No order issued to conceal criminal acts

CONTRARY to Patrick Geaney’s letter (Irish Examiner, April 27), neither the document Crimen Sollicitationis of 1962 nor Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter of May 2001 give any permit to Catholic bishops to conceal criminal acts of child abuse from the civil authorities.

What they do is to bind those involved in the internal church investigation of breaches of the church's own rules to secrecy in relation to that church investigation.

Crimen Sollicitationis relates to breaches of the rules regarding the sacrament of penance (reconciliation), including sexual solicitation. Very few cases of clerical child abuse are initiated in this way, and in the case of those that are, bishops are not prevented by the rule of secrecy from reporting a criminal offence because the rule of secrecy relates only to a canonical offence that does not concern the criminal law ie, misuse by a priest of a Church sacrament.