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Amanpour

Pope Benedict XVI's Last Days Awash in Scandal

Aired February 25, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Coming to you tonight and all this week from Rome, and I'm standing with St. Peter's behind me, the Vatican, the center of power for the papacy, as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to exit the stage at what is clearly a time of crisis for the church and for its 1.2 billion Catholics.

Today, the pope took the rare step of changing Vatican rules to allow a new pope to be elected more quickly. And this just as a new scandal was erupting.

Scottish cardinal Keith O'Brien asked the pope to accept his resignation after a U.K. newspaper alleged so-called inappropriate behavior with four seminary students back in the 1980s. And the pope today accepted his resignation. O'Brien's age -- he turns 75 next month -- had dictated retirement. But he'd been planning to come to the conclave to elect the next pope.

That plan was abruptly canceled, of course.

Meanwhile, the Vatican announced that the beleaguered pope will not be revealing the content of an internal report on so-called Vatileaks, the scandal. That report is rumored to contain allegations of homosexual behavior and blackmail involving Vatican hierarchy. Instead, Benedict will reportedly only show the documents to the next pontiff and let him deal with it.

And as dusk falls on Thursday, the pope will make his final departure on a helicopter bound for his retreat at Castel Gandolfo. There, at 8 o'clock Roman time, his papacy ends. And for a church, as we said, in crisis at a pivotal time in its history, it seems there is no time to spare.

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AMANPOUR: Father Tom Rosica is a spokesperson for the Holy See and joins me now.

Thank you and welcome to the program.

TOM ROSICA, ASSISTANT SPOKESPERSON, HOLY SEE: Thanks for inviting me.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, it couldn't come at a worse time. The pope is trying to make a graceful exit; he's resigned. And yet all these scandals keep rocking the church, even today.

How has he been dealing with Cardinal O'Brien? And what is the truth behind these allegations against him?

ROSICA: I can tell you what we announced this morning in the holy see press office at the conference. Cardinal O'Brien, who's going to be turning 75 in a few weeks, submitted his resignation as Archbishop of Edinburgh. That resignation was accepted by the pope on February the 18th. We announced it this morning in the holy see press office.

Of course, there's all kinds of stories that we're aware of, of Cardinal O'Brien over the weekend from different newspapers, allegations and whatever.

The cardinal not only learned that his resignation was accepted, but he announced that he would not be coming to the conclave, because he feels that the spotlight should not be on him; he would not be the center of media focus. But the media focus, the world focus is on Pope Benedict, on this tremendous time of transition, but on the College of Cardinals.

AMANPOUR: Well, of course, the focus should be on Pope Benedict and the conclave and the next election. But of course, all these scandals are coming up. And, yes, Cardinal O'Brien has denied vehemently these charges.

But how troubling is this for the pope, for the Vatican, at this precise time?

ROSICA: Certainly this is not a pleasant moment for the entire church. When one member suffers, all of us suffer. I don't know the details. We don't know all of the details. We know what's been reported to us by the papers. But I can say this, that the resignation was accepted and that Cardinal humbly backed down and said I will not go to Rome to the conclave.

And that, I find, is a positive thing for the cardinal and for all of us.

AMANPOUR: Now what does the Vatican, what's the pope wish Cardinal Mahoney, who's been stripped of his public duties by Cardinal Gomez in Los Angeles, he insists on coming. And yet he's been just deposed this last weekend. He's been accused of shielding perpetrators who have committed crimes against many, many young people in that diocese.

ROSICA: I think we're dealing, Christiane, with two different --

AMANPOUR: We (inaudible) -- I'm asking you, what is your opinion and the Vatican's opinion about him coming?

ROSICA: First of all, the document that we've presented this morning, which contains the rules, the regions of a conclave, say that every cardinal who is alive and who is under 80 years old, should be here for the conclave. I think we have to be very careful about separating the stories. First of all, we have a story, issues of allegations against a particular person, which is quite different than the situation of Cardinal Mahoney.

