Foreign Office apologises for Pope 'condom' memo

The Foreign Office has apologised for a "foolish" document which suggested the Pope's visit to the UK could be marked by the launch of "Benedict" condoms.

Called "The ideal visit would see...", it said the Pope could be invited to open an abortion clinic and bless a gay marriage during September's visit.

The Foreign Office stressed the paper, which resulted from a "brainstorm" on the visit, did not reflect its views.

The Bishop of Nottingham said, if anything, it was "appalling manners".

The Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon said: "I think it's a lot worse that we invite someone into our country - a person like the Pope - and then he's treated in this way.

"I think it's appalling manners more than anything else."

The junior civil servant responsible had been put on other duties, the Foreign Office said.

Details of the document emerged after it was obtained by the Sunday Telegraph.

'Song with Queen'

The UK's ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Campbell, has met senior officials of the Holy See to express regret on behalf of the government.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband is said to have been "appalled" by the incident.

Robert Pigott, BBC religious affairs correspondent   It's clear that what the Foreign Office has called "this foolish document" did not reflect government policy. Its tone is clearly frivolous, and it came from junior officials. But it has, nevertheless, the potential to cause considerable damage. Whether fairly or not, it will leave some Catholics with the impression of a culture within official circles in which their Church's teaching is not taken seriously. Some will suspect prejudice against faith groups. Perhaps most damaging of all, it could leave an impression that the Pope might be regarded as a figure of fun less than five months before his visit to Britain. Apart from the pressure on the papal visit from public feeling about sex abuse, and the threat of demonstrations against the Pope, the government needs the Vatican's help in a global diplomatic effort to curb climate change and fight poverty. How serious and far-reaching the effect of the document is depends partly on how the Church itself responds.

The paper was attached as one of three "background documents" to a memo dated 5 March 2010 inviting officials in Whitehall and Downing Street to attend a meeting to discuss themes for the papal visit.

It suggested Benedict XVI could show his hard line on the sensitive issue of child abuse allegations against Roman Catholic priests by "sacking dodgy bishops" and launching a helpline for abused children.

The document went on to propose the Pope could apologise for the Spanish Armada or sing a song with the Queen for charity.

It listed "positive" public figures who could be made part of the Pope's visit, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and 2009 Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle, and those considered "negative", such as Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins.

The civil servant responsible for sending round the memo said in a cover note: "Please protect; these should not be shared externally. The 'ideal visit' paper in particular was the product of a brainstorm which took into account even the most far-fetched of ideas."

An investigation was launched after some recipients of the memo, said to have been circulated to a restricted list, objected to its tone.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the department was "deeply sorry" for any offence the document had caused.

"This is clearly a foolish document that does not in any way reflect UK government or Foreign Office policy or views. Many of the ideas in the document are clearly ill-judged, naive and disrespectful," he said.

"The text was not cleared or shown to ministers or senior officials before circulation. As soon as senior officials became aware of the document, it was withdrawn from circulation.

"The individual responsible has been transferred to other duties. He has been told orally and in writing that this was a serious error of judgement and has accepted this view."

'Blue-skies thinking'

The Foreign Office said the memo had resulted from discussions by a group of three or four junior staff in a team working on early planning for the papal visit.

A source told the BBC News website the individual since moved to other duties had called the group together for "some blue-skies creative thinking about how to make the visit a success", but their discussions had become "a joke that has gone too far".

The source added that others in the group had been spoken to about the incident, but had not faced any formal action.

I think it's a joke that has gone wrong - light relief that has gone out of control. Jack Valero, Catholic Voices

Bishop McMahon said he hoped it was meant to be "light hearted".

But he added: "That in itself can be dangerous if these memos move around the departments, they tend to gain momentum."

He said he did not think Catholics would be upset by the memo as they "are used to getting a bad press".

Jack Valero from the organisation Catholic Voices said he was not taking the memo seriously.

"I think it's a joke that has gone wrong - light relief that has gone out of control. And I think Catholics will just take it like this, you know, that they'll think about it today and then they will forget about it."

He said those that have been scarred by abortion would find the joke "a bit thin".

But he added: "In the Catholic church we are used to forgiveness, it's part of our culture to forgive people's mistakes."

Earlier this year the Pope announced 2010 would see the first papal visit to the UK since John Paul II's visit in 1982.

Pope Benedict XVI's visit will take place from 16 to 19 September, during which time he is expected to visit Birmingham, as part of the planned beatification of Cardinal John Newman, and Scotland.

The visit will come in the autumn of what is proving to be a difficult year for the Pope with a wave of allegations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal properly with priests accused of paedophilia.

The Pope himself has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy and of not taking strong enough steps against paedophiles when he had that responsibility as a cardinal in Rome.

However, his supporters say he has been the most pro-active Pope yet in confronting abuse.

For what an ipad is usefull

Woman sends adopted Son back to Russia

Russia's foreign minister has threatened to shut down international adoptions with the United States after a Tennessee woman sent a 7-year-old boy she adopted, back to Moscow on a one-way flight this week.

The boy, named Artyom Savelyev, apparently had a letter with him addressed to "whom it may concern." In the letter, Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tenn., says that she was misled by the orphanage about the boy's behavior problems and asks that the adoption be canceled.

I am certain that she was overwhelmed, but the choice she made has -- it's going to cause other kids not to be adopted.

- Steve McGill of Nashville

"The reality is that most children who are adopted out of institutional care from around the world will have at the very least some developmental delays," says Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption. He says the first year is often rocky, especially for older children, but calls the Tennessee adoption case the first of its kind.

"Occasionally inter-country adoptions do disrupt," he says. "Usually the child would remain in the United States and alternate care would be arranged for the child. This is the first time that I'm aware of that an internationally adopted child was put on an airplane and returned in this manner."
Johnson says the fact that the child made it back to his home country —- by himself — creates a new set of diplomatic problems.

