THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

The pope and Cardinal Sodano at a Vatican ceremony on Dec. 7, 2017.

The McCarrick scandal has prompted John Allen to revive the 'case' against Cardinal Angelo Sodano's long and questionable history of seeming to protect two
important prelates from investigation for sexual crimes - and why the Dean of the College of Cardinals has not been made to answer for it.

On Cardinal Sodano and
the meaning of ‘accountability’
by John L. Allen Jr.

Aug 12, 2018

ROME - In the mounting conversation about accountability amid the Church’s sexual abuse scandals, one question that often doesn’t get as much attention as it should is what, exactly, people need to be held accountable for - that is, which sorts of actions on the abuse scandals are worthy of sanction, and what proof higher authority needs before consequences ought to be imposed.

To begin with the clearest case, “zero tolerance” obviously implies that the direct commission of sexual abuse requires swift and stern discipline, and we now know that standard holds even for Princes of the Church due to the example of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

We also know, at least in theory, that covering up abuse by others is also a violation of the “zero tolerance” policy, meaning that it, too, is supposed to draw sanction - though proving such knowledge, as opposed to suspecting it, is often surprisingly difficult.

Where it gets stickier is when the charge isn’t committing a crime or a cover-up, at least not directly, but simply being on the wrong side of history - showing such poor judgment, such tone-deafness and insensitivity, as to suggest ignorance of the magnitude and depth of the abuse crisis, thereby rendering the Church’s response weaker and less convincing.

If there is accountability for that sort of lapse in the Catholic Church, you certainly couldn’t tell it judging by the current Dean of the College of Cardinals.

This week, the Irish Times reported that Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, while he was the Vatican’s Secretary of State under St. Pope John Paul II, broached the idea of negotiating a deal to keep Church archives closed from government inquiries with then-Irish President Mary McAleese in November 2003. The Times also reported that two years later, Sodano asked then-Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern if his government would promise to indemnify the Vatican for any losses it might occur in Irish courts related to sex abuse litigation.

While the Vatican hasn’t commented on those reports, they’re entirely consistent with what we know about Sodano’s modus operandi.

In February 2005, for instance, Sodano asked then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene to block a class-action lawsuit then before a United States District Court in Louisville, Ky., which sought to hold the Vatican financially responsible for the sexual abuse of minors. Rice was compelled to explain that in the American system the executive branch of government doesn’t have that power, and that foreign states are required to assert their immunity themselves in American courts. (For the record, the Vatican [under Benedict XVI] eventually did just that, successfully, and the lawsuit foundered.)

Bear in mind both the Irish and American requests came after the explosion of the abuse scandals in the U.S. in 2002/2003, so one can’t argue that Sodano didn’t understand how serious the crisis was, or how hurtful it would be to survivors to see the second most powerful figure in the Vatican making protecting institutional assets his top concern.

Nor is that the only question mark in Sodano’s history in terms of his view of what “zero tolerance” implies.

In 2010, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, accused Sodano of having blocked a Vatican investigation of the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Gröer, who was accused of various forms of sexual abuse and misconduct and who was eventually stripped of his duties and privileges as a cardinal in 1998. According to Schönborn, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wanted to launch a trial against Gröer under Church law but Sodano got in the way.

Schönborn was later compelled to travel to Rome for a kiss-and-make-up session with Sodano and Benedict, but he never retracted the substance of his charge.

Schönborn spoke, by the way, not long after Sodano used the phrase “petty gossip” in an Easter homily in connection with press coverage of the reports of clerical abuse victims, in a way that many victims found deeply insensitive.

Then there’s the issue of Sodano’s longstanding strong support for Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ, who was found guilty by Ratzinger and his team at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sexual abuse and misconduct in 2006 and sentenced to a life of prayer and penance.

Sodano was a Maciel ally up to the bitter end. Even as Ratzinger’s team was conducting its investigation, Sodano arranged for the Vatican to issue a public statement insisting there was no “canonical procedure” against Maciel - which was technically correct, since the decision had been made to handle the case informally due to Maciel’s age and health, but the statement obscured the larger truth that the Vatican was on his trail.

Sodano even fought against releasing a public statement about the 2006 sentence, well after the letter communicating it had already been received by Maciel and distributed within the order, on the grounds of saving Maciel the embarrassment.

