No order issued to conceal criminal acts
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.
Bishops are not prevented by this document, or by Cardinal Ratzinger's letter of 2001, from initiating a parallel criminal investigation by reporting a credible allegation to the police.
This is not to say that bishops have always reported such abuse merely that they have not been told to conceal criminal acts from civil authorities by either Pope John XXIII or by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI.
This is the considered verdict on these issues of Fr Tom Doyle, OP, JCD whose record of pursuing the interests of abuse victims dates back to the early 1980s, and who is an established canon law authority on clerical child abuse.
Sean Ó Conaill
Irish Co-ordinator
Voice of the Faithful
2, Greenhill Road
Coleraine
Co Derry
