Accused cleric ‘was approved by Ratzinger’

A SOUTH AMERICAN diocese at the centre of an investigation by the Vatican has strongly defended its bishop over his handling of abuse allegations concerning his new vicar general, write Jon Stibbs and Isabel de Bertodano.

A message on the diocesan website of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city, claimed the appointment of Fr Carlos Urrutigoity was approved by the future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and that the accusations against the priest were “slander”.

Bishop of Ciudad del Este Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano has repeatedly defended Fr Urrutigoity, who was incardinated into the diocese in 2005. The priest was accused of abusing seminarians while working in the United States’ Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, between the late 1990s and 2002. He denies the allegations. In 2006 the diocese paid out a reported sum of US$400,000 (£237,000) to a student who alleged Urrutigoity had abused him.

Last week the diocesan website carried a defence of the bishop, stating that in 2005 Fr Urrutigoity, who is originally from Argentina, “came recommended by some cardinals with functions in the Holy See (one of them, elected a few days later Successor of Peter)”.
Last month, Spanish Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló undertook a week-long apostolic investigation into the diocese in response to the abuse allegations. Since then, the Vatican has taken the unusual step of asking Bishop Livieres not to carry out any priestly ordinations in the diocese. The Church has not given an official reason for the instruction.

The Vatican also confirmed that Fr Urrutigoity had been removed from his position as vicar general on 14 July.