Now even a trueblue Bergoglian says this:
Pope’s words ‘a source of great pain’
for abuse survivors, says Cardinal O'Malley
Sunday, 21 Jan 2018
Pope Francis’s top adviser on clerical sex abuse has implicitly rebuked the Pontiff over his accusations of slander against Chilean abuse victims, saying that his words were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse”.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, said he couldn’t explain why Francis “chose the particular words he used” and that
such expressions had the effect of abandoning victims and relegating them to “discredited exile.”
In an extraordinary effort at damage control, Cardinal O’Malley insisted in a statement that Francis “fully recognises the egregious failures of the Church and its clergy who abused children and the devastating impact those crimes have had on survivors and their loved ones”.
Francis set off a national uproar upon leaving Chile on Thursday when he accused victims of the country’s most notorious pedophile priest of having slandered another bishop, Juan Barros. The victims say Barros knew of the abuse by Fr Fernando Karadima but did nothing to stop it – a charge Barros denies.
“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis told Chilean journalists in the northern city of Iquique. “There is not one shred of proof against him.
It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”
The remarks shocked Chileans, drew immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates and once again raised the question of whether the 81-year-old Argentine Jesuit “gets it” about sex abuse.
The Karadima scandal has devastated the credibility of the Catholic Church in Chile, and Francis’s comments will likely haunt it for the foreseeable future.
Cardinal O’Malley’s carefully worded critique was remarkable since it is rare for a cardinal to publicly rebuke the Pope in such terms. But Francis’s remarks were so potentially toxic to the Vatican’s years-long effort to turn the tide on decades of clerical sex abuse and cover-up that he clearly felt he had to respond.
Cardinal O’Malley headed Francis’s much-touted committee for the protection of minors until it lapsed last month after its initial three-year mandate expired. Francis has not named new members, and the committee’s future remains unclear.
“It is understandable that Pope Franciss’ statements … were a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy or any other perpetrator,” Cardinal O’Malley said in the statement.
“Words that convey the message ‘if you cannot prove your claims then you will not be believed’ abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile.”
Francis’s comments were all the more problematic because Karadima’s victims were deemed so credible by the Vatican that it sentenced him to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” in 2011. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.
Those same victims accused Barros of witnessing the abuse. Yet Francis said he considered their accusations “all calumny” and that he wouldn’t believe them without proof.
Catholic officials for years sought to discredit victims of abuse by accusing them of slandering and attacking the church with their claims. But many in the Church and the Vatican have come to reluctantly acknowledge that victims usually told the truth and that the Church had wrongly sought to protect its own by demonising and discrediting the most vulnerable of its flock.
Cardinal O’Malley said he couldn’t fully address the Barros case because he didn’t know the details and wasn’t involved. But he insisted the pope “gets it” and is committed to “zero tolerance” for abuse.
“Accompanying the Holy Father at numerous meetings with survivors I have witnessed his pain of knowing the depth and breadth of the wounds inflicted on those who were abused and that the process of recovery can take a lifetime,” he said.
Karadima’s victims reported to Church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the Santiago parish he ran. But only when they went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from ministry.
The emeritus archbishop of Santiago
[Cardinal Francisco Errazuriz, who represents Latin America in Bergoglio's advisory Council of Cardinals] subsequently apologised for having refused to believe the victims from the start.
Francis reopened the wounds of the scandal in 2015 when he named Barros, a protege of Karadima, as bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno.
His appointment outraged Chileans, badly divided the Osorno diocese and further undermined the Church’s credibility in the country.
Earlier, Steve Skojec provided a most useful recapitulation of the actions versus words contradiction exhibited by this pope on the question of clerical sex abuse:
Pope Francis prompts outrage with accusations
against against clerical sex abuse victims
[Those victims he did not 'meet and cry with' in Chile]
by Steve Skojec
January 19, 2018
In stunning new comments made during his visit to South America this week, Pope Francis has attacked the credibility of victims of notorious clerical sexual abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima. The pope accused abuse victims of “calumny” for their allegations that Bishop Juan Barros, a Karadima protege, knew about the abuse, or even that he watched as it took place.
