Roman Catholic bishops in England and Wales rejected as “false and entirely misleading” a BBC documentary about what it said was a cover-up of child sexual abuse under a system enforced by Pope Benedict XVI in his previous job.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in the two countries, plans to write to Mark Thompson, director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) this week to protest about the program, aired late on Sunday.
The documentary, by “Panorama”, the BBC’s flagship current affairs show, examined what it described as a secret document written in 1962 that sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.
The document, called “Crimen Sollicitationis”, imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witness. Breaking that oath would result in excommunication, the BBC said.
“The procedure was intended to protect a priest’s reputation until the church had investigated, but in practice it can offer a blueprint for cover-up,” the BBC documentary said.
“The man in charge of enforcing it for 20 years was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man made Pope last year,” reporter Colm O’Gorman said in the program “Sex Crimes and the Vatican”.
Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrine, from 1981 until his election as Pope in April, 2005.
The Vatican said on Monday it was studying the transcript of the show but had no immediate comment.
Archbishop: 'Program is false and entirely misleading'
Responding to the documentary, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, central England, said the BBC should be “ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI”.
He said there were two strands to the documentary, one highlighting cases of child abuse by priests -- a crime the Catholic Church dealt with seriously, carefully and with transparency -- the other attacking the Vatican.
“This aspect of the program is false and entirely misleading,” Nichols said in a statement endorsed by the bishops of England and Wales.
“It is false because it misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope.” The second document cited by the BBC was a 2001 update of the original text.
The public broadcaster defended its documentary.
“The protection of children is clearly an issue of the strongest public interest,” it said in a statement, responding to the bishops’ criticism. “The BBC stands by tonight’s ’Panorama’ program, and invites viewers to make up their own minds once they’ve seen it.”