Vatican warned Irish bishops not to report abuse

[one...two...tree 2,762]

DUBLIN – A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."

Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — "must be meticulously followed." He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.

Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatican declined AP requests to comment on the letter, which RTE said it received from an Irish bishop.

http://news.yahoo.co..._catholic_abuse

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I guess "Don't ask, don't tell," was the Vatican's policy as well.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/295055

Edited January 18, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[mawilson 2,133]

Ok, now can we prosecute the Pope for conspiracy to destroy evidence, obstruction of justice and

aiding and abetting known pedophiles?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Ok, now can we prosecute the Pope for conspiracy to destroy evidence, obstruction of justice and

aiding and abetting known pedophiles?

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland,...

Hard to do, since he is dead.

[Danno 1,228]

I guess "Don't ask, don't tell," was the Vatican's policy as well.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/295055

This is actually more normal than most know, in fact there is a seminary in Maryland I think, known as the Pink Palace.

This guy has Documented the widespread problems which he contends is actually causing the Priest shortage... by running off traditional type Catholic men.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

a response from the Vatican....

On Wednesday, the Vatican insisted that its 1997 letter was only intended to emphasize that Irish bishops must follow church law meticulously. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Holy See wanted to ensure that pedophile priests wouldn't have any technical grounds to escape church punishment on appeal.

It by no means instructed bishops to disregard civil reporting requirements about abuse, added the Vatican's U.S. lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, who said the letter had been "deeply misunderstood" by the media.

At the time, there were no such reporting requirements in Ireland. In fact, the Irish bishops were ahead of Irish lawmakers in pledging cooperation with law enforcement as dioceses were hit with the first wave of lawsuits by victims of abusive priests.

Yet as a result of the 1997 letter, most Irish dioceses outside Dublin never implemented the 1996 commitment to report all suspected abuse cases to police, according to the conclusions of the Dublin Archdiocese investigation published in 2009.

"This in fact never took place because of the response of Rome," said the Dublin Archdiocese commission in its report.

That eight-year investigation interviewed two senior Dublin Archdiocese canon lawyers involved in handling abuse complaints. They were quoted as saying that the letter discouraged bishops from pursuing their 1996 initiative for fear of being overruled by Rome, as had already happened in one notorious case of a serial pedophile.

The AP has requested interviews with both officials, Monsignors Alex Stenson and John Dolan. But the Dublin Archdiocese said Wednesday that no officials would be available to make any comment on either the 2009 investigation or the publication of the Vatican's 1997 letter.

In that letter, the Vatican's diplomat to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, told the Irish bishops that their 1996 policy contained procedures that appeared to contradict canon law and stressed the need to follow that law "meticulously" or risk having their canonical trials overturned on appeal.

The Irish bishops' policy makes clear, with dozens of citations, that canon law must be followed when a bishop learns of an abuse allegation. That raises questions about what — beyond the police reporting requirement — the Vatican was so concerned about in its letter.

Lombardi said Wednesday that the Vatican was chiefly concerned about protecting the church's right to deal in strict secrecy with crimes that occurred within the sacrament of confession. The Vatican has particular norms with dealing with the crime of soliciting sex from a minor within the confessional that require church proceedings be kept secret.

Plaintiffs' lawyers have charged that those norms mandated non-reporting to police; Lena has argued in court papers they did no such thing.

Irish victims' groups described Lombardi's explanation as nonsensical and irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of thousands of child-abuse cases, which did not involve the confessional.

They said, almost without exception, church officials learned of sexual assaults by priests outside the confessional, from the victims or their parents who generally were seeking to prevent the priest from attacking anyone else.

They noted that the Vatican has consistently ignored letters from several Irish investigations seeking church documents, such as the 1997 letter, that would shed light on the scope of Catholic child abuse and its cover-up.

"Even within the narrow confines of canon law, raising the question of the sacrament of confession as a credible reason for withholding child-abuse reports to police makes zero sense in Irish experience and, presumably, global experience of the church's actual pattern — to cover up and conceal crimes regardless of whether an act of confession was involved," said Maeve Lewis, director of Ireland's child-abuse victims support group One in Four.

She said the real reason the Vatican didn't want bishops to report abuse was to shelter the church from scandal and lawsuits.

"We know from bitter experience that the letter's threat to overturn any punishments imposed by the Irish church was real and perversely executed in the case of Tony Walsh," she said.

Walsh was defrocked by a canonical court in Dublin in 1993, but appealed the punishment to Rome, which decided the following year he should be reinstated as a priest and instead sent to a monastery.

Cardinal Desmond Connell, former archbishop of Dublin, got Walsh defrocked only after his criminal trial in Dublin had begun and Connell had made a personal plea to the pope, explaining that no Irish monastery was willing to take him.

The 1997 letter cited the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, which had reviewed the Irish document and expressed reservations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110119/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Does anyone here know how to get a nun pregnant ?

Punch line... "dress her up as an alter boy".

*an oldie but a goodie

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

"You have so much to live for. Take the last parachute, my son," said the Priest.

"Don't worry, Father," the hippie replies. "The leader of the free world just jumped with my backpack."

[The_Dude 1,142]

Hard to do, since he is dead.

They are trying to show that this is pervasive, not an isolated event. That is the defense that the vatican used to stave off lawsuits from U.S. plaintiffs. The vatican essentially said that this was an isolated (to the U.S.), and as such, they weren't liable, the individual archdiocese were.

[luckytxn 2,264]

The letter did state to not report ALL SUSPECTED crimes to the police. It never said that they had to cover up anything but to report the suspicions to higher ups so they could investigate them. If the police came and wanted to investigate they should have been able to and the local church should have helped. From the letter it never said they could not do that. It may be easy to just go to the police on any here say they have heard and report but that would be wrong.

From what I have read so far about the Irish church is that they had a problem and were trying to come to grips with it and decided to make a policy to report any and all suspicions. That could have thrown some innocent priests under the bus as of course many times suspicions turn out to be false. There is no need to use a slash and burn method but they should have been helpful to any investigations done by the authorities.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

I have to laugh when people act "surprised" when they find out children are being molested by priest. Now what gives it away ? Could it be men who have sworn off sex, wear dresses all day, mind screw millions of people with fairy tales, not to mention the Catholic church has about the worst history of all religions. I mean come on...what's the first clue here ?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I have to laugh when people act "surprised" when they find out children are being molested by priest. Now what gives it away ? Could it be men who have sworn off sex, wear dresses all day, mind screw millions of people with fairy tales, not to mention the Catholic church has about the worst history of all religions. I mean come on...what's the first clue here ?

Actually, there's no correlation between making a vow of celibacy and pedophilia. Its rather that pedophiles are drawn to professions of power, especially with children. That's why there are a high incidences of pedophilia among teachers and scout leaders as well. The Catholic Church has adopted better methods in weeding out potential pedophiles from the priesthood, as most school districts, but pedophiles will always be drawn to professions where they will have access to children. The travesty of justice with Catholic Church was it's institutionalized way of dealing with pedophiles among the clergy, where it was swept under the rug.