BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Where there's a will, there's a way. And the will of secular media - despite all their celebration of JMB/PF whom they believe to be very much on their side on many Church positions opposing the dominant mentality - is to thrash the Church whenever it can, however it can.

Like most of the non-Catholic Francis fanworld, media love this Pope but continue to abominate the Church he leads and cannot wait for him to deliver her into their hands, so they hope... Thus, we have, from a major UK newspaper, this guaranteed attention-grabbing headline about 'the Vatican' (it certainly grabbed mine, and I had to find out what it was all about), even if both incidents described - though the headline suggests an abundance of gay orgies and murder scandals - affect two separate Italian dioceses, and the crimes apparently have not gone beyond those jurisdictions where they were both dealt with on the local level without having to be raised to the Vatican...And BTW, if these had happened in B16's time, you can bet the newspaper would have tacked on their boilerplate denunciation of Joseph Ratzinger as having been the singlehanded cause of the entire clerical sex abuse crisis, yada, yada, whereas this story does not even mention Pope Francis at all (rightly so, as he has nothing to do with the incidents, unless they are not acted on at the diocesan level, although if the Pope had been B16, the newspaper would doubtless have invoked the principle of command responsibility to blame him for the events).


Gay orgies and 'murder' scandals engulf Vatican
by ROSE TROUP BUCHANAN

April 8, 2015


The Vatican has been embroiled in two separate, highly embarrassing, scandals.

In one, a north Italian priest has been removed from office after allegations emerged that he had been surfing the internet to find gay lovers and had been involved in gay orgies.

The other, which has generated – if possible – even more lurid press coverage in Italy, alleges a priest in the south of the country is under investigation on suspicion of murdering one of his parishioners.

Father Gratien Alabi, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is under investigation for murder following the discovery of female bones under the flagstones of an ancient mountain chapel.

The bones are thought belong to Guerrina Piscaglia, 50, who disappeared from nearby Arezzo in Tuscany last year, The Times reported.

The case has generated intense media interest, with some papers claiming that Father Alabi had engaged in an affair with the woman, a parishioner of his and another priest’s church, and fathered a child with her.

Father Alabi has denied all claims, protesting his innocence.

Meanwhile, to the north of the country, the local Curia is scrambling to address the allegations made by a 32-year-old man from Rovigo, midway between Bologna and Venice.

The unidentified man apparently approached the media after church authorities failed to take action following his official complaint to the Ecclesiastical Court of the Puglia region against the unidentified 50-year-old priest.

The younger man claimed he met the priest through Facebook, forming a close friendship with the clerical figure who then confessed his homosexuality to his online correspondent.

In his complaint, according to Italian newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno, the man included a record of his conversations with the priest.

In these online interactions, the priest admitted to sexual relationships with other religious figures – as well as members of the Vatican’s elite Swiss Guard – using the internet to find new partners and engage in sexual encounters online.

Following the intervention of the Archbishop of Taranto, Filippo Santoro, the individual involved was immediately removed from office, once the “reliability of the facts” had been established. The allegations included behaviour that was “absolutely incompatible with the priestly ministry”.

“Needless to say, the feelings of the archbishop and the Curia are those of regret and dismay,” a Vatican spokesperson told the Italian newspaper.

So, in both cases, appropriate action was taken on the diocesan level. What the media ought to do is to follow up any canonical or criminal proceedings initiated against the two priests, not inflate the headlines to 1) imply multiple sex and murder scandals when there is one sex crime allegation and one murder suspicion under investigation; 2) imply that nothing has been done about these 'scandals'; and 3) 'embroil' the Vatican in diocesan events that are being dealt with appropriately, at least to begin with.

The Independent is indulging in sheer media dishonesty and naked manipulation of its readers, especially those who never go beyond reading the headlines.

On the other hand, how many media outlets used the AP story on the accusations made against Mons. Barros by a man, now 51 and a practising journalist, who not only claims that Barros watched while Karadima made sexual advances to him and two other boys, but also that Karadima and Barros themselves engaged in sexual dalliance in the presence of the boys (teenagers at the time)?

