Vatican Response Rubs Salt Into Abuse Victims' Wounds

Survivors aren't trying to hurt the Pope, say survivors
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 30, 2010 6:55 AM CDT
Vatican Response Rubs Salt Into Abuse Victims' Wounds
Arthur Budzinski, 61, left, speaks using sign language via his daughter Gigi Budzinski at a press conference outside The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Monday March 29, 2010. Budzinski was molested while attending St. John's school for the deaf as a youngster by Father Lawrence Murphy....   (Jeffrey Phelps)

A man who says he was among some 200 deaf boys allegedly molested by a priest in Wisconsin said yesterday the Vatican's defensive responses to revelations about the case make him feel like he did when he was 12, when no one would listen to him about the abuse—while insisting the goal isn't to bring down the pope. "It's 2010. I'm not trying to hurt the pope," said Arthur Budzinski, 61. "The pope should do something. I'm just telling my story. That's all I'm doing."

Top Roman Catholic officials are rubbing salt "into the already deep wounds of those who have been victimized and disillusioned by the Catholic church" by criticizing those speaking out, said a rep for a survivor group. "It's ludicrous to claim that these hundreds of once-trusting, devout Catholics are somehow conspiring to hurt the world's most powerful religious figure," she said. (More Pope Benedict XVI stories.)

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