Pedophile priests

The 62-year-old priest, whose name was given only as Father Peter H., was "banned from working with children and young people. He broke this restriction," the diocese of Munich and Freising in southern Germany said in a statement after suspending the cleric.

Peter H. had been permitted to switch to a different diocese in 1980, after being accused of sexually abusing children. He was transferred from the western German city of Essen to southern Germany where the archbishop of Munich and Freising at the time, Joseph Ratzinger, now the pontiff, approved giving Church housing to the priest for "therapy", the diocese said.

Two years later, by which time Archbishop Ratzinger had moved to the Vatican, Peter H. was given pastoral duties in a Bavarian town. In 1986, he was given a suspended jail term for sexually abusing children, but he remained in the Church.

When the man's past surfaced recently, it became impossible for the Church to keep him in his post. Prelate Joseph Obermeier, a senior priest charged with overseeing Peter H., also handed in his resignation.

In further revelations, a monastery in St. Ottilien in southern Germany has acknowledged that several monks, now deceased, had admitted to acts of abuse in the 1960s. It has appealed to victims to come forward. Five new cases of pedophilia have also been reported in the diocese of Muenster in northwestern Germany.

On Tuesday, the German Bishops' Conference announced that a telephone hotline, for both victims and perpetrators, would be launched at the end of March.

gb/dpa/AFP/KNA/epd

Editor:Susan Houlton