So, where does all that leave us?

There’s certainly never been a suggestion that Sodano himself has abused anyone, and even charging him with “cover-up” in the case of Maciel may be a stretch - rather than him having direct knowledge of Maciel’s crimes, the more plausible scenario likely is that Sodano just didn’t want to know. [He may not have' wanted to know' but that does not mean he did not know anything at all about the widely-substantiated 'rumors' that had been going on for years about Maciel! It's like Cardinals Wuerl and Farrell claiming they never heard anything about McCarrick's crimes. You can't be occupying a position of power for years and claim ignorance of open secrets about your peers or subordinates.] He admired Maciel’s orthodoxy, zeal and success with youth - not to mention his fundraising prowess - and was inclined to ascribe the charges against Maciel, which had circulated since 1997, either to envy or political opposition.

On the other hand, there’s little question that the cumulative weight of Sodano’s career suggests an official who’s been unwilling, or unable, to take on board the real nature of the clerical abuse crisis, and he hardly inspires confidence in terms of a robust commitment to reform.

Granted, Sodano is now 90, yet he remains the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and if Pope Francis were to die tomorrow, he’d still preside over the daily meetings of cardinals in the run-up to the conclave to elect a successor. Moreover, Sodano is active despite his age, and is widely seen in Rome as exercising significant behind-the-scenes influence through an extended network of friends and proteges, especially in the Secretariat of State.

As Francis ponders what “accountability” for the abuse scandals implies, sooner or later he’ll likely have to consider figures such as Sodano - officials who may not be guilty of a crime or a cover-up, but whose choices and statements have left many observers, especially abuse survivors, wondering exactly how serious the system truly is about “zero tolerance.”

Back in 2011, Catholic World Report published the following article by Edward Pentin - fairly well-documented, but it was like a pebble dropped into a very deep well for all the effect it did not have and continues not to have! Is there any way for journalists like Allen and Pentin to keep track of stories like these that they call attention to but whose readership all appear to be like the three monkeys who 'see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil'?

The allegations against Cardinal Sodano
Calls for his resignation grow amid
reports of his connection to multiple scandals
by Edward Pentin

May 4, 2011

Over the past few months, Cardinal Angelo Sodano has faced a number of serious allegations in the media, most especially regarding his connections with the disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ, the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado.

The controversies prompted leaders, both in the traditionally orthodox and heterodox sectors of the Catholic press, to call for Sodano’s resignation as dean of the College of Cardinals. In a May 12 editorial in First Things, the publication’s editor, Joseph Bottum, wrote that Cardinal Sodano “has to go,” as he has been found too often “on the edges” of scandal.

“Never quite charged, never quite blamed, he has had his name in too long a series of depositions and court records and news accounts — an ongoing embarrassment to the Church he serves,” Bottum wrote.

He lamented that the cardinal, 82, should be plagued by scandal at end of his life, saying it “would be kinder to protect the man and let him slip away unnoticed.” But after explaining some of the allegations against Sodano, Bottum concluded that even such a figure as the cardinal “has to be removed from his current position and told to serve the Church in prayer.” Everyone inside the Church “needs to be taught that there are consequences for scandalous mistakes,” Bottum wrote.

Many of the allegations against Sodano had been made by Jason Berry, the investigative reporter who disclosed his findings in the National Catholic Reporter, most recently in a long two-part exposé of the Maciel scandal published in April this year. Unsurprisingly, Berry too believes Cardinal Sodano should step down and considers him clearly guilty of a number of unjust and corrupt actions. “I don’t think Benedict can salvage his papacy in the eyes of the world unless he gets rid of Sodano,” Berry told CWR, “and I don’t say that with any personal agenda against the Pope.”

So what are these damaging allegations against the cardinal who for 16 years served as Vatican secretary of state? Arguably, the two most serious cases involve his dealings with Father Maciel and his blocking of an investigation into Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, the late archbishop of Vienna, who was found guilty of sexually abusing children in 1998.

Regarding Father Maciel, Cardinal Sodano is accused of taking substantial amounts of money in order to help the Legion ingratiate itself with the Vatican. This allegedly led Sodano to hinder investigations into Maciel, beginning in 1998 when ex-Legion victims filed a canonical case against Maciel with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to Berry, Cardinal Sodano pressured Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the congregation’s prefect, to halt the proceedings.

