Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006) is adocumentary film (39 min) presented by theBBC programPanorama. It aired on 1 October 2006.

Sex Crimes and the Vatican was filmed for the BBC'sPanorama documentary series. It was directed by Sarah Macdonald, filmed by David Niblock and presented by Colm O'Gorman. The film charged that theVatican used a secret document,Crimen sollicitationis, to silenceallegations of sexual abuse by priests and thatCrimen sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years byJoseph Cardinal Ratzinger before he became the Pope.^[1]

Crimen sollicitationis, subtitled "On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of the Crime of Solicitation", is based on an earlier instruction of 1922 and was primarily concerned with dealing with the offense of sexual solicitation in Confession. Seventy of the seventy-four paragraphs dealt with establishing internal procedures for handling such cases in the curial court. The procedures having been established, they were then extended to included cases regarding homosexual conduct, any obscene act with preadolescent children, or animals, regardless if any of the prescribed activity had to do with the sacrament of penance.^[2]

Many Catholic Bishops, priests and laity expressed anger at what they perceived as a clear bias against the church. They state that the program made no effort to highlight the efforts made by the church in recent years to combat sex abuse, particularly the efforts taken by the English and Welsh Catholic Church under the leaderships of bothCormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor andVincent Cardinal Nichols,Archbishop of Westminster.^{[citation needed]} These two cardinals are involved in abuser cover-up cases.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]}

• Roman Catholic sex abuse cases
• Roman Catholic priests accused of sex offenses
• Pontifical Secret
• Deliver Us from Evil (2006), a documentary about a sex abuse case in Northern California
• Twist of Faith (2005), anHBO documentary film about abuse in the Catholic Church
• Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012), anotherHBO documentary

• Sex Crimes and the Vatican atIMDb
• Most Controversial Highlights in the 1962 Ottaviani Directive (English)
• (in Italian)Avvenire on-line special - L’"inchiesta" Bbc su preti e pedofilia. Some articles trying to rebut alleged mistakes and bias inside the documentary.

• 2006 television films
• 2006 films
• Curial response to Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals
• Media coverage of Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals
• Documentary films about Catholicism
• Panorama (British TV programme)
• 2006 British films
• British documentary television films

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