THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

It's not that there is any joy at all - all right, occasionally, a tad of Schadenfreude when the matter does not have to do with faith, morals and liturgy - in piling up
the negatives against Bergoglio. It is that he piles them up all by himself, and one is dutybound to report them as they come to light. Consider this latest wrinkle
in Bergoglio's already messy mishandling of the clerical sex abuse crisis riddling the Church in Chile...

The Jesuit whose advice
the pope heeded on Barros

June 18, 2018

The first head to roll, in the work of rebuilding the Catholic hierarchy of Chile set in motion by Pope Francis, has been the most predictable: that of Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, who finally resigned and whose resignation was promptly accepted [More than three years since his much-protested appointment by the pope in early 2015, an appointment staunchly defended by the pope until he received the report of Mons. Charles Scicluna whom he sent to Chile to investigate the charges against Barros and other cases of clerical sex abuse that have been improperly dealt with by the Chilean bishops].

But there is something that does not add up in this operation and in its back story. The photo above is a clue to this. It was taken at the cathedral of Osorno on March 21, 2015, the day of the turbulent entrance into the diocese of Bishop Barros, who had been the target of serious accusations of unfitness for the office but strenuously defended by the pope. Next to him, in liturgical vestments and with the act of appointment in his hand while the protest raged around Barros is a Spanish Jesuit, Germán Arana, a friend and spiritual guide of Barros, but above all one of the most intimate confidants of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

When, in mid-May this year, the pope convened all the Chilean bishops in Rome for three days of “discernment” on their general failure to deal with clerical sex abuses in their dioceses, Barros came too, but from Madrid, and together with none other than the Jesuit Arana.

Who, it turns out, had played a decisive role three or four years before, in the appointment of Barros as bishop of Osorno, according to a report last May on the para-Vatican website “Il Sismografo” by its founder and director, Luis Badilla, a Chilean vaticanista who lives in Rome and a former journalist for Vatican Radio. Arana’s role was first leaked by the Spanish blogsite "Infovaticana".

Until a couple of months ago, Arana’s role was entirely unknown not only to the general public but even to specialists on Vatican affairs. Even when Francis, last April, confessed that he had “made serious errors in the assessment and perception of the situation, in particular through the lack of reliable and balanced information”, Arana’s name never came up as one of those who had led the pope on about Barros.

Instead, the main culprits named for having led Francis to promote Barros to the diocese of Osorno and then to defend his innocence against any and all charges, were and continue to be Cardinals Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa and Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, previous and present archbishop of Santiago, as well as the apostolic nuncio in Chile, Ivo Scapolo. [Errazuriz is, of course, on the pope’s 9-man advisory council of cardinals, and did not attend the May convocation at the Vatican, nor did he sign the letter sent by the Chilean bishops offering their resignation en masse to the pope. At the time Bergoglio chose him to represent Latin America on his advisory council, it was certainly well-known how he had for years ignored complaints and accusations against Karadima, cavalierly dismissing the accusers and their allegations. It was Errazuriz's deliberate brush-off of the Karadima accusations when he was Archbishop of Santiago that led to the case being forwarded to the CDF for action. Errazuriz was perhaps the first illustration that for Bergoglio, the catchphrase 'zero tolerance' on clerical sex abuse is just that, a slogan he has no intention of following when his personal preferences come into play.]

But if one looks back at winter 2014-2015, when Barros’s appointment was made, there is a letter from Pope Francis that contradicts this reconstruction. The letter - brought to light by Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press in January of this year, on the eve of the pope’s visit to Chile – is dated January 31, 2015, at which time, Barros’s appointment as bishop of Osorno was already official, having been announced by the Holy See on January 10. Whereupon, the permanent council of the episcopal conference of Chile wrote the pope, asking him to revoke the appointment “in extremis”. The Jan. 31, 2015 letter is the pope’s reply to the bishops, rejecting their request outright.

In the letter, Francis relates that at the end of 2014, even the nuncio in Chile had urged Barros to decline the appointment and instead withdraw from the scene for a yearlong ‘sabbatical’. He proposed the same sabbatical to the two other Chilean bishops who had been proteges of Karadima.

And Bergoglio reveals Barros did write him offering to withdraw from the fray, but the pope explains he rejected Barros’s offer because of what he claimed to be a ‘flaw’ in Barros’s letter – namely, that he mentioned the names of the two other bishops linked to Karadima, names that were supposed to remain secret.

