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Boston Priest to Lead Vatican’s Oversight of Sex Abuse Claims Boston Priest to Lead Vatican’s Oversight of Sexual Abuse Claims
(35 minutes later)
VATICAN CITY — The pope has put a priest from the archdiocese of Boston, the center of a clerical sex abuse scandal in the United States, in charge of the Vatican’s review of sex abuse by priests. ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday named a priest from Boston, the epicenter of the sexual abuse crisis in the United States, as the Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor. He also pardoned his former butler who was serving a prison term after leaking confidential documents in the Vatican’s most embarrassing security breach in decades.
The Vatican said Saturday that the Rev. Robert W. Oliver, a canonical specialist in the archdiocese, would succeed Bishop Charles Scicluna, who was recently named auxiliary bishop in his native Malta. The two announcements, which came on the weekend before Christmas, were a telling juxtaposition for a complex, ancient institution that has always tread a fine line between grace and justice, crime and punishment, sin and redemption.
Bishop Scicluna’s departure had sparked some fears among sex abuse victims that the Vatican might roll back on the tough line on clergy abuse he charted in his 10 years at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The Rev. Robert W. Oliver, a canon law specialist at the Archdiocese of Boston, will be the “promoter of justice” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal office that reviews all abuse cases, the Vatican said Saturday.
The Vatican office, which Pope Benedict XVI headed for nearly a quarter century, reviews all cases of clerical sex abuse, telling bishops how to proceed against accused priests. The abuse crisis erupted in Boston in 2002, when church records unsealed in a court case revealed that the diocese had transferred priests known to have been pedophiles. The scandal led to the resignation that year of Cardinal Bernard F. Law as archbishop of Boston.
The pope also granted his former butler a Christmas pardon on Saturday for stealing the pontiff’s private papers and leaking them to a journalist, one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times. Raising the ire of abuse victims, Cardinal Law was transferred to Rome and named archpriest of the prestigious Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore and remained a member of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for Bishops, responsible for naming bishops, until he retired last year.
The pope met for 15 minutes with the butler Paolo Gabriele in the prison where he was serving his sentence. Mr. Gabriele was subsequently freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lived with his wife and three children. The Rev. Oliver succeeds the Rev. Charles Scicluna, 53, who was promoted to auxiliary bishop in his native Malta. A friendly, diminutive canon lawyer, Monsignor Scicluna found himself at the eye of the storm after being named promoter of justice in 2002.
The Vatican said he would not continue living or working in the Vatican, but that it “intends to offer him the possibility to serenely restart his life together with his family.” The same year, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a decree that all abuse cases should be sent directly to the doctrinal office. But bishops later said that the decree was not explained clearly and confusion lingered over how dioceses should handle abuse cases.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope’s meeting with Mr. Gabriele was “intense” and “personal,” noting that Mr. Gabriele and the pope had worked together closely for six years. When the scandal erupted anew in Europe in 2010, with cases emerging in Ireland and Benedict’s native Germany — including some that called into question how Benedict handled an abuse case when he was archbishop of Munich in 1980 — the Vatican issued new guidelines, essentially telling bishops to report abuse cases to the police.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Victims groups called the Vatican’s actions too little, too late.
In an interview in March 2010, Monsignor Scicluna, who traveled the world explaining to dioceses how to handle abuse cases, said that his office had a staff of 10 and was adjudicating on average 300 cases a year of priests accused of abusing minors.
At the time, he said he hoped less that his office would have more staff, but rather that the Vatican would see fewer abuse cases.
The Vatican also said Saturday that Benedict had pardoned his former butler, Paolo Gabriele, 46, who had been sentenced to prison after admitting to leaking confidential documents that formed the basis of a tell-all book on alleged misdeeds, financial mismanagement, back-stabbing and infighting within the Vatican.
On Saturday morning, Benedict met for 15 minutes with Mr. Gabriele in the Vatican police barracks where he had been serving an 18-month sentence for aggravated theft and set him free, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.
Mr. Gabriele was arrested in May after Vatican authorities found what they called an “enormous” quantity of confidential documents in his Vatican apartment. Some appeared in “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” a book issued in May by a journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.
Mr. Gabriele said he leaked the documents because he believed that exposing the “evil and corruption” within the Vatican, and informing Benedict about mismanagement in the ranks of the Roman Curia, would help put the Catholic Church back on track.
Father Lombardi said that Mr. Gabriele would not have his former job back, as major-domo in the papal household, but that the Vatican will help find him a new job and apartment.