Stories of pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church continue to make the news, and will probably continue to do so for some time to come. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
ROME (AFP) – Dozens of Italian Catholic priests investigated for pedophilia over the past decade are just the “tip of the iceberg” and the Church has done little to bring abusers to justice, a lawyer said Tuesday.
“I have documented more than 130 cases of clergy pedophilia” since around 1999, Sergio Cavaliere told AFP.
The lawyer, who represents the family of a child abused by a priest in Casal di Principe in southern Italy, said he compiled the list from local press and Internet reports on legal cases involving Italian clergy.
Eighty-eight of the reports cite the abusers by name.
So far, “not a single priest has been handed over to justice by a diocese,” Cavaliere said, echoing recent remarks by a prosecutor in northern Milan.
Prosecutor Pietro Forno, who has won 10 convictions of predator priests, told right-wing daily Il Giornale: “In the many years that I have dealt with the issue, complaints were never lodged by a bishop or individual priests, and that is a bit strange.”
Pope Benedict XVI drafted a decree signed by his predecessor John Paul II in 2001 ordering bishops to report abuse cases to the Vatican and remove abusers from contact with youth.
However, the German pontiff faces allegations that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, when he headed the Vatican’s watchdog over morals and doctrinal issues, and earlier as the archbishop of Munich, he failed to take action against predator priests.
Police arrested the Casal di Principe priest in December 2007 after catching him molesting a 12-year-old boy in a car, and he has been convicted to six years and eight months in prison, but is awaiting a final appeal ruling.
The diocese “showed a complete lack of interest in the victim’s fate,” Cavaliere said.
The Italian Catholic Church, contacted by AFP, was not immediately prepared to comment on the matter.
Large-scale pedophile scandals have rocked the churches of Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, the United States and the pope’s native Germany in recent months.
The Church’s behaviour in addressing the scandals is “the opposite of (Pope) Benedict XVI’s idle chatter,” Cavaliere said, in a mocking reference to remarks by the pontiff last month.
Benedict said during Palm Sunday mass on March 28 that Jesus Christ “leads us to the courage to not be intimidated by the idle chatter of prevailing opinions,” in what was read as a dismissal of growing allegations that Benedict himself failed to act against predator priests.
Observers say the wave of scandals could soon engulf Italy, which counts more than 50,000 priests, the highest concentration in the world.
“The Italian Church is worried and moving to address what might break out in Italy,” Roberto Mirabile, head of the anti-pedophilia group La Caramella Buona, told AFP last month.
Charles Scicluna, the chief Vatican investigator for sex crimes, expressed some concern about the handling of predator priests in Italy in a recent interview with Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference.
“So far, the phenomenon does not seem to be of dramatic proportions, though I am worried by a certain culture of silence that is still too widespread,” he said.
A gay rights activist who says he was abused by a priest as a child criticised a leading cardinal for backing the pope ahead of Easter mass on Sunday.
“The Church should rally around victims, not around the Holy Father,” said Francesco Zanardi in a letter to Angelo Sodano, the dean of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, reproduced in the Italian press on Tuesday.
“The Church should seriously and honestly assume responsibility for the atrocities it has covered up over the years,” Zanardi wrote.
Sodano, in the unusual gesture on Sunday, also recalled the “idle chatter” remark when he told the pontiff: “The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the idle chatter of the moment.”
Benedict, 82, has spoken out several times since the start of his papacy in 2005 on sex abuse.
Last month he addressed a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics expressing “shame and remorse” over predator priests in Ireland and chided Irish bishops for making “serious mistakes” in responding to allegations.