AMANPOUR: Right. Now I want to --

ROSICA: -- Cardinal Mahoney --

AMANPOUR: -- (inaudible) Cardinal Mahoney.

ROSICA: Cardinal Mahoney is here in Rome. He announced he was coming. And --

AMANPOUR: He's here already.

ROSICA: -- he's here to take part in the conclave. That's all that I can say.

AMANPOUR: Tell me why there is no proscription against these kinds of attendees. I do understand from your rules that all living cardinals of a certain age should be eligible to be here. But if he's been publicly rebuked by his own hierarchy, why would he come and partake in something so elevated?

ROSICA: I think it's important --

AMANPOUR: And so important.

ROSICA: -- first of all, let's be careful about the words "rebuked" or "scold" or "reprimand."

AMANPOUR: But he -- has he not been?

ROSICA: His successor in Los Angeles issued an initial statement and then issued subsequent statements and invited the people of Los Angeles last week to pray for Cardinal Mahoney as he fulfills the most significant obligation of any of the cardinals, and that is to elect the successor, in this case, the successor of Peter, the successor of Pope Benedict.

AMANPOUR: I just think that many people, particularly in Los Angeles and the United States, where you know there's a petition that's circulating so that he shouldn't participate in this. Many people wonder why he should have that privilege.

But, look, I hear your answer. Let me move on.

These allegations about a certain gay cabal inside the Vatican, these allegations of potential blackmail, the pope himself was briefed by three senior cardinals who've investigated this part of the so-called Vatileaks scandal.

Can you tell us what they told the pope? What have they found in those documents, in their investigation?

ROSICA: Contrary to what we may have read in the Italian media, which was irresponsibly picked up by other media, we don't know what was in that report. That report, presented by the three cardinals to the Holy Father a few months ago, which was publicly acknowledged this morning; gratitude was expressed to the three cardinals, Herranz, De Georgi and Tomko. The pope thanked them for what they did.

That report remains in the hands of the pope. He is the only person who saw that. And the pope announced that that report will be handed onto his successor.

AMANPOUR: Do you think it'll ever be made public?

ROSICA: I don't know, because that is the responsibility of the pope to share that. The three cardinals will be present at the general congregation meetings.

The purpose of the congregation meetings, when the cardinals gather here next week, is not to look at that report, but it's to talk about the great issues facing the church, the challenges and the privileged moment that this is to make a difference in the world.

AMANPOUR: We want to talk to you more about that throughout this week. But right now I want to know a couple of news items.

ROSICA: Sure.

AMANPOUR: When do you think the conclave will start? The pope today changed the rules, but never said what date it could start.

What is your best guess of when it could start and when we'll know?

ROSICA: All that we know is we announced this morning when the cardinals gather in congregation in these meetings, the first or second day, the dean of the College of Cardinals in dialogue with the rest of the cardinals will decide when the conclave will start.

So none of us know. And I'm not hiding anything from you. I wish we knew, because we were asked all day today. But I do know there will be a conclave. It's going to be pretty soon.

AMANPOUR: All right. Father Rosica, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

ROSICA: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: And turning now to Mark Dowd. He's a practicing Roman Catholic, a very vocal critic of this pope and he is also openly gay. He was a Dominican friar in England until he resigned. He's now a journalist and he's been following the scandal involving Scottish Cardinal O'Brien very closely. I spoke with him a short time ago.

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AMANPOUR: Mark Dowd, thank you for joining me from our London bureau.

MARK DOWD, FORMER DOMINICAN MONK: Pleasure to be with you.

AMANPOUR: All these stories that are yet again rocking the Catholic Church, I want to know what you make of Cardinal O'Brien's decision not to come for the conclave, and also of these allegations by four members of the priesthood that he engaged in sexual misconduct with them.

