To the editor:

In her “Singled out” letter (Public Forum, June 30), Dianne Hoffman, Lawrence, asks why “people are so careful not to offend any racial or religious groups except Catholics.”

I attended St. Benedict’s Academy, Wild Rice, N.D., during the Great Depression. I have some answers.

When a church representative, literally the proclaimed direct link to Jesus Christ and salvation, sexually abuses children — usually young boys — and then gets moved around and the crimes covered up, it tends to attract media attention. It’s of particular interest when it appears the pope, before becoming the “Anointed One,” helped cover up such criminal activity.

When state police (in Europe) raid a church office and seize records of hundreds of child abuse cases — cases that should have been turned over to law enforcement authorities rather than hidden — and the Vatican claims their rights were violated, you get much more publicity.

Pope Benedict, on his first visit to the U.S., said he is “deeply ashamed” of such activity. While history links him to individual cases of sexual abuse, by priests, of children, it generates even greater publicity. Benedict added that the “criminal scandals are caused by the church and that more than forgiveness is needed.”

By the way, I left St. Benedict’s when I was in fourth grade and big enough to deliver newspapers. I neither saw nor heard of any kind of abuse at St. Benedict’s, with the exception of watching young boys who wet the bed get their urine-soaked sheets rubbed in their faces.

Joseph Grant,

Lawrence