“There is not one shred of proof against him.” Francis said to a Chilean journalist at the end of his visit to Chile. “It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”
On Twitter, Barros’s “most vocal accuser”, Juan Carlos Cruz, lashed out about the absurdity of the pope expecting proof from his abuse:
“
As if one could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros standing next to him watching everything. These people from above are crazy and @Pontifex is talking about reparation to the victims. We remain the same and his forgiveness remains empty.”
Cruz reiterated his outrage in an exchange with Crux‘s Austen Ivereigh, when the latter questioned his claims. “Does he need a photo, a selfie, as proof? Sorry Austen, we did not think of it as we were being abused and Juan Barros watching.”
According to the Associated Press, the pope’s “astonishing” comments “drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates.”
A group of Karadima victims spoke out against the pope’s words yesterday, saying,
“This is serious and we cannot accept it … what he has done today is offensive and painful, and it also reveals an unknown face of the Pontiff.”
Those who are surprised by the pope’s comments in Chile are likely more familiar with his
[seemingly] tough talk on clerical sex abuse. In September 2015, Pope Francis addressed victims of abuse at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia in clear, unequivocal terms:
I carry in my heart the stories, the suffering and the pain of the minors who were sexually abused by priests. I’m overwhelmed by the shame that people who were in charge of caring for those young ones raped them and caused them great damages. I regret this profoundly. God weeps! The crimes and sins of sexual abuse to minors can’t be kept a secret anymore. I commit to the zealous oversight of the Church to protect minors, and I promise that everyone responsible will be held accountable.
In June of the following year, the pope issued a new motu proprio letter taking steps further than just words. Entitled “Come una madre amorevole” (As a Loving Mother), the letter established norms seeking the removal of bishops who have, “through negligence, committed or omitted acts that have caused grave harm to others, either with regard to physical persons, or with regard to the community itself.”
At the time, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said that the letter “clarifies that negligence regarding cases of sexual abuse committed against children or vulnerable adults are among the ‘grave causes’ that justify removal from ecclesiastical Offices, even of Bishops.”
During his current visit to South America, Gerard O’Connell of America magazine tweeted about a moment where the pope expressed solidarity with victims:
Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, said Pope Francis “listened, prayed and cried” with a small group of victims abused by priests, when he met them at the nunciature in Santiago, after lunch today. He spent around half an hour with them, alone, without anyone else present.
Nevertheless, by the end of the trip, the pope expressed his indignance at accusations against Barros from known victims of Fr. Karadima.
Despite powerful words and moving gestures, the pope’s track record on dealing with perpetrators of abuse or those who covered for them has been wildly inconsistent. While there have been some cases — like that of the conservative Bishop Robert Finn of the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, who was removed on the basis of what some have termed “politically motivated” charges of neglect — other, more egregious examples have not only gone ignored, but in some cases have been actively thwarted or even promoted by Francis. As we reported in October, 2015, not long after his statement in Philadelphia, the pope’s words and actions on the matter are often worlds apart.
Mons. Barros
The case of Bishop Barros and the controversy that surrounds it is nothing new, though thepope's harsh response in Chile is now bringing attention to an issue that many have never heard about before this week. The appointment of Barros by Francis in 2015 was, in fact, so controversial, that five members of the pope’s anti-abuse commission expressed “concern and incredulity” at the assignment. Similarly, Barros’s installation Mass was forced to be cut short when hundreds of protesters showed up.
It was at this time that Francis first showed his contempt for victims in Chile — a contempt his recent words appear to confirm. In a video from May of 2015, Francis accused those who implicated Barros of being “dumb”:
“The Osorno community is suffering because it’s dumb,” Pope Francis told a group of tourists on St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, because it “has let its head be filled with what politicians say, judging a bishop without any proof...Don’t be led by the nose by the leftists who orchestrated all of this”.
