‘Smoking gun’ in church crisis?

Dec. 11 — As pressure continued to build Wednesday for Cardinal Bernard Law to resign as head of the Boston Archdiocese, critics said they had uncovered a “smoking gun” that shows Law and other U.S. Catholic leaders accused of covering up sex abuse allegations were acting on the pope’s orders.

A GROUP called the Coalition of Catholics and Survivors said Tuesday it had come across the document from among the thousands of personnel files that the Boston Archdiocese made public last week. A court hearing lawsuits against the archdiocese had ordered the release.

Joseph Gallagher, a co-founder of the group, said the document was the “smoking gun” that spelled out a Vatican policy of placing image ahead of child welfare.

In the document, Pope John Paul II says a defrocked Catholic priest who had a history of molesting boys should leave the areas where his “condition” was known — or stay put as long as it caused no scandal.

“That would explain why (other) bishops have done the same thing as Cardinal Law — they’ve moved sexual offenders from parish to parish without notifying the parishioners,” Gallagher said.

The May 25, 1999, document is a translation of Pope John Paul II’s order removing Robert Burns, a convicted pedophile, from the priesthood.

Donna Morrissey, a Boston Archdiocese spokeswoman, said she could not comment on matters of litigation.

If there is any truth to this, that would be major. We'll see if this has legs. I guess this would re-open the issue of if the Vatican can be sued for its assetts in the U.S.