AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By KIERAN TAPSELL
March 22, 2016
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has issued a statement about Spotlight, the film about the cover up of child sexual abuse in Boston.
The bishops agreed with Father Richard Leonard that Spotlight is “an occasion for holy, righteous anger and every adult Catholic should see it”.
I saw the film, and I was angry, not so much about the past but by what is happening right now. A cover up ordered by canon law in 1922 continues to this day.
In 1996, when Irish bishops wanted mandatory reporting to the police of all allegations of child sexual abuse, they were told they could not because it conflicted with canon law. In 1998 Cardinal Castrillón, the Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, told the bishops they should not put anything in the way of victims going to police, but bishops were not to do the reporting.
In 2002, he and Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, now in charge of reforming the Roman Curia, publicly stated bishops should be prepared to go to jail rather than report a paedophile priest to police.
In 2002 American bishops wanted mandatory reporting under canon law for all allegations, but the Vatican refused. It only agreed to a dispensation from the pontifical secret where civil laws required reporting. It was more concerned about bishops going to jail than the welfare of children.
That dispensation was extended to the whole church in 2010. But where there are no civil laws requiring reporting (as is the case in six Australian States and territories for most cases), the pontifical secret over these allegations still applies.
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