UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
Following the recent grilling of Vatican officials by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Nicole Winfield and John Heilprin of AP published a report stating that, in his last two years of papal ministry, Pope Benedict defrocked 400 priests who had abused minors. After the release of this report, a comedy of errors ensued; it’s documented by postings of John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter website:
1. The Vatican media spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, denied the AP report.
2 The Vatican then quickly retracted its denial.
3. And John Allen published a post mortem of the denial-retraction, noting that AP reporters had winkled the data about priests defrocked by Benedict out of a spreadsheet prepared by Bishop Charles Scicluna for the UN hearing, and “apparently obtained by the AP” after the UN hearing.
I am strongly inclined to agree with the responses to the AP report by Barbara Dorris and David Clohessy of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. Barbara writes,
Numbers don’t protect kids. Decisive action protects kids. Parents, police, prosecutors and parishioners need the names and whereabouts of every child molesting Catholic cleric. That’s the information that the Vatican should be making public.
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