DOWD: Well, I follow Catholic affairs in Great Britain pretty closely and have to say this story has come completely out of the blue. Cardinal O'Brien has been very trenchant in his criticism of proposals for gay marriage in the United Kingdom. He's been very trenchant also in his opposition to gay adoption.

And suddenly we open our newspapers yesterday morning and find out three priests and one former priest basically have sent accusations about inappropriate behavior to the papal nuncio -- that's the pope's ambassador here in the United Kingdom. And within a day, he has offered his resignation, which has been accepted by Pope Benedict.

It must be said the cardinal does deny the allegations that have been made against him and says he's thinking about legal action. But this really has shaken Catholicism in these isles.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Dowd, you are openly homosexual; you were a former friar in the Dominican order. And you're also following, no doubt, this story of the alleged cabal here at the Vatican, the potential for blackmail of allegedly gay priests and the fact today is that the pope himself was briefed by three cardinals who have been investigating certain stories.

The pope got the briefing; he has not made it public. What do you make of those allegations in the heart of the Vatican?

DOWD: What I can say is that, you know, having been a friar myself and having been an openly gay Catholic for the last 25 years in my journalistic career, homosexuality is the ticking time bomb in the Catholic Church.

On the one hand, the church teaches that the condition of same-sex attraction is intrinsically disordered -- those are Cardinal Ratzinger's own words from 1986 -- and yet we know that actually about half, if not more, of all the people attracted into seminaries in the priesthood are gay themselves.

And of course, one, you have this culture of secrecy and guilt and repression, you have conditions there which foster the potential for blackmail and for manipulation.

And although I'm not party to the specifics of what's been going on with the Vatileaks investigation and the reports in "La Republica" in Rome in the last three or four days, I do know this is a very unhealthy stage for the church, because basically when you have secrecy, you have lies; and when you have lies, people often are put in terrible pressures of being compromised.

AMANPOUR: So you just said half of the members of the church are gay or homosexual.

Where do you come up with that kind of figure?

DOWD: I made a program for U.K. television, getting on now for 12 years ago. It was rather controversially called "Queer and Catholic." I interviewed a series of seminary rectors and leaders of the church. Some of them were brave enough to actually share some of those insights with me; some of them would only tell me those things off the record.

And of course, I've got my own experience of being in religious life myself. And I can tell you that gay men are massively, massively overrepresented in Catholic life. And there's nothing wrong with that, of course.

The problem is that a lot of them are told that they are intrinsically unhealthy according to church teaching. And that's not a very appropriate state of affairs if we're talking about psychosexual health and emotional maturity.

AMANPOUR: Do you think that the next pope, whoever that pope might be, will be any more progressive than Joseph Ratzinger?

DOWD: You would say, looking at the way that the present gathering of cardinals is constituted, many of these people being appointed by conservative popes like John Paul II and Benedict XVI, that the odds are not in favor of progression. But in my experience, the Catholic Church is always liable to surprise you.

And it wouldn't be at all surprising for me to suddenly find that we had a pope who actually -- on the one hand, people might be saying this individual, so far, had had a very conservative track record. It may be that, once they're in the top position, they feel in the position to actually make reforms and to make changes of the like of which people would not have forecast.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Dowd, Pope Benedict XVI was conservative and indeed he was a conservative and very traditionalist pope.

How would you say the explosion of these sexual crimes in the Catholic Church, the priest pedophilia scandal, how has he dealt with that?

DOWD: I think Pope Benedict XVI has dealt with the sex abuse crisis in two ways; first, from a mechanical, procedural point of view, he's tried to speed up the process. He tried to make it more transparent. Certain people who were, I think, guarded and protected by the Vatican quite early on in his pontificate were dealt with quite severely.

But the fact of the matter is there's such a backlog of these cases. And often the church moves so slowly that even though when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith back in 2001, he stipulated that all of these cases should come to his desk.