Cardinal Danneels
Also of particular note is the pope’s closeness with Cardinal Godfried Danneels from Belgium, who has become perhaps the most notorious member of the so-called “St. Gallen Mafia” — a group of cardinals who worked together to ensure Bergoglio’s election to the papacy.
Danneels was caught on tape in 2010 trying to stop a sex abuse victim from going public. As Marcantonio Colonna later reported in
The Dictator Pope, Danneels’s home and his diocesan offices were later raided by police, who seized computers and documentation on abuse allegations. “For reasons that remain unclear,” wrote Colonna
“the seized evidence was declared to have been inadmissible, the documents returned to the archdiocese and the investigation was abruptly closed. This despite the fact that individuals had come forward with almost five hundred separate complaints, including many that alleged Danneels had used his power and connections to shield clerical sex abusers.”
Nevertheless, Colonna writes that according to Danneels, the 2013 conclave was for him “a personal resurrection experience.” And sure enough, if one looks closely at the photos of the new pope on the Loggia, standing there in shadows is the triumphant-looking kingmaker himself, the once-disgraced Cardinal Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels.
Later, Danneels — a man who was implicated and even recorded in the act of covering up the clerical abuse of children — would be personally invited by the pope to both 'family synods'.
Father Inzoli
In a January, 2017 report, Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote of a “child abuse scandal” “coming for Pope Francis”. Dougherty detailed the way clerics accused of abuse were able to avoid discipline under Francis by means of powerful friends and connections:
Consider the case of Fr. Mauro Inzoli. Inzoli lived in a flamboyant fashion and had such a taste for flashy cars that he earned the nickname “Don Mercedes.” He was also accused of molesting children. He allegedly abused minors in the confessional.
He even went so far as to teach children that sexual contact with him was legitimated by scripture and their faith. When his case reached CDF, he was found guilty. And in 2012, under the papacy of Pope Benedict, Inzoli was defrocked.
But Don Mercedes had “cardinal friends", we have learned. Cardinal Coccopalmerio and Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, now dean of the Roman Rota, both intervened on behalf of Inzoli, and
Pope Francis returned him to the priestly state in 2014, inviting him to a “a life of humility and prayer.” These strictures seem not to have troubled Inzoli too much. In January 2015, Don Mercedes participated in a conference on the family in Lombardy.
Last summer (2017), civil authorities finished their own trial of Inzoli, convicting him of eight offenses. Another 15 lay beyond the statute of limitations. The Italian press hammered the Vatican, specifically the CDF, for not sharing the information they had found in their canonical trial with civil authorities. Of course, the pope himself could have allowed the CDF to share this information with civil authorities if he so desired.
Francis was subsequently forced to laicize Inzoli last summer. But not until the predator priest had shown up at a family conference where he had no business being.
Cardinal Coccopalmerio and his orgying protege
For his part, it was Cardinal Coccopalmerio who had petitioned Francis to give an apartment in the CDF building to his secretary, Msgr. Luigi Capozzi — an apartment that was raided by Vatican police who last year were re[orted to have broken up "a drug-fueled, homosexual debauched party.” (Coccopalmerio had also reportedly requested that Capozzi be made a bishop.)
Is this pontificate starting to crack?
For five years now, Francis’w progressiveist papacy has made him nearly bulletproof with the secular press and the progressive Catholic media. His infamous “Who am I to judge?” comment about a known homosexual priest in his employ helped to land him on the cover of “LGBT news” magazine The Advocate as “Person of the Year” in 2013. He has also graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Esquire, Fortune, People, and Vanity Fair, among others — almost always in a positive context. It’s a distinction virtually unknown to his recent predecessors, who more often than not found themselves maligned for their teachings.
But the victim-shaming by the pope this week may mark a change in his fortunes. A few months ago, a Google search of “Pope Francis” and “Sex Abuse” was likely to return our October 2015 report on Danneels and Barros on the first page of results. But in the wake of the pope’s inconceivably tone-deaf comments in Chile, our report has been buried in a deluge of new stories from major outlets around the world.
Rumors of Bergoglio's temper are a thing of legend, but always reported from behind closed doors, by anonymous sources. His indignation over the Barros accusations is a rare misstep from arguably the most media-savvy pope in history.