The National Council for Adoption is working closely with the U.S. State Department to try and talk Russia out of suspending international adoptions.

"[The] United States will talk to Russians and explain to them that this is not what America stands for, that this is against our law as well," says Larisa Mason, one of the people working the phones for the council. A Russian living in Pittsburgh, Mason adopted a Russian orphan herself.

Mason says the U.S. takes the case very seriously and plans to file charges against Hansen.

"And if Russia wants us to do something and strengthen our procedure on international adoptions, we're ready to do that and talk to them," she says.

Rob Johnson of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services says case managers are investigating the incident with law enforcement. He says the state didn't know about any problems before the boy arrived in Moscow. The boy's adoption was finalized six months ago.

Since 1998, more than 47,000 Russian children have come to the U.S. The number of annual adoptions has tapered to just 1,600 last year. Part of the reason, according to adoption experts, is that Russia is doing a better job of placing orphans in its own country.

Still, Steve McGill of Nashville was sickened when he heard the news of a woman sending the boy back with a note. He and his wife adopted a Russian child in 2004.

"I am certain that she was overwhelmed, but the choice she made has — it's going to cause other kids not to be adopted," he says. "We've already had trouble with Russia shutting us down before because of corruption in the adoption industry. Kids get left without homes because she couldn't reach out for help here. So I'm angry."

Russia's threat to suspend American adoptions leaves thousands of families in limbo who are midstream in the years-long expensive process of bringing a Russian child to the U.S.

Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill threatens HIV/AIDS fight

Wambi Michael

HIV campaigners fear a homophobic bill currently being discussed by the Uganda parliament will lead to further stigmatisation of the gay community in Uganda and could stop HIV positive people from accessing treatment and hamper the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Being gay and HIV positive in Uganda has never been easy. But life is set to get a lot harder for gay people seeking treatment for HIV and AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

Pereza (not his real name) knows better than most the difficulties gay people have in Uganda when it comes to accessing HIV treatment. When the 34-year-old, who works for a private business, first suspected that he was HIV positive he was too scared to go and be tested. "When I finally went to be tested, the counsellor asked me whether I had a partner," he told Panos. "I had to deceive her. If I had risked bringing a fellow man then I don't think I would have been enrolled for treatment."

"It takes courage for any gay person to seek medical treatment in this country," Pereza continued. "Most of us are dying because we cannot access treatment, care and support. You would be ridiculed if you dared to come out to tell a nurse or doctor that you are gay. Everyone would look at you as if you were something dirty."

The difficulties facing men and women like Pereza have recently come to light because of the so-called Anti Homosexuality Bill, a private member's bill currently being discussed by the Ugandan cabinet and which has created a growing climate of fear among the gay community in Uganda.

Already illegal

Homosexual acts are already illegal in this East African country, carrying a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. The bill, which was proposed towards the end of 2009 by David Bahati, an MP for the ruling National Resistance Movement, seeks to up this to life imprisonment. It also proposes the death sentence for a new offence of "aggravated homosexuality" – namely when one of the participants is under 16, disabled, HIV positive or a "serial offender".

An estimated 170,000 people are enrolled in government ARV treatment in Uganda with a further 100,000 expected to enrol by the middle of this year.

Dr. Stephen Watiti, the chairperson of the National Forum of People Living with HIV/AIDS Network, said about 80 percent of Uganda's ARV treatment is funded by foreign donors and any cuts in aid would directly affect HIV positive people. "Removing [any of] that money would be a death sentence to those receiving the treatment," he said.

Watiti said treatment interruptions caused by shortages of the drug could lead to a new drug resistant HIV epidemic. He added that criminalising HIV transmission in both homosexuals and heterosexuals would cause stigma that would fuel the disease, leading to more deaths.

Laban, a university student in Uganda's capital, Kampala, is scared.

"Some of my classmates know that I'm gay," the 23-year-old said. "With this law they are expected to report me to the police. If the bill is passed I will leave my studies and go into hiding."

He is referring to the fact that if the bill is passed anyone who fails to report within 24 hours the identities of any gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered person could be sent to prison for up to three years.

Prominent members of society "outed"

Some of the local newspapers have already "outed" prominent members of society they believe to be gay. Campaigners fear the bill could lead to McCarthy era witch hunts, sending the gay community underground and preventing effective anti HIV teaching.

Laban told Panos the gay community faces a lot of stigma. "You are expected to behave in a certain way which is approved by the culture and morals," he said. "So I have decided to live alone to avoid being ridiculed."

Frank Mugisha, head of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), is one of few gay Ugandans to actively campaign for their rights. As a result he has become a potential target and cannot go out without bodyguards. He told Panos the gay community has been living in fear since Bahati tabled his bill. "If the bill passes into law we will be ostracised by almost everyone in society. Already we can't go to overcrowded places because for fear of being attacked by a mob."

An "odious" bill

The bill has caused outcry, both internationally and in Uganda.

Barack Obama called the bill "odious", while several other leaders, including UK prime minister Gordon Brown, have put pressure on Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni to withdraw the bill.

One of those most strongly opposed to the bill is the Swedish government, which threatened to cut the $50 million in aid it gives Uganda each year if the bill is passed.

There have also been calls from US human rights campaigners for America to cut some of its considerable aid. The US is the biggest donor to Uganda's HIV treatment programmes under The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). From 2004 to the end of 2009 Uganda had received a total of almost US$1.5 billion. The money has helped provide more than 200,000 people living with HIV/AIDS with life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.

As a result of this pressure, the bill now looks likely to be watered down. Museveni has himself changed tack. Having previously condemned homosexuals, he has distancing himself from the bill, declaring parliament's handling of it "must take into account our foreign policy interests". Meanwhile, David Bahati announced in January that he would be willing to amend the bill - though he did not say how.

