At last, Pope's 1999 document exposed about shifting child-abusers, but what about the children?
Sex priests scandal draws in the Vatican
Offender Robert Burns transferred New Hampshire, Ohio, and Boston; Accused Paul Shanley bailed out this week for $US300,000

THE Pope has been dragged into a row over sexual abuse by priests in the United States after documents implied that the Vatican favoured covering up the scandal.
  The Catholic archdiocese of Boston is facing many lawsuits from alleged victims. However, newly-released papers suggest the Vatican tried to suppress publicity.
  The documents emerged as Cardinal Bernard Law, head of the Church in Boston, awaited an audience with the Pope in Rome and was reportedly ready to resign.
  Church sources say the Vatican is considering naming an administrator to run the Boston archdiocese should he do so.
  More than 50 Boston priests this week called on Cardinal Law to step down.

[Picture of face of balding man in glasses] Father Shanley

  Among the hundreds of documents made public in recent days is a translation of the Pope's order defrocking a convicted paedophile in 1999. It demands he leave areas "where his condition is known." However, the priest, Robert Burns, may remain "if it is foreseen that the presence of the suppliant will cause no scandal".

  Lawyers for the victims seized on the revelations as evidence that Vatican policy was not to protect local children but to hush up any embarrassment over the conduct of wayward priests.
  One campaigner, Roderick Macleish, said: "Now for the first time we've seen documents from the Vatican that emphasise the word that we've seen so often here in Boston: scandal. This document says he is to be relocated to another place where presumably they wouldn't know about it. What about the children?"
  Father Burns arrived in Boston from Ohio, where his personal problems had attracted attention. He pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two boys in New Hampshire in 1996.
  On Wednesday [Dec. 11], a pivotal figure in the Boston scandal, Father Paul Shanley, 71, walked out of jail after friends and family posted bail of $300,000 [U.S.].
  Father Shanley spent seven months behind bars in Cambridge, Massachusetts, awaiting trial on 10 counts of child rape and six of indecent assault and battery. The retired priest is accused of sexually abusing boys as young as five at a church in Newton, outside Boston, over 10 years until 1989.