The cleric who was the judge in a Catholic Church trial of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys on Thursday denied that he was ordered to drop the proceeding, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/89747067.html
The judge, the Rev. Thomas Brundage, is a canon lawyer who was told by then-Archbishop Rembert Weakland to handle the trial of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy in 1996. Father Brundage is now in the Diocese of Anchorage.
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, Father Brundage disputed some of the reporting and interpretation of documents uncovered by The New York Times in a story about why Father Murphy was never defrocked.
Father Brundage denied that the Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, blocked the trial of Father Murphy. Father Brundage also insisted that Weakland never told him to abandon the trial, and maintained that the tribunal was proceeding Father Murphy died in 1998.
“I would have directly appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the church,” Father Brundage told the Journal Sentinal. “I would have tried to get it to Pope John Paul II.”
