The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
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Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.
Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: "I found out I wasn't working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself."
If this information had been exposed a few years ago, would Cardinal Ratzinger had ever been named Pope? I can't wrap my head around this. Forget if he's the Pope now. What type of human being would cover up crimes against the children? He obviously had a lot of experience in this matter.
Has anybody seen Bill Donohue lately? Maybe he'll go on TV again and blame the Hollywood Jews for this mess too.
And there's this one where he calls some abuse cases "gold diggers" in Ireland.
TIME:
The shocking extent of child abuse by clergy in Ireland's parishes and Catholic institutions was exposed last year in two government enquiries, known as the Ryan Report and the Murphy Report. The first described "endemic sexual abuse" at schools and orphanages run by religious orders from the 1930s to the 1990s, while the latter accused the Catholic Church, the state and the Irish police of colluding in the cover up sexual abuse committed by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin.
A rape victim from Ireland slams Donohue over his remarks. "You're views are insane."
