The Vatican's insistence that
it never impeded criminal investigations of pedophile priests has been
thrown into doubt by a 1997 letter from the pope's representative in
Dublin warning against a mandate by Irish church leaders for full
cooperation with criminal authorities.
Throughout
the mushrooming scandal, Rome officials have denied trying to foil
secular law by allowing child-abuse allegations to be shrouded in
halfhearted diocesan inquiries and coverups.
But the newly discovered
letter undermines those claims and reinforces evidence of foot dragging
that has still not been adequately addressed by the Vatican.
The
letter from the papal representative rejected a 1996 decision by Dublin
church leaders to respond more candidly to the suppressed scandal in
Ireland by ordering that child-abuse allegations be referred for
criminal investigation.
The “strictly confidential” letter from Rome —
leaked last week amid continuing inquiries into the Irish scandal —
emphasized the priority of in-house handling of pedophilia cases under
church, not civil, law.
This
was hardly the needed prescription for what an Irish government
investigation eventually described as “endemic” abuse of thousands of
children over decades by rogue priests who were routinely shielded from
criminal penalties.
It was disclosed recently,
for example, that Tony Walsh, a notorious abuser of children who was
convicted and defrocked in a secret church court in Dublin in 1993, got
his collar back a year later when a Vatican court believed his appeal
and reinstated him as a priest.
He was eventually imprisoned after
raping and molesting scores of youngsters.
Rome
officials insist that the letter from Rome is outdated, misinterpreted
and superseded by tougher church rules.
Unfortunately, the latest
policies of the Vatican do not mandate the zero-tolerance reforms that
ranking officials in the United States and elsewhere were forced to
proclaim as the scandal demoralized church faithful worldwide.
It
is commendable that Pope Benedict XVI has been apologizing and
promising a firmer hand.
But current Vatican policy, updated last year,
offers merely a nonbinding advisory — not a firm mandate — that diocesan
officials should report crimes to police.
This is cold comfort to worried Catholic parents or anyone else relying on the rule of law.
SIC: NYT/USA