Strong support for the bill

However, the voices supporting the bill – and denouncing foreign countries for intervening in Uganda's affairs – remain very strong.

Bahati has the support of Uganda's powerful lobby of Evangelical and Anglican bishops, many of whom have been outspoken in favour of the bill and who have the power to sway public opinion.

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of the Church of Uganda, the country's main Anglican Church which claims to represent 30 per cent of all Ugandans, publically confirmed his support for the bill in February at the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, in London.

In a formal statement Orombi said the Church of Uganda "particularly appreciate[s] the objectives of the Bill which seek to... prohibit and penalize homosexual behaviour and related practices in Uganda as they constitute a threat to the traditional family." He also remarked that: "Homosexual practice has no place in God's design of creation, the continuation of the human race through procreation or His plan of redemption" and that "lesbianism, bestiality and other sexual perversions" should also be prohibited.

"State-legislated genocide"

Some members of the Christian community have spoken out against the bill and Ugandan society is divided. Canon Gideon Byamugisha, a prominent member of Uganda's Anglican Church, described the bill as "state-legislated genocide against a specific community".

Christopher Senyonjo, a retired Anglican bishop living in Uganda, said: "The bill will push Uganda towards being a police state. There is lack of understanding about homosexuality – it is not [about] recruitment [of gay people], it is [about] orientation."

Yet it is the feeling on the streets of Kampala and across Uganda that is likely to determine what happens, as MPs will court popular opinion.

Young preachers, encouraged by the churches, preach against homosexuality on Kampala's busy street corners.

One of these preachers is Betty Wanyaka. She told Panos: "I'm a mother and I believe in God, so I'm against homosexuality. The Word says men have to marry woman not man and man."

But not everyone agrees. Calvin Kanyali, a young salesman from Kampala, said there were more pressing issues than attacking the gay community.

"People are dying of cancer, the hospitals have no medicine but they want to spend the little money there is chasing after homosexuals. This shouldn't be the biggest priority for our MPs," he said.

HIV/AIDS' rates could rise on wave of homophobia

Gerald Sentongo, the Administrator of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), told Panos that if the bill was passed it would further complicate efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS among homosexuals in Uganda.

Around 5.4 per cent of Uganda's population is HIV positive, according to official government statistics. Campaigners fear this figure could rise with the rising tide of homophobia.

"No one will come out to seek treatment knowing that the nurse, counsellor or doctor is required by law to report a homosexual and have him arrested by police," Mr Sentongo said.

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Canarias, entre las CCAA con menos consejerías

El Gobierno de Canarias presidido por Paulino Rivero se encuentra entre los ejecutivos autonómicos con menos consejerías. Mientras Cataluña cuenta con 14 áreas, Murcia y Madrid se quedan con nueve.


La Comunidad de Madrid y la Región de Murcias son las autonomías españolas con menos consejerías, nueve cada una, mientras que las que más tienen son Cataluña, con 14 y Andalucía con 13, pese a la reciente supresión de los departamentos de Justicia y Administración Pública y de Vivienda y Ordenación del Territorio andaluces.

Según los datos recabados por Europa Press en las 17 comunidades autónomas, Cataluña lidera ahora el ranking autonómico con 14 consejerías, las mismas que tenía al inicio de la legislatura, y una más que Andalucía y la Comunidad Valenciana, que cuentan actualmente con 13.

Por detrás se sitúan Baleares, Navarra y Castilla y León, con doce consejerías; Aragón, Extremadura y País Vasco, con once; Castilla La Mancha, Galicia, Cantabria, Canarias, La Rioja y Asturias, con diez; y Murcia y Comunidad de Madrid, con nueve.

EL REPARTO

De este modo, las consejerías canarias comprenden las áreas de Presidencia, Justicia y Seguridad, dirigida por José Miguel Ruano (CC); de Economía y Hacienda, con José Manuel Soria (PP); de Obras Públicas y Transportes, con Juan Ramón Hernández (CC); de Agricultura, Ganadería, Pesca y Alimentación, con Pilar Merino (PP); y Educación, Universidades, Cultura y Deportes, con Milagros Luis Brito (CC).

A estas se unen las consejerías de Bienestar Social, Juventud y Vivienda dirigida por Inés Rojas (CC); de Sanidad con Mercedes Roldós (PP); de Medio Ambiente y Ordenación Territorial con Domingo Berriel (CC); de Empleo, Industria y Comercio con Jorge Rodríguez (CC); y de Turismo con Rita Martín (PP).

Ratzinger se rebela ante las acusaciones de encubridor

Benedicto XVI ha utilizado la misa del Domingo de Ramos para cargar contra las informaciones que le acusan de encubrir casos de abusos sexuales a menores. El declaró que no se "dejará intimidar por las mezquinas habladurías de la opinión dominante", en relación a los escándalos de curas pederastas en EEUU, Irlanda, Alemania, Austria, Holanda, que han colocado en el ojo del huracán al Vaticano y salpicado al propio Pontífice.

El diario New York Times asegura que cuando era el prefecto del ex Santo Oficio, Ratzinger encubrió a un sacerdote estadounidense acusado de abusar sexualmente de unos 200 menores sordos y en la década de los años 80 cuando era arzobispo de Múnich autorizó que un sacerdote pederasta que había sido expulsado por ese motivo de la ciudad alemana de Essen, ejerciera en la capital bávara.

La insanta Sede ha desmentido categóricamente esos casos y ha denunciado una "innoble campaña" para golpearle "cueste lo que cueste". Según el diario vaticano L'Osservatore Romano, "nadie ha hecho tanto" como Benedicto XVI en la lucha contra esos abusos sexuales y menos ocultó caso alguno.
Por primera vez en sus casi cinco años de Pontificado, Benedicto XVI, que el 16 de abril cumplirá 83 años, ha presidido la homilía del Domingo de Ramos desde el "papamóvil", una medida, según el portavoz, Federico Lombardi, para que así lo pudieran ver mejor todos los fieles.

