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	Protest at BBC 'Attack' on Pope By Jonathan Petre Telegraph [United Kingdom] October 2, 2006 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/02/nbbc02.xml The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is to make a formal complaint to the BBC over a documentary which accused the Pope of covering up child abuse by priests. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is to protest to Mark Thompson, the corporation's director general, about last night's "unwarranted" and "deeply prejudiced" BBC1 Panorama programme. The documentary, called Sex Crimes and the Vatican, purported to reveal how in 2001 the future pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued "a secret Vatican edict" to instruct the world's Catholic bishops to put the interests of the Church before the safety of children. The programme said that by issuing the document the cardinal was advising bishops to encourage alleged victims, the accused and any witnesses to talk to them about the allegations rather than report them to the civil authorities. It described the document as an updated version of the "notorious" 1962 Vatican instruction Crimen Sollicitationis – the Crime of Solicitation – which, it claimed, laid down the rules for covering up sexual scandal. The English and Welsh bishops were denied a preview film by the BBC because the Vatican had refused to co-operate in the making of it. But a leaked copy was sent to the bishops in Spain, where they were on retreat last week, and they watched it together on Saturday evening and decided that the cardinal should protest vigorously. A statement issued yesterday by the Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, revealed the extent of their anger. He said that as a public service broadcaster, the BBC should be "ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI". The archbishop said that viewers would recognise "only too well the sensational tactics and misleading editing of the programme, which uses old footage and undated interviews. They will know that aspects of the programme amount to a deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious leader." Archbishop Nichols, the chairman of the Catholic office for the protection of children and vulnerable adults, described the evil of child abuse depicted in the documentary as "horrific and deeply distressing". But he said that the thrust of the programme was "false and entirely misleading" because it misrepresented two Vatican documents. "The first document, issued in 1962, is not directly concerned with child abuse at all but with the misuse of the confessional," he said. "The programme confuses the misuse of the confessional and the immoral attempts by a priest to silence his victim. "The second document, issued in 2001, clarified the law of the Church, ensuring that the Vatican is informed of every case of child abuse and that each case is dealt with properly." He continued: "This document does not hinder the investigation by civil authorities of allegations of child abuse, nor is it a method of cover-up, as the programme persistently claims. In fact it is a measure of the seriousness with which the Vatican views these offences." The row is the latest in a series of clashes between the Catholic Church and the BBC. In October 2003 the bishops made a similar high-level complaint when the BBC attacked Pope John Paul II in a Panorama special called Sex and the Holy City. A BBC spokesman said the corporation stood by the Panorama programme and invited viewers to make up their own minds about it.
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