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	Vatican Moves to Ward off Fresh Priest Abuse Scandal The Age April 15, 2010 http://www.theage.com.au/world/vatican-moves-to-ward-off-fresh-priest-abuse-scandal-20100416-si5o.html The Vatican has moved to ward off a fresh scandal over the handling of paedophile priests after a letter surfaced indicating high-level co-operation in covering up for abusers. Spokesman Federico Lombardi said on Thursday the letter underscored the correctness of a 2001 decision to consolidate responsibility for handling cases of sexual abuse of minors by clergy under one Vatican department. In the letter, recently reproduced on the website of French magazine Golias, a top Vatican prelate wrote to a French bishop praising him for not turning in a pedophile priest. The bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux in northern France, Pierre Pican, was jailed for three months for not informing on Abbot Bissey, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2000 for pedophilia. "I congratulate you on not having spoken out to civil authorities against a priest," wrote Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, then prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. "You have done well and I am delighted to have an associate in the episcopate who... preferred prison to speaking out against a son-priest." Hoyos added that he would send a copy of the letter to all the bishops' conferences in the world "to encourage the brothers in the episcopate in this very delicate area". It was then pope John Paul II who issued a decree in April 2001 to consolidate cases under the Vatican's morals and doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) - headed at the time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - the future Pope Benedict XVI. The decree required bishops to notify the CDF of "serious crimes" such as pedophilia. Lombardi said the move guaranteed "rigorous and coherent" handling of abuse cases. The Bissey scandal, which broke in 1996, was the first clergy pedophilia case to receive broad media attention in France. The abbot raped a minor and molested three others. Large-scale pedophilia scandals have rocked the Roman Catholic Church across Europe and the United States in recent months.
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