[This was the glaring hokum in the pope’s letter for two obvious reasons: 1) How could a resignation letter be flawed by the inclusion of other bishops’ names from information that the nuncio gave him? (AP would have ridiculed Benedict XVI to hell and back if he had ever said anything so absurd, but Winfield simply glosses it over and gives Bergoglio a pass!) and 2) why were those names ‘supposed to remain secret' when, given the huge interest and knowledge in Chile of Karadima’s case for over two decades now, and which priests (who eventually became bishops) were among his known associates, the names of the two other bishops were probably known to everybody else who followed the case. Certainly, known to Barros himself because they may have been his contemporaries in Karadima’s circle.

Very simply, Barros did give the pope the opportunity to get out of his quandary early enough, but no! Jorge Bergoglio was not going to change his mind about Barros once it was set, because to accept Barros’s withdrawal would be seen as an admission of error on his part! And he would persist in his obstinacy about keeping Barros – turning belligerent even to questioning media – for the next three years.

Besides, how could Bergoglio have acted so sanctimoniously during his meeting with the Chilean bishops in May when they did promptly ask him to revoke Barros’s appointment the moment it was announced by the Holy See? (Yeah, yeah, he told them he was also to blame for the mess - "See how humble I am!" - but did he ever verbalize to them “I should not have dismissed the letter you sent me in January 2015!”?)

Of course, some of the bishops may have questionable records themselves on sex abuse, but it is surely very uncommon that a bishops’ conference would intervene directly with the pope on an episcopal appointment! When many bishops and clergy of Austria protested Benedict XVI’s appointment of an auxiliary bishop in Linz back in 2010 – because the new bishop was known for his staunch orthodoxy - they did so in the media, and raised such a hornet’s storm that Mons Wagner, the appointee himself, informed Benedict XVI he wished his nomination withdrawn. Barros, alas, had no such scruples, apparently, because once the pope told him to stay put, he did.]

Apart from the flimsiness of this justification given by Francis for what he did, it emerges in glaring fashion from the pope’s own letter it that neither the nuncio nor the permanent council of the Chilean hierarchy - meaning its highest representatives, beginning with the Archbishop of Santiago - had championed the promotion of Barros as bishop of Osorno. On the contrary, they went about opposing it, both before and after its official publication, evidently maintaining that the accusations against him were credible.

But there is more in that letter from Francis of January 31, 2015. The pope writes that at the time of the letter, Barros was doing “a month of spiritual exercises in Spain.” Now we know where and with whom: in Madrid, and under the guidance of the Jesuit Arana, a former professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and since 2011, the rector of the Spanish seminary of Comillas. Il Sismografo tells us he has a reputation as “an exceptional former of priests and a great guide in the spiritual exercises.”

In the last months of 2014 - in the interval between his previous position as military ordinary of Chile and his upcoming one as bishop of Osorno - Barros had spent time in Madrid with Fr. Arana. And it is thought to have been precisely this latter who convinced Bergoglio of the soundness of his appointment. Badilla, in “Il Sismografo,” sees a reference to the decisive advice of Arana in Francis’s words during the return flight from Chile, on January 21, 2018, in strenuous defense of Barros’s innocence, before the about-face a few weeks later under the weight of crushing evidence: “Now, the case of Bishop Barros. It is a case where I called for an examination, an investigation, which was thorough. Really, there is no evidence of guilt, nor does it appear that there will be any.” [It makes it look even worse for Bergoglio that obviously he never really ordered a formal or other sort of official investigation at all, but simply relied on the word of Arana.

In the same way, and almost with the very same words, he claimed he had Mons. Battista Ricca investigated before he named him ‘spiritual adviser’ (officially, the chaplain) of IOR, despite official police records in Paraguay of the latter’s involvement in at least one public scandal (he was trapped in an elevator with a teenage male prostitute). Too bad the media did not even bother to check Ricca's record at all, and to this day, Sandro Magister remains the only Vaticanista who thought it necessary to look into his past. Because even if one assumes Ricca had given up his homosexual lifestyle and his live-in Swiss lover from the time he was busted in Paraguay, it was still not wise at all for the pope, any pope, to name someone with Ricca’s record as the ranking prelate at IOR (who is there as Bergoglio’s eyes and ears), as if the IOR did not already have more than its share of ethical problems!

