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by Jim Holman.
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Derelict in Duty

Was John Paul II Complicit in the Cover-up of Sexual Abuse?

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

Pope John Paul II knew about priests molesting children as far back as the late 1980s and apparently did nothing about it. This shocking revelation — if revelation it be — was the burden of an article by journalist Gustavo Arellano, appearing in the May 27-June 2 Orange County Weekly. The story of the pope's complicity is one that is "likely to resonate worldwide," Arellano mused. How fortunate for the Weekly that Gustavo was there to break it.

Well, by the end of the first week of June, at least, Gustavo's story did not "resonate worldwide." Why? Maybe on account of his evidence. The "disturbing revelation" of the late pontiff's negligence, Arellano wrote, "is included in the papers of Father Andrew Christian Andersen," an Orange diocesan priest who in 1986 pled guilty to molesting four boys at St. Bonaventure church in Huntington Beach. The Andersen file contained a note from Monsignor Oscar Rizzato, then "deparment head" of the Holy See's secretariat of state, noting that he was forwarding to the Orange diocese two letters from a non-Catholic which voiced displeasure at the way the diocese had handled the Andersen case.

Both letters were addressed to Pope John Paul II.

In the first letter, written sometime in early 1987, the non-Catholic (whose name was crossed out) complains that the diocese of Orange did not punish Father Andersen for his crimes, but placed him in "some small church in New Mexico." "Your Father Andersen," the letter writer continued, "has the support of your church and many of the congregation." After his trial, "neither the Father nor his congregation mentioned anything about the victim. The children." The writer also revealed that his brother had been sexually abused by a deacon, but given the statute of limitations, nothing could be done to stop the perpetrator.

To this letter, Arellano wrote, "His Holiness did not answer."

Nor did he answer another letter from the same writer, dated June 4, 1987. In this letter, the writer notes he was sending a copy of his original letter. He says, though an Episcopalian, he hales from an "Irish Catholic family" and has "always felt a kinship with the Catholic religion" and has "always looked to the Pope as a symbol of the true and pure belief in God and Christ. I guess I need reassurance," he continues, "that you believe in what you say and the Bible's teachings and believe that the children are a great blessing from God that need our protection and love, not only when it is popular but more so when it is not."

Such was the evidence presented by Arellano in his Weekly article. Reading it, I was unconvinced that the hand of guilt necessarily pointed to the pope. An important middle was missing; namely, evidence that John Paul had actually seen the letters.

What evidence did Arellano have for his assertion that John Paul was derelict? On May 26, I e-mailed Arellano with this very question. The same day, I received his reply.

According to Arellano, "the letters were addressed to Pope John Paul II, so it's not much of a stretch to say he read them." Not much of a stretch? Does Arellano think that President Bush reads all the letters addressed to him? Or Governor Schwarzenneger? Or even the governor of North Dakota, for that matter? If not, why would anyone assume that the pope, who has the care for billions of Catholics worldwide, would read all his mail? Pope John Paul was an indefatigable worker, by all accounts; but even he had to sleep.

Arellano continued: "if for whatever reason he did not read them, then Bishop Rizzato, in his role as Secretariat [sic] of State, was supposed to inform him of the letters, especially in light of the sensitivity of the Andersen case at the time." Yet this is simply to argue that, perhaps, Rizzato was remiss in his duty. But it also ignores that the Vatican, like any other governing body, follows certain protocols.

This was confirmed for me by a California Catholic priest who is knowledgeable about Vatican governing custom. (The priest requested anonymity for the usual reason California priests request anonymity from the Mission; most California ordinaries do not like their priests speaking to us.) The priest, Father X, said that if a letter, such as the ones in question, "seems important enough for attention" it "is sent to the appropriate Vatican congregation, which would send it back to the diocese of its origin with the direction that the officials there should see to it." The Vatican policy is explicable, said Father X, "since it is not the Vatican's competence to do something about particular cases in other countries.

"The chances of the pope having seen the letters is practically nil."

Arellano in his e-mail reply to me said that the Holy See "knew of the problems in Orange County during the 1980s, so a letter regarding Andersen would've definitely set off the alarms in the Vatican that would've reached John Paul." Arellano's "would've definitely," however, assumes a number of factors. First, it assumes that Rizzato would have judged himself competent to second-guess the competency of a local ordinary almost half a world away without instigating a full-blown investigation of the Orange diocese. It also assumes that, even if Rizzato thought there was merit in the letter writer's charges, the Vatican has the resources to carry out such an investigation. The Vatican is a small bureaucracy, nothing like the United States government, as Father X noted to me. This bureaucracy has a world of dioceses and priests to deal with, not just the diocese of Orange. Can it possibly oversee every detail? But even if Rizzato thought the matter worthy of attention and had the resources to address it, this still does not prove that John Paul had read the letters or understood the full gravity of the American church's problems with priest molestation.

Indeed Pope John Paul II, it seems, had a possible blind spot in regards to the issue of priest molestation. According to Father X, John Paul, before the molestation crisis broke, "had the conviction, based on his experience of living in a Communist country, that accusations of child molestation are the standard attack on clergy."

The claim that John Paul dismissed claims of child molestation because of his past experience, if true, can be of little comfort to Catholics. Such a claim, however, reminds us that the pope is human and capable of misjudgment in his capacity as ruler of the universal Church. "Put not your trust in princes" applies also to supreme pontiffs, who are not impeccable.

But though popes are imperfect and even sometimes downright rotten, their actions deserve a measured and just appraisal — which, I thought, Gustavo Arellano did not accord John Paul II. But journalists, too, are not impeccable; they have their own prejudices and blind spots, even when trying to be most objective.

Arellano's article hints at just such a blind spot, one that I have found is common to secular journalists, and even some Catholic ones. They do not understand what the Church means by "sin" and seem to think the concept of sin confines the Church to an ivory tower of vague abstractions. Arellano approvingly quotes papal biographer John Cornwall, who wrote in the June issue of Vanity Fair that when John Paul "located the source of the crimes" of molestation in the mysterium iniquitatis, he distanced "the perpetrators, and indeed the Church, from responsibility." The concept of sin, wrote Cornwall, "implies that the priests in question did not set out to abuse young people but were enticed to do so by Satan."

Cornwall and Arellano would, it seems, prefer the word "crime" to sin in referring to sexual molestation. Why is unclear, for a crime, in Catholic parlance, is first a sinful act, but a sinful act forbidden in the external forum, in civil law. A sin, therefore, is far worse than a mere crime, for it is a violation not merely of the will of the state but of the will of God. Far from removing responsibility from anyone, the concept of sin roots an act at the core of individual accountability — his free will.

Sin is a word that points inexorably to the fact that a person who commits sin hasn't just violated some external standard of behavior but has twisted and perverted his very being as a man. Someone may be convicted of a crime and still be innocent, but no one convicted of sin in the tribunal of the heart can hold himself guiltless. Pope John Paul II knew this and, during his 26 years as pontiff, courageously declared it to the world. One wonders that those who attack the integrity of this pope on the flimsiest of evidence do so because they too know the truth he taught — and rather than acknowledge and struggle against the unpleasant reality in themselves, attack the character of the messenger — in this case, the Church's late, intrepid, though imperfect, supreme pontiff.

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