I have always held former Pope John Paul II to be anything but saintly and have viewed the rush to make him a saint as yet another cynical Vatican ploy to distract the ignorant, those fearful of independent thought, and the downright stupid/intellectually lazy from the reality of what a festering cesspool the Catholic Church hierarchy has been for decades if not centuries. Now, a newly released letter from 1997 to the bishops of Ireland (a copy of the letter is here) demonstrates that John Paul II and his minions were up to their eyeballs in orchestrating the cover up of the world wide sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children and youth. Rather than being beatified, John Paul II should likely have been criminally prosecuted for obstruction of justice. And only time will tell whether Benedict XVI shouldn't be under indictment. The larger question, of course is when rank and file Catholics will stop sticking their heads in the sand and realize that they are subsidizing and underwriting the criminal deeds of the Church hierarchy and walk away. The Globe and Mail has coverage on the 1997 letter and it's proof of Vatican involvement in the cover up of crimes against children. Here are highlights:*
A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police – a disclosure that victims groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of coverup.
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The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.
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The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.
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Mr. Storero [Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland] wrote that canon law – which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church – “must be meticulously followed.” He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.
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“The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere,” said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International. Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as “the smoking gun we've been looking for.”
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“We now have evidence that the Vatican deliberately intervened to order bishops not to turn pedophile priests over to law enforcement,” she said. “And for civil lawsuits, this letter shows what victims have been saying for dozens and dozens of years: What happened to them involved a concerted coverup that went all the way to the top.”
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Irish church leaders didn't begin telling police about suspected pedophile priests until the mid-1990s after the first major scandal – of a priest, Brendan Smyth, who had raped dozens of children while the church transferred him to parishes in Dublin, Belfast, Rhode Island and North Dakota – triggered the collapse of the entire Irish government. That national shock, in turn, inspired the first victims to begin suing the church publicly.
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I hope this letter energizes a new round of lawsuits aimed directly at the Vatican. These horrid men need to be behind bars.
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