Ratzinger recordó su viaje a Tierra Santa, donde visitó los lugares de la vida, muerte y resurrección de Cristo y dijo que estaba muy "afligido" por las recientes "tensiones" verificadas "una vez más" en Jerusalén, por las nuevas construcciones judías en Jerusalén este, la zona palestina.

El pidió "a los responsables de la suerte" de la Ciudad Santa, "que es la patria espiritual de cristianos, judíos y musulmanes", que acometan con valentía el camino de la paz y lo sigan con perseverancia". Asimismo exhortó a los cristianos a permanecer en Tierra Santa, donde cada vez quedan menos.

DR Congo: Lord’s Resistance Army Rampage Kills 321

Regional Strategy Needed to End Rebel Group’s Atrocities and Apprehend Leaders

This 37-year-old man from Bangadi was attacked by the LRA on January 24, 2010, when he risked going to his banana and sugarcane farm 2km outside of town. A group of LRA found him there and shot him twice – both bullets grazed his back and neck. An LRA then grabbed him by the ankles, shook him to see if he was really dead, and cut him by machete just below the neck and lower down on his back, leaving him unconscious. When he came to, he eventually found his brother who had also been shot by the LRA. Covered in blood, they made it to a Congolese army position and found soldiers who took them by bicycle to a health center.

© 2010 Human Rights Watch

Women mutilated by the LRA near Bangadi in December 2009. An LRA combatant cut each victim’s lips and an ear with a razor and sent the victim’s back to their villages with a chilling warning to others that anyone who heard or spoke about the LRA would be similarly punished.

© 2010 Béatrice Petit

Trail of Death

The Makombo massacre is one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history, yet it has gone unreported for months. The four-day rampage demonstrates that the LRA remains a serious threat to civilians and is not a spent force, as the Ugandan and Congolese governments claim.

Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher

(Kampala) - The rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children, during a previously unreported four-day rampage in the Makombo area of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in December, 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

"The Makombo massacre is one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history, yet it has gone unreported for months," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The four-day rampage demonstrates that the LRA remains a serious threat to civilians and is not a spent force, as the Ugandan and Congolese governments claim."

The 67-page report, "Trail of Death: LRA Atrocities in Northeastern Congo," is the first detailed documentation of the Makombo massacre and other atrocities by the LRA in Congo in 2009 and early 2010. The report, based on a Human Rights Watch fact-finding mission to the massacre area in February, documents the brutal killings during the well-planned LRA attack from December 14 to 17 in the remote Makombo area of Haute Uele district.

LRA forces attacked at least 10 villages, capturing, killing, and abducting hundreds of civilians, including women and children. The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks. The dead include at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a 3-year-old girl who was burned to death. LRA combatants tied some of the victims to trees before crushing their skulls with axes.

The LRA also killed those they abducted who walked too slowly or tried to escape. Family members and local authorities later found bodies all along the LRA's 105-kilometer journey through the Makombo area and the small town of Tapili. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that for days and weeks after the attack, this vast area was filled with the "stench of death."

Children and adults who managed to escape provided similar accounts of the group's extreme brutality. Many of the children captured by the LRA were forced to kill other children who had disobeyed the LRA's rules. In numerous cases documented by Human Rights Watch, children were ordered to surround the victim in a circle and take turns beating the child on the head with a large wooden stick until the child died.

The United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Congo (MONUC) has some 1,000 peacekeeping troops in the LRA-affected areas of northeastern Congo - far too few to protect the population adequately, given the area's size.  Yet instead of sending more troops, the peacekeeping force, under pressure from the Congolese government to withdraw from the country by July 2011, is considering removing some troops from the northeast by June in the first phase of its drawdown.

"The people of northeastern Congo are in desperate need of more protection, not less," said Van Woudenberg. "The UN Security Council should stop any drawdown of MONUC peacekeeping troops from areas where the LRA threatens to kill and abduct civilians."

In mid-April, the Security Council is due to visit Congo to discuss the peacekeeping force's   plans for withdrawal and the protection of civilians.
The Makombo massacre is part of a longstanding history of atrocities and abuse by the LRA in Uganda, southern Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Congo. Pushed out of northern Uganda in 2005, the LRA now operates in the remote border area between southern Sudan, Congo, and CAR. In July 2005, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the senior leaders of the LRA for crimes they committed in northern Uganda, but those indicted remain at large.

The Human Rights Watch research indicated that the Makombo massacre was perpetrated by two LRA commanders - Lt. Col. Binansio Okumu (also known as Binany) and a commander known as Obol. They report to Gen. Dominic Ongwen, a senior LRA leader who is believed to command the LRA's forces in Congo and who is among those sought by the International Criminal Court. Human Rights Watch urged investigations of these commanders' alleged participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In December 2008, the governments of the region, led by the Ugandan armed forces, with intelligence and logistical support from the United States, began a military campaign known as Operation Lightning Thunder against the LRA in northeastern Congo. A surprise aerial strike on the main LRA camp failed to neutralize the LRA leadership, which escaped. In retaliation, the LRA attacked villages and towns in northern Congo and southern Sudan, killing more than 865 civilians during the Christmas 2008 holiday season and in the weeks thereafter.

On March 15, 2009, Operation Lightning Thunder officially ended, following pressure from the Congolese government, which found it politically difficult to support a continued Ugandan army presence on Congolese territory. But a covert joint military campaign continued, with the quiet approval of the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila. Both governments publicly maintain that the LRA is no longer a serious threat in Congo and that the bulk of the rebel group has either moved to Central African Republic or has been killed or dispersed.

