This Saturday night at 8:00 PM (ET) CNN will air a special one-hour
\ndocumentary about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. The program,
\nentitled What the Pope Knew<\/i> will be reported by Gary Tuchman. <\/p>\n
I spoke to him about what he found. Here is part one (of three) of an edited transcript of that interview.
JWK:<\/b> How did this documentary come to be?<\/p>\n
TUCHMAN: <\/b>
\nWe have done a lot of stories about what had happened in the Catholic
\nChurch but what was notable — and what gave us the idea for this hour
\n— were two things. <\/p>\n
One. Pope Benedict has done more than any
\nother pope to combat it. He’s the only pope that ever met with victims
\nand made public apologies. That’s very notable.<\/p>\n
But that
\ncombined with fact that one of the victims in our hour is suing Pope
\nBenedict and the Vatican. That’s the first time that’s happened. <\/p>\n
Those two things together we thought made this ripe for a comprehensive and fair hour looking at this very important topic. <\/p>\n
JWK:<\/b> What did you think you’d find and what did you actually find?<\/p>\n
TUCHMAN: <\/b>We
\nhave found previously secret Church documents — that have been secret
\nfor decades but were subpoenaed and we were able to get access to them
\n— and these previously secret documents unequivocally show that
\nCardinal Ratzinger — today’s Pope Benedict — knew about sexual
\nmolestations in the Church as early as the 1980’s when he was the head
\nof the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That bishops in the
\nUnited States, specifically bishops in Oakland, Milwaukie (and)
\nSpringfield, Illinois were sending Cardinal Ratzinger desperate letters
\n— please remove this abusive priest from our diocese, please laicize
\nand defrock him.<\/p>\n
In some cases these priests were already
\nconvicted. They were already in jail. But they were still priests. But
\nthe response, unfortunately, from Cardinal Ratzinger and the
\nCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was often a situation where
\nRatzinger opposed or slowed down the defrocking of these priests —
\nincluding these convicted child molesters.<\/p>\n
What’s notable about
\nthat is that Cardinal Ratzinger was very involved in silencing,
\ncensoring or firing dozens of priests who differed with the Vatican
\nabout doctrine but, when it came to this, the philosophy was to delay,
\nask for more time, more evidence. <\/p>\n
We were very fortunate and
\ndelighted that one of the Pope’s top aides did an interview with us in
\nthe Vatican, (Vatican Prosecutor) Monsignor Charles Scicluna. And what
\nwas interesting is he tells us even back then the local bishops could
\nhave made decisions on their own — and should have decisions on their
\nown to get these priests away from kids. And it was known that they
\ncould do that — but if they knew that why were they sending desperate
\nletters to Cardinal Ratzinger asking for it and doing it repeatedly?<\/p>\n
Even the bishops didn’t know that! So, that’s what’s disturbing. <\/p>\n
The
\nargument is things were different back then. But, you know what?
\nChildren are children and they were being molested and nothing was
\nbeing done about their molesters. The police weren’t told, the public
\nwasn’t being told and the bishops in the United States were getting no
\nadequate response from Cardinal Ratzinger.<\/p>\n
JWK: <\/b>So some bishops were actually trying to deal with it and were told by the Vatican to cool it?<\/p>\n
TUCHMAN:<\/b>
\nRight. We have the bishop in Oakland writing to Cardinal Ratzinger that
\nI have this priest who wants to be defrocked (and) is a convicted
\nmolester. Please defrock him. And letters with Cardinal Ratzinger’s
\nsignature came back — we need more information. We gotta remember the
\ngood of the Universal Church.<\/p>\n
Now, to some, that means he’s
\nconcerned about the reputation of the Church. The Vatican today is
\ntelling us that was just a stock phrase that was used, that more
\ninvestigation was needed. Either way, nothing was done.<\/p>\n
We want
\nto be very clear. We are not criticizing the institution of the
\nCatholic Church in this documentary. That’s not what this is about.
\nWe’re criticizing molesters and why molesters weren’t stopped earlier
\n— like they are today.<\/p>\n
JWK:<\/b> You don’t have to condemn the entire Church to say that the bureaucracy got in the way.<\/p>\n
TUCHMAN:<\/b>
\nI’ve done stories like this for many years and I constantly have had
\ngood and great priests come up to me and say thank you. We can’t even
\nhug the children in our parish anymore because we’re afraid. And these
\nbad priests have done this to us. They’ve impugned this great religion
\nby their activity and actions. They made things bad for us.<\/p>\n
We
\ndedicate this to the good priests and the hundreds of millions of
\nfaithful Catholic lay people who deserve better than these pedophile
\npriests who, unfortunately, could have been stopped quicker.<\/p>\n
TOMORROW: How the Vatican cooperated with the making of the documentary<\/b> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This Saturday night at 8:00 PM (ET) CNN will air a special one-hour documentary about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. The program, entitled What the Pope Knew will be reported by Gary Tuchman. I spoke to him about what he found. Here is part one (of three) of an edited transcript of that interview.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,13,1,14,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-christianity","category-journalism","category-media","category-pope-benedict-xvi","category-television","category-vatican"],"yoast_head":"\n