It took several decades, but in 2002 the media finally gave due attention to the epidemic of priests who molest children and the higher-ups who transfer the perps to other dioceses, where they choose from a fresh crop of potential victims. The press was rightly unsparing when it came to naming priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals in the US, but that courage didn't extend past America's borders. Except in exceedingly rare instances, the media couldn't work up the nerve to point fingers at the Vatican. Despite this conspicuous blind spot, several unearthed documents directly implicate the highest levels of the Catholic Church, including three Popes, in the cover-up.
The earliest such document — “Instruction on the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of Solicitation” — was sent to every high-ranking cleric in the world in 1962 (it was uncovered during legal action in 2003). It explains what to do when a priest gets accused of sexual acts with a penitent (someone whose confession they'd heard), a child, or an animal. The gist is that the offending man of the cloth is to be secretly tried by local Church officials (or, in some cases, the Vatican's Holy Office). Secular authorities are not to be alerted, and all paperwork is to be walled up in the diocese's “secret archive.”
The “Instruction” includes a secrecy clause regarding these transgressions — an oath to be recited in which the cleric swears “under the pain of excommunication” and “other most serious penalties” that he will “observe this secret absolutely and in every way,” never “directly or indirectly” revealing anything, “even for the most urgent and most serious cause [even] for the purpose of a greater good.”
A note at the end of the main body declares that the “Instruction” was issued by “the most eminent Cardinal Secretary of the Holy Office” and was personally approved by Pope John XXIII.
Priest James Porter pled guilty to molesting 28 children during the 1960s and early 1970s (the actual count is believed to be around 100 kids in five states). Documents show that his superiors, fully aware of his serial child-rape, shuffled him to one diocese after another. In 2002, a Boston Herald lawsuit forced the release of Porter's file. It turns out that the pedo-priest had written a letter directly to Pope Paul VI in 1973, confessing his molestations and asking the Pontiff to let him out of the priesthood. It's not known how the Pope responded, but the next year Porter was no longer a priest. It wasn't until 20 years later that many of his victims banded together and got him sent to prison. Although they undoubtedly were aware of earlier cases, this provides documentary proof that the highest levels of the Vatican knew what was happening by 1973, at the latest.
The most recent smoking document proving the Pope's awareness and complicity dates back just a few years. (It too was publicly released during the scandal of 2002.) Dated May 29, 1999, the order signed by Pope John Paul calls for the defrocking of Robert Burns, a priest who pled guilty to indecent assault of a child. In it, his Holiness says that the molester “ought to live away from the places where his previous condition is known.” However, wrote the Pope, the diocese doesn't have to ship him elsewhere “if it is foreseen that the presence of the suppliant will cause no scandal.”
Lawyer Roderick MacLeish, who handles sex abuse lawsuits against the Church, told Reuters:
“For the first time we've seen documents from the Vatican that emphasize the word that we've seen so often here in Boston — ‘scandal.’ This document says he is to be relocated to another place where presumably they wouldn't know about him, unless the bishop or the cardinal of the appropriate diocese determines it will cause no scandal. What about the children?”