Vatican official blocked action on abuse, Cardinal Schonborn says
By Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said a top Vatican official had blocked an investigation of sexual abuse and offended victims by calling their complaints “petty gossip,” according to news reports from Austria.
Cardinal Schonborn made his remarks about Cardinal Angelo Sodano, longtime Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II and now the Dean of the College of Cardinals, in a private conversation with Austrian news editors at the end of April, the news outlets reported.
A spokesman for Cardinal Schonborn, who is Archbishop of Vienna, said by phone on 10 May that the Archdiocese would have no comment on the reports.
According to the reports, Cardinal Schonborn said Cardinal Sodano had hindered the investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of minors by the late Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who was forced to step down as Archbishop of Vienna in 1995.
He served as prior at a Benedictine monastery until 1998, when additional allegations of abuse surfaced, and he relinquished all public ministry.
Cardinal Groer died in 2003 without having undergone a canonical trial.
Cardinal Schonborn, who replaced Cardinal Groer in Vienna, said Pope Benedict XVI, then head of the Vatican office in charge of investigating accusations of clerical sex abuse, had been thwarted by Cardinal Sodano in his efforts to take more direct action on the accusations against Cardinal Groer, the reports said.
Cardinal Schonborn also was quoted in the reports as saying Cardinal Sodano had offended victims of sexual abuse in the Church when he said at the Pope’s Easter Mass that the increasing reports of sexual abuse by clergy amounted to “petty gossip.”
Cardinal Schonborn said the Church has in the past often protected abusers rather than victims. The Cardinal’s remarks, originally published in Austrian newspapers in late April, drew the attention of the international media in early May.
The high-level criticism of Cardinal Sodano was unusual, and drew a rebuke from a former Vatican official.
Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the former head of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, told an Italian Catholic website that Cardinal Schonborn should have spoken privately with the former secretary of state and that “accusations like this shouldn’t be made in this violent way through a newspaper.”
According to the press reports, Cardinal Schonborn also spoke of the need for urgent reform of the Roman Curia, the body of officials heading up the government of the Church.
He said that Pope Benedict was working on reform at the top but that he had many things to deal with as head of the worldwide Church.
Cardinal Schonborn reportedly told the newspaper editors that the Church needed to reconsider its position toward remarried divorced Catholics, who are not allowed to take Communion, and toward homosexuals in stable relationships.