"After consulting the pope, I wrote a letter to the bishop, congratulating him as a model of a father who does not turn in his children."

So said Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos (Colombia), 

explaining why he had sent a 2001 letter to French Bishop 
Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux. Bishop Pican had just 
received a suspended prison sentence for his failure to 
report to French authorities the criminal conduct of a priest, 
otherwise discovered, who had been tried and condemned 
as a pedophile. (The priest, Rene Bissey, was sentenced 
to 18 years in jail in 2000  for sexually abusing 11 boys.) 

In his letter, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then head of the 
Vatican office charged with worldwide supervision of priests,
wrote to Bishop Pican, "I congratulate you for not 
denouncing a priest to the civil administration." You 
have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague
in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of 
all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to 
denouncing his son and priest."

Now that the Cardinal's letter has received publicity, 
the 81 year old prelate has said that the Bishop could 
not have reported the priest, as the sexual activity 
with young boys had come to light in the Confessional. 
But then, why emphasize in a letter publicized by the 
Vatican itself on the internet, that the Bishop that 
correctly protected, not a penitent in the confessional 
but rather "his son and priest." 

Vatican officialdumb wishes to tell us how to think 
but is scandalously unable to think through to a 
correct conclusion, how to protect children from 
those entrusted with their care, but who are known 
by their clerical supervisors to become sexually 
aroused by adolescent kids.

(Quotations taken from "Cardinal Justifies Praise 
for French Bishop's Silence Over Abuses Priest." 
AFP, April 18 2010)