Vatican and RCC are continuing to lie about cover up . . . here's the document ....

[defendandprotect]

Vatican officials defend pope on abuse

By FRANCES D'EMILIO
Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland. It also insisted that church confidentiality doesn't prevent bishops from reporting abuse to police.

The Vatican's campaign to defend the pope's reputation and resolve in combatting clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there.

Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential.

Germany's justice minister has blamed the directive for what she called a "wall of silence" preventing prosecution.

Skeptical about the Vatican's handling of abuse, a U.S.-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the U.S. this weekend to remind people to "call police, not bishops" in cases of suspected abuse.

But the Holy See's so-called prosecutor for clergy sex abuse cases, providing some of the first statistics about his office's handling of allegations, decried what he called "false and defamatory" contentions that Benedict had promoted a "policy of cover up."

At the Vatican, rules on handling sexual abuse were "never understood as a ban on making a complaint to civil authorities," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told Italian bishops conference daily Avvenire.

But Irish bishops have said the document was widely taken to mean they shouldn't go to police. And victims' lawyers in the U.S. say the document shows the church tried to obstruct justice.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CHURCH_ABUSE?SITE=COCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


HERE'S THE DOCUMENT . . .

Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'by EWAN FLETCHER
Last updated at 22:00 30 September 2006

Top: Tom Doyle and, bottom, Pope Benedict

The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

The Panorama special, Sex Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known document for the first time. The programme also accuses the Catholic Church of knowingly harbouring paedophile clergymen. It reveals that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence the victims.

Before being elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative, he was regarded as the 'enforcer' of Pope John Paul II in cracking down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings.

Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis - Latin for The Crime of Solicitation - which laid down the Vatican's strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.

Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.

Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: "I found out I wasn't working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself."

And Father Tom Doyle, a Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the church's handling of child abuse claims, says: "What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

"When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there's total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world."

The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church's relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world.
The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: "What gets me is that it's the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens."

Last night Eileen Shearer, director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults said: "The Catholic Church in England and Wales (has) established a single set of national policies and procedures for child protection work. We are making excellent progress in protecting children and preventing abuse."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=407808&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

"What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

Save Church at all costs

The document . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs...men_english.pdf


The link to the document works -- however, I can't COPY it for some reason!

[Kalun D]

1. If True

""In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.""

if this is true then there should be quite a few bishops with torn consciences.

[defendandprotect]

5. Are you kidding? Consciences?

Do you recall what this church was all about --

murder, inquisitions, torture -- Crusades, killing pagans, Jews, true Christians . . . ???

And this child sexual abuse isn't anything new -- it's historical within the church.

You can also trade it thru the Catholic and Mormon Church schools runs for the government

to destroy the culture/heritage of the native American by kidnapping their children --

and/or forcing them to send their kids!!

Plenty of violence, beatings, hangings, rapes, sexual abuse in those schools, as well!!

[defendandprotect]

6. Are you kidding? Consciences?

Do you recall what this church was all about --

murder, inquisitions, torture -- Crusades, killing pagans, Jews, true Christians . . . ???

And this child sexual abuse isn't anything new -- it's historical within the church.

You can also trace it thru the Catholic and Mormon Church schools runs for the government

to destroy the culture/heritage of the native American by kidnapping their children --

and/or forcing them to send their kids!!

Plenty of violence, beatings, hangings, rapes, sexual abuse in those schools, as well!!

Are you kidding? Consciences?


And/or did you notice the US Catholic Bishops lying recently re health care and abortion?

Catholics favor a government run health care system by huge margins -- and they want

reproductive health care included -- pre-natal and post-natal -- and they want contraception

AND abortion to be covered!!!

Catholic women have just as many abortion as any other women --

and even in Ireland they travel to UK -- 7,000 women a year - to have abortions!!

[Kalun D]

8. I don't know

I'm just guessing that a few of them aren't corrupt.

The problem is celibacy, it's just not natural.

[Brickbat]

2. Bad final link.

[defendandprotect]

4. Yeah . . . first time I checked it, it didn't work. Second time, it worked . . .

Unfortunately, I can't copy the document!!

There's not even any way to say "copy all" --

but it's there . . . I'm looking at it --

HERE: ... TRY AGAIN ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_09_06_Crimen_english.pdf

[TlalocW]

3. It makes me wonder

Does becoming a priest/bishop/etc. in the Catholic Church make you become a pedophile? Is it corrupting? Or do people with pedophile tendencies join the church in hopes that dedicating their life to God will somehow help them, much like conservative gays use the GOP/their churches to hopefully turn them around (not that I'm equating homosexuality with pedophilia but the reaction of people who think there's something - rightly in one case, wrongly in the other - wrong with them)? If the church would at least get rid of the need to be a celibate man and let priests marry, this problem could probably would go away. It's inconceivable to me that while declaring homosexuality as unnatural, they're so attached to insisting that their clergy deny the natural sex drive that everyone has.

TlalocW

[defendandprotect]

7. Pedophiles certainly do seek out positions which brings them close to children . . .

Keep in mind often these pedophiles are heterosexuals --

It's very common for the Church's almost legalistic approach to human sexuality to

be thought to interrupt natural development -- causing a kind of arrested development!!

Some of these men may essentially be 11 year olds in that regard!

Not to suggest any compassion for them -- except that they are victims, perhaps, of their

church and its distorted teachings, as well.

[metapunditedgy]

9. Explains why the priests always denied the accusations.

They swore never to acknowledge the crimes, "even for a greater good."

Catholic fail.