Drawing on sources close to the Legion, Berry alleges that Cardinal Sodano had been wined and dined by the Legion throughout his career as secretary of state, often visiting the order’s headquarters in Mexico City to celebrate major events. He was described as a major “cheerleader” for Maciel’s order by one source, who alleged that Sodano was willing to give a talk to the Legion at Christmas for $10,000. Another priest said he recalled Sodano receiving a $5,000 donation.

“It was like a business arrangement. He was on the payroll, so to speak,” Berry told CWR. “You have to bear in mind that the Legionaries had become part of the Vatican’s ecclesiastical structure.” This wasn’t an accidental development, according to Berry, but a “highly calculated” strategy to “ground the order in the religious infrastructure of the Church in Rome.” He said this led to Maciel building a Legionary university campus in Rome — the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum — with the vital help of Cardinal Sodano.

Cardinal Sodano, originally from Piedmont, Italy, served as apostolic nuncio to Chile from 1977 to 1988. During that time, he became friends with Maciel and was friendly with the country’s dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. He used his political clout to help the Legion be admitted into Chile, despite strong opposition from several Chilean bishops, including the archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez.

By 1989, Berry says Sodano, then a senior official in the Roman Curia, was already an honored guest at Legion dinners and banquets and had become Maciel’s biggest supporter. One of his tasks was to help fulfill Maciel’s wish to build the Regina Apostolorum. Berry quotes Glenn Favreau, a Washington, DC attorney and former Legionary in Rome, who said that Sodano intervened with Italian officials to get zoning variances to build the university on a wooded plateau of western Rome.

“Maciel hired Sodano’s nephew, Andrea Sodano, as a building consultant,” Berry wrote, “but Legionaries overseeing the project complained to Maciel that Andrea Sodano’s work was late and poorly done; they were reluctant to pay his invoices. To them, Maciel yelled: ‘Pay him! You pay him!’ Andrea Sodano was paid.”

Further questions surround Cardinal Sodano’s links with his nephew and in particular the nephew’s business associate, Raffaello Follieri, a property developer. Follieri was jailed in New York on fraud and money-laundering charges in 2008. A major part of his business involved the buying up of Church properties and parishes, many of which had been put on the market to pay for lawsuits from sexual abuse victims, and then reselling them.

Andrea Sodano was Follieri Group’s vice president. Press reports record Cardinal Sodano attending the company’s 2004 launch party in New York, and the firm trumpeted its “deep commitment to the Catholic Church and its long-standing relationship with senior members of the Vatican hierarchy.”

Follieri was later to misappropriate millions of dollars of investment capital from billionaire Ronald Burkle that was meant to buy up churches in the United States. But before then, soon after a series of investigative reports and two months prior to the Vatican banishing Father Maciel from public life in 2006, Cardinal Sodano sent a letter of complaint to Follieri.

In the missive, he wrote: “I feel it is my duty to tell you how perturbed I am to hear that your company continues to present itself as having ties to ‘the Vatican,’ due to the fact that my nephew, Andrea, has agreed on some occasion to provide you with professional consulting services. I do not know how this distressing misunderstanding could have occurred, but it is necessary now to avoid such confusion in the future. I do, therefore, appeal to your sensibility to be careful with respect to this matter. I shall accordingly inform my nephew Andrea as well as anyone else who has asked me for information regarding your firm. I take this opportunity to send you my regards.”

On October 23, 2008, Follieri pleaded guilty to 14 counts of wire fraud, money- laundering, and conspiracy, and is now serving 54 months in a federal prison. FBI agent Theodore Cacioppi told Berry that Andrea Sodano’s company “took in fraudulently earned money” and that the Bureau considered him and some of his associates “unindicted co-conspirators.”

Andrea Sodano was safely back in Italy at the time of Follieri’s arrest, and the FBI didn’t think it worth spending resources investigating him. But Berry reported on the government document that accuses Andrea Sodano of receiving payments, and also says that the Vatican itself received “donations” from Follieri’s scam.

