VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Catholic prelate who led the campaign to make the late Pope John Paul a saint exonerated the pontiff on Tuesday against accusations he turned a blind eye to one of the Church’s biggest sexual abuse scandals.
Victims of sexual abuse quickly criticized the prelate’s defense of John Paul, who died in 2005 and will be made a saint at a ceremony this weekend along with Pope John XXII, who reigned from 1958 to 1963.
While the late Polish pope is almost universally hailed for his role in helping bring about the fall of communism, his critics say he was slow to grasp the seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis that emerged towards the end of his pontificate.
Specifically, critics have been pressing the Vatican over what the pope knew about sexual abuse by Father Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of a disgraced Catholic religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.
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