This section is reprinted from the Irish Independent, October 3, 2006. Author is John Cooney, Religious Affairs Correspondent. View original link at http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1698776&issue_id=14717

Colm O'Gorman, the head of the One in Four victims' support group, yesterday called on the Vatican to introduce a worldwide mandatory child-protection policy as the Archbishop of Dublin rejected claims that the Pope led a cover-up of child sex abuse.

The developments came after a BBC Panorama programme, broadcast on Sunday, accused Pope Benedict XVI of covering up for two decades priests who abused children.

"It is simply not credible to suggest that the Vatican - and in particular Pope Benedict as Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church - bears no responsibility for the ongoing sexual abuse of children by priests in Catholic dioceses across the world," Mr O‘Gorman said.

He claimed that the Ferns Report, published last October by former Supreme Court judge Frank Murphy, had found that a 1962 secret Vatican document, 'Crimen Sollicitationis', had directed bishops on the handling of child-abuse allegations.

The Murphy Report said that this document imposed the penalty of automatic excommunication on anyone who breached secrecy. And Mr O‘Gorman claimed that those who argued that this document did not prevent victims from taking civil action were avoiding the programme‘s main finding - that Rome did not have a worldwide anti-abuse policy.

"The urgent need for such a policy is surely clear to any objective person who watched the film," he said.

Last night a senior Irish church source said that since 2001, when the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger updated the 1962 document, this directive had been applied by the diocese of Ferns, whose authorities had referred all child sex-abuse cases involving priests to Rome.

At the same time, the spokesman said, these allegations were referred to the civil authorities and to joint bodies composed of diocesan personnel, gardai and health officials. The 2001 directive had resulted in five priests in the Ferns diocese being dismissed from the priesthood.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the Pope had played a huge part in dealing openly with abuse cases.

He said that the documentary highlighted the evil of sex abuse and the trauma and suffering it inflicted. But he insisted: "What the programme did not do was to show any direct connection between the Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, and these particular cases.

"My experience is, in fact, that particularly the intervention of Cardinal Ratzinger in the beginning in 2001 has actually introduced a common form of practice by the Church around the world and has actually been a positive intervention."

The Archbishop told RTE radio that the idea was to let churches deal with sex-abuse cases at a local level but to ensure that common standards were adopted around the world.

He admitted that "the difficulties came in fact when there was a sort of vacuum in the application of terms." But he denied there was a secrecy policy and he also rejected the allegation in the documentary that clerics were sworn to secrecy if they became aware of sex abuse.

© Irish Independent