The government sentencing memorandum on Follieri, filed by the US Attorney, Southern District of New York, stated:

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“Follieri created the false impressions that he had ties to the Vatican, which enabled him to obtain church properties at below-market values, through his relationship with Andrea Sodano, the nephew (“Nephew”) of the then-Secretary of State of the Vatican Cardinal Angelo Sodano…and making unauthorized donations to the Vatican with investor money.

Follieri misused investor funds to pay the Nephew for ‘engineering’ services that the Nephew never performed so that the Nephew could travel with Follieri when visiting church officials and help Follieri obtain access to the grounds of the Vatican.

It was through this connection that Follieri was able to attend one of the Pope’s services and, along with many others, get his picture taken with the Pope… show the private gardens of the Vatican to Follieri’s friends and associates, and arrange for guided tours of a museum at the Vatican...

Follieri also falsely represented that he needed over $800,000 to pay for the engineering reports prepared by the Nephew. Follieri claimed that the Vatican needed to review these engineering reports before the Vatican could make any decision about whether to sell the properties to Follieri.”

---

Berry believes Cardinal Sodano had long been aware of his nephew’s dubious connections with Follieri. “It’s pretty clear he knew Follieri was a cash cow for Andrea Sodano and Msgr. [Giovanni] Carru [undersecretary at the Congregation for Clergy],” he said, although there appears to be no evidence at all to directly implicate Cardinal Sodano in any of Follieri’s crimes.

Berry, however, is disturbed by Sodano’s sense of amorality. “What is most striking about Cardinal Sodano’s letter is that he’s not saying cease or desist. He’s not expressing moral outrage. He’s telling him to be careful,” he said.

Up until this time, Maciel was busy trying to further ingratiate himself with the Vatican, offering gifts to Vatican officials to achieve his aims, one of which was to turn the Regina Apostolorum into a bona fide pontifical university. Many senior officials, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, refused to accept such gifts, but others didn’t. Cardinal Sodano is only on record as having accepted up to $15,000 as a gift from the Legion, but some sources believe he took more.

Although under canon law (no. 1302), Vatican officials, including cardinals, are obliged to report financial gifts to the cardinal-vicar of Rome, it’s not clear whether Cardinal Sodano considered himself bound by the same rule. “Vatican officials aren’t supposed to receive personal financial gifts for themselves, but they can act as channels for their own charities,” said one source close to the Vatican. “So if someone gives an official money and they give it to a charity, that’s OK, it doesn’t need to be reported.”

But this source said it was unclear to whom other gifts should be declared, and whether Cardinal Sodano needed to report to anyone else. “I don’t think he was answerable to anyone,” he said, adding there “should really be a clearer procedure to follow.”

But the alleged scandals surrounding Cardinal Sodano and Father Maciel go beyond just the financial. In 2004, the Vatican sent Msgr. Charles Scicluna, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to Mexico to investigate the Legion. After Scicluna returned from one of his trips in 2005, just after the conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger pope, a communiqué was sent to the Legion from Cardinal Sodano’s office saying “there is no canonical procedure in course nor is one foreseen for the future with regard to Father Maciel.” The communiqué was given without consulting the CDF.

“The Legion took that statement and put a spin on it to say Father Maciel had been exonerated,” said Berry. “In fact nothing of the sort had occurred.” The Holy See press office likewise sided with the secretary of state (it had no choice under the circumstances), and said there was not to be a canonical procedure.

In 2006, Cardinal Sodano helped minimize harm caused to the Legion’s name and structure. Although the Vatican ordered Maciel to refrain from all public ministries and to adopt a “life of prayer and penitence,” the Vatican statement continued to praise the Legion and Regnum Christi (the Legion’s lay movement) despite the misinformation campaign the Legion was running against the victims.

The statement allowed the Legionaries to spin the news, leading to their own communiqué saying that Maciel had accepted the Vatican’s decision “with faith, complete serenity and tranquility of conscience, knowing that it is a new cross that God, the Father of Mercy, has allowed him to suffer.” Berry said he has it “on good authority that Sodano’s fingerprints were all over that [Vatican] statement.”

This wasn’t the first time that Cardinal Sodano had interfered with an investigation. In May of this year, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, hinted that the former secretary of state had a history of mishandling abuse scandals. Speaking off the record to Austrian journalists, he said that in 1995, the future Pope Benedict pushed for a probe into abuse allegations against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër but that Cardinal Sodano resisted the probe.

