The fallout from the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church
settled across Europe on Wednesday, as prosecutors said they were
weighing criminal charges against a priest suspected of molesting
children in Germany, and Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of mishandling allegations of abuse in Ireland.
The
possibility of criminal charges emerged from new accusations against a
priest at the center of the child-molesting scandal rocking the church
in Germany. On Wednesday, church officials in Munich said the priest,
the Rev. Peter Hullermann
— whose transfer in 1980 to an archdiocese led at the time by Benedict,
then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, has drawn the pope himself into the
nation’s child abuse controversy — had been accused of molesting a minor
as recently as 1998.