Dublin, Ireland, Jan 19, 2011 / 16:54 pm
A newly released 1997 letter that some claim proves a Vatican-led cover up of clergy sex abuse in Ireland is being misrepresented, Vatican and Irish Church officials said.
The letter’s release Jan. 17 by Ireland’s RTE television seemed timed to embarrass the Vatican as a team Pope Benedict appointed began its official “apostolic visitation” to assess the state of the Irish Church and its progress in the wake of the clergy abuse scandal.
But Church officials said the letter proves the opposite of what lawyers for abuse victims have been claiming widely in the media.
The Jan. 31, 1997 letter was written to the Irish bishops by the Vatican's then-representative to Ireland, the late Archbishop Luciano Storero. In it, he expressed the Vatican’s concerns that legal requirements that bishops report priests accused of abuse to police might cause conflicts with Church law.