VATICAN CITY -- As Benedict XVI prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of his election as pope here on Monday, he is beset by devastating reports about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests -- and about his own role in the crisis. The reports have prompted sharp condemnations of the pontiff as well as a backlash of media criticism from papal defenders in the Vatican and around the world. Amid the firestorm, myths have emerged that only complicate the search for truth, healing and accountability.

1. Pope Benedict is the primary culprit in the coverup of the abuse scandal.

Between 1981 and 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope,headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's office for doctrinal orthodoxy. A few abuse cases (some from the United States) came before him, and the evidence shows that he did not move with any urgency to defrock priests. In 2001, as the number of cases coming to light worldwide increased, Ratzinger convinced Pope John Paul II to let his office have jurisdiction over all of them. Though the Vatican says church confidentiality did not preclude bishops from reporting crimes to civil authorities, some see Ratzinger's move as an attempt to keep the cases secret.

Nonetheless, there is just one case so far that can be traced directly to Ratzinger's tenure as a bishop, when he was head of the archdiocese of Munich in his native Germany. In that 1980 case, Ratzinger allowed a child abuser into his diocese for psychiatric treatment, and the priest was reassigned to a parish where he went on to abuse more children. It's unclear whether Ratzinger personally signed off on the assignment, but he seems to have acted more or less like most bishops at the time -- giving little oversight to the abuser and doing nothing to remove him from the priesthood. Alas, there is plenty of blame to go around for the church's passivity.

As pope, Benedict has blamed the media for exaggerating the scandals,yet he has moved more aggressively against abusers than John Paul II,his predecessor, who tried to stop defrocking priests altogether and who ignored evidence of the terrible abuses by the late Marcial Maciel Degollado, a well-known Mexican priest who founded the Legionaries of Christ, a secretive order that is under Vatican investigation.

 

During the 2000s, as Ratzinger came to realize the scope of the abuse,he expedited the defrocking of abusive priests and reopened the Maciel case, which had been closed under John Paul. "We realize that it's necessary to repent," Benedict said in a homily on Thursday. He has still has not punished bishops, however, with the same rigor with which he has targeted abusers.

2. Gay priests are to blame.