Letter: Church Tried to Keep Abuse Claim Secret

[brooklynite]

Source: NY Times

TORONTO (AP) -- A letter written by a late Canadian bishop shows church officials in Canada knew of sexual abuse allegations involving a priest before his promotion to a top Vatican post and then discussed with Vatican officials how to keep the scandal from becoming public.

The four-page letter was written on Feb. 10, 1993 by the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ontario, and sent to the pope's envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis. Its contents were released this week as an exhibit in a civil lawsuit.

The letter raised concerns about Monsignor Bernard Prince, a friend of the late Pope John Paul II. Prince served as secretary-general of the Vatican's Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which works with missionary societies, from 1991 until he retired in 2004.

Windle advised the Vatican to avoid honoring or promoting Prince in any way because it might anger abuse victims and lead them to file criminal charges or civil lawsuits.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/09/world/AP-Church-Abuse-Canada.html

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So far, reporting on the Church scandal has been equated to the crucifixion and the Holocaust against the Jews. Wonder what they'll come up with this time?

[foxfeet]

1. Pope Ratzi will be first on Mr. Blackwell's "Worst-dressed List."

Prada pumps notwithstanding.

[Heywood J]

2. I'm betting the next equivalence will be to the crusades.

Irony notwithstanding, of course.

[No Elephants]

8. AWKward!

[Crowman1979]

3. I saw this in a documentary last year, why is the media lagging far behind on reporting this info?

[GodlessBiker]

4. La Cosa Nostra would be proud of the church for being so racketeering-like.

[iris27]

5. The Inquisition!

Or maybe witch hunts!

[No Elephants]

6. Wow. I didn't see that coming! Then again,

[bigworld]

7. I wouldn;t have a problem with them keeping these claims hush-hush

but at the same time they continued to enable these priests by moving them from place to place and not removing them or even attempting to confront them. Did the church sanction them at all? Do ANYTHING to stop any alleged abuse from continuing?

Something is rotten and the stink goes way up high.

[No Elephants]

9. You wouldn't have a problem with keeping secret that it may not be safe for parents to leave their

kids alone with priests, just as a general rule?

Until these claims became public, few parents had any idea it wasn't akin to leaving your kid with God the father.

Forget even the abusers known at a given moment. If parents were woken up, future abusers would have had a lot fewer opportunities.

I wonder how many parents would let their kids go on trips alone with a priest now.

I appreciate your desire to punish the priests. They should have been reported to the police, of course. But, the very first priority should have been keeping any more kids from being molested in the future, not hushing this up to protect the name of The Holy Roman Catholic Church.