Poisonous Pontifications

Here’s how this works from the top down

Extract from Unknown News:

Pedophile priests scandal:
Ratzinger's office was responsible for handling the ongoing sex scandal, involving hundreds of priests who molested children under the cover of their clerical collars. So what did Ratzinger do?
• In 2001, as the decades-long pattern of priests' abuse first started to be reported, he wrote a letter to bishops reminding them that church policy since 1962 mandated that the church itself would investigate, bypassing worldly police authorities, and required victims of priestly abuse to take an oath of secrecy.

In effect, Ratzinger ordered a cover-up.
•
• According to an article in Britain's Observer, the letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood." What the hell would you call that, if not a plain and obvious obstruction of justice?
• In 2002, Ratzinger publicly stated that "less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type," which sounds curiously dismissive of the problem. More reliable sources indicate that about 4% of U.S. priests have been accused, but even that statistic begs the question of how many more cases might have been reported if the church had been cooperative in such investigations, instead of defensive.