Irish Crisis: Vatican Untruths

Saturday September 3, 2011 – by Colm O’Gorman

Vatican suggestion that it did not undermine reporting of abuse is simply untrue.

The response of the Holy See to the Cloyne Report seeks to portray the Vatican as having never been opposed to the idea that Bishops should co-operate with civil law when it comes to reporting priests who rape and abuse children.

Interestingly they quote Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the former Prefect (Head) of the Congregation for the Clergy. This is the powerful Vatican Department with responsibility for matters involving clergy and priests and which, until 2001, played a central role in deciding how cases of clerical sexual abuse were handled.

The Hoy See quotes Cardinal Hoyos as saying, “I also wish to say with great clarity that the Church, especially through its Pastors (Bishops), should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice, when such is initiated by those who have such rights, while at the same time, she should move forward with her own canonical procedures, in truth, justice and charity towards all.”

In this way, the Holy See tells us, the Cardinal “drew attention to the fact that canon and civil law, whilst being two distinct systems, with distinct areas of application and competence, are not in competition and can operate in parallel.”

And even more significantly Cardinal Hoyos made his comments when meeting with Irish Bishops at Rosses Point, County Sligo on 12th of November 1998.

All very encouraging and progressive really, I mean even somewhat cynical old me thinks that sounds OK taken at face value.

But hang on a minute. Isn’t that the same Cardinal Hoyos who passionately believed that Bishops should NOT report abusing clerics to the civil authorities?

Who in 2001, three years after making the very reasonable statement quoted by the Holy See today, wrote to a French Bishop who had been sentenced to three months in prison for failing to report a Catholic Abbot who had raped and abused children over a period of decades?

Indeed it is. The very same Cardinal Dario Hoyos wrote a letter praising French Bishop Peirre Pican for not passing information about a rapist priest to the French police. Pican had been convicted of failing to report abuse by a Catholic Abbot sentenced to eighteen years in prison for paedophilia, including the repeated sexual assault of boys over two decades, and the rape of one of the boys.

In his letter Cardinal Hoyos wrote, “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration. You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.” Hoyos was at the time one of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church as head of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy. Even more significant than the fact that he sent the letter as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy is the fact that he then sent a copy to every Roman Catholic Bishop in the world and that he sent the letter with the full approval of the then Pope, John Paul II.

Also of note in the context of the current debate on mandatory reporting and the seal of the confessional is the fact that Pican’s defence argued that the secrecy of the confessional exempted him of his legal obligation to report sexual crimes against children.

The truth is pretty revealing really isn’t it?

To read on: link to Colm O’Gorman’s blog