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American Morning

Pope Comments on Abuse Allegations

Aired March 21, 2002 - 08:02   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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: The sexual allegations against clergy in the Catholic Church has reverberated all the way to the Vatican. CNN has learned that Pope John Paul II has indirectly addressed the issue of growing scandals in a rare public response.

CNN's Alessio Vinci joins us now on the videophone from Rome with the latest -- good morning.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Jack.

Well, this letter that the pope -- Pope John Paul II has issued to priests around the world is not a direct response to the sex scandal which has afflicted, especially has been coming out in the United States. This is a letter that the pope writes every year before the holy week, before the holy Easter week.

However in this letter, Pope John Paul II writes that, "As priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers." And he continues, "these are sins which have cast a dark shadow of suspicion over all priests."

During the news conference earlier today, Vatican officials releasing this letter also tried to put some perspective over this statement made by the pope, saying that basically the church is very deeply concerned about the whole issue. They're saying that they're trying to do everything that they can to avoid that such things happen in the future.

But they're also trying to say look, there are 500,000 priests around the world and this is only a very small minority of people who appear to be afflicted by that pedophilia. They even gave us some data. They're saying that of the total U.S. clergy, only 3 percent of the people seem to be, have a tendency of pedophilia and the entire clergy, they're saying, about 0.3 percent of the total clergy seem to the same problem.

So the Vatican here trying to put some perspective. And we had the feeling during the press, during the news conference, Jack, that they were trying to basically say look, this is a story that has coming out especially in the Anglo-Saxon media. In other parts of the world it is not taking place, it has not been so much talked about and so they believe that the scandal is so big just because mainly the Anglo-Saxon media are reporting it more than other countries -- Jack.

CAFFERTY: All right, thank you, Alessio.

CNN's Alessio Vinci reporting by videophone -- which is the reason for the break-up a little bit in the picture -- from Rome this morning.

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