But you know, there have been so many of them. And they've been happening in so many different disparate countries that a very small outfit, like that particular part of the Vatican machinery, can't process and get on top of the detail as quickly as it needs to. So I think -- and in many respects, he's had a rather mixed record on it.

I did an interview with the pope's brother, actually, for the BBC only 2-3 years ago, prior to his visit to the United Kingdom. And Georg Ratzinger told me in the most heartfelt terms, the actual, personal toll that this crisis had taken on the pope.

He said he was basically lying awake at night, sweating and worrying about it and that actually in terms of his own emotional health, it had taken great toll on him. And you know, it may be that that has been one of many contributory factors in his decision to abdicate his papacy and to draw his own pontificate to a rather early close.

AMANPOUR: Mark Dowd, thank you so much for joining me.

DOWD: It's been a pleasure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And when the pope announced his resignation, it took everyone by surprise. Well, almost everyone. One long-time Vatican observer all but predicted it. I'll ask him how he read the tea leaves when we come back. But first, the pope's resignation may have hit hardest here, in his tiny Bavarian hometown, with a population of under 3,000 that draws 100,000 visitors every year. The locals have been selling pope beer and pope bread and there's even Ratzinger bratwurst. As the pope steps down, though, they hope the good times don't go with him.

We'll be right back.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Welcome back to the program and our live coverage all this week of the pontifical transition. And there you have a live picture of the Vatican not far from where I'm sitting. I have St. Peter's right behind me.

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AMANPOUR: This, as we've said, is a critical moment in the Catholic Church, as Pope Benedict XVI enters the final days of his papacy.

For 20 years, journalist Marco Politi has been a close observer and, on occasion, a strong critic of the Catholic leadership. He's the author of a biography of Pope Benedict called "Joseph Ratzinger: Crisis of a Papacy," in which he actually foresaw the possibility that Benedict may resign.

Many call you the best journalist in Italy, and I'm really delighted to welcome you to this program. Thanks for being here.

MARCO POLITI, AUTHOR: Good evening.

AMANPOUR: How did you read the tea leaves? How did you even discuss in your book that came out a short time ago about this resignation?

POLITI: Well, I lived a long time in Germany. I'm half German. My mother is German. So I felt that when -- I know the German character. In a man like the pope, like he did two years ago, says that that the pope under stress, physical, mental or psychical (ph) stress, has the right and the duty to resign, then he couldn't just make converswation.

AMANPOUR: But here's what's so interesting. Obviously you, as a close observer, you know, you picked up those signals. Many of us could have done as well, but almost nobody did. So this resignation came as a surprise.

Do you think that, as my previous guest said, this terrible sex scandals and what's rocking the church, do you think that played any part in a decision to step down earlier?

POLITI: Well, the scandals played a role. But especially this resignation was the last act of a series of crises. Ratzinger is a great thinker, a philosopher, a theologian, apreacher. He has not the temper of a leader. He lacks leadership. He had not the temper of governance.

So he had, from the beginning, crisis this with Islam, crisis with the Jews, crisis with the world of the science because of a condom and HIV.

And finally the great Vatileaks crisis, these secret documents about corruption in the Vatican, about struggles between cardinals, about disease and opposition against his secretary of state and (inaudible) about lack of transparency of the Vatican bank. This certainly was pushing him to accelerate his resignation.

AMANPOUR: Do you think, then, all this litany that you've just said of crises, do you pay any attention to these reports in "La Republica"? Are they serious, this idea that there might be a some kind of gay cabal, some kind of blackmailing in the Vatican?

POLITI: We know that the pope has put up an investigation team of three cardinals. But nobody has seen this secret report. Nobody has printed a single page of this report. Nobody has printed the copy of a page. Il Fatto Quottidiano, with whom I work now --

AMANPOUR: It is a newspaper.

POLITI: It's a news -- a Roman newspaper, published last year, copies of the Vatileaks documents. So you could read it. And no, I think that the idea of a gay cabal is rubbish, for a very simple reason. Here in the Vatican, there are monsignors who have love affairs with women and with men. But they hide it. They are liberals or conservatives. But certainly they don't act like a gay lobby.

