"We do not want any censorship," Bishop Giuseppe Betori, general secretary of
the Italian bishops' conference, told reporters May 22 in the midst of a very
public debate over whether RAI, the state-run television network, should
broadcast "Sex Crimes and the Vatican," a 2006 documentary of the British
Broadcasting Corp.
Officials at RAI announced late May 22 that they would permit the program to be
broadcast, but said the 40-minute documentary would be aired within the context
of a talk show, and the guests would include officials from the Italian church.
Bishop Betori said it was essential that someone, either at RAI or the bishops'
conference, explain to the public "all of the falsities it seems to contain"
when the program airs, likely to be May 31.
He said the program implies that when Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he
issued norms for handling clerical sex abuses cases aimed at covering up the
crimes.
The documentary said that in 2001 then-Cardinal Ratzinger issued an updated
version of a 1962 Vatican document, "Crimen Sollicitationis" ("The Crime of
Solicitation"), which the documentary said laid down the rules for covering up
sexual scandals.
After the documentary aired Oct. 1 in Great Britain, Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster lodged a formal complaint with the BBC, saying
that while no one could deny the "devastating effects of child abuse in our
society," particularly when committed by a priest, the documentary "sets out to
inflict grave damage on Pope Benedict."
"The main focus of the program is to seek to connect Pope Benedict with (the)
cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church," the cardinal said. "This is
malicious and untrue and based on a false presentation of church documents."
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, England, had criticized the
documentary as a "deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious
leader," misrepresenting the two Vatican documents.
"The first document, issued in 1962, is not directly concerned with child abuse
at all but with the misuse of the confessional," he said. "The second document
clarified the law of the church, ensuring that the Vatican is informed of every
case of child abuse and that each case is dealt with properly.. ..It is a
measure of the seriousness with which the Vatican views these offenses."
Catholic News Service
