VATICAN CITY (RNS) Vandals in southern Germany spray-painted obscene graffiti on the birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI.
The graffiti, painted in foot-high blue letters, was found early on Tuesday (April 13) over the door to the house in the Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn where Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was born in 1927.
Police would not release the content of the three-word phrase, which was removed the same day, but a spokesman described it to The Associated Press as a “defaming remark from the realm of the obscene” which was not specifically aimed at the pope.
A police spokesman told Agence France-Presse that “one can say (the graffiti) is connected” to the spreading international scandal over the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.
That scandal has focused in recent weeks on charges that Benedict, when still a cardinal, mishandled cases of pedophile priests in Germany and the United States.
Last week, vandals in Malta defaced billboards announcing the pope’s visit to the island nation this weekend (April 17-18); photographs of Benedict were altered to show him with a Hitler-style moustache, accompanied in at least one case by the handwritten word “pedophile.”
