ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday appointed as the Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor a priest who handled clergy sexual abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church in Boston at the height of the scandal and for years afterward.
The pope also pardoned his former butler, who was serving a prison term after leaking confidential documents in the Vatican’s most embarrassing security breach in decades.
The Vatican said the new prosecutor, the Rev. Robert Oliver, the top canon lawyer at the Archdiocese of Boston under Cardinal Sean O’Malley, would be the “promoter of justice” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal office that reviews abuse cases.
Oliver was among the canon lawyers brought in to advise Cardinal Bernard Law on sexual abuse cases in Boston, where the church’s sexual abuse scandal erupted anew in 2002. He was put in charge of the office investigating charges against accused priests after Law was forced to resign in 2002 amid an uproar over revelations that the cardinal had kept abusive priests working in parishes.
Advocates for abuse victims in the Boston Archdiocese criticized his record Saturday. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, a watchdog group that maintains an archive of abuse cases and documents, said that under Oliver’s guidance, the Boston archdiocese reported that between 2003 and 2005 it had cleared 32 of 71 accused priests, about 45 percent, saying it did not find “probable cause” to pursue abuse cases against them.
The Vatican also said Saturday that Benedict had pardoned and freed his former butler, Paolo Gabriele, 46, who had been sentenced to prison after admitting to leaking confidential documents that formed the basis of a tell-all book on alleged misdeeds, financial mismanagement, back-stabbing and infighting within the Vatican.