These public declarations might have contributed to burying information about ongoing LRA attacks, leaving many victims feeling abandoned. An 80-year-old traditional chief, whose son was killed during the Makombo massacre, told Human Rights Watch: "We have been forgotten. It's as if we don't exist. The government says the LRA are no longer a problem, but I know that's not true. I beg of you, please talk to others about what has happened to us."

While the Makombo massacre is the most deadly documented attack by the LRA since the Christmas massacres of 2008, dozens of attacks against civilians have also been carried out in other areas in recent months - near the towns of Bangadi and Ngilima in Haut Uele district, in Ango territory in Bas Uele district, as well as in the Central African Republic.

In the December 2009 attacks near Bangadi and Ngilima, LRA combatants horribly mutilated six civilians, cutting off each victim's lips and an ear with a razor. The LRA sent the victims back to their villages with a chilling warning to others that anyone who heard or spoke about the LRA would be similarly punished.

On March 11, 2010, the US Senate unanimously passed the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. If it becomes law, it will require President Barack Obama's administration to develop a regional strategy to protect civilians in central Africa from attacks by the LRA, to work to apprehend the LRA's leadership, and to support economic recovery for northern Uganda. The bill is currently before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"The people of northeastern Congo and other LRA-affected areas have suffered for far too long," said Van Woudenberg. "The US and other concerned governments should work with the UN and regional parties to develop and carry out a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians and apprehend abusive LRA leaders."

As Archbishop, Benedict Focused on Doctrine

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
and NICHOLAS KULISH

MUNICH — When Pope Benedict XVI was archbishop of Munich and Freising, he was broadly described as a theologian more concerned with doctrinal debates than personnel matters. That, say his defenders, helps explain why he did not keep close tabs on a pedophile priest sent to his archdiocese in 1980 and allowed to work in a parish.

Yet in 1979, the year before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, approved the Rev. Peter Hullermann’s move to Munich, the cardinal blocked the assignment to the local university of a prominent theology professor recommended by the university senate. And in 1981, he punished a priest for holding a Mass at a peace demonstration, leading the man to ultimately leave the priesthood.

Pope Benedict’s four-and-a-half-year tenure as archbishop is among the least-examined periods of his life, but his time presiding over 1,713 priests and 2.2 million Catholics was in many ways a dress rehearsal for his present job tending to the Roman Catholic Church’s more than one billion members worldwide.

As archbishop, Benedict expended more energy pursuing theological dissidents than sexual predators. Already in the early 1980s, one could catch a glimpse of a future pope preoccupied with combating any movement away from church tradition. Vatican experts say there is little evidence that Benedict spent much time investigating more than 200 cases of “problem priests” in the diocese, with issues including alcohol abuse, adultery and, now under the microscope, pedophilia.

“His natural habitat was the faculty lounge, and he hadn’t even been a faculty chair,” said John L. Allen Jr. of The National Catholic Reporter. “He would be the first to concede he was much more interested in the life of the mind than the nuts and bolts of administrative work.”

Andreas Englisch, a leading German Vatican expert and the author of several books on Benedict, said that Cardinal Ratzinger “was never interested in bureaucratic stuff,” and noted that when he was first asked to be archbishop of Munich, he considered turning down the post because he did not want to work as “a manager.” In his autobiography, Benedict described taking the post as “an infinitely difficult decision.”

His management decisions are now the central focus of the widening scandal in the church in Germany. His supporters say that although he approved Father Hullermann’s move to his archdiocese, they assume that he may not have paid attention to a memo informing him that the priest, who had sexually abused boys in his previous posting, was almost immediately allowed to resume parish duties.

“He certainly would not have realized anything; he was in a different sphere,” said Hannes Burger, 72, who covered the church, including during Benedict’s time as archbishop, for the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“He held beautiful sermons and wrote beautifully, but the details he left to his staff,” said Mr. Burger, who interviewed the future pope several times before he went to Rome. “He was a professorial bishop, with Rome as his goal.”

Three decades ago it was common practice in the church to ignore or cover up incidents of molestation, or, in severe cases, to transfer priests to faraway parishes. Even outside the church, both victims and law enforcement authorities were less likely to take decisive steps to expose and combat abuse.

But Benedict’s track record in handling such cases under his direct control has assumed new relevance because he presides over a church troubled by scandal. He has to weigh whether and how severely to punish bishops who failed to act to deal with abuses in their domains.

In fact, in his efforts to combat child abuse in 2010, Benedict faces a dilemma over how to handle the same kind of institutional secrecy that was practiced by his own archdiocese in 1980. The future pope himself chose “co-workers of the truth,” as the motto for his time as archbishop.

The case is alarming, wrote the German newspaper Die Zeit last week, not “because Ratzinger was guilty of an exceptional offense.”

“It is the other way around: It is significant because the archbishop acted as probably most other dignitaries in those years,” it wrote. “In 1980 Joseph Ratzinger was part of the problem that preoccupies him today.”

Benedict was a stern disciplinarian on the issue that propelled him up the church hierarchy. An early enthusiast for reform in the Catholic Church in the early 1960s, he soon changed his mind and joined the ranks of those trying to put the brakes on the liberalizing forces unleashed by the counterculture movement.

His time in Munich was marked by confrontations with the local clergy, theologians and priests who worked there at the time say.

Cardinal Ratzinger ruffled feathers almost upon arrival in Munich by ordering priests to return to celebrating First Communion and first confession in the same year, rather than having the first confession a year later, a practice that had become established over the previous decade, and which its advocates considered more appropriate for young children.

One priest, the Rev. Wilfried Sussbauer, said he wrote to the archbishop at the time questioning the change, and said Cardinal Ratzinger “wrote me an extremely biting letter” in response.

