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	Italian Bishops See Calumny in BBC Report on Abuse Catholic World News [Rome] May 21, 2007 http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=51256 Rome, May. 21, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Plans by Italy's RAI television network to air a BBC program on sexual abuse have been condemned by Italian Church leaders. An editorial in the daily Avvenire, published by the Italian bishops' conference, said that an Italian internet site that posted the program was guilty of "calumny against the Church and the Pope." The BBC program, "Sex Crimes and the Vatican," aired in England last October, drawing bitter protests from Church leaders there. It has not yet been presented to an Italian television audience, although the internet version has been downloaded by thousands of viewers. The program was scheduled for presentation on "Year Zero," a regular show hosted by Michele Santoro, who has regularly criticized the Church. But the Italian broadcast has reportedly been stalled at the requests of the parliamentary committee that oversees the RAI network. The focus of the BBC presentation is Crimen Sollicitationis, a Vatican document that was promulgated in 1962. The Panorama program described that document as "secret," and claims credit for exposing it, although the full text of Crimen Sollicitationis was published in 2001 and covered extensively by Catholic publications in 2002. Crimen Sollicitationis covers canonical discipline for priests accused of the sexual misconduct-- including, but not limited to, the sexual abuse of minors. In 2001, Pope John Paul II (bio - news) gave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the exclusive jurisdiction for handling these disciplinary matters. Because the document emphasizes the confidentiality of canonical trials, the BBC report suggested that the Vatican policy, and its enforcement by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, was an effort to conceal evidence of abuse. Avvenire, in its editorial attack on the program, pointed out the distinction between canonical and civil trials, and noted that the Vatican document did not require victims of abuse to remain silent. In fact paragraph 15 of the document "obliged anyone knowledgeable of sexual abuse committed in the confessional to tell authorities or they would be excommunicated." The BBC program distorts the facts of the case, Avvenire said, in order to raise “accusations against Joseph Ratzinger of being the individual responsible for covering up the crime of pedophilia by priests."
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