Islam Online [United Kingdom]
October 2, 2006
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2006-10/02/05.shtml
London — Britain's Roman Catholic bishops and the BBC were on a collision course Monday, October 2, over a documentary accusing Pope Benedict XVI of systematically covering up Church child sexual abuse before assuming the papacy.
"This aspect of the program is false and entirely misleading," Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham said in a statement on behalf of British bishops, reported Reuters.
"It is false because it misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope," he said.
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| The BBC said Benedict enforced an oath of secrecy on the child victim and witness or else face excommunication. Photo by The Reuters |
A documentary aired by the BBC's flagship program "Panorama" on Sunday, October 1, claims that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man elected Pope last year, was implicated in the systematic cover-up of child sex abuse accusations against Catholic priests.
The documentary, "Sex Crimes and the Vatican", examined a 1962 document that set out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.
The document, called "Crimen Sollicitationis", imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the accusation and any witness.
Breaking that oath would result in excommunication, the BBC said.
"The procedure was intended to protect a priest's reputation until the Church had investigated, but in practice it can offer a blueprint for cover-up," according to the documentary.
"The man in charge of enforcing it for 20 years was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man made Pope last year," said the program's presenter Colm O'Gorman.
Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrine, from 1981 until his election as Pope in April 2005.
Father Tom Doyle, a canon solicitor reportedly sacked by the Vatican after criticizing its handling of child abuse claims, told the BBC that Crimen was "an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy, to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen."
Ashamed
But the British bishops rejected the BBC accusation.
Nichols said the BBC should be "ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI".
"Since 2001 Cardinal Ratzinger, when head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took many steps to apply the law of the Church to allegations and offences of child abuse with absolute thoroughness and scruple," Nichols insisted.
He said the original 1962 document was concerned not directly with child abuse but with the abuse of the confessional by a priest to silence his victim.
Nichols, chair of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, said the BBC should be "ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI".
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has also written to the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, to complain.
The Vatican said it would not comment on the BBC documentary for the time being but expressed full support for British bishops' stern rebukes of the program.
BBC Defends
Despite the volcano of criticism, the BBC stood by its stance.
"The protection of children is clearly an issue of the strongest public interest," it said in a statement.
"The BBC stands by the 'Panorama' program, and invites viewers to make up their own minds."
O'Gorman also lashed out at critics.
"What gets me is it's the same story every time and every place," said O'Gorman, who was abused by a priest as a boy and is now director of One In Four, an Irish charity which supports people who have been sexually abused.
"Bishops appoint priests that they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens."
The BBC program has found seven priests facing child abuse investigations living in and around Vatican City.
The Vatican document first surfaced publicly in 2003, when it was widely reported in the US media, and was used by lawyers for sexual abuse victims in law suits against some American dioceses.
The US scandal, in which priests known to have abused minors were transferred from parish to parish instead of being sacked, was centered in Boston.
It led to the resignation of the city's archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, in December 2002.
Pope Benedict has been under fire from Muslims worldwide since quoting a medieval text by a 14th century emperor claiming that everything Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) brought was "evil and inhuman."
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