THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

So, finally, AP at least is looking into one of the stories that have resurfaced in recent weeks about Bergoglio's record of dealing with clerical and episcopal sex abuse when he was Archbishop of Buenos
Aires. Will anyone else follow the lead? Even most of the bloggers critical of Bergoglio have not picked up the thread of his Argentine record, about which he has famously claimed that there were never
any clerical sex abuses in his diocese.


Bergoglio's role in defense of
Argentine predator priest under fire
by Luis Andres Henao and Nicole Winfield



A page in one of four books written by Argentine criminal defense attorney Marcelo Sancinetti, with a sentence that reads in Spanish: “The church judges with its own exclusive right". In 2010 Archbishop Bergoglio
commissioned the four-volume, 2,000-plus page forensic study of a legal case against a convicted priest that concluded he was innocent, that his victims were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Sept. 18, 2018 (AP)- Pope Francis’s role in Argentina’s most famous case of priestly sex abuse is coming under renewed scrutiny as he faces the greatest crisis of his papacy over the Catholic Church’s troubled legacy of cover-up and allegations that he himself sided with the accused.

Francis, who at the time was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in 2010 commissioned a four-volume, 2,000-plus page forensic study of the legal case against a convicted priest that concluded he was innocent, that his victims were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.

The Argentine church says that the study obtained by The Associated Press - bound volumes complete with reproductions of Johannes Vermeer paintings on the covers - was for internal church use only. But the volumes purportedly ended up on the desks of some Argentine court justices who were ruling on the appeals of Father Julio Grassi.

Despite the study, Argentina’s Supreme Court in March 2017 upheld the conviction and 15-year prison sentence against Grassi, a celebrity priest who ran homes for street children across Argentina.

The study, and Francis’s role in the Grassi case, have taken on new relevance following allegations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis, and a long line of Vatican officials before him, covered up the sexual misconduct of a prominent U.S. cardinal.

Neither Francis nor the Vatican has responded to the allegations that Francis rehabilitated ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from sanctions in 2013. The Vatican didn’t respond to a request for comment about Francis’ role in the Grassi case.

In an exclusive interview with AP, Grassi’s victim, Gabriel, said he is still waiting for Francis to acknowledge his pain, given the Supreme Court has now ruled that he indeed was assaulted by Grassi when he was 13.

“I’d like for the church to say something, even though I don’t expect it will,” Gabriel told AP, sitting next to his psychiatrist. “No one ever reached out to me,” he said. “No one bothered.”

Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, wasn’t Grassi’s bishop and bore no direct responsibility for him. But in 2006, he was quoted by the now-defunct Argentine magazine Veintitres as saying the accusations against Grassi were “informative viciousness against him, a condemnation by the media.”

He said he would withhold judgment pending the outcome of the court case, but Grassi himself testified that Bergoglio had “never let go of my hand” throughout the legal process.

Under Bergoglio’s presidency, Argentina’s bishops conference in 2010 enlisted a leading Argentine criminal defense attorney, Marcelo Sancinetti, to research a counter-inquiry into the prosecutors’ case against Gabriel and two other former residents of Grassi’s Happy Children homes whose cases were thrown out in the initial trial.

In the study, Sancinetti concluded that not only weren’t the accusations against Grassi sufficiently proven, “the falsity of each one of the accusations is objectively verifiable.”

In the four tomes, which were produced at an annual clip from 2010-2013, Sancinetti accused Gabriel of changing his story and trying to extort Grassi. But a court years earlier had already thrown out a lawsuit filed by Grassi accusing Gabriel of extortion.

Sancinetti compared the “current trials and condemnations with severe sentences based exclusively on the word of a person who calls itself victim of sexual abuse to the trials for witchcraft of the Middle Ages.” And in the final volume and on his law firm’s website, Sancinetti said Francis in particular had commissioned the work. He didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Argentina’s Supreme Court disagreed with Sancinetti’s analysis, and on March 21, 2017, upheld Grassi’s 2009 conviction for having sexually abused and corrupted Gabriel.

Through tears, Gabriel had testified that on two separate occasions in 1996 the priest once fondled him, and then performed oral sex on him in his office.

Gabriel, who for a time was placed in Argentina’s witness protection program after suffering a break-in, physical attacks and threats, said he was shocked when Grassi testified that Bergoglio “had never let go of my hand.”

“We were all like ‘wow!’ It was Bergoglio,” he said.

