THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Forgive me, but missing even one day of updating this thread can make it very difficult to catch up, especially these days when the pluperfect pontificate of the
pluperfect pope appears to be unravelling day by day to show its (and his) true colors. One of the most significant news reports to me in the past week was the AP
item opening wide the Barros story and mentioning those extreme accusations against Barros that I had always wondered why they have been suppressed in most
reports about the case so far. Even after the AP story, accounts of it shy away from mentioning those accusations - as if seeking to 'protect' Bergoglio from further
embarrassment, or perhaps in sheer disbelief that a pope could read such accusations against a man he was considering to name a diocesan bishop and still go
ahead and name him anyway, against unprecedented opposition from the faithful of the diocese and half of the Chilean Parliament who signed a letter asking the pope
to desist from nominating Barros. So before anything else, let me go on record with the AP story.

AP Exclusive:
2015 letter about abuse cover-up belies
pope's claim of 'ignorance' about Barros
By NICOLE WINFIELD AND EVA VERGARA


VATICAN CITY, February 5, 2018 (AP) — Pope Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it, contradicting the pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, the letter’s author and members of Francis’ own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press.

The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors, compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.

The scandal exploded last month when Francis’s trip to South America was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis callously dismissed accusations against Barros as “slander,” seemingly unaware that victims had placed Barros at the scene of Karadima’s crimes.

On the plane home, confronted by an AP reporter, the pope said: “You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward.”

But members of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors say that in April 2015, they sent a delegation to Rome specifically to hand-deliver a letter to the pope about Barros. The letter from Juan Carlos Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and fondling he says he suffered at Karadima’s hands, which he said Barros and others saw but did nothing to stop.



Four members of the commission met with Francis’s top abuse adviser, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained their concerns about Francis’ recent appointment of Barros as a bishop in southern Chile, and gave him the letter to deliver to Francis.

“When we gave him (O’Malley) the letter for the pope, he assured us he would give it to the pope and speak of the concerns,” then-commission member Marie Collins told the AP. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been done.”

Cruz, who now lives and works in Philadelphia, heard the same later that year.

“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the pope — in his hands,” he said in an interview at his home Sunday.

Neither the Vatican nor O’Malley responded to multiple requests for comment. [Paint the Vatican bright red for the deep embarrassment this must have caused Bergoglio and the guardians of his image! And Cardinal O'Malley caught in the crossfire!]

While the 2015 summit of Francis’s commission was known and publicized at the time, the contents of Cruz’s letter — and a photograph of Collins handing it to O’Malley — were not disclosed by members. Cruz provided the letter, and Collins provided the photo, after reading an AP story that reported Francis had claimed to have never heard from any Karadima victims about Barros’ behavior.

The revelation could be costly for Francis, whose track record on the abuse crisis was already shaky after a botched Italian abuse case he intervened in became public, More recently, he let the abuse commission lapse at the end of last year. Vatican analysts now openly question whether he “gets it,” and some of his own advisers privately acknowledge that maybe he doesn’t.

[Well, see, Ms Winfield and all you out there at AP - and the rest of the MSM as well - the problem is that you all always portrayed Bergoglio as one who walks on water without floundering as Peter did. And now that he is caught out in A BIG LIE, you are trying your best to save face for your own obvious miscalculations and misreading of this man.

What's not to 'get' about the filth in the Church constituted by clerical sex abuse and covering up for it? If Bergoglio didn't 'get it', would he even have tried all the pro-forma statements and actions he has taken to 'show the world' that he, Bergoglio, is 'more serious than anyone else has been in the Church' about cleaning out this filth? And you all dutifully reported everything a-critically and with great praise!

What a contrast to AP's modus operandi during Benedict XVI's pontificate, when every story about him, whether it had to with the subject or not, had a boilerplate paragraph criticizing him for not doing enough about the clerical sex abuse scandal - as if he had not been the man who almost singlehandedly confronted it with concrete measures and his own personal involvement in reading through all the cases of sex abuse forwarded to the CDF when he was its Prefect.

It all came to a head in 2010 when the AP, along with teamed up with the New York Times and Germany's power Der Spiegel group to try and uncover any shred of evidence that Joseph Ratzinger was directly or indirectly involved in a sex abuse scandal or its cover-up, and thereby force him to resign!]

