Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Cardinal O'Connor protests BBC documentary alleging Vatican sex abuse cover-up

MSNBC

Bishops reject Vatican abuse cover-up report
BBC program alleges Pope Benedict XVI enforced cover-up secrecy oath

Andrew Parsons / AP FILE

The leader of Britain's Catholics, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, seen at Westminster Cathedral in London in April, plans to write to the BBC to protest a program that alleges the Vatican covered-up child sex abuse under a system enforced by Pope Benedict XVI in his previous job.

Reuters
Updated: 2 hours, 49 minutes ago

LONDON - Roman Catholic bishops in England and Wales rejected as “false and entirely misleading” a BBC documentary about what it said was a cover-up of child sexual abuse under a system enforced by Pope Benedict XVI in his previous job.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in the two countries, plans to write to Mark Thompson, director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) this week to protest about the program, aired late on Sunday.

The documentary, by “Panorama”, the BBC’s flagship current affairs show, examined what it described as a secret document written in 1962 that sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

The document, called “Crimen Sollicitationis”, imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witness. Breaking that oath would result in excommunication, the BBC said.

“The procedure was intended to protect a priest’s reputation until the church had investigated, but in practice it can offer a blueprint for cover-up,” the BBC documentary said.

“The man in charge of enforcing it for 20 years was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man made Pope last year,” reporter Colm O’Gorman said in the program “Sex Crimes and the Vatican”.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 9:12 AM