Papal favourite Pietro Parolin ‘withheld information on child sex abusers’

Cardinals Pietro Parolin and Luis Antonio Tagle, both favourites to succeed Francis, withheld incriminating church records, including those requested by Australia, it has been claimed.

Italian cardinal and Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin (2ndL) arrives at St Peter's Basilica prior to the start of the Eight Novemdiale mass, following the funeral of the pope and ahead of the conclave, in The Vatican. Picture; AFP.

Two top contenders to become the next leader of the Catholic Church cannot be trusted to crack down on the sex abuse of children by priests, a campaign group has claimed.

The Italian cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who are both favourites to succeed Francis at the Vatican conclave, withheld incriminating church records, the American watchdog Bishop Accountability said.

Cardinals will gather to vote for the next pope in the conclave starting on Wednesday.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, said: “It can be fairly said that no church official in the world has played as pivotal a role in withholding information about sex crimes from civil authorities than Cardinal Parolin.”

She argued that all requests for information about priests from other countries who were accused of abuse had gone through Parolin’s office of the Vatican secretary of state since 2013 and were often blocked.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle attends a mass at St Peter's basilica in The Vatican. Picture: AFP.

When a British abuse commission asked in 2018 and 2019 for information about cases in the English Benedictine Congregation, “Cardinal Parolin refused, saying that the Holy See [the central governing body of the Church] did not exercise jurisdiction over individuals and institutions outside the Vatican”, Barrett Doyle said, adding that when Polish investigators asked for information, local bishops said, “Sorry, we’ve turned that information over to the Vatican.”

The Australian abuse commission counted 4,400 victims of 1,100 Catholic clergy but the Vatican had handed over files on only two priests. “That’s obstruction of justice,” she said. “The official ultimately responsible for that decision was Cardinal Parolin.”

Tagle, who was Archbishop of Manila between 2011 and 2020, is likely to push on with the late pope’s progressive agenda if elected. However, he did nothing to pull the Philippines out of the “Dark Ages” on abuse, Barrett Doyle said. “He is a gentleman who weeps when he talks about victims, but what we found dismayed us,” she said.

Rather than publishing guidelines on how to report abuse, the bishops’ conference of the Philippines issued a document in which it divided the blame for priests abusing children with the parents and even the children themselves, stating that “a victimised child is not necessarily the passive partner in an exploitative relation”.

Barrett Doyle said: “If Cardinal Tagle cannot even get his brother bishops from his home country to publish guidelines, what on earth can we expect for him to achieve as pope of a global church?”

Shay Cullen, an Irish missionary priest in the Philippines, said the local church continued to block investigations into abusive priests and encouraged “total silence”.

Barrett Doyle said that Parolin and Tagle were only two cardinals among many who had not done enough to stamp out abuse. She said that only bishops in the United States were “accustomed” to name abusers and kick them out of the church.

“Only in the US is it church law that a priest found guilty under canon law of sexual abuse is removed permanently from public ministry,” she said, adding that “elsewhere, bishops can give second chances”.

Asked who she would vote for as the next pontiff, she named the Boston cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley.

“I don’t believe he is a hero but he has done a little bit more than everyone else and has no learning curve. He is completely up to speed,” she said. “He is perhaps the least bad of many bad options.”

There have been conflicting reports about Parolin’s health. Italian media reported the 70-year-old had fainted due to high blood pressure and required medical intervention on Wednesday. However, the incident was denied by Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See press office, in an interview with a journalist for La Croix, the French Catholic daily.

In a statement, the Holy See said: “During the meeting with journalists, the director of the Holy See press office, Matteo Bruni, refuted the hypothesis of Cardinal Pietro Parolin falling ill, specifying that no such incident had occurred. He also denied the involvement of medical or nursing staff.”

Asked by AFP about the accusations made against both cardinals, a Vatican spokesman declined to comment.

The Times