The Barros affair first caused shockwaves in January 2015 when Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno, Chile, over the objections of the leadership of Chile’s bishops’ conference and many local priests and laity. They accepted as credible the testimony against Karadima, a prominent Chilean cleric who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for abusing minors. Barros was a Karadima protege, and according to Cruz and other victims, he witnessed the abuse and did nothing.

“Holy Father, I write you this letter because I’m tired of fighting, of crying and suffering,” Cruz wrote in Francis’s native Spanish. “Our story is well known and there’s no need to repeat it, except to tell you of the horror of having lived this abuse and how I wanted to kill myself.”

Cruz and other survivors had for years denounced the cover-up of Karadima’s crimes, but were dismissed by some in the Chilean church hierarchy and the Vatican’s own ambassador in Santiago, who refused their repeated requests to meet before and after Barros was appointed.

After Francis’s comments backing Barros caused such an outcry in Chile, he was forced last week to do an about-face: The Vatican announced it was sending in its most respected sex-crimes investigator to take testimony from Cruz and others about Barros.

In the letter to the pope, Cruz begs for Francis to listen to him and make good on his pledge of “zero tolerance.”

“Holy Father, it’s bad enough that we suffered such tremendous pain and anguish from the sexual and psychological abuse, but the terrible mistreatment we received from our pastors is almost worse,” he wrote.

Cruz goes on to detail in explicit terms the homo-eroticized nature of the circle of priests and young boys around Karadima, the charismatic preacher whose El Bosque community in the well-to-do Santiago neighborhood of Providencia produced dozens of priestly vocations and five bishops, including Barros.

He described how Karadima would kiss Barros and fondle his genitals, and do the same with younger priests and teens, and how young priests and seminarians would fight to sit next to Karadima at the table to receive his affections.

“More difficult and tough was when we were in Karadima’s room and Juan Barros — if he wasn’t kissing Karadima — would watch when Karadima would touch us — the minors — and make us kiss him, saying: ‘Put your mouth near mine and stick out your tongue.’ He would stick his out and kiss us with his tongue,” Cruz told the pope. “Juan Barros was a witness to all this innumerable times, not just with me but with others as well.”

“Juan Barros covered up everything that I have told you,” he added.

Barros has repeatedly denied witnessing any abuse or covering it up. “I never knew anything about, nor ever imagined, the serious abuses which that priest committed against the victims,” he told the AP recently. “I have never approved of nor participated in such serious, dishonest acts, and I have never been convicted by any tribunal of such things.”

For the Osorno faithful who have opposed Barros as their bishop, the issue isn’t so much a legal matter requiring proof or evidence, as Barros was a young priest at the time and not in a position of authority over Karadima. It’s more that if Barros didn’t “see” what was happening around him and recognize it was problematic for a priest to kiss and fondle young boys, he shouldn’t be in charge of a diocese where he is responsible for detecting inappropriate sexual behavior, reporting it to police and protecting children from pedophiles like his mentor.

Cruz had arrived at Karadima’s community in 1980 as a vulnerable teenager, distraught after the recent death of his father. He has said Karadima told him he would be like a spiritual father to him, but instead sexually abused him.

Based on testimony from Cruz and other former members of the parish, the Vatican in 2011 removed Karadima from ministry and sentenced him to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes. Now 87, he lives in a home for elderly priests in Santiago; he hasn’t commented on the scandal, and the home has declined to accept calls or visits from the news media.

The victims also testified to Chilean prosecutors, who opened an investigation into Karadima after they went public with their accusations in 2010. Chilean prosecutors had to drop charges because too much time had passed, but the judge running the case stressed that it wasn’t for lack of proof.

While the victims’ testimony was deemed credible by both Vatican and Chilean prosecutors, some in the local church hierarchy clearly didn’t believe them, which might have influenced Francis’s view. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz has acknowledged he didn’t believe the victims initially and shelved an investigation. He was forced to reopen it when the victims went public, and has since apologized. He is now one of the Argentine pope’s key cardinal advisers.

