The New York Times on Thursday published fresh allegations that the Catholic Church was more interested in protecting its own reputation than the innocent children placed in its care, adding to the public anger and acute embarrassment already faced by the Church and Pope Benedict XVI.

The paper alleged that two priests in the U.S. state of Wisconsin asked the Vatican's office of the Doctrine of the Faith to allow them to conduct a church trial against a priest accused of sexually abusing some 200 deaf boys at a Catholic school. The request was refused and the trial halted, documents in the possession of the paper reveal. The present Pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger thus once again finds himself at the heart of the scandal, since, as head of the office of the Doctrine of the Faith, he was responsible for cases of child abuse.

The priest in question was the Reverend Lawrence Murphy, who worked at the former St. John's School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin, from 1950 to 1975.

He died in 1998. His alleged victims were not limited to the deaf boys' school. Several other witnesses have come forth to denounce abuse at the hands of Murphy and their testimony shows that the priest continued to molest boys even after he reportedly repented and was moved out of the school.