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Via Slate: 

1.  Pope Implicated in Sex Abuse Scandal

The Catholic Church is in the middle of another sex abuse scandal, and this one keeps inching closer and closer to Pope Benedict XVI. As more lawsuits are filed, more documents that have been hidden from public view for years are making their way into the courts. It was revealed on Wednesday that when the pope was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he "failed to defrock an American priest who molested hundreds of deaf boys, despite receiving letters from a number of American bishops pleading with him to act on the matter," the Times reported. "Internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, warning him and other top Vatican officials that failure to act could embarrass the church, have been unearthed as part of a lawsuit." The Rev. Lawrence Murphy worked at St. John's School for the Deaf in Wisconsin from 1950 to 1974, during which time he molested up to 200 boys. (A social worker who evaluated the priest many years later said the reverend admitted to the molestations and exhibited no remorse.) Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican's secretary of state, was Ratzinger's second-in-command in the mid-'90s when U.S. bishops wrote about the situation surrounding Murphy. Bertone told the bishops to begin a canonical trial that would result in Murphy's defrocking if he was found guilty, but Ratzinger called it off after receiving a letter directly from Murphy. " 'I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,' Father Murphy wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, according to the Times. "'I ask your kind assistance in this matter.'" Instead of disciplining Father Murphy, the church moved him from the region but allowed him to continue working in schools and a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.