Vatican Radio, John Allen defend Pope’s handling of abuse crisis while CDF prefect

 UPDATE: On Monday, March 29, Catholic League President Bill Donohue will appear on CNN Headline News’ “Joy Behar Show” to discuss the pope and his handling of recent allegations. The show airs at 9 pm ET. The show also replays at 12 am ET.

Vatican Radio has taken the extraordinary step of posting a March 26 John Allen column in defense of Pope Benedict’s handling of the clerical abuse crisis while prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Vatican Radio’s action is the latest in a series of responses on the part of the Holy See to recent news reports that seek to link the Pope to the abuse scandal.

Vatican Radio, whose director published his own editorial on the issue, also conducted a ten-minute interview in which Allen criticized journalistic inaccuracy and “sloppiness” and praised Pope Benedict as a “real reformer” in addressing the abuse crisis. Allen said that after 2001, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was given purview for addressing the clerical abuse scandal, the congregation’s staff became an “Eliot Ness” team in handlings cases.

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From the Catholic League:
Today's edition of the Times has a news story which says that Ratzinger "did not defrock a priest who molested scores of deaf boys in the United States, despite warnings by American bishops about the danger of failure to act, according to church files." Wrong. Besides the fact that there is no evidence he even knew of the case, his office actually lifted the statute of limitations—the abuse took place in the 50s and 60s—and began an investigation. Murphy died while the inquiry was proceeding.

Vatican intensifies defense of pope on sex abuse decisions