Letters prove that the Vatican tried to cover up child abuse
Two recently uncovered letters from the Vatican provide strong evidence that, despite their claims to the contrary, the present Pope and his predecessor were well aware of the scale of the priestly child sex abuse crisis and took active steps to cover it up.
“These letters show beyond doubt that the Church can never be trusted to tackle this dreadful problem responsibly by itself"
— Keith Porteous Wood, National Secular Society.
The letters make clear that the Vatican, and the Pope’s personal representatives, put protection of the Church before the protection of children. It instructed bishops in two different parts of the world not to report known abusers to the police or release files.
Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, comments: “These letters show beyond doubt that the Church can never be trusted to tackle this dreadful problem responsibly by itself, but what can be done? The most effective remedy is pursuing the Vatican itself, and perhaps its leaders, through international organisations and the courts. Lawyers have got close to proving that the Vatican itself has been not just complicit, but calling the shots. These letters could just prove to be the last piece in the jigsaw.
“The letters make it all nigh impossible for the Vatican to heap all the blame for gross misdeeds on local bishops. As Prefect of the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith since November 1981, no one knows more about child abuse in the Catholic Church than the current pope, Joseph Ratzinger. Most of those reading these letters will be asking whether the pope could not have known (to put it no stronger) about these instructions to be obstructive to the secular authorities in reporting suspicions or releasing files.”
The executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, Colm O’Gorman, said that the 1997 letter was proof that the Vatican had been operating a policy of instructing bishops not to report criminality by priests.
A campaigner and survivor of abuse, Marie Collins, called on the Pope to state “that mandatory reporting by church representatives to the civil authorities in Ireland of any complaint of child abuse has his approval”.
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