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	Bishops Round on Panorama's Claims of Abuse Cover-Ups By Stephen Bates The Guardian [United Kingdom] October 2, 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1885466,00.html Catholic bishops in England and Wales yesterday launched a retaliatory strike against the BBC's Panorama series, claiming that a programme due to be shown last night highlighting the cover-up of alleged child sexual abuse by priests was unwarranted and misleading. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, is to write to the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson - a practising Catholic - to complain about the programme, called Sex Crimes and the Vatican. The programme claimed to have unearthed Vatican documents aimed at preventing the proper examination of claims of child abuse and accused Pope Benedict XVI, in his previous post as enforcer of church doctrinal orthodoxy, of shielding priests from investigation. In a statement, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham said the BBC should be ashamed of the standard of its journalism, and said it had made an unwarranted attack on the pope's integrity. "Viewers will recognise only too well the sensational tactics and misleading editing of the programme, which uses old footage and undated interviews," he said. "They will know that aspects of the programme amount to a deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious leader. It will further undermine public confidence in Panorama." The documents featured in the programme were a statement called Crimen Sollicitationis, published as far back as 1962 and concerned with priestly abuse of secrets told during confessions, and a 2001 paper clarifying church law. The archbishop, who chairs the English church's child protection office, said yesterday that the earlier document was not concerned with sex abuse at all and that the second was neither a means of covering up accusations nor hindering police investigations. He added: "[The programme] is false because it misrepresents [the] documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the pope." Last night a BBC spokeswoman said: "The protection of children is clearly an issue of the strongest public interest. The BBC stands by tonight's Panorama programme, and invites viewers to make up their own minds once they've seen it. 'The BBC has a well-defined complaints system, and when we receive the letter we will respond to it."
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