Italy Sets Conditions for Airing Sex Abuse Film, by Philip Pullella, TV Guide, May 22, 2007

Italy Sets Conditions for Airing Sex Abuse Film

By Philip Pullella
TV Guide
May 22, 2007

http://www.tvguide.com/news-views/Entertainment-News/Article/Default.aspx?idx=1011413

Rome (Reuters) - Italy's state broadcaster on Tuesday decided to buy a BBC documentary on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests but will only let it be aired if accompanied by balancing opinion from the Church.

The documentary had sparked a political row which pitted right-wing politicians opposed to the airing against leftists who said censoring it would violate freedom of speech.

Clouds shade the sun over the dome of St Peter's Basilica at The Vatican April 22, 2002 file photo. Italy's state broadcaster on Tuesday decided to buy a BBC documentary on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests but will only let it be aired if accompanied by balancing opinion from the Church.
Photo by The Reuters / Vincenzo Pint

On Tuesday RAI director general Claudio Cappon approved purchasing the documentary, called "Sex Crimes and the Vatican," but set conditions for how it can be broadcast.

He demanded that the program hosting the documentary, talk show "Year Zero," also let prominent members of the Church give their version of events and contest the documentary's assertions.

Michele Santoro, a left-leaning journalist, had originally planned to air the documentary this Thursday but will now delay broadcasting it.

The solution did not satisfy Mario Landolfi, a right-wing politician who is head of the parliament's oversight committee for the broadcaster and led the campaign to ban it.

Landolfi accused Cappon of what he called "a Pontius Pilate solution," referring to the Roman governor who washed his hands of the killing of Jesus Christ.

"This will permit a media trial against the Catholic Church," Landolfi said.

The documentary was aired on the BBC in October but never in Italy, although bloggers have translated it and it now ranks as Google Video Italia's (www.video.google.it) most popular item.

Groups critical of the Church have also sent the link to the video in emails to the media.

Italy's powerful Roman Catholic Church already has condemned the documentary and Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference, has accused bloggers who put the documentary on the web of spreading "infamous slander."

The BBC documentary examined what it described as secret Vatican documents setting out procedures to deal with general abuse of the confessional by a priest to silence his victim.

The original document, written in 1962, was updated in 2001 to deal more specifically with pedophilia as the Church around the world became embroiled in a string of sexual abuse scandals.

British bishops last year criticized the BBC, saying it should be "ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict."

Before his election as Pope in 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrine.