Vatican warned Irish bishops not to report abuse

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I believe the Vatican is more interested in keeping up the sagging numbers of priests, than with punishing offenders, which might include expulsion from the priesthood. Even if that means protecting pedophiles.
Plus, pedophilia is the dirty little secret Rome tried kept swept under the carpet, as the allegedly holy state of chastity might be perceived as a contributing factor to the crime. Or at least that is the perception of many.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

"no mandatory reporting" is not the same as "no reporting",

It, at least, increases the tolerance of no reporting.

And what if said priest happens to be innocent? So we drag an innocent man through all kinds of persecution only to find out he in fact is innocent.

Well, it could be argued that the Pope had no knowledge of this, because Parkinsons would kind of make it hard to type or write a letter.

You NEVER EVER discourage the reporting of such things. Even if the child is lying, that's to be dealt with AFTER.

You NEVER EVER discourage the reporting of such things. Even if the child is lying, that's to be dealt with AFTER.

Trail by Press is not a quest for justice.

Alleged crimes should be handled by legal authorities, not the newspapers and the media.

ruveyn

Uh considering we're talking about a man that had Parkinson's Disease, I find it highly unlikely that John Paul II wrote the letter. My grandfather had Parkinson's Disease and he couldn't write because he shook so badly, anything the Pope would have tried to write or type for that matter would be either illegible or jibberish.

Most likely it was some Cardinal acting without John Paul II's knowledge.

Around after the gun shot, John Paul got old and he didn't really set direction of much in the Vatican.

Ratzinger was actually the man behind the man during John Paul's last days. John Paul was more of an ambassador and public image. Of course, it does not mean he had not wronged by omission for letting this happen. But it is 100% most likely Ratzinger was the intellectual author of this whole Vatican method to deal with pedophiles.

I do not really think the Vatican was trying to protect the pedophilles, after all, they have nothing to win from that, it is not like that the head of the church is behind a conspiracy to get children raped. I think they were just ret*d and paranoid. They thought that taking the justice and handling by themselves, they could make sure to eliminate the pedophiles' threat without harming the image of the Church. But they were naive, we were no longer in freaking century XVI , you cannot hide things like that anymore, and it was stupid. The irony in this is that all their moves were attempts to mantain a good PR image for the church, but since they had to indirectly protect the priests from the law in order to try to hide the scandal, it really, really destroyed their PR image...

I think all the back-slash and the bad image is well-deserved, and I hope soon a new pope decides to send the whole deal to sh** and establishes a zero tolerance method , and they should also create rules for priests similar to the boy scouts of America's rules. Something as simple as making sure no member of the church is ever able to be alone with children without another adult around would do wonders not only to protect children but also to protect priests from possible smear, because, we have to accept, some of the cases are probably fabricated by greedy people that want money... and priests need to be protected by rules like that so that this sort of accusation is harder to make unless it happened.

I'm not saying you discourage the reporting, however you don't need it to be a three ring circus either. First thing if there is a report of this kind of abuse it should be turned over to authorities, not turned over to the media to blare all over the place because it doesn't help the child, if the priest is innocent you've pretty much ruined his life too.

People usually say that they're covering it up because they're secretly a pedophile ring or that they're hypocrites who care more about the Church's reputation than the well being of little kids. But yeah, it's more of them trying to have their cake and eat it too by dealing with it themselves AND protecting the Church's reputation.

There definitely needs to be a zero tolerance rule. Allowing one adult to be alone with a child makes it too easy to take advantage of the situation.