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American Morning

Second Day of Meetings For Group of American Cardinals Summoned to Vatican

Aired April 24, 2002 - 07:01   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, though, a second day of meetings for the group of American cardinals summoned to a sex abuse summit at the Vatican. There were strong words of condemnation yesterday coming from Pope John Paul II, who said priests who abuse children are guilty of both a sin and a crime, and there is no place for either of these in the Catholic Church.

For the latest on the Vatican meeting, let's turn to Alessio Vinci, who joins us now for Rome.

Good morning, Alessio.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Paula.

You know, one of the bishops who attended the meeting yesterday described the meeting as serious and somber. However, today's meeting, we understand, is going to be a little more lively, because the U.S. cardinals and bishops and the Vatican officials will be more exchanging views and have sort of a debate-like conversation over the issues.

And one of the issues that will be discussed, as you mentioned, is what to do with those priests who are accused of molesting young children or teenagers. The pope, as you mentioned, said there should be no place, there is no place of those who do that in the church, but he also said that -- he also mentioned Christian conversion and the decision to turn away from sin and return to God. So he left it here a little bit an open door to those doing this, and perhaps as they should be dealt with, obviously removed, from the place where they are committing the sin and the crime, but the church says perhaps those people should be dealt with in a medical matter, they should be assisted, and they should not thrown back into society where they could hurt other people.

And also, another issue, who will decide whether the priest is guilty or not, and who will decide whether the priest should be defrocked? Should the bishop be helped by a panel of lay people. All these questions will come up. The answer to them, some of them probably come out during the final communique, which will be released later this afternoon when the session comes to an end. And we're going to hear about it obviously later on at the bishops conference in Dallas this coming June. Two things we know will not be discussed today, one of them will be the resignation of cardinal Law. We understand that this is an issue that will be directly addressed between the pope and the cardinal himself at a later date, and of course the situation on celibacy and whether the church should relax the rules of celibacy and perhaps make more room to those -- to women in the church.

Back to you, Paula.

ZAHN: And Based on what we've read from a number of cardinals who did interviews yesterday, they didn't seem to any consensus about any issue of zero-tolerance policy. What can you tell us about that?

VINCI: No, well, this is exactly what everybody here is trying to figure out, because again, we heard mixed signals from the Vatican itself.

I tried to talk to one top official inside the Vatican exactly on this issue, and he said, look, there is no conflicting words about what the pope said. The church says there should be zero-tolerance for those who are hurting the children, they should be removed immediately from the place where they are committing the sin and the crime. But on the other side, the church says we should not take those pedophiles or those sex abusers and throw them back into society where nobody can deal with them.

The church has a moral duty, that's what the Vatican says, to deal with these people. And anyway, it's very hard to defrock a priest, and a priest remains always a priest. So even if he is thrown back into society and defrocked, he will remain in the eyes of the people as a former priest. So the church says, let's keep them out, or at least let's remove them from where the problem is, and let's deal with them and try to see if we can cure them or help them out -- Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Alessio Vinci, thank you so much for that report. See you a later bit later on this morning.

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