Gabriel said he and his lawyer delivered a letter addressed to Francis two months after he was elected Latin America’s first pope, bringing it to the Vatican embassy in Buenos Aires on May 8, 2013.

In the letter, Gabriel identified himself as a victim of “aberrant crimes of repeated sexual abuse and corruption” by Grassi.

He lamented that court-protected details of his abuse had been exposed by the study, which he said had “denigrated” him personally and contradicted the stated “zero tolerance” policy of both Pope Benedict XVI and Francis.

“I suffered and continue to suffer,” he wrote.

He asked for an audience with the pope “and I earnestly beg you for compassion and help in recovering my faith.”

He never received a reply. In fact, his lawyer said they were threatened at the embassy and don’t know what became of the letter.

Asked why the Argentine bishops conference had commissioned the study, a conference spokeswoman said it was to help bishops understand the case better.

“The bishops conference considered that it could provide more information in view of the canonical procedure,” the conference said in a statement to AP.

Such a study, however, would be unthinkable for use in a canonical trial. While church trials do make use of police investigations and evidence from secular courts, a counter-study commissioned by an entire bishops’ conference could run into jurisdictional problems at a canonical trial, canonists said.

In addition, Gabriel’s attorney, Juan Pablo Gallego, said the books ended up on the desks of some Argentine judges deciding Grassi’s appeals and represented what he called a blatant, albeit unsuccessful lobbying attempt.

The diocese of Moron, which was responsible for Grassi, had long defended its decision to keep him in ministry even after the trial began by saying it didn’t want to prejudice the outcome.

Eighteen months after Argentina’s high court ruled against him, Grassi remains a priest as he serves his 15-year sentence in the Unidad 41 de Campana prison in the province of Buenos Aires.

The Moron diocese said Grassi had been removed from pastoral duties when the trial began, and that he now has been restricted from exercising any public ministry. The diocese told AP that the canonical case is now with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases.

Julieta Anazco, president of Argentina’s Survivors’ Network of Ecclesiastical Abuse, said the Grassi case was a watershed for Argentina since the victims went up against a celebrity priest who had the backing of Argentina’s Catholic elite, and suffered the public humiliation of being accused of only seeking money.

“They have made the path of our struggle easier for us,” she said. “Thanks to their struggle, many of us were encouraged to denounce (our abusers) publicly.”

She cited the recent case of hearing-impaired victims of the now-notorious Antonio Provolo Institute who came forward to denounce abuse by the same Italian priest accused by Italian Provolo students who in 2014 alerted Francis and the Vatican to his whereabouts. Argentine police have arrested Father Nicola Coradi and raided Provolo schools.

“Before Pope Francis can enact accountability for bishops and other church leaders, he has to own up to the harm he himself caused victims in Argentina,” said Anne Barrett Doyle of the online resource Bishop Accountability, which has gathered the documentation on the Grassi saga.

The case has parallels to that in neighboring Chile, where Francis repeatedly defended a bishop accused of covering up for the country’s most notorious predator, the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Francis discredited Karadima’s victims, who placed Bishop Juan Barros at the scene of their abuse, saying their accusations were “calumny.”

Francis eventually acknowledged he had made “grave errors in judgment” about Barros, apologized to the victims and launched a Vatican investigation that resulted in all of Chile’s active bishops offering to resign.

He has offered no mea culpa about the Grassi case. Gabriel, who works odd jobs off the books and has no credit card, is waiting.

“I’m Catholic, but yes, there are moments when I don’t know if the church represents me.”

In fact, Marco Tosatti had a blogpost yesterday with an illustrative video taken in 2017, in which Bergoglio is asked at a public event about the Grassi case, and he denies twice that he ever commissioned the 4-volume book cited above. His source was PJ Media, as follows:



Pope Francis faced accusations of covering up priestly abuse while he was the archbishop and cardinal in Buenos Aires, a 2017 French documentary reveals. A segment of the documentary, “Sex Abuse in the Church: The Code of Silence,” investigates the pope's assertion that sexual abuse never happened in his diocese.




Selected frames from the video. Can you recall any pope in the age of media ever having been caught snarling and generally looking mean and nasty on camera?

Investigative journalist Martin Boudot traveled to Buenos Aires to find out if the pope was telling the truth. Contradicting the pope's assertion, a group of victims claimed they were sexually abused while Bergoglio [now Pope Francis] was archbishop and told Boudot their cries for justice were ignored.

