Vatican still lacks mandate

The Vatican's insistence that it never impeded criminal investigations of pedophile priests has been thrown into doubt by a 1997 letter from the pope's representative in Dublin warning against a mandate by Irish church leaders for full cooperation with criminal authorities.

Throughout the mushrooming scandal, Rome officials have denied trying to foil secular law by allowing child-abuse allegations to be shrouded in halfhearted diocesan inquiries and coverups. 

But the newly discovered letter undermines those claims and reinforces evidence of foot dragging that has still not been adequately addressed by the Vatican.

The letter from the papal representative rejected a 1996 decision by Dublin church leaders to respond more candidly to the suppressed scandal in Ireland by ordering that child-abuse allegations be referred for criminal investigation. 

The “strictly confidential” letter from Rome — leaked last week amid continuing inquiries into the Irish scandal — emphasized the priority of in-house handling of pedophilia cases under church, not civil, law.

This was hardly the needed prescription for what an Irish government investigation eventually described as “endemic” abuse of thousands of children over decades by rogue priests who were routinely shielded from criminal penalties.

It was disclosed recently, for example, that Tony Walsh, a notorious abuser of children who was convicted and defrocked in a secret church court in Dublin in 1993, got his collar back a year later when a Vatican court believed his appeal and reinstated him as a priest. 

He was eventually imprisoned after raping and molesting scores of youngsters.

Rome officials insist that the letter from Rome is outdated, misinterpreted and superseded by tougher church rules. 

Unfortunately, the latest policies of the Vatican do not mandate the zero-tolerance reforms that ranking officials in the United States and elsewhere were forced to proclaim as the scandal demoralized church faithful worldwide.

It is commendable that Pope Benedict XVI has been apologizing and promising a firmer hand. 

But current Vatican policy, updated last year, offers merely a nonbinding advisory — not a firm mandate — that diocesan officials should report crimes to police.

This is cold comfort to worried Catholic parents or anyone else relying on the rule of law.

SIC: NYT/USA