not only did the catholic church know about pedophile priests, but they went out of their way to keep the situation under wraps. even going as far as to threaten priests if they exposed the corruption.

A letter to Ireland’s Roman Catholic bishops has been revealed by the broadcaster RTE that contradicts the Vatican’s frequent claim it has never instructed clergy to withhold evidence or suspicion of child abuse from police.

The 1997 letter documents rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to help police identify paedophile priests. Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II’s envoy to Ireland, it instructs bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”.

Storero wrote that canon law, whereby allegations and punishments are handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed”; any bishop who tried to go outside canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of being overturned on appeal in Rome.

Vatican letter told Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report child abuse