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Cardinals Called to Rome for Highly Unusual Meeting

Aired April 16, 2002 - 13:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well the Vatican is now saying next week's highly unusual meeting with all U.S. cardinals will deal directly with the priest molestation scandal rocking the American church.

CNN Rome bureau chief Alessio Vinci joins us now with more details.

Hi, Alessio.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF: Hello, Kyra, good morning to you.

Well the aim -- in a brief statement, the Vatican said the aim of this meeting was primarily to restore happiness among the families and restore trust in the faithful and the clergy. And the meeting is expected to focus primarily on a series of guidelines U.S. bishops have been working on for quite some time now, guidelines primarily aimed at preventing more cases of sexual abuse in the United States. Those guidelines are also dealing with how should, for example, priests and clergymen in the United States handle first reports, allegation of sexual abuse cases and how, for example, and when to report those cases to the police. This meeting is, in a way if you want, an opportunity also for the Vatican officials to sit down with those U.S. bishops and draw and write those guidelines together.

Privately, however, some Vatican officials are also saying that they're not too happy with the way some U.S. bishops and cardinals have been handling the sex abuse scandals as a whole, primarily by trying to settle, for example, some of those accusations out of court by offering a large amount of money and thus, probably triggering a large amount of people seeking financial compensation by the -- by the U.S. church. There are some estimates already hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid by the U.S. church to settle various cases around the United States. And Vatican officials here have told us in the past that those funds are certainly not unlimited.

We do understand as many as 11 cardinals will be -- U.S. cardinals will be participating in this meeting. Eight of them will be coming from the United States, three of them are already here in Rome, permanently based here in Rome. Among those, some from the United States, of course, are some of the cardinals directly involved in this pedophilia scandal, among them the Cardinal Eagen of New York as well as Cardinal Law of Boston. There's been a lot of speculation and pressure against him to resign. However there is no indication at this time, anyway, that during the meeting Vatican officials and the cardinals and the bishops will be discussing any possible resignations -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Alessio, I'm just curious, how much do you think the Pope really knew about these sex scandals and if he was kept in the dark at all?

VINCI: No, I think the Pope knows and knew about the sex scandals. Perhaps what he was not totally briefed about was the magnitude of the scandal, especially in the United States, suggestion that -- you know many reporters here in the Vatican here in Rome trying to ask questions to Vatican officials always got answers that this was primarily a scandal involving the church in the United States, that it was limited and confined to the United States. So Vatican officials always, at least to us, gave indications that they believed that this was mainly a scandal beefed up by the press and it was not a worldwide scandal.

So the Pope certainly was aware of those issues. He mentioned briefly the sex abuse scandals in a letter to priests just before Easter time. What is unclear is how much he really knew how big the scandal. And this meeting that -- which will take place next week, it's certainly an indication that the Vatican now is trying to raise, if you want, a little bit of the issue and finally grasping with the magnitude of the scandal, if you want -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: CNN Rome bureau chief Alessio Vinci, thank you so much.

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