New revelations tied to documents being reported on by the Irish media reiterate that in the 1990s many Vatican officials had no grasp of the scope of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and were insistent that bishops not proactively cooperate with civil authorities in cases of alleged abuse by their priests. A newly revealed letter from the Vatican's ambassador to Ireland to the Irish bishops in 1997, warning them not to adopt a policy of mandatory reporting of clerical sex abuse to police, confirms that there was no consensus at all on the part of the Vatican about how to respond to the scandal that was just then becoming more public. The letter is the central document in a report, "Unspeakable crimes," aired by Ireland's RTE television. For anyone who has been following the story of the Vatican's responses to the crisis, much of this documentation, while new, is not a surprise. This is in large part because the Vatican official behind the letter, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, then head of the C ...