And BTW, lest you forget...we have not been told at all what Scicluna found out about Barros that forced Bergoglio to reverse himself after more than three years of obstinately insisting, "I know best and don't you dare say my appointment of Barros was wrong in any way!"]

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Fr. Arana should have decided to walk beside Barros during his highly contested entrance into the diocese of Osorno, nor that he should have been close to him in the following years, until his arrival in Rome a month ago and his subsequent inevitable removal.

One uncertainty remains. What will Francis do about this improvident Jesuit adviser of his? Will he keep him in the circle of his most intimate and most trusted confidants? Remember the recent case of Mons. Dario Vigano [who was simply given a new title but presumably still calls the shots at the mega-Secretariat for Communications despite his unforgivable yet incredibly hamhanded Bergoglio-serving manipulation of a private letter sent to him by Benedict XVI]. The circle of Bergoglio stalwarts is a serious weak point of Francis’s pontificate. [Quite an understatement, that! After all, a man is known by the company he keeps, birds of a feather flock together, and ‘tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”!]

With one extra complication. In the ten pages that Francis conveyed to the Chilean bishops in mid-May as an outline for “discernment,” he scolded those bishops and superiors who entrust “to priests suspected of active homosexuality” seminaries and novitiates, with their associated recruitment. He addressed a similar rebuke a few days later - behind closed doors - to the Italian bishops meeting in Rome for their plenary assembly.

“We are full of homosexuals,” he lamented. But then why does Francis not “discern” in the circle of the ecclesiastics closest to him? [I bet he discerns all right - no, he knows for sure - and I am not saying that the likes of Mons. Paglia and James Martin, for example, are homosexuals, but that, despite their unremitting high-profile advocacy of homosexualism and its LGBTQ variants, he rewards them with key positions in his Curia, which is certainly his way of telling the whole community of sexual deviants among Catholics that he sees no problem at all with their lifestyle. As he said in even more specific and reassuring words to Juan Carlos Cruz.]

As a side note to this story it must be pointed out that among the numerous cases of sexual abuse committed by members of the Chilean clergy that have come to light in recent years, one has received very little coverage outside of Chile but is no less serious. And it too involves the Society of Jesus. It was reported in detail by Edward Pentin in the National Catholic Register:
> The Ignored Chilean Abuse Case. At a Jesuit High School

The epicenter of this other story is the Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago, run by Jesuits and with a decidedly progressive profile, the opposite of the nearby conservative parish of El Bosque, long led by that Fernando Karadima who is today the emblem of clerical sex abuse in Chile, after his conviction in 2011 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. For years he was an extremely popular educator and guide, for better or for worse, of numerous young people and priests, some of whom, including Barros, went on to become bishops.

The culprit in this case is the Jesuit Jaime Guzmán Astaburuaga, who committed his misdeeds in the eighties and nineties, sexually abusing numerous young people between the ages of 12 and 17. The Chilean province of the Society of Jesus became aware of this abuse in 2010. And in 2012 it convicted him. But it was only in January of this year that the provincial of the Chilean Jesuits, Cristián del Campo, made Fr. Guzmán’s conviction public. Prompting the reaction of sixty alumni of the Colegio, who in an open letter said the five-year silence over the conviction has aggravated the victims’ suffering and compromised the necessary work of restoration and prevention.

[One of these days, I will not be surprised if someone comes out with a story of untold and yet to be uncovered stories of clerical sex abuse in Argentina.]

A most interesting and informative sidebar to the Karadima story:


Karadima's brother meets the pope-
says Barros and his fellow priests
covered up for the abuser
Also calls on the abuser to ask forgiveness
in public from his victims for the harm he did them
by Junno Arocho Esteves

June 18, 2018

The brother of Chilean Fr Fernando Karadima was among the group of priests and laypeople who met Pope Francis on June 2. Oscar Karadima revealed that he spoke to the Pope about the suffering his family endured following the revelation that his brother was found guilty of sexual abuse.

“I spoke to him about Fernando; I told him what Fernando was like with his family, with us: He was an arrogant man, authoritarian, a man we were afraid of and that even my mother was afraid of him,” Oscar Karadima said.

Recalling his conversation with the Pope, Oscar Karadima said his family members “were also victims of abuse of power and of conscience” by his brother. Their family name, he added, was tarnished due to the scandals.

“We are the only Karadima family in Chile. I’ve read on social media, ‘The Karadima family are a family of degenerates, a family guilty of covering up, a family of paedophiles,'” he said.

