Alessio Vinci: 'Damage control' at Vatican summit

CNN Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci

VATICAN CITY (CNN) -- Pope John Paul II has summoned U.S. cardinals to the Vatican to discuss the scandal involving Roman Catholic priests molesting children.

CNN Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci discussed the meeting Tuesday with CNN anchor Carol Costello.

VINCI: [The meeting] started early [Tuesday] morning at around 9:30 local time. It started with a prayer. You know, for many, many months, Vatican officials here believed that this scandal, the sexual abuse scandal, was merely a problem in the United States and that the American press was blowing it out of proportion.

The controversy is landing in the corridors of the Vatican. And not just anywhere in the corridors, but in the very same rooms very close to where Pope John Paul II lives and works.

U.S. cardinals and top Vatican officials are meeting now. They're discussing a series of guidelines on how to deal with this pressing issue of sex abuse among priests and in the U.S. Catholic Church as well as a number of guidelines on what to do in order to prevent those cases in the future.

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Both Vatican officials and U.S. cardinals are saying that we should not expect too much out of this meeting. No clear guidelines will come out of it, but this is just an opportunity to discuss those issues and to come up perhaps with a series of guidelines and of policies that the U.S. bishops can bring back to the United States, discuss among themselves and perhaps make them public during their meeting in Dallas in June when all the U.S. bishops will meet together.

Joining me here in our studios just outside the Vatican is Robert Mickens. He is the correspondent, the Vatican correspondent to the London-based The Tablet. ...

First of all, why do you think it took so long for the Vatican officials to realize that the problem was not an American problem only?

MICKENS: Well, first of all, Alessio, the thing we have to realize, they know that it's not an American problem, at least pedophilia. What is peculiarly American is this media hype that's surrounded this thing. You hear words like witch hunt coming from the corridors of the Vatican. They talk about the media going after these bishops.

But it has, in a very odd way, shone a spotlight on some real deep crises within the hierarchy of the church. Because the scandal right now is not about pedophilia, it's about what looks like anyway to be a cover-up. And the reason they were having these meetings right now is because the bishops have asked for these meetings.

VINCI: What do you know is happening inside the meeting at this time now?

MICKENS: Well, as you said, there are going to be some speeches, some welcoming and whatnot, and each cardinal is going to get a chance to make his own statement, his own concerns. And again, I think that we shouldn't get our hopes up too high because there's not a whole lot that can be accomplished in a couple of days.

VINCI: You think the resignation of Cardinal [Bernard] Law will come up?

MICKENS: I suspect that that's probably something because people have been talking about it. Whether or not any one particular cardinal will have the courage, and I underline this word, courage, to bring this up is another question.

VINCI: There has been a lot of, as you said, a lot of calls from both Vatican officials and the cardinals themselves saying there is -- people should not expect too much out of this meeting. But something will have to come out to increase, to make people feel happy and to call this meeting a success. What is the minimum they'd have to come up with, do you think, to call this meeting a success?

MICKENS: Well, first of all, this is about damage control, at least for the United States. Vatican officials did not want this. They like bishops to handle problems on their own. However, I have to say that part of this problem is because of the Vatican's policy in the last 15, 20 or 30 years to emasculate the Episcopal Conference in the country, which gives them hardly any power to make binding decisions on all the members, and also weakening each individual bishop.

So it's no wonder that now these bishops, they don't have the courage perhaps or at least the confidence and the experience in dealing with problems because they always have to get permission from Rome. They can't even translate a psalm, one psalm, without the permission of Rome.

VINCI: Give me one last answer. Do you think the pope will issue an apology?

MICKENS: Well ... Bishop Wilton Gregory [president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] said that the time for mea culpas is over, now we need action. It would be strange if Pope John Paul does because it would say that there's something that's not in sync between the bishops' conference in the United States and the Vatican.