Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #5

Father Doyle wrote that these cases

were going to cost the Church

eventually $1 billion.

The last estimate is

it's over $2 billion.

So he was right.

'Facing the crisis,

'Catholics confront the sex abuse

scandal on the very first day of holy ..'

'NBC News In Depth tonight.

Crisis in the Church..'

'New details tonight about how the

Boston Archdiocese handled the case

'of a priest charged now with

repeatedly raping a young boy.'

'Tonight, another priest..'

'John Geoghan, accused by

more than 130 of abuse..'

'Newly released documents show

Boston Church officials knew..'

'Cardinal Law knew of Shanley's

alleged abusive behaviour,

'but never informed legal

authorities..'

'Last month's life sentence

given to Father John Hanlon

'for raping a young boy

'is the latest chapter

in a scandal that is..'

'Now, after the Church sex scandal

first came to light in Boston,

'thousands of victims across

the country have gone public..'

'This morning, the Pope

has broken his silence

'about the growing sexual abuse rocking

the Catholic Church in the United States.'

'Even President Bush

weighed in yesterday

saying he's confident

'the Church will clean

up its business and

do the right thing.'

'Law must go!

Law must go!'

Identified as a key figure who

covered up sex abuse in Boston,

Cardinal Law cost the Church tens of

millions of dollars in settlements.

But instead of being punished

by the Vatican,

Law was rewarded

with a seven-year term

at this magnificent basilica

in Rome.

He had the second most

prominent church in catholicism

and a palace to live in.

And he's got a stake a in luxurious state

of affairs for the rest of his life.

It sends a pretty blatant message

that victims aren't that important,

but you've persecuted

this poor cardinal.

You know, he's suffered enough,

now we've got to give him

a nice cushy job to protect him.

One of the things that Vatican

officials had tried to do

is portray this

as an American thing

or, at best,

an Anglo-Saxon thing.

Oh, the sex abuse scandals,

they happen only in the United

States, in Canada..

And, suddenly, in the year 2010,

this great scandal

explodes in Europe.

It explodes in Ireland,

in Germany,

in Austria, in Switzerland,

in France, in Belgium.

Everybody points to this to be

from the date 2002,

when the Boston Globe said,

"Hey, we have a problem here."

And they subsequently

published 1,200 articles.

This is an old, old problem

and if you follow this problem

to its foundation,

it will lead you to the highest

corridors of the Vatican.

Benedicti Decimi Sexti.

Cardinale Ratzinger.

In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

was elected Pope,

and chose the name Benedict XVI.

He was known as a great

theologian and intellectual.

What many did not realise

was that for 25 years, he'd

led the Vatican Office familiar

with the most severe cases

of sex abuse by priests,

the Congregation for the

Doctrine of the Faith.

The CDF has a dark history.

When it was founded

in the 16th century,

it was known as the Inquisition.

Ratzinger took that job over,

he was Archbishop of

Munich and Freising,

and he was promoted

by John Paul II

to run the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Think of the Pope in the middle and

a whole bunch of offices around him.

What you had was multiple

offices of the Holy See,

who ultimately don't talk to one another,

handling these different cases.

And so, cases wouldn't

get bogged down.

But then what happened in 2001,

Ratzinger put out this teaching

approved by John Paul II that said,

"Every sex abuse case that involves

a minor, they all come to my desk."

From 2001 forward,

every single priest sex abuse case

went to Ratzinger.

Cardinal Ratzinger, now

His Holiness Benedict XVI,

is the most knowledgeable

person in the world

regarding priestly

sexual abuse of minors,

'cos he has all the data.

Inside the cloistered

walls of the Vatican

lie voluminous records of worldwide

sexual abuse in the priesthood,

centralized in the secret archives

of the Congregation for

the Doctrine of the Faith.

It is the century-old history

of the Catholic Church.

We have documents from councils

in Spain in the 4th century after Christ,

in which there is written something

about sex abuse with children.

So it is 1,700 years that the

church is dealing about this.

This is the guilt of the Vatican.

They could already understand

how deep this scandal was

and that this scandal was not

just an American scandal,

and that a paedophile is not a sinner,

but he's a criminal.

He is a criminal who

plans his activity,

who is very attentive

to organize situations

in which he can abuse children.

Well, it's one for the money

And it's two for the show

Three to get ready

Now, go, cat, go

But don't you

Stand on my blue suede shoes

Uh-huh

You can do anything

But lay off of my blue suede shoes.

For most people, Tony Walsh

was the priest from Ballyfermot

who did an Elvis impersonation,

He was part of the

Singing Priests group.

And he was very good, he was a

really, really popular priest.

What most people didn't know

was that Tony Walsh was

Ireland's most notorious paedophile.

In 2010, a government investigation

revealed that Walsh,

by his own count, had committed

over 200 acts of abuse.

That investigation, known as the

Murphy Report,

also uncovered the fact

that the archdiocese of Dublin

had known about

Walsh's activity

for nearly 20 years, yet did

nothing to inform parents or police.

His first appointment in 1979

was to Valey Farmers.

The suburb of Dublin.

He's put in the charge

of the older boys,

even though, in 1979 already there was

a complaint made against him

a couple of days

after his ordination.

In Ireland, Catholicism is

kind of like a blood type.

It's the status quo,

it's what's always been done,

you don't question it,

you blindly go along with it.

You know, the Catholic Church was

part of who we are and what we are.

The priest, he is the

carrier of the sacrament.

You know, it's almost like he's

the.. he's got the Holy Grail.

I remember interviewing

a woman once and she said,

"We used to get down on

our knees when he passed by"

"and bless ourselves. He carried the

host, you know.

"That's how people saw them," and that's

because they were almost Godlike.

The government investigation

into the Singing Priest

uncovered church documents that

revealed a new dimension

to the worldwide sex abuse scandal.

It was the role played by bishops and the

Vatican in allowing the abuse to continue.

Year after year, parents reported

Walsh's abuse to the Dublin archdiocese,

but the church did not

punish the priest,

reach out to the victims

or alert local parents.

As revelations continued

in the Walsh case,

parents and survivors scanned

the Murphy Report

to learn the extent of the crimes

and the cover-up.

Documents showed that the

church kept allowing Walsh

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