Known as an influential and charismatic priest, Fr Fernando Karadima drew hundreds of young men to the priesthood, and four of his proteges went on to become bishops, including retired Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno.

Speaking to Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Oscar Karadima also called on his brother to ask forgiveness for the hurt inflicted on those he sexually abused.

“I would ask him to be humble. Fernando, ask for forgiveness. Not in silence to God or in your prayers. Do it publicly, that people hear that you ask forgiveness for the harm you have done to victims and to everyone,” Oscar said.

“Fernando,” he continued, “you are a man who is going to die. How can you die in this way, as a proud person who doesn’t ask forgiveness? I ask you in the name of God and the most holy virgin who you always said you loved so much. I ask you in the name of my father, my mother, my two dead sisters.”

After accusations of sexual abuse came to light in 2010, the Vatican investigated Fr Karadima and sentenced him to a life of prayer and penance after he was found guilty of sexual abuse.

Oscar Karadima said he also wanted to inform the Pope of the four bishops who formed part of Fr Karadima’s inner circle and that “they were witnesses and covered up abuses.”

“The Pope stopped me and said, ‘Speak to me about Barros.’ I told him, ‘Your Holiness, Bishop Barros lied. He was my brother’s friend and, in a certain way, you can say he belonged to his ‘iron circle,'” Oscar Karadima recalled. The Pope had accepted Bishop Barros’s resignation on June 11. Abuse survivors have alleged that when Bishop Barros was still a priest, he witnessed their abuse by his mentor.

“Everyone knew that they were made bishops because my brother Fernando was able to make it so, through his friendship or closeness with (Cardinal) Angelo Sodano,” he added.

Cardinal Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, served as apostolic nuncio to Chile from 1978-1988 and as Vatican Secretary of State from 1991-2006.

Oscar Karadima recalled tearing up as he recounted his and his family’s pain and that Pope Francis touched his hand and encouraged him.

After listening to him, he added, the Pope grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a message for the Karadima family.

“To the family of Oscar Karadima, with my blessing and my sorrow for so much suffering that you bear. In the name of Fernando, silent and incapable of realising (his mistakes), I ask your forgiveness,” the Pope wrote.

Karadima said he was moved by the Pope’s gesture and said it was the first time someone from the Catholic Church recognised his family’s pain.

“Neither (Cardinal Riccardo) Ezzati, nor (Cardinal Francisco Javier) Errazuriz, nor anyone acknowledged our pain. That is why what I also ask for – because no one has said it – is justice for my family. The Pope was the only one who had words of affection and consolation toward them,” Oscar Karadima said.

Pope Francis has made seeking forgiveness and promoting reconciliation a priority in the fallout of the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Chilean church.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, president of a board of review handling abuse cases within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Fr Jordi Bertomeu Farnos, an official of the doctrinal congregation, concluded their June 14-17 visit to the diocese of Osorno with a Mass at the Cathedral of St Matthew.

During the Mass, Archbishop Scicluna, Fr Bertomeu and Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Concha Cayuqueo of Santiago, apostolic administrator for the Diocese of Osorno, kneeled before the congregation and asked forgiveness.

“Pope Francis has entrusted me to ask forgiveness for each one of the faithful of the Diocese of Osorno and all the citizens of this territory for having wounded you and profoundly offending you,” Archbishop Scicluna said.

Addressing journalists after the Mass, the archbishop thanked the people of Osorno for welcoming him and said the visit was only the beginning of the journey toward reconciliation.

True reconciliation, he said, isn’t achieved with a mission of a few days, but is rather a gift from God that must be accompanied by long process that requires patience, generosity and humility.


And new developments on the over-eighty Bolivian bishop whom Bergoglio has named a cardinal. I don't think any other cardinal-designate has ever faced the accusation Mons. Ticona faces on the matter of a double life (witnesses attesting to his concubinage with a woman from his hometown). Who is the Nuncio to Bolivia and did he fail to do due diligence on backgrounding Ticona as is his duty to the pope and to the Church when a man is being considered for a cardinal's hat? Or did he in fact do his duty but whatever findings he may have forwarded to Rome were overridden by the pope because Ticona is a buddy of Bergoglio pet Evo Morales, president of Bolivia?

