A Vatican office has acknowledged that the Catholic Church erred over previous decades in asking its members to keep silent when they heard about priests fathering children. "Before our times, the Church did like most institutions and avoided addressing publicly matters regarding its members' behavior, about which it kept silent," Norbertine Fr. Bernard Ardura, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, said in a document published last week. "This was a mistake, which can be explained by the context, but it remains a mistake," said Ardura. Vincent Doyle, the child of a priest and the leader of Coping International, a global campaign for the recognition of priests' children (Provided photo)