By the time he finally got his letter into the pope’s hands in 2015, Cruz had already sent versions to many other people, and had tried for months to get an appointment with the Vatican ambassador to relay concerns about Barros’s suitability for diocesan work. The embassy’s Dec. 15, 2014, email to Cruz — a month before Barros was appointed — was short and to the point: “The apostolic nunciature has received the message you emailed Dec. 7 to the apostolic nuncio, and at the same time communicates that your request has been met with an unfavorable response.”

One could argue that Francis didn’t pay attention to Cruz’s letter, since he receives thousands of letters every day from faithful around the world. He can’t possibly read them all, much less remember the contents years later. He might have been tired and confused after a weeklong trip to South America when he told an airborne press conference that victims never came forward to accuse Barros of cover-up.

But this was not an ordinary letter, nor were the circumstances under which it arrived in the Vatican.

Francis had named O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, to head his Commission for the Protection of Minors based on his credibility in having helped clean up the mess in Boston after the U.S. sex abuse scandal exploded there in 2002. The commission gathered outside experts to advise the church on protecting children from pedophiles and educating church personnel about preventing abuse and cover-ups.

The four commission members who were on a special subcommittee dedicated to survivors had flown to Rome specifically to speak with O’Malley about the Barros appointment and to deliver Cruz’s letter. A press release issued after the April 12, 2015, meeting read: “Cardinal O’Malley agreed to present the concerns of the subcommittee to the Holy Father.”



Commission member Catherine Bonnet, a French child psychiatrist who took the photo of Collins handing the letter to O’Malley at Casa Santa Marta, said the commission members had decided to descend on Rome specifically when O’Malley and other members of the pope’s group of nine cardinal advisers were meeting, so that O’Malley could put it directly into the pope’s hands.

“Cardinal O’Malley promised us when Marie gave to him the letter of Juan Carlos that he will give to Pope Francis,” she said.

O’Malley’s spokesman in Boston referred requests for comment to the Vatican. Neither the Vatican press office, nor officials at the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, responded to calls and emails seeking comment.

But O’Malley’s remarkable response to Francis’s defense of Barros and to his dismissal of the victims while he was in Chile, is perhaps now better understood.

In a rare rebuke of a pope by a cardinal, O’Malley issued a statement Jan. 20 in which he said the pope’s words were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse,” and that such expressions had the effect of abandoning victims and relegating them to “discredited exile.”

A day later, Francis apologized for having demanded “proof” of wrongdoing by Barros, saying he meant merely that he wanted to see “evidence.” But he continued to describe the accusations against Barros as “calumny” and insisted he had never heard from any victims.

Even when told in his airborne press conference Jan. 21 that Karadima’s victims had indeed placed Barros at the scene of Karadima’s abuse, Francis said: “No one has come forward. They haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This is all a bit vague. It’s something that can’t be accepted.”

He stood by Barros, saying: “I’m certain he’s innocent,” even while saying that he considered the testimony of victims to be “evidence” in a cover-up investigation.

“If anyone can give me evidence, I’ll be the first to listen,” he said.

Cruz said he felt like he had been slapped when he heard those words.

“I was upset,” he said, “and at the same time I couldn’t believe that someone so high up like the pope himself could lie about this.” [Unfortunately, the man elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church has shown himself to be a habitual liar and deceiver (on so many issues in which his lies and deception are documented and chronicled) - but as I always remark, if the man can dare edit Jesus's words from the Gospel and omit statements by the Lord that he, Bergoglio, does not agree with, what would he NOT dare do?]

Winfield then supplements her story with a timeline of the Barros case:

Bishop Barros – the story so far
by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, February 6, 2018 (AP) - Here's what you need to know about the Bishop Barros affair:

Pope Francis’s appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to head the small diocese of Osorno, Chile encountered opposition when it was announced three years ago and has contributed to a credibility crisis for the Chilean Catholic Church in the time since.

Bishop Barros was a protege of Fr Fernando Karadima, a charismatic priest who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors. Some of the victims allege that Barros witnessed the abuse, placing him at the scene when Fr Karadima kissed and fondled minors. Bishop Barros has denied knowing of the abuse or covering up for Fr Karadima.