The Pope’s Ticona problem:
Bolivian bishops now distance themselves
from Bergoglio's cardinal-designate
by Maike Hickson

June 18, 2018

A new scandal is continuing to develop for Pope Francis, regarding one of the men he plans to make a cardinal at the 29 June consistory. The Bolivian bishops’ conference has just distanced itself from one of their own, Bishop Toribio Ticona Porco, whom he announced as a cardinal-designate last month. The Bolivian bishops now say that Ticona does not speak in their name.

The background for this unusual episcopal move is that Ticona is a friend of the controversial Socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales, who appears to be seeking re-election to a fourth term in violation of Bolivian Constitutional law – a move the Bolivian bishops’ conference opposes.

Ticona came under fire earlier after allegations surfaced that he has been living in concubinage with a woman with whom he has two children, and that he sold land from the Bishopric of Potosí to her in 2014.

On the matter of the growing episcopal conflict in Bolivia, the German bishops’ news website Katholisch.de published a report on 16 June. The news agency ACI Prensa also published an article on the matter on 13 June.

According to these reports, the conflict began after Cardinal-elect Toribio Ticona Porco (81), the retired Bolivian bishop of Corocoro, gave an interview on 6 June in which he made some encouraging comments about Evo Morales, saying that he hopes the Church hierarchy of Bolivia would work together with him on certain grounds.

Morales had tried in 2016, with the help of a referendum, to receive permission from the Bolivians to be re-elected as President in 2019, but the people rejected his idea. However, Morales has recently indicated that he might nevertheless try to get re-elected for a fourth time.

Cardinal-elect Ticona commented in the 6 June interview on this conflict situation with regard to Morales, saying that he would prefer not to comment on whether or not Morales should be re-elected because “we are friends.” With regard to the 2016 referendum which rejected Morales’s re-election, Ticona abstained from commenting, but he said that Morales and the Bolivian bishops should “mutually respect one another.”

“In matters that unite us, we can work together,” he added. These words would appear to be an episcopal endorsement of President Morales. Since Ticona is soon to be a cardinal, some media have presented the statement as the opinion of 'the highest Church authority in Bolivia', thus undercutting the official resistance against Morales coming from the Bolivian bishops’ conference.

Since the Bolivian bishops’ conference had already rejected Morales’s attempt at reelection in violation of the law, they responded to Ticona's statements in the June 6 interview. In a statement on June 13, they refer to “misinterpretations of some statements of the cardinal” which “have been able to create confusion in the public.” The bishops direct the public to the different media statements and pastoral letters that they have previously published. “We reject any attempt to divide or manipulate the Catholic Church [in Bolivia],” they add.

Moreover, the Bolivian bishops also make it clear that the “legitimately elected authorities” of the bishops’ conference – i.e., its President, Vice-President, Secretary General and Permanent Episcopal Council – are “the official voice of the Catholic Church in Bolivia.” Even if Ticona, as a member of the Bolivian bishops’ conference, has the “right to speak, as a bishop emeritus, in accordance with the bishops’ conference’s own statutes.”

As Katholisch.de reports, Evo Morales himself has now also intervened in this matter. While in Russia for the World Cup, he put wrote on Twitter: “My respect, affection, and admiration for my brother Toribio Ticona, Cardinal of Bolivia. Strength! The bishops and Catholics of the base [from the “base communities”], who defend the poor and who work with you, are with you.”

At the end of May, Morales congratulated Ticona upon his appointment to the cardinalate; the President even announced that he would accompany Ticona to Rome for the ceremony. “He congratulated me and declared that, finally, someone has appointed an indigenous cardinal,” Ticona said.

The bishop and Morales had earlier worked politically together and they even even marched together in manifestations. Ticona himself also recently referred to his origins from an indigenous farming family, claiming that this might be the reason that he is now being criticized.

President Morales, who also stems from an indigenous background, is a revolutionary Socialist politician who in 2015 [in]famously gifted Pope Francis during his papal visit to Bolivia with a hammer-and-sickle crucifix. The symbolism didn't bother the pope at all.

In 2017, Morales caused much controversy when he set out to ban evangelization (or “proselytization”), something which he later quite ambiguously withdrew. His planned law would have imposed up to 12 years imprisonment if a person tries to convince another person to join a religious organization.

It is noteworthy that Pope Francis and President Morales met each other in person at least five times since 2013.

As OnePeterFive reported recently, Bishop Ticona came under pressure shortly after his nomination for a red hat was announced, when the Spanish-language website Adelante la Fe revealed allegations that the bishop also has a “wife” and children. Though he immediately denied the reports, Adelante la Fe, as well as as other websites such as LifeSiteNews, confirmed the truthfulness of that initial report.