[Not that rare, since he already unloaded his contempt earlier to that hapless group of tourists in St. Peter's Square. Obviously, something about Barros - or clerical sex abuse in general - touches off a total loss of self-control and discretion in Bergoglio. One would have said it was overflowing outrage at the very thought of priestly sex abuses, but since his angry words were directed first to the Chilean faithful who opposed his naming of Barros to be a diocesan bishop, and then next to the victims of clerical sex abuse, it has to be something else!] Nevertheless, the clerical sex abuse crisis is a powerful third rail in the Church’s relations with the secular world. The damage done here likely won’t soon be forgotten.
Beginning of the end, of blip on the radar?
I’ve said from the outset of 2018 that I think this is the year Francis’s fortunes will turn. The world has reached “peak Francis,” and those who love him, love him for his push towards a new, progressive iteration of Catholicism. The faithful, on the other hand, have had more than their fill of his appetite for destruction. What is certain is that his outrageous comments about abuse victims will not endear him to either camp, lowering his stock among supporters and cementing his reputation among critics.
Still, Francis has enormous good will in the bank among those with a vested interest in the furtherance of his agenda. The news of a papal award being given to one of the most notorious abortion promoters in the world began making international headlines just days after the joint reports first appeared here and at The Lepanto Institute.
For the global Left, this was nothing but a feather in the pope’s cap, but the story was quickly drowned out with coos of wistful approval from women the world over (including true believers) when news broke that Francis had offered, on the spot, to officiate the wedding of two flight attendants on a recent papal flight. The couple, so the story went, was planning to marry in 2010 when their parish was damaged by an earthquake.
Although they have been living together in a civil marriage for years and have two children, they never found the time to be married in a Catholic Church. The “impromptu” wedding was quickly picked up as yet another heartwarming story demonstrating the humanity of “the people’s pope” — never mind that it broke a bunch of canon laws, made a triviality of something sacred, set a terrible precedent that will put priests the world over in a tough situation, and was, contrary to a calculated pretense of spontaneity, actually planned out a month in advance. In other words, it was a cheap and transparent PR stunt, but it appears to have done some good for the pope’s damaged image.
When all the smiley face emojis and animated hearts fade, however, the question will remain: how many tricks does a papacy need to stay afloat when it sees clerical abuse victims unafraid to stand up for themselves as “dumb” people full of “calumny”? For that matter, how many tricks does it have left?
[Oh, never fear! As many as Bergoglio can conjure when he pleases! The more important question is, can he get away with new tricks, or variations on previously tried-and-tested tricks? Yes, he can and will - because he is still the pope and can manipulate the institutions and infrastructure of the Catholic Church anyway he wants to in order to insure the triumph of his very own church of Bergoglio.]
The Internet is famous for having a short attention span, but there are some things people have a hard time forgetting. Abusing spiritual power to take advantage of children and vulnerable young adults is one of them. With the armor of this papacy finally cracking, it appears there may finally be a chance for the world to see what some of us have long known: the ugly reality that lies beneath.
Perhaps even more surprising than Cardinal O'Malley's rebuke of the pope is this article by Robert Mickens, Bergoglian DOC, premier cru (to describe him in terms - Italian and French, respectively - used for certified wines from 'first growth' grapes), and perhaps, more significantly, anti-Ratzinger nonpareil, makes some shocking accusations against his idol, which are not really attenuated by his loyal attempts to make excuses for him (Note his seemingly non-sequitur subtitle - though later in the story, one realizes Mickens means that as bishop, Bergoglio himself 'mishandled' priestly sex abuse cases!)
The pope’s bewildering inaction on sexual abuse
There is no question that Francis is authentic —
he does not demand of others what he does not demand of himself
by Robert Mickens
January 19, 2018
Pope Francis has been away in South America this past week and, while in Chile, he drew only modest crowds of supporters. It was the frostiest reception he’s received on any of his 22 foreign trips — at least to those countries with a majority of Christians and certainly in the traditionally Catholic lands of Latin America.
