How Pope Benedict ignored Vatican responsibility for child sex abuse in Ireland
It must be acknowledged that Pope Benedict XVI was the first holder of that office to take the clerical child sexual abuse scandal seriously. That said, few in Ireland could feel wholeheartedly grateful about that.
In 2001, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he circulated every Catholic bishop in the world with two letters, both in Latin, one instructing that both be kept secret, asking that they forward to him all credible allegations they had on file about clerical child sexual abuse involving their priests. He received thousands of responses, including from Ireland.
When he was pope and the commission of investigation was under way into how Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, and later the Cloyne diocese, dealt with clerical child sex abuse allegations, it asked the Vatican for access to the files sent from Dublin and Cloyne. It was ignored, repeatedly. The commission published its Dublin report in November 2009 and its Cloyne report in July 2011.
Pope Benedict, appropriately, excoriated Ireland’s Catholic bishops for their handling of clerical child sexual-abuse allegations.
At a meeting with the Irish bishops in 1997 Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy until 2006, insisted it was Vatican policy to defend the rights of an accused priest above all and no allegations of clerical child sex abuse should be reported to the Garda or civil authorities in Ireland. That remained Vatican policy well into the current pontificate of Pope Francis.
This was the background to then taoiseach Enda Kenny’s forceful attack on the Vatican for its lack of co-operation with Irish statutory investigations into clerical child sexual-abuse allegations and followed publication of the Cloyne report in July 2011. It also played a significant role in the Government decision of November 2011 to close the Irish Embassy to the Holy See.
The investigators, lawyers commissioned by the Catholic archdiocese of Munich and Freising to examine its files from 1945 to 2019, dismissed the former pope’s claims not to be aware of the four cases as “not credible”. The Church in Munich and Freising ignored victims of clerical sexual abuse and saw those it did notice “as a danger for the institution”, their report found.
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/2022/12...n-ireland/
It must be acknowledged that Pope Benedict XVI was the first holder of that office to take the clerical child sexual abuse scandal seriously. That said, few in Ireland could feel wholeheartedly grateful about that.
In 2001, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he circulated every Catholic bishop in the world with two letters, both in Latin, one instructing that both be kept secret, asking that they forward to him all credible allegations they had on file about clerical child sexual abuse involving their priests. He received thousands of responses, including from Ireland.
When he was pope and the commission of investigation was under way into how Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, and later the Cloyne diocese, dealt with clerical child sex abuse allegations, it asked the Vatican for access to the files sent from Dublin and Cloyne. It was ignored, repeatedly. The commission published its Dublin report in November 2009 and its Cloyne report in July 2011.
Pope Benedict, appropriately, excoriated Ireland’s Catholic bishops for their handling of clerical child sexual-abuse allegations.
At a meeting with the Irish bishops in 1997 Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy until 2006, insisted it was Vatican policy to defend the rights of an accused priest above all and no allegations of clerical child sex abuse should be reported to the Garda or civil authorities in Ireland. That remained Vatican policy well into the current pontificate of Pope Francis.
This was the background to then taoiseach Enda Kenny’s forceful attack on the Vatican for its lack of co-operation with Irish statutory investigations into clerical child sexual-abuse allegations and followed publication of the Cloyne report in July 2011. It also played a significant role in the Government decision of November 2011 to close the Irish Embassy to the Holy See.
The investigators, lawyers commissioned by the Catholic archdiocese of Munich and Freising to examine its files from 1945 to 2019, dismissed the former pope’s claims not to be aware of the four cases as “not credible”. The Church in Munich and Freising ignored victims of clerical sexual abuse and saw those it did notice “as a danger for the institution”, their report found.
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/2022/12...n-ireland/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
