Pope slams Irish church, no Vatican blame in abuse

[Christa]

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI rebuked Irish bishops Saturday for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered an investigation into the Irish church but did not mention any Vatican responsibility.

In a letter to the Irish faithful read across Europe amid a growing, multination abuse scandal, the pope doled out no specific punishments to bishops blamed by victims, and Irish government-ordered investigations, for having covered up abuse of thousands of Irish children from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Ireland's main group of clerical-abuse victims, One in Four, said it was deeply disappointed by the letter because it failed to lay blame with the Vatican for what it called a "deliberate policy of the Catholic Church at the highest levels to protect sex offenders, thereby endangering children."

"If the church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," the group said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100320/ap_on_re_eu/eu_church_abuse_pope

[ChicagoSuz219]

1. My comment after reading the NYT article:

"It's a start. When does he apologize to the rest of the planet?"

[laconicsax]

2. Of course he'll deny responsibility.

It's not like he penned an http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection1">official letter stating that the problem is the victims reporting the abuse and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection">obstructed subsequent investigations.

...oh wait. He did that back when he was http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dxcdf.html">Grand Inquisitor. Those "grave errors of judgment" were an expression of his orders.

Edit: html fix