AMANPOUR: So you're saying out and out that there are senior members of the Vatican hierarchy who are engaged in sexual affairs?

POLITI: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Even though they're meant to be celibate?

POLITI: They should be. But it is since centuries in Rome, people know and writers write, and there are histories about sexual affairs, even of popes in the past.

AMANPOUR: You've also done a huge amount of work on the sex crimes by the pedophile priests. I believe that so much of this evidence came to the Vatican, particularly under the auspices of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Tell me what you know about the volume of documents, about where they are, where they're hidden and will it -- will this story ever come out?

POLITI: This is actually the problem. Cardinal Ratzinger underwent a change also in his attitude because he came out; he was grown in a church which was hiding everything. And which was thinking maybe it's a psychological problem; we send somebody to cure, a psychologist. And only later at the end of the past century, he understood how deep this problem was. And actually, he wanted also to open a trial against Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. But he was stopped by the then- entourage of Pope John Paul II.

AMANPOUR: Because he was so close, Father Marcial, to John Paul II.

POLITI: Yes, he was close to the people around John Paul II. And John Paul II, for his mentality as a Polish bishop, as a Polish cardinal, often thought this was only slander and not real things. So Pope Benedict has began with his papacy to turn a new page.

He once said the victims are at the center of the care of the church. But he has not had the courage to order all the bishops to open the archives to see the hidden victims which are still thousands and thousands all over the world.

AMANPOUR: All over the world?

POLITI: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Do you think that a new pope will finally open all these cases and open all these archives?

POLITI: A new pope should tackle this problem with great courage (ph). We have a single example. Just in the Diocese of Munich, where Cardinal Ratzinger was archbishop, the new archbishop, Cardinal Marx, has opened an independent investigation made by a woman lawyer.

And she has discovered that in the last 40-50 years there were already 300 cases of pedophilia and of sex abuses which were systematically hidden.

So if you multiply this for the dioceses all over the world, you can see how many hidden crimes still exist.

AMANPOUR: What is going to do -- look, there are 1.2 billion Catholics out there, and there's certainly probably a majority of them who are outraged by all of this, who love their faith and yet have no faith in their hierarchy anymore.

POLITI: It was a great shock. It was a great shock for a lot of people. And if we remember all the beautiful movies in the States, where of the `50s and `60s, you always saw a priest, a nun, a very positive personality helping people, helping kids.

And to discover that these people could commit crimes and that the people in the hierarchy was hiding it or moving one criminal from one parish to another, was a big shock. And it will take a long time for people to restore from this shock.

AMANPOUR: Marco Politi, thank you very much. You have so much to tell us and we'll have you back on this program in the next several days as we count down to the pope's exit, because we also want to talk about Benedict's legacy; we want to see whether there's anything other than these scandals that he should be remembered for and what will the next pope be like?

Who is the leading contender? Pope Benedict will soon be leaving the Vatican to begin the rest of his life. The pope who came before him, the late John Paul II, is on a different journey. We'll explain when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, as Pope Benedict prepares for retirement, his predecessor, the late John Paul II is being prepared for higher things. Back in 2011, just six years and a month after his death, John Paul was beatified. It left him one step and one more miracle away from sainthood.

Accordingly, his body was exhumed from the grotto beneath St. Peter's and brought upstairs to the Chapel of St. Sebastian, a prime location next to Michelangelo's Pieta.

But John Paul's rise meant relocation for another pope, Innocent XI, who reigned in the 1600s, who's already buried beneath St. Sebastian's altar, to make room for John Paul.

Innocent was also exhumed and reburied in a less prominent tomb. It seems that even when it comes to popes, the old real estate rule applies: location, location, location. And that's it for tonight's program. We have so much more in the few days ahead. Thank you and goodbye from Rome.

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