Catholics say sex abuse blog spreads BBC "slander" to Italy
Pastor Dale Morgan
Catholics say sex abuse blog spreads BBC "slander" to Italy*
By Phil Stewart
Reuters
Saturday, May 19, 2007; 1:04 PM
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's leading Roman Catholic newspaper lashed out at
bloggers on Saturday for spreading "slander" by posting a BBC
documentary that alleged a Church cover-up of child sexual abuse.
The documentary aired on the BBC in October, but never in Italy. The
bloggers translated it and it now ranks as Google Video Italia's
(www.video.google.it) most popular item.
"We did the patient work of translating and subtitling it to fill this
shameful gap," they wrote at www.bispensiero.it.
Newspaper Avvenire, which is owned by the Italian Conference of Roman
Catholic bishops, slammed the web version in a front-page editorial
headlined "Infamous Slander Via Internet."
The BBC documentary examined what it described as a secret document
written in 1962 that set out a procedure for dealing with child sexual
abuse within the Church.
It imposed an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest and any
witness, a policy the BBC documentary said was meant to protect the
priest's reputation during the investigation but "can offer a blueprint
for cover-up."
Avvenire called the documentary "a pot-pourri of affirmations and
pseudo-testimony that were at the time publicly repudiated" for being
false and misleading.
The Roman Catholic Church has been hit in several countries, including
the United States and Ireland, by lawsuits and allegations of sex abuse
by priests.
British bishops last year criticized the BBC, saying it should be
"ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this
unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict."
Before being elected Pope in 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was
the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican
department that enforces doctrine.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, writing on behalf of the
British bishops, has said the original document in question was
concerned not directly with child abuse but with the abuse of the
confessional by a priest to silence his victim.
The document was revised in 2001 to deal more specifically with sex
abuse cases but still remained secret, Nichols said. He added Pope
Benedict had worked to punish offenders.