"Regarding pedophile priests, in his book [Between Heaven and Earth - Bergoglio's conversations with his friend Rabbi Skorka], Pope Francis says there were no cases in his diocese," said Boudot, prompting derisive laughter from the group.

"He wants people to believe that, but it's a lie," said one of the victims. They said they all tried to contact the archbishop after they were abused, but their cries fell on deaf ears.

"He received all the celebrities, like Leonardo DiCaprio," said one of the women. "And for us, not even a quick letter to say he was sorry."

Even worse, in one case, Bergoglio tried to influence the Argentinean justice system in an effort to protect Father Julio Grassi, who is serving the remainder of a 15-year jail sentence after being convicted of sexually abusing teenage boys.

The Argentinian church did everything it could to get Grassi acquitted and the trial was spread over 15 years, according to Boudot. In 2010, in fact, the Argentine Episcopal Conference led by Cardinal Bergoglio ordered a counter-inquiry called "Studies on the Grassi Case."

Boudot said the 2,800-page counter inquiry was actually "a confidential, internal Argentinian Church legal text" that accused the children of "falsification, lies, deceit and invention." The purpose of the study was to overturn the court's decision and get Fr. Grassi acquitted on appeal. [As we know, Bergoglio tried that tactic for 3 years in stonewalling the Barros case, accusing Barros's accusers of calumny.]

"So the pope did commission a counter-inquiry to try to have a priest who had been sentenced for pedophilia acquitted," Boudot reported. What's more, Bergoglio is said to have repeatedly sent the "study" to various judges right before Fr. Grassi's various appeal hearings.

At the center of the counter-inquiry commissioned by Bergoglio was an orphan boy who was allegedly Grassi's main victim. Now an adult, the man spoke about the case for the first time to Boudot anonymously because he's still afraid of reprisals. He explained to Boudot that he received threats and people broke into his home and stole evidence he could have used in the trial. "In the end, the courts took action for my safety and placed me in the witness protection program," he said.

"I'll never forget what Father Grassi kept repeating at his trial: 'Bergoglio never let go of my hand.' Now Bergoglio is Pope Francis, but he has never gone against Grassi's words. So I'm certain he never let go of Grassi's hand!" he added.

Why was very little said about the French documentary before now? And what to say about a pope whose lies are caught on camera?

Remember how at the start of Benedict XVI's papacy, MSM spent weeks, if not months, rehashing a blatantly 'fake news' BBC documentary laying the blame for the culture of covering up sex abuses in the Church on Benedict XVI, falsely attributing to him a CDF document issued long before he came to Rome as CDF Prefect?


Key points in 'defense'
commissioned by Bergoglio
for pedophile priest Grassi


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Sept. 18, 2018 (AP) — Here are some key points from a church counter-inquiry into the legal case against a famous Argentine priest accused of sexual abuse.

The four-volume study was commissioned by Argentina's bishops' conference, then led by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, before he was named Pope Francis. The study concluded that despite being convicted of abusing one boy, the Rev. Julio Grassi was innocent, that the complainants were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.

Argentina's Supreme Court upheld Grassi's guilty verdict and 15-year sentence in March 2017. The study was obtained by The Associated Press.

THE VICTIM
Grassi was found guilty in 2009 of aggravated sexual assault and corruption of minors in the case of "Gabriel." He was acquitted of abuse in the case of two other accusers.

The lawyer who oversaw the church study, Marcelo Sancinetti, wrote in the epilogue that "the falsity of each one of the accusations (against Grassi) is objectively verifiable,"

The study said that Gabriel tried to withdraw his accusation in the courts and then tried to extort Grassi by visiting him and offering him "help in exchange for help," before the accusation was made public on a TV news program in 2002.

Grassi filed a complaint alleging extortion, but a court threw out the case in 2003 for lack of evidence, long before criminal action against Grassi began.

The study argued that the Catholic Church's system of canon law doesn't have to conform to the findings of secular courts.

"The spiritual decisions of the church cannot remain subject to the decisions of the organs of each state, because that would be equivalent to losing its own authority."

WITCH HUNT?
The study says the trials and sentences of church figures "based exclusively on the word of a person who calls himself a victim of sexual abuse" are comparable "to the trials for witchcraft of the Middle Ages."

COMMISSIONED BY THE POPE
Sancinetti said Francis was responsible for commissioning the report.

"With this, these 'Studies on the Grassi Case' conclude, and with it the work commissioned in 2010 by the Argentine Episcopal Conference and in particular by its then-President Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, today His Holiness Pope Francis."