What the trip made glaringly clear is that, despite the support Francis has received for
his many good and inspiring steps to restore evangelical credibility to the church and its mission [OK, Mickens, start listing them, if you can!] many people still see him as “all talk and no action” when it comes to the issue of clergy sex abuse — especially in holding accountable those bishops who tried to cover it up.
The best-known case of this in Chile directly involves the pope and his unwavering support of Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, who has been accused of protecting one of the country’s most notorious abusing priests. Many Chileans were angered when the pope allowed the bishop to concelebrate at the largest public Mass of the papal trip.
And while
the surprising and touching wedding ceremony [Mickens obviously insists on keeping up the myth though the deception was quite quickly unveiled] that Francis performed for two flight attendants during an inland flight on Thursday may have deflected attention from this for a fleeting moment,
it is not likely to reassure the people of Chile — or many other Catholics from around the world — who continue to be disappointed and confused by the pope’s apparent inaction on sex abuse.
This has long been the ugliest blot on his pontificate. And in the course of a few days it is now even uglier.
Pope Francis’d credibility in dealing with sexual abuse has always been questionable, despite the many excuses and the positive “spin” his apologists and adulators have continued to put forth.
It is undeniable that he has done far less than Benedict XVI did in addressing sexual abuse in the church, and yet the press has treated Francis with far greater tolerance for his omissions than it would have ever conceded to his now-retired predecessor. [Must have cost Mickens an arm and a leg to come to this admission!]
Francis simply has been flatfooted on the issue. [Flat-footed? Or not really sincere?]
It took Cardinals Reinhard Marx and Sean O’Malley, members of his C9 “privy council,” to convince the Jesuit pope to establish the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) and other now-aborted attempts to deal with sex abuse.
But after three years of activity, the mandate of the commission’s members has expired. The PCPM has effectively been in mothballs now for over a month.
Marie Collins, who was arguably the most credible member of the commission, shared her frustration this week over the PCPM’s abeyance.
“It appears to me that the obvious lack of urgency or any slight of concern in the Vatican about the commission's current status reflects how unimportant the membership is considered. Also the low priority being given to this issue of child protection despite the assurances so often given by the pope and others that it has the highest priority!” she wrote on her blog.
This is damning. And Pope Francis — and all who support his efforts to reform and renew the church — should be very concerned....
“Why has the pope not disciplined bishops who mishandled sex abuse cases?” Perhaps because he did the same thing.
There is fairly substantial evidence, even if Francis’s supporters have always denied or refused to believe it, that when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and president of Argentina’s episcopal conference, the future pope did little very little to remove or report priests accused of sexually abusing minors.
Some alleged victims have said Cardinal Bergoglio did not even answer their letters of complaint. They’ve also said he refused to meet them or apologize to them. [This is the first time I have ever seen anything like this published about Bergoglio's record on this issue! I had always wondered about the strange silence! To think this revelation is coming from Mickens! Is he perhaps starting to 'ease into' a critical attitude towards the pope about whom he is among those who have always held him up as the pluperfect pope?]
Perhaps this pope — a man who so deeply lives with the knowledge that he is a sinner who has been forgiven and needs to continually to be reminded of that forgiveness — is hampered by this painful admission: “Who am I to judge other bishops who, to one degree or another, failed to deal with complaints of sexual abuse just as I did?”
Here you may read what a Boston Globe columnist writes about Bergoglio's performance in the matter of clerical sex abuse:
www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/01/19/pope-francis-company-man/kfE0f7wFLDuMN2Uqg2hbQL/story.html?event...
The first line of the column reads:
Let the record show that the promise of Pope Francis died in Santiago, Chile, on Jan. 18, in the year of our Lord 2018.
And its closing lines are:
Well, Pope Francis fooled us. He fooled us all.
I'm not posting the article because the columnist tars everyone in the Church with his working premise that "Pope Francis is a company man,
no better than his predecessors when it comes to siding with the institutional Roman Catholic Church against any who would criticize it or those, even children, who have been victimized by it."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2018 04:33]