Sex Crimes and the Vatican

Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006) is a documentary film (39 min) filmed by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old.

Crimen sollicitationis

It was filmed for the BBC's Panorama documentary series, and charged that the Vatican used a secret document, Crimen sollicitationis, to silence allegations of sexual abuse by priests and that Crimen sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope.[1]

The Vatican refused repeated requests from Panorama to respond to any of the cases shown in the film.[2]

Many Catholic Bishops, priests and laity expressed anger at what they perceived as a clear bias against the church. They state that the program made no effort to highlight the efforts made by the church in recent years to combat sex abuse, particularly the efforts taken by the English and Welsh Catholic Church under the leaderships of both Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Archbishop Vincent Nichols, both of whom have significantly improved child protection procedures within the Catholic Church.

Colm O'Gorman

Sex Crimes and the Vatican was filmed by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old. Father Seán Fortune was charged with 66 counts of sexual, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence relating to eight boys but he committed suicide on the eve of his trial. Colm started an investigation with the BBC in March 2002 called Suing the Pope which led to the resignation of Dr. Brendan Comiskey, the bishop leading the Ferns Diocese. Colm then pushed for a government inquiry which led to the Ferns Report.

See also

References

  1. "Sex crimes and the Vatican". BBC News. September 29, 2006. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  2. "Sex crimes and the Vatican: Transcript". BBC Panorama. October 3, 2006. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
  3. "Bishop Accountability". bishop-accountability.org. Retrieved 28 February 2015.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 07, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.