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	Is the Media to Blame for Vatican Bad Press? By Pamela Hansen Malta Independent April 18, 2010 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=104773 Isn't it rather ironic that some in the Catholic Church are crying witch hunt, claiming that the Church is being persecuted and conspired against, in response to the deluge of international bad press because of its appalling handling of children abused by Catholic priests. I will no doubt be facing a witch hunt after this piece is published, but here goes. Pope Benedict is not getting any respite despite the volcano eruption in Iceland, which brought most of Europe's airlines to a halt, hogging the front page news. And although not holding the front page, the death toll from the earthquake in the remote region in western China is still rising and rightly getting media attention, yet still news stories on the Vatican's abuse scandal abound. The UK Times, Irish Times, Voice of America, Euronews and Expatica in The Netherlands all carried online stories on the Vatican's continuing crisis in the last couple of days. "Pope's visit to Malta overshadowed by paedophile priest scandal" – Richard Owen, UK Times and "Abuse scandal ratchets up pressure on Vatican as Pope Benedict visits Malta – Irish Times, Paddy Agnew, both in Rome yesterday. And on Friday "Pope Heads to Malta, Where More Sex Abuse Victims Await" Voice of America – Sabina Castelfranco in Malta, "Malta abuse victims demand to meet Pope" – Euronews and "Sunny Malta – for those abdicating responsibility?" – Expatica item in this week's press review. Earlier in the week, Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, writing in The Tablet, said some people in the media do, without any doubt, wish to damage the credibility of the Church. Yet, he acknowledges "But we owe a debt of gratitude to the press for its insistence that the Church face its failures. If it had not been for the media, then this shameful abuse might have remained unaddressed." Why would some in the media want to damage the credibility of the Church? To quote a cliché "there is no smoke without fire". The damage to the Church's credibility lies with the way it conducted its business in relation to all the children abused by its priests. If the media is right in "its insistence that the Church face its failures", it cannot then be accused of persecuting the Church by doing so! Locally, we had Father Joe Borg, a Times blogger who thinks he is so clever by narrowing down the persecution to the journalists with "cheek". Although I would agree that some in the media exploit the sensational, I suppose he is not including his buddy Lou Bondi and the production company he (Lou) co-owns – Where's Everybody. By the by, isn't interesting the way the victims in Malta, guided by Lou, have suddenly become very meek and accommodating. "We are very happy that our cries are now being heard by the church authorities, locally and at the Vatican. We are also very grateful that this good news is coming on the eve of Pope Benedict's XVI visit to Malta. "All of us welcome the Pope to Malta with open arms and augur that his visit will leave the desired results," Joseph Magro, one of the victims of abuse, was reported as saying. Father Borg quoted the conclusion of a report by the agency AFP posted on 13 April: "The Vatican has adopted a strategy of blaming the media for playing up the paedophile revelations, accusing them of trying to smear the Pope." Trying to be cunningly funny, he responds to that statement with "Oh, I see, it is the Vatican's fault after all!" Well actually, yes it is. The fault of this whole sorry saga lies fairly and squarely at the Vatican's door. I find the way some in the Church are turning things round to portray the Church as the victim rather sickening. Father James Scahill, in Massachusetts, dismissed repeated Vatican statements that blamed the media for highlighting the Church's child sex abuses and molestations. He said that the media had forced the Church to deal with the crisis more openly. "I have met with countless victims of abuse," he said. "I have lives I can relate this to, and anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows the media has not created this scandal. The institutional Church has brought this onto themselves." He called on the Pontiff to resign for the good of the Catholic Church. "If he can't take the consequences of being truthful on this matter his integrity should lead him, for the good of the Church, to step down and to have the conclave of cardinals elect a Pope with the understanding that the elected Pope would be willing to take on this issue, not just in promise," Father Scahill said. It is unacceptable that the Vatican is passing the buck and, as the London Times called it, playing the blame game – trying to argue that abusive priests were primarily the responsibility of bishops, not Rome. Paddy Agnew in the Irish Times put it rather well "To some extent, this defence of Benedict, however accurate and genuine, may miss a crucial point. This is that the 'universal' mishandling of clerical sex abuse in the church is not the failure of particular local bishops (as is claimed in the letter to the Irish), but the expression of a sick 'company culture' back at HQ. "Who created the culture which saw bishops instinctively cover