The French Connection (Main Forum)

by James, Australia, Friday, April 20, 2012, 12:20 (425 days ago) @ Oh Yet We Trust

Have I just missed it or has France been pretty much out of the news in regards to clerical abuse and is the above perhaps the reason why? Interesting thought. I'm sure abuse happened in France but you don't hear much about it.

Stephen,

The reason I specifically mentioned France is because it has the European Continental system of law. Most common law jurisdictions had misprision of felony laws that required people to report serious crimes unless they had a reasonable excuse. It was these laws that Canon Law specifically told bishops and anyone involved in enquiring about the sex abuse of minors to disobey, under pain of excommunication.

As I do not know much about the specifics of the Continental system on these issues, I confined my remarks on this to common law countries like England, Ireland, United States, Australia, Canada, etc.

However, I do know that there was such a law in France, because bishop Pierre Pican was given a three month suspended jail sentence for shifting around a seral pedophile priest who was ultimately given 18 years jail.

But not only was the bishop prosecuted, but the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, Cardinal Dario Castrillon, wrote to Pican on September 8, 2001, congratulating him on not reporting his information to the police. You have to remember that this is just 6 months after Cardinals Ratzinger and Bertone signed the Motu Proprio confirming and reinforcing "pontifical secrecy" in any investigation and reporting to the Vatican on pedophile priess.

Cardinal Castrillon wrote,

"I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration," Castrillon Hoyos said. "You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest."

Cardinal Castrillon, you will recall, was in charge of the Congregation of Bishops when the Irish bishops wanted an exemption from pontifical secrecy to allow reporting to the police. They were firmly told by the Papal Nuncio in January 1997 that such a proposal conflicted with Canon Law - and it did: Crimen Sollicitationis of 1962, signed by Cardinal Ottaviani.

Castrillon further had a meeting with the Irish bishops in 1998 where, according to the RTE documentary, he repeated the same message, and one bishop at the meeting noted that they were being instructed to hide the crimes of priests from the police.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/15/us-pope-abuse-france-idUSLDE63E2H420100415

But this is where the lie and the spin comes in from the Vatican, the Reuters report says,

Under fire in recent weeks for its secretive handling of abuse cases, the Vatican has insisted the fact that other published documents did not explicitly instruct bishops to inform police of abuse did not prove it told them to hide it.

Well, Crimen Sollicitationis does not have the specific words, "don't go to the police", but it was a prohibition on revealing the information to everyone, which must include the police.

So, Stephen, that is the French connection, and all it does is confirm once again that not only did Crimen Sollicitationis mean what it said, but a prohibition on reporting to the police was the unanimous interpretation given to the document by the highest Curial officials in the Vatican, until the law was abandoned in May 2010.