UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

How a Pope called Pius turned the confessional box into a paradise for paedophiles: From a leading Catholic writer, a devastating exposé of a Vatican ruling

By JOHN CORNWELL

At my Catholic boarding school in the late 1950s there was a jolly priest who heard my confession in his room rather than in a vacant confessional box. After I had recited my laundry list of petty sins, he asked if I was ever tempted to ‘commit a sexual sin by myself’.

He suggested that I take out my penis so that he could examine it to see whether I was prone to sudden erections. I left the room immediately. The next year, his proclivities discovered, he was removed by his bishop to another school.

As a child barely out of infancy, I had joined the long queues in our parish church every Saturday to confess…