After receiving the letter, Father Sussbauer and other priests asked for an audience with their archbishop in 1977. They did not get one. But the visiting sister of President Jimmy Carter did. When the priests found out, they called Cardinal Ratzinger’s office. “We asked, ‘Who is more important, your own priests or the sister of the American president?’ ” Father Sussbauer, 77, recalled. “Then suddenly we got an appointment.”

Cardinal Ratzinger was already something of a clerical diplomat, traveling as the official representative of Pope John Paul I to Ecuador in 1978. And with two conclaves to select a new pope in 1978, it seemed at times as if the archbishop already had one foot in the Vatican.

“His predecessor as archbishop was simply more aware of the practical problems of pastoral work,” said Wolfgang Seibel, a Jesuit priest and editor of the Munich-based magazine Stimmen der Zeit from 1966 to 1998. “He didn’t have enough time to leave his mark.”

How closely he would have watched personnel decisions, especially with an administrative chief, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, who had been in his post since 1968, is an open question. But the transfer of Father Hullermann from Essen would not have been a routine matter, experts said.

Mr. Englisch, the Vatican expert, said that transferring a problem priest was “such a difficult decision” that it would necessarily have required his opinion.

“I think the guy who handled it would have gone to his archbishop and said, ‘This case of transferring a priest is not common, and we should really have an eye on him,’ ” Mr. Englisch said. Referring to Benedict, he added, “I don’t think that he really knew the details; I don’t think he was really interested in the details.”

“As they say in the legal profession, you either knew or you should have known,” said the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church. “The archbishop is the unquestioned authority in that diocese. The buck stops there.”

Rachel Donadio and Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

Can Gaddafi's Son Reform Libya?

It is a warm February afternoon and the sun is streaming through the open doors of a large, airy farmhouse set at the far end of a guarded estate outside Libya's capital, Tripoli. Trays of dates and almonds are laid out in the living room, where the owner of the house, relaxed in a traditional North African robe and slippers, sips orange juice freshly squeezed from the fruit trees outside. All is a picture of prosperity and calm.

The serenity, though, is illusory. The home's inhabitant is Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya's four-decade-long leader Muammar Gaddafi. At 37, Saif finds himself at the heart of a political battle for his country's future. To hear Saif tell it, the need for reform is urgent. "The whole world is going through more freedom, more democracy," he says, pumping the air in impatience. "We want to see those changes now, instead of 10 years' time, or 15 years." (See pictures of the rise of Colonel Gaddafi.)

Just over six years ago, Saif coaxed his father into abandoning Libya's chemical- and nuclear-weapons program. Muammar Gaddafi's stunning aboutface, which followed longstanding demands from Washington, ended Libya's isolation from the West. Trade embargoes and an air blockade that had sealed most Libyans from the outside world for decades were lifted. In late 2008 the U.S. confirmed its first ambassador to Tripoli since 1972. More than 100 oil companies, including U.S. majors like Chevron and ExxonMobil, and European giants such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell, arrived to tap Libya's vast oil reserves, betting that the country would become an energy powerhouse. Construction crews now bang and clatter across Tripoli, building apartment and office towers, Western hotels (InterContinental, Starwood and Marriott are all working on new hotels) and a new airport.

In the latest sign of change, the first U.S. ambassador to Libya in 37 years hosted 100 Libyan women at his house one February evening for the first American cultural event in decades. American singers shimmied across the stage in tight dresses, belting out Broadway show tunes like "All That Jazz" and "New York." "For years this place was Slumberland," says Sami Zaptia, a Libyan business consultant in Tripoli. "Now everyone wants to get on the Libya gravy train." (Read: "After 37 Years, the U.S. Arrives to Do Business in Libya.")
But for all the new glitz and buzz, Libya's international acceptance has not brought deeper political or social change. Last September, Gaddafi celebrated his 40th anniversary in power with a blowout party featuring an air force flypast, hundreds of performers and a massive fireworks display. Aged just 68, Gaddafi Senior is now the world's longest-serving head of government (a few monarchs beat him when it comes to longest-serving head of state). His face peers from billboards across the country, and his firebrand style has barely tempered with age. His blast against Western leaders in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September could have been written years ago. The first sign visitors see at Tripoli airport is not an advertisement for Libya's spectacular beaches or Roman ruins, but a quote from Gaddafi's revolutionary manifesto, the Green Book, proclaiming workers to be "Partners Not Wage Earners." Crucially, it is Gaddafi and his appointed revolutionary committees who still make all of Libya's key decisions.

As Western companies arrive with billions of dollars to spend, though, Gaddafi's exhortations are beginning to sound like the language of a vanishing culture. Who will take his place? What will take his system's place? Those questions are at the core of the political debate, and as yet, there are no clear answers. "We are reckoning within ourselves," says Youssef Sawani, a close associate of Saif and executive director of the influential Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. "The world has changed around Libya, and Libya has to change. Change is long overdue."

Abuse Scandal’s Ripples Spread Across Europe

This article is by Katrin Bennhold, Nicholas Kulish and Rachel Donadio.

MUNICH — The fallout from the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church settled across Europe, as prosecutors said they were weighing criminal charges against a priest suspected of molesting children in Germany, and Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of mishandling allegations of abuse in Ireland.

The possibility of criminal charges emerged from new accusations against a priest at the center of the child-molesting scandal rocking the church in Germany. On Wednesday, church officials in Munich said the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann — whose transfer in 1980 to an archdiocese led at the time by Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, has drawn the pope himself into the nation’s child abuse controversy — had been accused of molesting a minor as recently as 1998.

The latest revelation comes as church officials in northern Germany say they have “credible evidence” of at least two other cases of sexual abuse committed by Father Hullermann in the 1970s, adding to a trail of accusations that suggest a pattern of abuse over two decades. During that time, church officials repeatedly transferred Father Hullermann to new parishes and allowed him to work with children, even after a 1986 conviction for sexually abusing boys.

Father Hullermann has not returned repeated calls and hung up without comment when reached briefly on Wednesday.

