Kasper’s Bad Excuse

A friend sends his translation of the most important paragraph from the German Kath.net’s report on Cardinal Kasper and his remarks on African Catholics:

Late Thursday afternoon in response to Kath.net, [Kasper] stated the following: “I have never spoken about Africans in this manner and moreover would never speak in this way.” Later, however, the Zenit journalist published the audio recording and explained that there were even two other journalists with him as witnesses. Kasper’s voice is clearly audible on the audio recording and the statements were in fact reported faithfully by Zenit.

On Friday morning Cardinal Kasper communicated directly to Kath.net: “I will not comment on and certainly won’t authorize [the publication of] a private conversation that was secretly recorded, that was no interview, with two other journalists and a third [journalist] whom I don’t know at all and who also did not introduce himself personally to me. These are not proper journalistic methods.”

 In other words, “Yes, I was lying, but it’s not fair that I was caught.” The story goes on to say that the tape shows that Kasper did know they were journalists.