A month earlier, Cardinal Schönborn had told the New York Times that Cardinal Ratzinger had called for an investigation of Cardinal Groër, who served as archbishop of Vienna from 1986 to 1995, but that “the other side, the diplomatic side, had prevailed.” Cardinal Groër eventually relinquished all his ecclesiastical titles in 1998, at the request of Pope John Paul II, as mounting evidence of sexual abuse emerged.

What makes these allegations against Sodano serious is the extent to which his actions (in 1998, 2004, and 2006 with regards to Father Maciel, and in 1995 concerning Cardinal Groër) obstructed investigations and led to further injustices being perpetrated.

Sodano’s image of showing inadequate concern for the victims of sexual abuse by clergy was not helped on Easter Sunday of this year, when he issued what many saw as a bizarre tribute to the Holy Father in the face of a media onslaught on the Church over the sexual abuse crisis.

In an unscheduled statement, Cardinal Sodano referred to the criticism of the Pope’s handling of the abuse issue as “petty gossip.” Cardinal Schönborn, in that same meeting with Austrian journalists, said Sodano had “deeply wronged” the victims of sexual abuse by downplaying the importance of the issue. Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, called them “certainly not the wisest of words” and made it clear that Benedict XVI had never asked for such a tribute.

For Berry, Sodano’s gesture wasn’t bizarre but “breathtaking in its arrogance” and entirely in keeping with his character. “If you stand back with a wide angle lens, Sodano has always been a realpolitik figure within the Vatican,” he explained. “He negotiated with Noriega to get him out of [the] nunciature to go to Florida, where he was assured to go to prison; he was close to Pinochet. I think Sodano has a Machiavellian attitude about power…. I can’t speak about his psychodynamics, but his public behavior certainly suggests a man in a Machiavellian role who is functioning within a monarchical power structure and knows he is the highest prince under the Pope.” Others see Sodano not so much as Machiavellian but as a certain kind of Italian stereotype— someone shrewd, wily, and shameless about nepotism.

Despite all the allegations swirling around him, Cardinal Sodano refuses to share his side of the story. When CWR contacted his office, we were told he was “too tired and busy traveling” to answer our requests for an interview. No officials, including those in the Holy See press office, were willing to step forward and defend him.

Berry, who also tried unsuccessfully for an interview, was unsurprised at his reluctance. “How does someone in his position explain some of the things he has done?” he asked.

Berry, however, stands full-square behind his revelations about Sodano, discovered in his research on the Legion. “I wouldn’t have written a book with [Gerald] Renner, made a film, and written all those articles if I didn’t believe in them,” he said. “I don’t want to say we’ve been vindicated, but we have been abundantly confirmed in our accuracy.”

Joseph Bottum, in his May 12 article for First Things, described Berry’s April exposé on the Legion as “fumbling” journalism and “thinly sourced” when it came to uncovering financial deals in Rome. But he felt Berry’s allegations were nevertheless “fumbling toward what seems to be the truth.”

The widespread hope is that Cardinal Sodano will come clean, thereby helping the purification of the Church and enabling healing to begin.

And what about this take on Cardinal O'Malley, Bergoglio's pointman for handling the clerical sex abuse crisis in the Church??? Who has already alleged no one called his attention to a letter written to him about McCarrick's crminal conduct?

O'Malley sends Boston seminary rector on extended vacation
after receiving complaints about unbecoming conduct

August 10, 2018

This afternoon, Cardinal O'Malley released a statement saying the rector of St John's seminary has been told to take an extended summer vacation for the Fall semester after two former seminarians posted on social media that they witnessed and experienced activities contrary to moral standards and formation to the Catholic priesthood. Boston Catholic Insider has latest details.

Some of the appointees on Cardinal Sean's team are unknown to me, so I am reserving judgement on whether the outcome is rigged until after I do diligence.

I will say O'Malley has never come across to me as someone who has any desire to reach independent conclusions about internal corruption. My nickname for him was "the sled dog". I always had the feeling the archdiocese was loading up his sled and he was trying to sell the snake oil.

