A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up.
The letter definitively shows the Vatican has been consistently lying for many years that they did not engage in a coverup. When you couple this with the continuing Vatican bank scandals about money laundering, the inescapable conclusion is that Vatican essentially is a criminal organization.
This is just another example of the collapse of moral authority of institutions that once were respected. Our banks and legislatures are filled with criminals. So, it appears, are churches.
Quote:
“Storero warned that bishops who followed the Irish child-protection policy and reported a priest’s suspected crimes to police ran the risk of having their in-house punishments of the priest overturned by the Congregation for the Clergy.
“The 2009 Dublin Archdiocese report found that this actually happened in the case of Tony Walsh, one of Dublin’s most notorious pedophiles, who used his role as an Elvis impersonator in a popular “All Priests Show” to get closer to kids.
“Walsh in 1993 was kicked out of the priesthood by a secret Dublin church court — but successfully appealed the punishment to a Vatican court, which reinstated him to the priesthood in 1994. He raped a boy in a pub restroom at his grandfather’s funeral wake that year. Walsh since has received a series of prison sentences, most recently a 12-year term imposed last month. Investigators estimate he raped or molested more than 100 children.”
When will countries grow tired of this, and throw the bastards out? When?
The Catholic Church should have their tax-exempt status revoked and those who raped and/or covered up should be imprisoned. This isn’t religion, this is derangement.
Pope: “What? Huh? Proof we were allowing children to be molested? Crap… Hey! Look at those gays that want marriage! Talk about the gays!”
Not sure there’s a flaming bag full of poo large enough to distract people this time, but he’s sure trying…
Maybe he could get his Mafia buddies in the Vatican Bank to help?
Hello-having done a bit of research on the recently reported ‘smoking gun letter from the Vatican’-and having read the entire thing, along with the background of this story, lets get clear what’s has NOT been reported.
This letter was written in 1997 by Cardinal Storero, from the Congregation of the Clergy office at the Vatican-WITHOUT any approval or orders from any Pope, and especially, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope B.
The Cardinal who was the head of that office, Hoyos, got this letter written because he questioned the procedure in the Irish Bishops document, which states that clergy abuse crimes should be reported to the civil authorities-but not, according to Hoyos’s concern’s, if it would be at the expense of the local bishop’s being able to investigate them first.
Again, the letter ‘questions’- and does NOT ‘order’ any change in action, because this would have been AGAINST the original and present policy, of all the Pope’s of the last 50 years-none who EVER ordered any Bishop not to report crimes of clergy abuse to the local police.
Thanks to Pope JPII and Benedict XVI, the Church’s record of putting an end to these crimes, where virtually no new cases of clergy abuse have happened in the last two decades, is far above the record of the public school systems, and all other institutions, where the abuse of children and minors occur, and are still kept hidden.
The truth sets us free, we are told-and THAT, you can believe!
The facts would appear to be different
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/catholic_crisis/timeline.html