Identifying Silver Hallmarks

"The Irish bishops asked the Vatican not to report to police abuses of the priests'

copy of the letter. Source: AP

Irish RTE television has made public a letter from 1997 sent by the Vatican to Catholic bishops in Ireland to warn them not to report all suspected child abuse to the police. The letter shows that the Vatican wants all allegations of child molestation were investigated and possibly punished by the Church itself, and that there was involvement of the civil authorities, it is a serious blow to the Vatican's position, according to which The Church never ordered the bishops to hide evidence or suspicions to the police.

The letter is part of Vatican policy on handling abuse in Ireland. Two reports d'indagine pubblicati nel 2009, e riguardanti in particolare l'arcidiocesi di Dublino e gli istituti per bambini, hanno dimostrato come in Irlanda per decenni, a partire dagli anni '30, la Chiesa abbia coperto casi di presunti abusi su decine di migliaia di bambini. Un terzo rapporto, riguardante la diocesi di Cloyne, sarà pubblicato nei prossimi mesi.

Quel che è certo, è che i prelati irlandesi presero a riportare alla polizia i casi di molestie su minori da parte dei sacerdoti cattolici solo a partire dalla metà degli anni '90; in particolare fu nel 1996 che la conferenza episcopale irlandese pubblicò un documento con la quale rendeva nota la sua intenzione di denunciare alle autorità giudiziarie cases where the bishops were aware.

The newly discovered letter was sent in 1997, then a year after the Irish revolutionary document, Luciano Storero Archbishop, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland. In it, Storero announced that the Congregation for the Clergy ruled that the Irish policy of automatically reporting allegations of abuse "raises serious reservations under both moral and canonical," and as such was not recognized by the Vatican, recalled Storero in the letter that canon law, under which allegations of abuse should be handled internally by the Church, "must be followed meticulously." Storero added that if a bishop had complained of a priest suspected of child abuse to the police, the Congregation of the Clergy could have broken its rules regarding the priest suspected.

addition to that of 1996, the Church of Ireland has published two other documents relating to the reporting of cases of child abuse to civil authorities, none of these three documents has never been approved by the Vatican, and, according to some witnesses, seems increasingly likely that some Irish bishops have continued to follow the provisions contained in the 1997 Vatican letter again in 2008.

Nevertheless in his pastoral letter of 2010, Joseph Ratzinger he leaned to the Irish bishops blame the management of cases of abuse, saying that the Irish bishops would follow canon law.

Because the defense of the Vatican in dozens of lawsuits against priests in the United States molesters was based precisely on the denial of any intervention Vatican in favor of silting of the evidence, this letter could have a dramatic effect in trials for abuse.

Update: the letter was published by the New York Times .

Source: Irish bishops Vatican Warned not to report abuse " Associated Press, January 18, 2010. Many thanks to Antonio Lombatti for reporting this news.