Further, an extended summer vacation for the rector does not reflect the serious nature of the seduction, harrasment, persecution, obstruction and corruption at Catholic seminaries.

I'm hoping the willingness of seminarians to publicly speak about the filth and the related harassment of faithful men who refuse to go along with it, will help drain swamps at other seminaries across the US.

I think we are going to have to wait and see how it plays out.

Prior to this developing story, I had been giving prayerful reflection to next steps in draining the episcopal swamp. I watched Cardinal DiNardo's recorded statement and tuned in to several of Cardinal Wuerl's guest appearances on the crisis. I also read bishop Barron's article. With all due respect, they are out of their ever-loving minds.

The pattern emerging is apology tours, an investigation on what happened with McCarrick and developing more useless procedures on how to internally inform the chain of command who has never done anything but promote those who teach or practice sexual debauchery and abuse power.

We've been there/done that. All we have for souvenirs is a basement full of patronizing letters from chanceries.

We have a very small window of opportunity to pull the rug out from under their 2018 sequel to the dog and pony show.

Please. Let us dispense with the farce that we need an investigation on why McCarrick was given 50 years to abuse his power to conduct gay orgies.

We already know what happened.
- There is an endemic culture of homosexual sex in the priesthood and hierarchy that protects everyone in the club.
- If you give any indication you have zero tolerance for using the Church as the Tinder for Catholic homosexuals, your vocation or family are targets for malicious conduct.
- This dynamic has been in full throttle for 60 years, whether in a parish, a school, a seminary, CCD or any other apostolate in the Catholic Church.
- In some dioceses, it is the operating culture.

Let us also face another sad reality: There is no hope of cleaning house with a Holy Father who would promote and appoint a bishop who painted a homoerotic mural of himself and Christ or surround himself with a Cardinal whose apartment is raided for gay orgies or pick a spokesperson for himself whose obsession is encouraging gays to have sex.

Catholics have informed him and begged for his help and his response has made crystal clear that his intentions are the promotion and enabling of the club. The damages to trust are irreparable.

What is needed is an independent clearing house for allegations of every priest and bishop in every diocese whose pastoral ministry advocated gay sex, abused power, sexually harrassed or used intimidation tactics to against orthodox practicing Catholics.

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Boston Catholics tried reporting suspicious and bad conduct to Cardinal Sean for many years.

When complaints began surfacing that one priest was only at the the parish weekends and was spending weekdays in Massachusetts gay sex hookup community of Provincetown, complainants were told by the Cardinal's staff that the Cardinal has "confidence" in this priest.

When complaints surfaced that another priest lived with his gay lover for years in the South End, you can guess what happened when Catholics called the chancery. Nothing.

When another priest notorious for luring and confirming gays into mortal sin was simulating the Sacrament of marriage with a phony ritual, complainants were told the priest is the Cardinal's friend.

When a gay parishioner of a Boston Shrine wrote a tell-all book of sexual debauchery taking place within a Franciscan order and described (and even nicknamed) an archdiocesan priest's involvement in the sex club, you know what happened when Catholics called the chancery? The same thing that happened when people complained about McCarrick. Bupkis.

When problems with Church teaching had a foothold, Boston Catholics developed an independent infrastructure for reporting bad behaviors and promised anonymity. If the evidence was clear and verifiable, it was publicly reported. That was the only effective way to avoid the hijacking of outcome and uprooting the corruption. Perhaps the same structure is needed to manage the abuse of power.

In February, Cardinal Joseph Tobin made the mistake of publicly tweeting what he meant to be a private message. "Nighty-nights baby. I love you." He offered the ludicrous explanation it was meant for his 65-year-old sister. He got away with it. Any team doing forensics needs to start with his phone records and his computer. Reconstructing McCarrick's train accident is a complete waste of resources and hands bishops the outcome of useless procedures they never have and never will follow.

Frank Keating recently said the bishops had their chance 15 years ago to put meaningful reforms in place, they've proven they will not and the only thing left is complete exposure. The right structure and the right people have to go into place, but my recommendation is an independent clearing house and forensic team.

Laity provides lists of allegations and an independent team of orthodox Catholic lawyers and law enforcement officials trained in forensics conduct audits of the files of parishes, dioceses, orders or seminaries concerned.