Vatican: 1997 letter warning Irish bishops against reporting abuse was 'misunderstood'

[defendandprotect]

Vatican: 1997 letter warning Irish bishops against reporting abuse was 'misunderstood'

Published: Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 7:06 PM Updated: Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 7:06 PM
By The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican launched a new round of damage control today over priestly sex abuse, insisting a 1997 letter warning Irish bishops against reporting abuse to police had been "deeply misunderstood."

The Associated Press on Tuesday published the contents of the letter, in which the Vatican’s top diplomat in Ireland told bishops their policy of mandatory police reporting "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."

The letter, obtained originally by Irish broadcaster RTE from an Irish bishop, has undermined persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never told bishops not to cooperate with police.

An Irish government-ordered investigation into decades of abuse cover-ups in the Dublin Archdiocese concluded that Irish bishops understood the letter to mean they shouldn’t report suspected crimes.


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/01/vatican_says_1997_irish_abuse.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. OH please

Johnny the Rat may become one of the more corrupt popes in a church that has had some very corrupt popes. He might be the worst since Julius II, author of the phrase 'as soon as coin in coffer clings, the soul from purgatory springs."

[defendandprotect]

2. "Is the Pope Italian...?" Remember that ... ?

As a former Catholic from childhood, think I can say this --

Pope John XXIII -- Vatican II -- who made the Church a democracy - and who

acknowledged every members right to their own conscience and told them to use

their personal conscience to decide for themselves whether or not to use birth

control was one of the last three Italian Popes and one of the last legitimate Popes.

The next two Italian Popes -- who also disappeared very quickly -- were allegedly

going to overturn restrictions on birth control -- and they are also rumored to have

both been vidtims of a right wing coup on the Vatican.

IMO, the Polish Pope was our first CIA Pope --