Will Vatican Taliban defend pedophile priest?

After all, Eric Dejaeger was *hiding* in plain view, working for a Catholic pilgrimage organization in Lourdes, France, where he welcomed and guided Flemish pilgrims around the site. The former Arctic missionary was on Interpol’s international wanted list but it seems Catholic Church security officials do not read or respond to these requests.

And in accordance to official Catholic policy, canon law - which is claimed to be established by God - trumps any man-made law, including those found in criminal codes, prohibiting the sexual assault of children. From here:

A newly disclosed document reveals that Vatican officials told the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they had serious reservations about the bishops’ policy of mandatory reporting of priests suspected of child abuse to the police or civil authorities. [...]

The letter was written just after a first wave of scandal over sexual abuse by priests in Irish Catholic schools and other facilities [...] By 1996, an advisory committee of Irish bishops had drawn up a new policy that included “mandatory reporting” of suspected abusers to civil authorities. The letter, signed by Archbishop Luciano Storero, then the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio — or chief representative — in Ireland, told the Irish bishops that the Vatican had reservations about mandatory reporting for both “moral and canonical” reasons.

Following Dejaeger's deportation from Belgium, he will be taken to Nunavut by RCMP officers.

Dejaeger came to Canada from Belgium in 1973. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest of the Oblate order and eventually began work as a missionary in the Arctic, where he served in several communities. According to court documents, Dejaeger pleaded guilty in 1990 to nine counts of sex crimes against boys and girls in Baker Lake, a small Inuit community...

More here.