop Harvey told him a restriction had been placed on Mgr Pater because of the abuse. He would never become nuncio.
Last week Bishop Harvey said Mgr Pater was the first Vatican employee he knew of to be credibly accused of abuse. Father Thomas Doyle, a military chaplain in Germany, who formerly worked at the nunciature in Washington, said he believed it was was merely the first to become public.
He called the situation "profound and shattering, because this connects several dots".
"They did know. They kept it covered. They didn't act on their own requirements for the United States. In other words, they violated their own code of ethics, their own procedures," said Father Doyle.
In 1979 Mgr Pater was a newly ordained priest serving at a parish in Kettering, Ohio, in the Cincinnati archdiocese when he met a 13-year-old girl, now in her 30s. The abuse began in 1980 during counselling sessions with Father Pater following the death of her brother.
In 1982 Mgr Pater was invited to train for the Vatican's diplomatic service. In late 1992 the woman confided in another priest, Father Tom Stricker, who encouraged her to report it to the archdiocese.
Despite an investigation, Mgr Pater kept his diplomatic career, serving at papal nunciatures in Australia, Zaire (now the Congo), Turkey and India, where he was until his recent resignation.
In the summer of 1993 the woman sued him, archdiocesan officials, the parish and her high school. Mgr Pater was put on administrative leave, left Zaire and underwent treatment at St Luke Institute in Maryland. It deemed him fit for ministry and not a threat to children, an archdiocese spokeswoman said.
Mgr Pater returned to Zaire in 1994. The woman's legal action dragged through the following year before a confidential financial settlement was agreed of which Mgr Pater paid the bulk.
