It was the latest case to emerge in a clerical sexual abuse scandal that has been churning through Europe in recent months, putting the Vatican on the defensive and forcing bishops across the continent to confront the issue.
The bishop, Georg Mueller, 58, who left his diocese in June, has since undergone therapy and “no longer carries out pastoral activity,” according to a statement by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Reacting quickly to a Norwegian press report, Father Lombardi said that after the abuse came to the attention of church authorities in January 2009, it was handled “with rapidity” in a process overseen by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. Pope Benedict XVI accepted the bishop’s resignation “in a timely manner,” the spokesman said.
The congregation, which oversees sexual abuse cases against priests, has been the subject of scrutiny for the way it has handled such cases.
Bishop Bernt Eidsvig, who took over the prelature, as it is formally called, in the central Norwegian city of Trondheim, the official seat of the Catholic Church in the country, said in a statement that the Norwegian Catholic Church was “shaken to its foundations” by the revelation.
While the Vatican says that 3,000 priests have been reported in the past decade for accusations of abuse against them over the course of a half-century, Bishop Mueller is one of only a handful of bishops who have resigned in recent decades over abuse charges. The most prominent cleric was an Austrian cardinal, Hans Hermann Groer, who relinquished his duties in 1998. Other bishops have resigned over criticism of the way they handled accusations against priests.
In the case of Bishop Mueller, the victim, now an adult, made a complaint to a priest in Oslo, which was passed on to the apostolic nuncio in Sweden, Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig. When confronted with the complaint, Bishop Mueller admitted guilt, said Andreas Dingstad, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Norway, which counts 150,000 practicing Catholics, although government figures put official membership at 57,000.
Mr. Dingstad acknowledged that the church kept silent about the true circumstances of Bishop Mueller’s resignation.
“The official explanation was that the bishop had problems cooperating with others in the church, but that was only a part of the truth,” Mr. Dingstad said. “The reason for not coming out with everything was that the victim did not want that.”
On Wednesday, Adresseavisen, a daily newspaper in Trondheim, reported on the case, saying that the church had paid the victim $65,000 to $100,000 in compensation. Mr. Dingstad confirmed that a payment had been made, but said that he did not know how much it was. The Vatican said the case was not prosecuted by civil authorities because it was beyond the statute of limitations.
The newspaper also reported that four other child sex abuse cases involving Norwegian priests had come to the attention of the church, dating to the 1950s and the 1980s. Mr. Dingstad said that two of the priests implicated had since died, and that he did not know the whereabouts or status of the others.
Numerous cases, most of them dating back decades, have been emerging in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland and France in recent months.
Bishop Mueller was ordained as a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and was appointed bishop in Trondheim in 1997. A man reached by telephone at the order’s headquarters in Rome said the bishop’s whereabouts were not known, and then hung up.
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