{"id":34,"date":"2010-03-26T13:37:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html"},"modified":"2010-03-26T13:37:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:37:37","slug":"was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html","title":{"rendered":"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests?"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s the million — perhaps billion — dollar question for faithful Catholics, as the New York Times continues hammering away at its investigation of how Pope Benedict’s former office handled reports of clergy sex abuse in the U.S., <\/a>Germany, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The NYT has uncovered memos and other documents<\/a> that indicate Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future pope) was apprised of plans to send pedophile priests to counseling and return them to pastoral work. No smoking gun (his signature, for example) has yet emerged that definitely proves he knew and approved of such plans; the Catholic Church’s defense <\/a>continues to be that the Vatican has admitted that mistakes were made and accepted several bishop resignations, while noting that these stories are reporting on decades-old news, overlooking evidence that the scourge of clergy sex abuse has declined, at least in America.<\/a><\/p>\n

So far, it remains unclear how much, if anything, Ratzinger\/Benedict knew about specific coverups, but one thing continues to stand out, for me: the Vatican never recommended reporting a crime to the police.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Check back for updates and share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n

*Click here to <\/span>subscribe to Belief Beat <\/span><\/strong><\/a>and <\/span>click here to <\/span>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the million — perhaps billion — dollar question for faithful Catholics, as the New York Times continues hammering away at its investigation of how Pope Benedict’s former office handled reports of clergy sex abuse in the U.S., Germany, and elsewhere. The NYT has uncovered memos and other documents that indicate Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future pope) was apprised of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDid the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests? - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests? - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That’s the million — perhaps billion — dollar question for faithful Catholics, as the New York Times continues hammering away at its investigation of how Pope Benedict’s former office handled reports of clergy sex abuse in the U.S., Germany, and elsewhere. The NYT has uncovered memos and other documents that indicate Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future pope) was apprised of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-26T13:37:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests? - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests? - Belief Beat","og_description":"That’s the million — perhaps billion — dollar question for faithful Catholics, as the New York Times continues hammering away at its investigation of how Pope Benedict’s former office handled reports of clergy sex abuse in the U.S., Germany, and elsewhere. The NYT has uncovered memos and other documents that indicate Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future pope) was apprised of…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-03-26T13:37:37+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html","name":"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests? - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-03-26T13:37:37+00:00","dateModified":"2010-03-26T13:37:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/was-pope-benedict-involved-in-covering-up-for-pedophile-priests.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Did the Pope Approve Covering Up for Pedophile Priests?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}