This section is reprinted from the Irish Independent, October 2, 2006. Author is John Cooney, Religious Affairs Correspondent. View original link at http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1698533&issue_id=14716

A senior church lawyer last night accused Colm O'Gorman, the founder of the One in Four victims' support group, of "maligning" Pope Benedict XVI.

In last night's BBC 'Panorama' programme, Mr O'Gorman named Pope Benedict as the churchman responsible for the Vatican's worldwide cover-up of child-abusing priests.

In an angry reaction, Fr Michael Mullaney, a lecturer on canon law at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, told the Irish Independent: "Mr O'Gorman has made false charges against the Pope, who has taken strong steps to deal with the crime of clerical child abuse.

"Mr O'Gorman has misunderstood and misinterpreted the Vatican's approach to allegations against priests suspected of abusing children. This is a thinly-veiled effort to malign Pope Benedict."

Mr O'Gorman, a Dáil election candidate for the Progressive Democrats, travelled around the world for the TV investigation, titled 'Sex crimes and the Vatican'.

The programme examined the impact of what it claimed was Rome's secretive implementation of a 1962 policy document, 'Crimen Sollicitationis' (The Crime of Solicitation), which few outsiders have seen.

Mr Gorman, who campaigned to highlight the extent of clerical child sexual abuse in the diocese of Ferns after being raped by the late Fr Sean Fortune, claimed the document silenced victims and helped priests evade prosecution.

The programme also claimed that "at the heart of this scandal sits Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI".

It added: "For 20 years he controlled the Vatican department that enforced 'Crimen Sollicitationis' and in 2001 he created its successor." He was referring to 'Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela' - the protection of the most holy sacraments'.

Accusing Mr O'Gorman of "total distortion" and of "some false" statements about the documents, Fr Mullaney said the 1962 document "does not deal specifically with child abuse". Rather, it concerned the misuse of the confessional. "The programme confused the misuse of the sacrament of confession and the immoral attempts of a priest to silence a sex-abuse victim."

Fr Mullaney insisted that the 2001 document was an internal document which "does not in any way stop anyone from reporting a sexual assault to the civil authorities".

The documentary has caused an outcry in Britain. The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, is to make a formal complaint to the head of the BBC over the programme.

In the programme, an Irish victim of clerical abuse spoke publicly for the first time about how, as a boy attending a Catholic school, he was sexually abused by a priest.

Aiden Doyle said that, when he told another priest about what had happened, the priest said he was going to apply the seal of confession, indicating that he would have to keep quiet about the abuse.

The programme also featured Limerick-born paedophile priest Oliver O'Grady, speaking about his preference for young boys and girls.

John Cooney

© Irish Independent