up?" Besides, the Pope's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, on a recent visit to Chile, linked child abuse in the Church to homosexuality. Although, he might have meant that the offending priests were homosexual, which opened another can of worms, he should not have tarred all homosexuals with the same brush. Incidentally, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lom has admitted that he does not talk to the Pope about the abuse issue, but to Cardinal Bertone. Earlier this week, Archbishop Paul Cremona was also passing the buck, "This was not a problem which was restricted to the Church," he said on a local television programme. Actually, in this case, yes it is. The problem the Church is facing is not that paedophilia takes place, but that it tried to hide cases from public scrutiny, protect their own and ignored the plight of victims in cases of abuse in which the perpetrators were priests. In September 2001, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who at the time headed the Vatican department in charge of priests around the world, told Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux that he was a model for all bishops for his behaviour in the case that shocked France. "I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration... To encourage brothers in the episcopate in this delicate domain, this Congregation will send copies of this letter to all bishops' conferences," Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, wrote in his letter to the French bishop. Barbara Dorris of SNAP, a US-based support group for clerical sex abuse victims, described the letter as "one of the most telling and troubling" among many internal Church documents now being published to expose the extent of the abuse crisis. "In what other institution on this planet does a top official praise a colleague for hiding a criminal from the police?" she asked in a statement. The priest, Rev. Rene Bissey, was sentenced to 18 years in jail for sexually abusing 11 boys and Pican got a suspended three-month sentence for not reporting the crimes, the Washington Post reported last week The Vatican said on Thursday that this had indeed been a major error of judgment by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos. Spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi did not deny the letter's authenticity, only saying it showed it was right to assign handling of all clerical abuse cases with minors to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now the Pope – in 2001. Hans Küng, the dissident Swiss theologian, does not concur, "We cannot hide the fact that the system of hiding [abuse] was led by the Congregation of Faith of Cardinal Ratzinger, in which they kept cases under strict secrecy. Benedict had engineered the Catholic Church's 'worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes'," said Küng, who urged bishops to push for reforms in defiance of the Pope. Writing in the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung this week, the former friend and fellow theologian of Pope Benedict, Küng who is 82, does not believe that the Vatican is capable of the reform required. "The consequences of these scandals for the Catholic Church are devastating. Dear bishops, ask yourselves how we are going to deal with this in the future? Do not be silent – silence makes us complicit. Send demands to Rome for reform." He said that bishops should call for a new synod, or council, to discuss reforms. He accused the Pope of not living up "to the great challenges of our time". His call for reform also appeared in The New York Times, the Italian daily La Repubblica and other newspapers in France, Spain and Switzerland. Our own dissident theologian Father Mark Montebello has been effectively silenced as I wrote in this column several weeks ago, Rome would want to avoid a loose cannon like Father Mark disrupting the Pontiff's imminent Malta visit. "The Church in Malta had, since 1999, set up a Response Team to hear cases of child abuse, and this had been supplemented by a second team. Both teams were headed by retired judges and were autonomous of the Church. Cases were then referred to Rome for action," Mgr Cremona said on a TV programme. But the victims, who are insisting they meet the Pope, had approached the local Church's Response Team in 2003 but, "unfortunately, we did not get justice then. We sincerely hope that, through this meeting with Mgr Scicluna, we get it now," said Lawrence Grech, the spokesman for the victims in Malta. What does that tell you about the response teams, the retired judges heading them and Rome action? Did whoever was interviewing the Archbishop point this out? Mgr Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's top official responsible for dealing with sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy, is so generously climbing down from his ivory tower and has accepted to meet, in June, the 10 victims of alleged sexual and physical child abuse at St Joseph Home in Sta Venera seven years later and after their plight attracted international coverage. It was still not known whether their request for a meeting with the Pope had been granted by yesterday afternoon. Their case has also been dragging on in the Maltese courts since 2003, and they are still waiting for justice to be done.
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