AT THE end of another difficult weekend marked by further polemics about clerical sex abuse cases in Canada, the US, Britain and Malta, the Vatican yesterday confirmed Pope Benedict will meet the College of Cardinals in the Vatican on April 19th.The pope will be the guest of the cardinals who have invited him for a lunch to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his election as pope on April 19th, 2005.
In reality, this will be more than a cosy chit-chat with the cardinals expected to address the current crisis.
All the indications last weekend suggest there was no sign of this storm abating. On Saturday, the case of Canadian priest Msgr Bernard Prince returned to plague the Vatican. Now defrocked, Prince was sentenced by an Ontario court in 2008 to four years in prison for abusing 13 boys between 1964 and 1984.
In 1991, even though allegations that he had abused a boy had been brought to the attention of his Pembroke, eastern Ontario, diocese one year earlier, Prince was appointed to the Pontifical Missionary Works in Rome.
In a 1993 letter to the Canadian papal nuncio submitted last week as civil evidence in court, his then bishop, the late Joseph Windle, although approving Prince’s move away “from the Canadian scene”, calls on the nuncio to block any form of promotion for the then Msgr Prince, explaining: “A promotion of any kind would indicate to the victim that he is being further victimised . . . and hence we could anticipate that a charge would be laid and a public trial would follow. The consequences . . . would be disastrous, not only for the Canadian church but for the Holy See as well.”
Earlier on Saturday, the Vatican repeated its claims that Benedict, in his previous role as Prefect For The Congregation Of The Doctrine Of The Faith, had done nothing wrong in 1985 when declining to take immediate action with regard to the abusive Californian priest, Stephen Kiesle.
Bishop John Cummins of Oakland had written to the then Cardinal Ratzinger, asking for approval for the “defrocking” of Kiesle, a self-confessed child abuser.
In his reply, Cardinal Ratzinger says although the reasons for a defrocking are of “great importance”, he nonetheless needs to take into consideration the welfare of the priest and of the universal church. Father Kiesle was indeed “reduced to the lay status” two years later but, in the meantime, he spent time as a volunteer in a Bay Area parish where he was accused of having abused children.
As Pope Benedict prepares to visit Malta next weekend, an indication of the climate awaiting him came from reports that posters announcing his visit had been defiled, with protesters painting a “Hitler” moustache on to the pope’s face, flanked by the word, “paedophile”.
In the UK, the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, was this weekend accused of having presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys, despite complaints from victims.
The allegations relate to Fr David Pearce, a former headmaster at St Benedict’s School, who was arrested in 2008.
Archbishop Nichols has denied any knowledge of the case.
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