Pope Francis created an uproar while visiting Chile in January, when he called the accusations against Bishop Barros “slander.” The Pope further insisted he never knew that any of Fr Karadima’s victims had come forward. The Associated Press reported Monday that Pope Francis received an eight-page letter in April 2015 that laid out in detail why abuse victim Juan Carlos Cruz thought Bishop Barros was unfit to lead a diocese.

Some key dates in the Barros affair:

January 10, 2015
Pope names Bishop Barros, then Chile’s military bishop, as Bishop of Osorno, over the objections of some members of the Chilean bishops’ conference. They were concerned about the fallout from the Fr Karadima affair.

January 31, 2015
Pope Francis acknowledged the bishops’ concerns in a letter, which the AP obtained last month. The letter revealed a plan to have Bishop Barros and two other Fr Karadima-trained bishops resign and take yearlong sabbaticals, but Pope Francis wrote that it fell apart because the nuncio revealed it. The Pope later acknowledged that he had blocked the plan himself because there was no “evidence” Bishop Barros was guilty of any cover-up. [Yet AP at the time did not even question why, if the pope had agreed earlier to the planned sabbatical for the bishops who were Karadima proteges, suddenly he revokes any action at all against (nothing more has been hear about the two other bishops) and goes ahead and nominates Barros away - having declined, the pope himself reveals, Barros's offer to resign. He didn't have to accept the resignation, of course - he simply ought to have suspended the nomination until a formal investigation into the matter. Which he never ordered.]

February 2015
Fifty Chilean lawmakers and priests, deacons and more than 1,000 laity in the Osorno diocese sign petitions protesting Bishop Barros’s appointment and urging Pope Francis revoke it.

February 3, 2015
Juan Carlos Cruz writes an eight-page letter to the Vatican’s ambassador in Santiago, Monsignor Ivo Scapolo, accusing Bishop Barros of watching the sex abuse he experienced and doing nothing to stop it. The letter, which Cruz said should be considered a formal complaint, would form the basis of a subsequent letter to the Pope.

March 21, 2015
The Mass installing Barros as bishop of Osorno is marred by violent protests. Black-clad demonstrators storm the church with signs that read, “No to Karadima’s accomplice.” Ten days later, the Vatican publicly defends Bishop Barros, saying it “carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment.”

April 12, 2015
Four members of the Pope’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors fly to Rome to meet with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Pope Francis’s top adviser, to raise concerns about Barros’ suitability to run a diocese. The commissioners cite the victim testimony that Barros witnessed and ignored abuse. Member Marie Collins hands Cruz’s letter to Cardinal O’Malley, who would go on to tell Collins and Cruz he delivered it to the Pope and relayed their concerns

May 15, 2015
Pope Francis is filmed in St Peter’s Square telling the spokesman for the Chilean bishops’ conference that the Chilean Church had become too politicised and the opposition to Bishop Barros was coming from “leftists.” Pope Francis says: “Osorno suffers, yes, from foolishness, because they don’t open their heart to what God says and they let themselves guided by the nonsense all those people say.” [And people say this is a 'merciful' pope?]


January 15, 2018
Pope Francis arrives in Chile to protests that are unprecedented for a papal visit. During his first public remarks, he apologises for the “irreparable damage” suffered by all victims of sexual abuse. He meets with two survivors and weeps with them. [Oh, the melodrama of it all!]

January 18, 2018
While visiting the northern city of Iquique, Pope Francis is asked by a Chilean journalist about Bishop Barros and says: “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak. There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?” [Bergoglio in a most peremptory display of know-it-all arrogance!]

January 20, 2018
Cardinal O’Malley publicly rebukes the Pope, saying his words in Iquique “were a source of great pain” for abuse survivors. “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,” Cardinal O’Malley said.

January 21, 2018
Pope Francis partially apologises, saying he shouldn’t have used the word “proof” but rather “evidence.” During an in-flight news conference, he repeats that accusations against Bishop Barros are “slander” and denies any victims had come forward accusing Bishop Barros of covering up for Fr Karadima. “I’m convinced he’s innocent.”

February 5, 2018AP reports the contents of Cruz’s letter, which contradict the Pope’s claim about no victims coming forward. Cruz wrote: “Holy Father, it’s bad enough that we suffered such tremendous pain and anguish from the sexual and psychological abuse, but the terrible mistreatment we received from our pastors is almost worse.”