At the Vatican on Thursday, a small group of abuse victims gathered to demonstrate against the church’s refusal to defrock a priest in Wisconsin implicated in the abuse of as many as 200 deaf boys, and the role the pope had played in the case when oversaw the Vatican’s doctrinal arm.

“The goal of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was to keep this secret,” Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told the Associated Press. “This is the most incontrovertible case of pedophilia you could get.”

The A.P. reported that some of the demonstrators were detained by police. In Ireland, Bishop John Magee, whose resignation was accepted by the pope on Wednesday, issued a statement of apology. In 2008, an investigation by a church panel into allegations in Cloyne found that Bishop Magee had failed to respond to accusations of abuse and that policies to protect children were severely lacking, setting off calls for his resignation.

“As I depart, I want to offer once again my sincere apologies,” said Bishop Magee, who had served as private secretary to three popes. He added, “To those whom I have failed in any way, or through any omission of mine have made suffer, I beg forgiveness and pardon.”

Bishop Magee’s was the first resignation the pope accepted since issuing a long-awaited letter to Irish Catholics last weekend apologizing to victims of sexual abuse and expressing “shame and remorse.”

Yet Benedict’s letter did not call for any church leaders to be disciplined, feeding a growing sense of anger in Ireland. Many Catholics there are demanding that the leader of the Irish church, Cardinal Sean Brady, resign over his role as a young priest in the 1970s in urging two children to sign secrecy agreements and not to report abuse.

Benedict’s letter followed two scathing Irish government reports last year revealing decades of sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children and a widespread cover-up. The findings have shaken the Irish church to its core; some fear it has lost a generation to the crisis.

Bishop Magee’s resignation accompanied a steady drumbeat for more church leaders to step down. Beyond Bishop Magee, four other Irish bishops implicated in the government reports for failing to protect children have offered to resign, but Benedict has accepted only one’s offer.

Nor has Benedict addressed the German scandal directly. So far, no cases have emerged from the two-year period when Father Hullermann worked at St. John the Baptist Church in Munich and Benedict was archbishop. But accusations have now surfaced at every other stop between Father Hullermann’s ordination in 1973 and his criminal conviction in 1986, and during a later assignment in 1998.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Munich archdiocese said the most recent potential victim had contacted the church. “The likely victim was a minor at the time,” the statement said, noting that the case had been referred to the prosecutor’s office.

“We are currently investigating the circumstances of the case,” said Eduard Mayer, the head of the prosecutor’s office handling the matter.

Church authorities have also been alerted to two previously unknown potential victims in the northern town of Bottrop. “We have two tip-offs that are so conclusive that we must proceed under the assumption that these incidents took place,” said Ulrich Lota, spokesman for the diocese in Essen, where Father Hullermann was ordained, confirming that in both cases the victims were boys.

Father Hullermann was abruptly transferred from Bottrop to Essen in 1977, but, according to Mr. Lota, there are no references in his file to abuse from that time.

Two years later, three sets of parents told the priest in charge of Father Hullermann’s new church that he had abused their children, prompting his transfer to Munich for therapy, where he was returned to parish duties.

After just over two years in Munich he was transferred once again, this time to the nearby town of Grafing. There, he abused several boys, leading to his conviction in 1986, which resulted in a suspended sentence of five years’ probation and a fine.

He then spent one year working in a nursing home before he was sent to a parish in Garching.

On Tuesday, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, the archbishop at the time of Father Hullermann’s transfer to Garching, asked victims and their families to forgive him for allowing the priest to transfer to there during his tenure. “I am now painfully aware that I should have made a different decision at the time,” said Cardinal Wetter, who stepped down as archbishop in 2007.

Wolfgang Reichenwallner, the mayor of Garching, where Father Hullermann worked for 21 years after his 1986 conviction, said that the apology had come “awfully late” and that town officials had not been informed about the priest’s repeated transgressions.

Cardinal Wetter said he had “overestimated a person’s ability to change and underestimated the difficulties of therapeutic treatment for people with pedophile tendencies.”

The Munich archdiocese, in its initial statement on Father Hullermann’s case this month, said “the statements of the treating psychologist” were decisive in his return to parish duties.

But Dr. Werner Huth, the psychiatrist who treated Father Hullermann from 1980 to 1992, said last week that from the very outset he had repeatedly warned church officials not to allow the priest to work with children ever again.

Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

The New York Times obtained the documents, which the church fought to keep secret, from Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, the lawyers for five men who have brought four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The documents include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims’ affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican.

Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims. Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

Even as the pope himself in a recent letter to Irish Catholics has emphasized the need to cooperate with civil justice in abuse cases, the correspondence seems to indicate that the Vatican’s insistence on secrecy has often impeded such cooperation. At the same time, the officials’ reluctance to defrock a sex abuser shows that on a doctrinal level, the Vatican has tended to view the matter in terms of sin and repentance more than crime and punishment.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, was shown the documents and was asked to respond to questions about the case. He provided a statement saying that Father Murphy had certainly violated “particularly vulnerable” children and the law, and that it was a “tragic case.” But he pointed out that the Vatican was not forwarded the case until 1996, years after civil authorities had investigated the case and dropped it.

Father Lombardi emphasized that neither the Code of Canon Law nor the Vatican norms issued in 1962, which instruct bishops to conduct canonical investigations and trials in secret, prohibited church officials from reporting child abuse to civil authorities. He did not address why that had never happened in this case.

As to why Father Murphy was never defrocked, he said that “the Code of Canon Law does not envision automatic penalties.” He said that Father Murphy’s poor health and the lack of more recent accusations against him were factors in the decision.

