Question just rewording a little from article.

Pope under fire for transfer, letter on sex abuse

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 34 mins ago
VATICAN CITY – Germany’s sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese acknowledged it transferred a suspected pedophile priest while Benedict was in charge and criticism is mounting over a 2001 Vatican directive he penned instructing bishops to keep abuse cases secret.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100312/ap_on_re_eu/eu_church_abuse

“Canon law concerning grave crimes … doesn’t in any way interfere with or diminish the obligations of the faithful to civil laws,” said Monsignor Davide Cito, a professor of canon law at Rome’s Santa Croce University.
The letter doesn’t tell bishops to also report the crimes to police.
But the Rev. John Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said it didn’t need to. A general principle of moral theology to which every bishop should adhere is that church officials are obliged to follow civil laws where they live, he said.
Yet Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore in Northern Ireland, told a news conference this week that Irish bishops “widely misinterpreted” the directive and couldn’t get a clear reading from Rome on how to proceed.
“One of the difficulties that bishops expressed was the fact that at times it wasn’t always possible to get clear guidance from the Holy See and there wasn’t always a consistent approach within the different Vatican departments,” he said.
“Obviously, Rome is aware of this misinterpretation and the harm that this has done, or could potentially do, to the trust that the people have in how the church deals with these matters,” he said.
An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic.
“An obligation to secrecy/confidentialtiy on the part of participants in a canonical process could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others,” it concluded.
In the United States, Dan Shea, an attorney for several victims, has introduced the Ratzinger letter in court as evidence that the church was trying to obstruct justice. He has argued that the church impeded civil reporting by keeping the cases secret and “reserving” them for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“This is an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice,” Shea told The Associated Press.

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