In the following article, Christopher Altieri - who worked for years at the English service of Vatican Radio, including during the first years of the Bergoglio pontificate, reviews the possibilities of whatever happened to the Juan Carlos Cruz letter given to the pope back in April 2015, in an analysis he would never have written for Vatican Radio:

The Bishop Barros crisis:
how bad is it?
by Christopher Altieri

Saturday, 10 Feb 2018

“How bad is it?” That was the question a friend put to me, à propos the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis precipitated the crisis by levelling repeated accusations of calumny against survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by a prominent Chilean cleric, Fernando Karadima, who was convicted of his crimes by a Vatican court in 2011.

Karadima’s victims claim one of their abuser’s protégés, Juan Barros – ordained bishop in 1995 and appointed by Pope Francis to head the diocese of Osorno, Chile, in 2015 – witnessed the abuse they suffered at Karadima’s hands, covered for his mentor and enabled his abusive behaviour. Put just like that, it is bad enough.

It gets worse.

Pope Francis first accused the victims of calumny in a heat-of-the-moment exchange with a reporter in a press gaggle at the gate of the Iquique venue where he was heading to say Mass on the last day of his recent visit to Chile. News of the Pope’s “hot takes” overshadowed the final, Peruvian leg of his South American tour.

The Pope then used his in-flight press conference – days later – on the return trip to Rome, to double down on his accusations of calumny, saying he has not received any evidence of Barros’ alleged wrongdoing, and that the victims had never brought their case to him. “You [reporters], in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward,” Pope Francis said.

Even at the time Pope Francis made it – again, during the in-flight presser en route to Rome from Peru, days after his impromptu response had garnered the attention of the press – the assertion was, to say the very least, problematic.

The accusations against Barros have been before the public since at least 2012. Victims have given testimony to Chilean prosecutors regarding the matter. It appears, therefore, that the Pope’s assertion can save itself only if it rests on a hyper-technicality: that he had no direct, personal acquaintance with the accusations.

Upon hearing the Pope’s claim, however, the abuse survivor and former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Marie Collins, made it known that she had delivered an 8-page letter to the Pope from one of Karadima's victims, describing life in the Chilean institute where their abuse took place and detailing Barros’s alleged role in their abuse.

The letter, Collins explained to AP, was from Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of Karadima and Barros’s most outspoken accuser. Collins claims she delivered the letter in 2015, through the Pope’s own chief adviser on sexual abuse matters (and president of the Commission for the Protection of Minors), Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston.

About the letter and its delivery, Marie Collins told the Catholic Herald: “It was at the time a private letter [written in Spanish] from Juan Carlos Cruz to the Holy Father.” Collins went on to explain: “As well as I can recollect it was sealed when given to Cardinal O’Malley. It was in a simple plain envelope. I did have a general idea of its content as [Mr Cruz] had also sent a detailed explanation of events in English.”

Asked specifically about Cardinal O’Malley’s confirmation of delivery, Collins told the Herald: “He said he had given the letter directly to the Holy Father and that at the same time he had discussed our concerns about Bishop Barros with him.”

At this point, there are four possibilities:
- Collins and Cruz are both lying about the letter;
- Cardinal O’Malley gravely misrepresented the diligence with which he discharged his promise to deliver it directly to Pope Francis (though Collins has expressed full confidence in him on several occasions);
- Pope Francis received the letter and did not read it;
- Pope Francis received it and read it, only to forget about it.

If O’Malley did not deliver the letter directly into the hands of the Pope, he needs to say so. If Pope Francis did receive the letter, only to put it aside without reading it, he needs to say so, and explain why he did not read it.

If the Pope did receive it, and read it, then the only way to save him from an accusation of deliberate untruthfulness is to admit he is relying on another hyper-technicality: that he received nothing submitted specifically and explicitly as evidence in an open judicial process, or that he received no new evidence – i.e. evidence about which he had no prior knowledge of any kind in any capacity – or that he received no evidence of Barros’s wrongdoing as a bishop, such as would warrant investigation and possibly trial under pertinent law.

