New York Newsday, Wednesday, February 2, 1994     15
By Patricia Cohen - Staff Writer

        The Bible says that "It is God who will judge the world with justice," but Terence German isn't willing to wait quite that long.
        So the former Jesuit priest has instead taken his case to New York State Supreme Court where he's suing Pope John Paul II, Cardinal John O'Connor and the Roman Catholic Church itself for $120 million.
        A small, earnest man with a round cherubic face that turns pink when he gets excited, German seems more likely to be cast as Walter Mitty than Martin Luther.
        But German, 51, is taking on the Catholic Church by accusing its most potent leaders of turning a blind eye to his repeated reports of other priests' sexual misconduct and misuse of church funds.
        Had German tiled his suit a decade ago, he probably would have been written off as a nut. But with former victims becoming regulars on Oprah and the diocese of New Mexico teetering on the brink of bankruptcy because of a raft of molestation lawsuits, the incredible has become credible. In the past decade alone, more than 500 priests have been named in sex-scandal lawsuits.
        Still, German's case is something of a rarity — even aside from his naming the Pope as the number one plaintiff. He doesn't claim that he himself was victimized. Rather, using a novel legal argument, he charges fraud and breach of contract, the kind of lawsuit you might bring if the plumber you'd hired failed to unclog your pipes as promised.
        German explains that he gave up all of his "worldly goods" when he took his vows in 1964 in exchange for a promise that the church would care for him until his death. The underlying assumption, of course, was that he would "live a life guided by the established principles" of the Roman Catholic Church, he says in the lawsuit he filed last year.
        But he couldn't. German argues that the church — by acquiescing to pervasive sexual and financial misconduct — broke its part of the covenant and he was left with no choice but to resign, which he did in 1989.
        "The church wasn't enforcing its own rules, so he wasn't able to live according to the church's own rules. He had to live with people stealing and sexual alliances with small boys," explains German's lawyer, Carl Person.
        "Maybe I should have been brave and been standing on the street corner five years ago talking about this," said German, considering that his delay has caused questions about his credibility. "I was told no one would believe you."
        Now he is on street corners — foraging for clothes in garbage bins or visiting soup kitchens. (Sunday breakfast of bagels and lox at Temple Emanuel-El on the East Side is best, he says.) His unemployment benefits ran out two weeks ago and last week he received an eviction notice from his $324-a-morith one-room apartment on the East Side. Every time lie lands a job, he charges, the church has helped to blackball him by branding him a "troublemaker" in the eyes of his employer. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the New York Archdiocese, declined to comment on any specifics of the case.
        German's story flutters out like confetti. The son of religious Catholics, he spent more than 25 years in the church, moving from the Wisconsin Providence of the Society of Jesus to the Jesuit community in St. Louis to New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral to Rome to the diocese in Savannah, Ga. At each stop, he says, lie found sexual perversity — even within the Vatican's own seminaries in Rome. But the only response to his anguished complaints was "I was constantly told to shut up" by church officials, he says.
        German says he warned O'Connor in 1986 several years before the story exploded in the media that the Rev. Bruce Rittcr, founder of Covenant House, was having sex with male youths, but "Ritter was so powerful and there was so much money in him that O'Connor didn't want to say anything."
        Even the Pope turned a deaf ear to his complaints of sexual improprieties, says German, who described himself as a "traveling Vatican troubleshooter" at Jesuit Headquarters in Rome from 1978 through 1981.
        "The Pope said 'that can't be, impossible,' " said German, describing his brief audience with John Paul Il.
        In fact, what drove German to finally file his suit was the Pope's statement last year singling out the United States as a place where sexual problems had surfaced. "He came out publicly and said we know these things are going on in the United States. But that's hogwash, it's going on right in Rome, and he knows it."
        Two other events propelled German to the state's courts. First, he learned of a $50-million suit against O'Connor filed in Goshen, N.Y., by a former altar boy who said the archdiocese ignored complaints about his abuse by a priest. Second, a friend of his who died of AIDS claimed to have been infected by a Wisconsin priest.
        The charge that some in church hierarchy adopted a code of silence on allegations of abuse is not new. Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni have written in their new book, "Gospel of Shame" : "Priests knew some of their fellows abused children, but maintained a collegial quiet."
        Even so, a lawsuit charging a de facto policy of ignoring complaints of abuse by priests could be embarrassing for an already embattled church.
        Yet German's specific allegations may never be heard in a courtroom. His suit bangs up against the wall dividing church and state, underscoring the touchy legal issue of just what right civil courts have over matters involving church members.
        Adam Simms, a lawyer for the New York Archdiocese, argued in court last week that the First Amendment clearly prohibits courts from deciding disputes over religious doctrine or authority. Even beyond the legal issues, however, Simms characterizes the suit as "ludicrous." They are awaiting a judge's ruling on a request to dismiss the suit.
        German's lawyer, Person, not surprisingly takes the opposite tack: "This has nothing to do with church doctrine, so there's no prohibition."
        German's wrangling with the church has sparked him to become estranged from members of his own family, two brothers as well as a sister who, he says, had an affair with a Jesuit priest years ago.
        He dismisses armchair psychoanalysis that might draw a link between his sister's experience and his own reaction to sexual abuses by priests, however. "I think I'm able to be more objective than that."
        Yet if German sees himself as a latter-day Job, with trials sent down to test his faith, that devotion has survived.
        "I'm an idealist who would like to see justice done. I still love the Catholic Church," said German, who declares his faith in God is unshaken. "But I do think the bureaucrats or hierarchy is kind of rotten."

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Priest's Current Debt is in excess of $50,000.00
Unlike pedophiles this priest has no income from his archdiocese.
His public faculties –by edict– were rescinded without formal charges being made.
The Crime:  Defending morally justifiable protection for the unborn.
        An unpopular position not considered "Politically Correct."

Pope John Paul II's Vatican theologians have been equally divided on the unpopular position. But Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb, a protector of pedophiles who still receive archdiocesan financial support — in addition to costs associated with their grave immoral activities, has taken away income from one who has not opposed any defined Catholic Church teaching.

For additional information please contact Father David Trosch (a morally valid priest)
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        or by phone: 1 251-639-7456 .
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