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General Veers
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World
Apr 10, 2010
Church tried to hide abuse
<!-- by line --> <!-- end by line --> OTTAWA - CANADIAN bishops sought to hide a paedophile priest's crimes by urging the Vatican not to promote him, according to a 1993 letter obtained on Friday by AFP, in the latest revelations to rock the Church. The letter written by an Ontario bishop, made public as part of a civil suit, comes amid the growing scandal over the Catholic Church's alleged inaction over sex abuse cases against children in the past decades.
In the four-page letter, Canadian church officials warned Pope Benedict XVI's envoy to Canada not to promote Monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, to the Episcopate nor present him with Papal honours in order to avoid charges and a public trial. Prince was defrocked and sentenced by an Ontario court in 2008 to four years in prison for abusing 13 boys between 1964 and 1984. He is due to be released in 2012.
At the time the letter was written on February 10, 1993, Prince had recently been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies, where he worked until his retirement in 2004. The year before Prince was sent to Rome, a 34-year-old man complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child. Ontario bishops learned of further victims later. -- AFP
Apr 10, 2010
Church tried to hide abuse
<!-- by line --> <!-- end by line --> OTTAWA - CANADIAN bishops sought to hide a paedophile priest's crimes by urging the Vatican not to promote him, according to a 1993 letter obtained on Friday by AFP, in the latest revelations to rock the Church. The letter written by an Ontario bishop, made public as part of a civil suit, comes amid the growing scandal over the Catholic Church's alleged inaction over sex abuse cases against children in the past decades.
In the four-page letter, Canadian church officials warned Pope Benedict XVI's envoy to Canada not to promote Monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, to the Episcopate nor present him with Papal honours in order to avoid charges and a public trial. Prince was defrocked and sentenced by an Ontario court in 2008 to four years in prison for abusing 13 boys between 1964 and 1984. He is due to be released in 2012.
At the time the letter was written on February 10, 1993, Prince had recently been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies, where he worked until his retirement in 2004. The year before Prince was sent to Rome, a 34-year-old man complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child. Ontario bishops learned of further victims later. -- AFP