As Fr Robert Gahl, who teaches ethics at Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, told Catholic News Agency in a story that ran earlier this week, “[Barros’s] alleged failure to report did not constitute episcopal negligence and yet his being somehow an accessory, at least insofar as he is accused of not having stopped a crime from taking place, would constitute the negligence of someone who is now a bishop.”

The accusations against Barros arguably come to more than failure to report abuse. In any case, the point is that Pope Francis appointed Barros to the See of Osorno in 2015, years after the accusations against Barros were public knowledge.

The appointment of Barros was also over and against the objections of the bishops of Chile, who wrote to Pope Francis about the matter. The Holy Father responded to the Chilean bishops with his own letter, in which he explained that he had in fact asked Barros to resign the post in which he found himself at the time (when Barros was appointed to Osorno he was bishop of the Chilean forces). The Pope also asked Barros to take a year’s sabbatical, before being considered for any other post.

The AP story detailing the exchanges reports that the Apostolic Nuncio to Chile, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, who acted as go-between, also told Barros that two other bishops who came up under Karadima were being given similar requests, and reportedly also told Barros to keep the news to himself. Barros, however, decided to give the names of the two other bishops in a letter he wrote announcing his renunciation of the military see. At that point, instead of sending Barros into retirement as damaged goods, or rejecting him as insubordinate, Pope Francis decided to make Barros the head of the Church in Osorno.

Quite apart from the legal cavils, the question is: what was Pope Francis thinking?

In various public and private conversations about the crisis, a few people have suggested that Pope Francis may have read and then forgotten about the letter. The details of the published excerpts alone make that highly unlikely.

An AP story published last Sunday contains lurid particulars. “[W]e were in Karadima’s room,” the story quotes Cruz’s letter, “and Juan Barros – if he wasn’t kissing Karadima – would watch when Karadima would touch us – the minors – and make us kiss him, saying: ‘Put your mouth near mine and stick out your tongue.’ He would stick his out and kiss us with his tongue.”
- If Pope Francis could read those sentences and forget he had, then there is reason to suspect that he is not in full possession of his faculties.
- If the letter was intercepted after Cardinal O’Malley delivered it, and before Pope Francis had a chance to read it, then the Holy Father is a victim of a grave and likely criminal disservice that has damaged his credibility.
- If he is a victim of such a disservice, he must nevertheless own his dismissal of the general public claims registered in the letter, and account for his part in the creation of a working environment in which such miscarriage was possible.
- He must also apologise to the persons whose names and reputations he has injured.

Even if the outstanding questions regarding Pope Francis’s handling of the Barros affair are clarified – as they must be – the crisis of leadership in the Church will nevertheless remain.

The known facts of this case and others constitutive of Pope Francis’s record in these regards bespeak a style of governance in which the man at the top is more inclined
- to listen to fellow clerics, than to victims;
- to believe bishops – ones with skin in the game, to boot – over laity who bring credible allegations of clerical misbehaviour;
- to trust his own “gut instinct” even when it is informed by the opinion of interested parties, and to compound this imprudence with the self-delusion of self-reliance in these regards;
- to believe he can manage the crisis of clerical sexual abuse by way of gimmicks like the powerless Commission for the Protection of Minors he set up between 2014 and 2015 before ignoring it and allowing it to expire;
- to blame underlings and hide behind cavils of law, rather than face the filth in the Church squarely and fight it without ruth or stint.

How bad is it? It is very bad indeed. If the manner in which the crisis as it has heretofore unfolded in the worldwide Church, and especially in the US and Ireland, is any lesson, then a candid mind would not be incapable of concluding that Pope Francis is not only part of the problem, but that he is the problem.


It is very telling that neither official Vatican media nor the usual prompter-than-a-sneeze defenders/apologists for Bergoglio have so far not said a word about this development in the Barros case. Oh, I know, they will say: The pope already sent Mons. Scicluna to look into this case - why don't we wait for his report? So be it! Though Fr. Lucie-Smith, also at Catholic Herald, promptly issued a caveat about Scicluna, whose absolute adherence to Bergoglio on allowing communion for unqualified remarried divorcees - and saying that it is this pope's magisterium we should listen to, not that of previous popes - does raise doubts about his impartiality.