Papal order covers ‘worst crime’

REV GERARD GARRETT (Irish Examiner letters, May 18) is wrong when he says that “Crimen Sollicitationis (is) a Vatican document dealing principally with solicitation by priests in the course of confession.”

The document indeed describes as “this unspeakable crime” when a priest in the confessional “tempts a penitent toward impure and obscene matters, whether by words or signs or nods of the head, whether by touch or by writing.” (Clause 1).

However, Crimen Sollicitationis reserves the epithet “the worst crime” for when priests and religious sexually abuse trusting, helpless, innocent boys and girls and “brute beasts” such as cats and dogs.