In a new report dated today, 18 June, Miguel Ángel Yáñez of Adelante la Fe has revealed additional information regarding the testimony of “direct witnesses” who knew Ticona and his female companion — named only as “Leonor RG”. The Bolivian newspaper Página siete has now also published an investigative report into the matter, saying that the cardinal designate had sold church-owned land to the aforementioned “Leonor RG”, who “in public… presented herself as the ‘wife’ of the cardinal.” [Yanez's article really ought to be read in full. The only online translation is in Googlespeak but it gives you an idea:
ttps://adelantelafe.com/nuevos-datos-sobre-el-escandalo-del-cardenal-ticona/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter]
Hickson missed quite a number of important points in her excerpting.]

Yáñez also alleges in his new report that Ticona has been using his name in differing combinations for different purposes. While he shows up in the initial decree of convocation of the consistory as “HE Mons. Toribio Ticona Porco”, his official identification card lists him as “Toribio Porco Ticona”. [It makes a difference as to whether he should be properly called Mons. (soon-to-be-Cardinal) Ticona as he has chosen to be called, or Mons. Porco, according to his legal ID. In the Hispanic world, a person uses both parents' family names with the father's family name ahead. So if Papa was Senor Porco not Senor Ticona, our soon-to-be-cardinal is really Cardinal-elect Porco, rather 'un-euphonic', and one can understand why he has turned around the family names, without suspecting him of wanting to 'hide things' as implied below! The word 'porco' does not exist in Spanish but it does in Italian where its primary meaning is pig or swine.]

“How important is this?” asks Yáñez. “So much, and it is another element [that is] more indicative in all [that has been] exposed. We have consulted with various legal sources in Bolivia, and all confirm that this practice is not only not common in the country, but is highly irregular and characteristic of people who want to hide things and play with confusion.”

Yáñez includes, in his report, highlights taken from the testimonies of various people — including a priest and others from the town of Oruro, where Ticona is said to have lived with his “wife” — making allegations based on first hand knowledge. Among these is the observation of a neighbor of the “couple” (Ticona and Leonor RG), who claims that having been in the house shared by the two, he saw a photo "where the man everyone knew as Leonor's ‘husband’ appeared…dressed as a bishop with John Paul II.”

Ticona is one of fourteen prelates who will receive the red hat from Pope Francis on 29 June. The next two weeks will show how Pope Francis will try to deal with this grave public estrangement between Cardinal-elect Ticona and the entire Bolivian bishops’ conference, as well as the potential scandal of his alleged double life — a scandal which has, as yet, not been denied by the Vatican even though it has prompted a “discreet” investigation by the Apostolic Nunciature in Bolivia.

This awkward situation at the coming Consistory reminds us of the Consistory of 2017 where one of the Cardinals-elect, Archbishop Jean Zerbo, of Bamako (Mali) was accused of embezzlement of funds, and this was reliably reported only a few weeks before his installment as a cardinal.

According to a Catholic Herold report, there had also been been speculations “that Francis might not make Archbishop Zerbo a cardinal following reports that he and two other Mali bishops had opened Swiss bank accounts totalling 12 million euros ($13.5 million).” Archbishop Zerbo did, in the end, attend that consistory, and Pope Francis nonetheless made him a cardinal.

“After the French Le Monde broke the news, Pope Francis did not show any signs of rethinking his nomination of Cardinal Monsignor Jean Zerbo,” says a report of Vatican Insider.

Thus, this Pope appears to be somewhat indifferent toward such serious accusations against his Cardinals, as can also be seen in the fact that he still keeps both Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga and Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz in his Council of Nine Cardinals, despite grave allegations of misconduct against both men. Indeed, he just met them again, from 11-13 June in Rome, for their Council meetings.

Time will tell if the pattern of special treatment for prelates favored by Pope Francis will repeat itself at the June 2018 consistory.

How many more such stories will emerge of persons favored and rewarded by Bergoglio despite serious questions raised about their character? And why do the media in general keep giving him a pass despite mounting evidence of a fundamental character flaw that is the moral equivalent of bishops covering up for criminally sinful priests? But worse in his case because he is supposed to be the pope, whose double standard in the way he appears to condone evil - or even just the appearance of evil - in persons of his choice makes a mockery of his title of address "Holy Father" or "His Holiness"!