From an AP article in The New York Times:
The Vatican on Monday made clear for the first time that bishops and other church officials should report clerical sex abuse to police if required by law. But the policy failed to satisfy victims who charge that the church deliberately hid abuse for decades.From an article by Marc Home in the Times:
Victims, government inquiries, and grand juries have all charged that the Catholic Church created what amounted to a conspiracy to cover up abuse by keeping allegations that priests raped and molested children secret and not reporting them to civil authorities.
The Vatican has insisted that it has long been the Catholic Church's policy for bishops, like all Christians, to obey civil reporting laws. In a new guide for lay readers posted on its Web site, the Vatican explicitly spells out such a policy. "Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed," the Vatican guidelines said. That phrase was not included in a draft of the guidelines obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The rest of the guidelines follow previously known and public procedures for handling canonical investigations and trials of priests suspected of abuse. The Vatican offered no explanation for the addition.
Victims were not impressed. "Let's keep this in perspective: it's one sentence and it's virtually nothing unless and until we see tangible signs that bishops are responding," said Joelle Casteix, western regional director for SNAP, the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, the main victims' group in the U.S. "One sentence can't immediately reverse centuries of self-serving secrecy." She said that, if the Vatican truly wanted to change course, "it would be far more effective to fire or demote bishops who have clearly endangered kids and enabled abuse and hid crimes, than to add one sentence to a policy that is rarely followed with consistency."
None of the core public Vatican documents to be applied in cases of abuse direct bishops to report cases to police. Nor does canon law make such an explicit requirement.
Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S. lawyer, said a 1965 document from the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, contained an implicit understanding of the need to follow civil laws that are just. The vague citation, however, is not nearly as explicit as what is contained in the lay guide. "It's beyond dispute that the canon law does not mandate non-reporting," Lena said. "These guidelines may help clarify that point for people who are less familiar with canon law. The statement confirms what has been long known, that where the civil state creates an obligation to report, bishops like anyone else are required to examine the law and determine what they have to do to obey it."
In 2002, after the clerical abuse scandal erupted in the United States, American bishops enacted reforms, which the Vatican made church law for the US, that do not specifically order all bishops to notify civil authorities of new claims. Instead, the US policy instructs bishops to comply with state laws for reporting abuse, and to cooperate with authorities. All US dioceses were also instructed to advise victims of their right to contact authorities themselves.
The Reverend Davide Cito, a canon lawyer at Rome's Santa Croce University, called the publication of the universal church policy in the lay guidelines "an important development. I'm very pleased," he said. "A Christian also has to follow civil laws. It's a Christian duty."
A Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Ciro Benedettini, said the reporting requirement had been the internal policy of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2003. The Vatican in 2001 shifted its policy on dealing with abuse cases, ordering bishops around the world to refer all cases to the Congregation, which then decides how to proceed. Previously, diocese themselves dealt with most of the cases on their own. Asked how bishops were supposed to know of this internal policy on reporting to police, Benedettini declined to comment.
Pope Benedict XVI had told Irish bishops last month that they should cooperate with civil authorities in investigating abuse. But the guidelines mark the first time that such procedures for the church at large, in which bishops are explicitly told they should follow civil reporting laws, have been laid out publicly.
Richard Dawkins, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”. Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.Rico says these guys are his latest heroes, and he wishes them well with their case...
The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases. Benedict will be in Britain between September 16th and 19th, visiting London, Glasgow, and Coventry, where he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian.
Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations. They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action. The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him, or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.
Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”
Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."
Last year pro-Palestinian activists persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli politician, for offences allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. The warrant was withdrawn after Livni cancelled her planned trip to the UK.
“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed, and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”
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