From the AP:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Monday admonished a leading cardinal for having publicly criticized the former Vatican No. 2 for his handling of clerical abuse cases.

In a statement, the Vatican said only the pope can make such accusations against a cardinal, not another so-called prince of the church.

In April, Vienna’s archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, accused the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of blocking a probe into a sex abuse scandal that rocked Austria’s church 15 years ago.

Schoenborn also accused Sodano of causing ‘massive harm’ to victims when he dismissed claims of clerical abuse as ‘petty gossip’ on Easter Sunday.

The Vatican sought to clarify Sodano’s comments, noting Monday that the pope himself had used the ‘petty gossip’ phrase a week earlier, referring to the need to have ‘courage to not be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinions.’

The phrase, and Sodano’s repetition of it, sparked widespread criticism that the Vatican simply didn’t appreciate the significance of the clerical abuse scandal. It also suggested the Vatican thought the hundreds of reports of abuse flooding in, and the questions that were being asked about the Vatican’s handling of abuse for decades, was mere gossip.

The Vatican said that interpretation was ‘erroneous,’ although it didn’t explain what the pontiff or Sodano meant by the phrase. The Vatican said both men felt compassion for victims and condemnation for those behind the abuse.

The Holy See issued the statement after Schoenborn met with the pontiff in a private audience. The audience was then broadened to include Sodano and the current Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone….

Read the entire AP report here.

Kerry Weber joined the staff of America in October 2009. Her writing and multimedia work have since earned several awards from the Catholic Press Association, and in 2013 she reported from Rwanda as a recipient of Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship. Kerry is the author of Mercy in the City: How to Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty, Visit the Imprisoned, and Keep Your Day Job (Loyola Press) and Keeping the Faith: Prayers for College Students (Twenty-Third Publications). A graduate of Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously worked as an editor for Catholic Digest, a local reporter, a diocesan television producer, and as a special-education teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.