The Vatican’s inaction is not unusual. Only 20 percent of the 3,000 accused priests whose cases went to the church’s doctrinal office between 2001 and 2010 were given full church trials, and only some of those were defrocked, according to a recent interview in an Italian newspaper with Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, the chief internal prosecutor at that office. An additional 10 percent were defrocked immediately. Ten percent left voluntarily. But a majority — 60 percent — faced other “administrative and disciplinary provisions,” Monsignor Scicluna said, like being prohibited from celebrating Mass.

To many, Father Murphy appeared to be a saint: a hearing man gifted at communicating in American Sign Language and an effective fund-raiser for deaf causes. A priest of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, he started as a teacher at St. John’s School for the Deaf, in St. Francis, in 1950. He was promoted to run the school in 1963 even though students had disclosed to church officials in the 1950s that he was a predator.

Victims give similar accounts of Father Murphy’s pulling down their pants and touching them in his office, his car, his mother’s country house, on class excursions and fund-raising trips and in their dormitory beds at night. Arthur Budzinski said he was first molested when he went to Father Murphy for confession when he was about 12, in 1960.

“If he was a real mean guy, I would have stayed away,” said Mr. Budzinski, now 61, who worked for years as a journeyman printer. “But he was so friendly, and so nice and understanding. I knew he was wrong, but I couldn’t really believe it.”

Mr. Budzinski and a group of other deaf former students spent more than 30 years trying to raise the alarm, including passing out leaflets outside the Milwaukee cathedral. Mr. Budzinski’s friend Gary Smith said in an interview that Father Murphy molested him 50 or 60 times, starting at age 12. By the time he graduated from high school at St. John’s, Mr. Smith said, “I was a very, very angry man.”

In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

However, it was not until 1996 that Archbishop Weakland tried to have Father Murphy defrocked. The reason, he wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, was to defuse the anger among the deaf and restore their trust in the church. He wrote that since he had become aware that “solicitation in the confessional might be part of the situation,” the case belonged at the doctrinal office.

With no response from Cardinal Ratzinger, Archbishop Weakland wrote a different Vatican office in March 1997 saying the matter was urgent because a lawyer was preparing to sue, the case could become public and “true scandal in the future seems very possible.”

Recently some bishops have argued that the 1962 norms dictating secret disciplinary procedures have long fallen out of use. But it is clear from these documents that in 1997, they were still in force.

But the effort to dismiss Father Murphy came to a sudden halt after the priest appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger for leniency.

In an interview, Archbishop Weakland said that he recalled a final meeting at the Vatican in May 1998 in which he failed to persuade Cardinal Bertone and other doctrinal officials to grant a canonical trial to defrock Father Murphy. (In 2002, Archbishop Weakland resigned after it became public that he had an affair with a man and used church money to pay him a settlement.)

Archbishop Weakland said this week in an interview, “The evidence was so complete, and so extensive that I thought he should be reduced to the lay state, and also that that would bring a certain amount of peace in the deaf community.”

Father Murphy died four months later at age 72 and was buried in his priestly vestments. Archbishop Weakland wrote a last letter to Cardinal Bertone explaining his regret that Father Murphy’s family had disobeyed the archbishop’s instructions that the funeral be small and private, and the coffin kept closed.

“In spite of these difficulties,” Archbishop Weakland wrote, “we are still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church.”

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting from Rome.

Document Trail: The Predator Priest Who Got Away

Do Nannies Really Turn Boys Into Future Adulterers?

Mothers who outsource the care of their sons to other women may be inadvertently raising adulterers. Or so claims Dr. Dennis Friedman in a book that has kicked up a bit of a ruckus in Britain. A Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the doctor argues that men become womanizers because their mothers left them with nannies.

According to Friedman, having two women care for a baby boy may cause his little brain to internalize the idea that there are multiple females to meet his needs. "It introduces him to the concept of The Other Woman," he said in London's Daily Telegraph. He explicates the relationship in his book The Unsolicited Gift: Why We Do The Things We Do, which explores how mothers love their offspring that determines how those children behave as adults. (See the mobile apps that make adultery easier.)

Girls are affected by nannies too. Not having her mother around creates in the infant female a "vacuum of need," says Friedman, which she might try to fill in later life with substance abuse or promiscuity — presumably with those married men in her social circle who were also raised by nannies.

But it is the thesis concerning boys that has been more controversial. Having two maternal objects, says Friedman, "creates a division in [the boy's] mind between the woman he knows to be his natural mother and the woman with whom he has real hands-on relationship: the woman who bathes him and takes him to the park, and with whom he feels completely at one." This dual-woman life, one for family and one for catering to his every need might become a set pattern in his mind, so that when he grows up and feels like his needs are not being met, he strays beyond the home. (See the top 10 mistresses.)

Friedman suggests mothers should not work, or if they must, should not return to work until their children are at least one year old. Critics, and many, many working mothers, quickly pointed out that he offers no statistics for his theory (as in, exactly how many nannies must Tiger Woods have had?), nor does his proposal seem particularly practical, since many women have little choice but either to return to work after having children or to not feed said children. Additionally, it rankled many women that Friedman still lays the blame for men's fidelity issues on females. If it's not the inattentive wife who drives a man into another woman's arms — it's his inattentive mother.

It also doesn't make developmental sense, says Dr. Jean Mercier, Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, who specializes in infant development. "Babies don't form attachments solely to their mothers — they become attached also to fathers, grandparents, nannies, child care providers, older brothers and sisters, or anyone else who interacts with them socially and frequently participates in care routines like feeding and bathing." These relationships are healthy and part of normal development. And becoming attached to a nanny doesn't equal becoming detached from a mother, or that the two are interchangeable. "A nanny or other person is added to the existing relationships most babies have."

It's unclear how wide a cross section of society Friedman used to draw his conclusions, but it's possible they may have been a bit skewed. His previous three books were explorations of the psychology of a small but prominent group of people with powerful matriarchs and lots and lots of nannies: the British Royal family.

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