There is an AP report from Chile dated March 16 about this that I never saw before, and only came across it today on an anti-Francis blogsite that linked to the AP story carried by the Huffington Post (which I never visit, so I missed this):
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/pope-francis-sex-abuse-chile-bishop_n_6881...

The AP report itself, while it carries the details of the accusers' accounts, appears to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt in this case - in which not only is his appointee for diocesan bishop accused of being complicit in a notorious priest's sexual escapades back when the priest (Fr. Karadima) was his mentor, and later intercepted and destroyed complaints sent to a bishop to whom he, Barros, was private secretary, but is now said to have engaged in sexual activity with Karadima himself; on top of which the Chilean archbishop who admits he ignored initial reports to him of Karadima's abuses now sits on Pope Francis's Advisory Council of 9.

Just how many levels of alleged culpability seem to have been ignored by the Vatican and Pope Francis in this sorry and sordid episode that are seemingly shrugged off as well by AP, the media in general, and the various victims' advocacy groups who were forever snapping unfairly against Benedict XVI?? Because after Barros was consecrated Bishop of Osorno on March 21, the AP and everyone else appear to have simply sat back and said, "Oh well, that's done!", in effect, giving JMB/PF a pass on an egregious episode, for a fraction of which they would have hounded Benedict XVI to hell. (Of course, his name is not even mentioned when the media report that 'the Vatican' in 2011 found Karadima, then 84, guilty of abusing minors and sentenced him to 'a life of penitence and prayer').

I am posting the AP report for the record, as it well illustrates the double standard employed by AP, the rest of MSM and the militant victim advocay groups towards Pope Francis and his predecessor....

Pope Francis's pledge of zero tolerance for
child abusers is being tested in Chile
By EVA VERGARA
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt96/MARITER_7/AP.jpg

SANTIAGO, Chile, March 16, 2015 (AP) — Juan Carlos Cruz recalls that he and another teen boy would lie down on the priest's bed, one resting his head at the man's shoulder, another sitting near his feet. The priest would kiss the boys and grope them, he said, all while the Rev. Juan Barros watched.

"Barros was there, and he saw it all," Cruz, now a 51-year-old journalist, told The Associated Press.

Barros has been tapped by Pope Francis to become bishop of a southern Chilean diocese this month, provoking an unprecedented outcry by abuse victims and Catholic faithful who contend he covered up sexual abuse committed by his mentor and superior, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, in the 1980s and '90s.

A Vatican investigation found Karadima guilty in 2011 and sentenced the now 84-year-old priest to a cloistered life of "penitence and prayer" for what is Chile's highest-profile case of abuse by a priest.

Barros had long declined to comment publicly on allegations against him. However, in a letter sent Monday to the priests of the diocese he'll be overseeing, he said he did not know about Karadima's abuses when they happened.

"I never had knowledge of, or could have imagined, the serious abuses that this priest committed against the victims," said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.

Now bishop for Chile's armed forces, he has said he learned of Karadima's abuse through a 2010 news report he saw on television, according to court records.

While not directly accused of abuse, Barros is said by at least three victims to have witnessed the sexual molestation at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church, part of the El Bosque parish that serves an affluent neighborhood of Santiago.

That history has parishioners, clergy and lawmakers in this predominantly Catholic country protesting the pope's decision to appoint Barros, 58, to become spiritual leader over the diocese in Osorno, about 580 miles (930 kilometers) south of Santiago.

More than 1,300 church members in Osorno, along with some 30 priests from the diocese and 51 of Chile's 120 members of Parliament, sent letters to Francis in February urging him to rescind the appointment, which was announced in January and is set to take effect on March 21.

They have not heard back and Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi declined to comment on the matter.

Numerous attempts to reach Barros were not successful; nor has he responded to the victims' accusations or the outcry over his appointment.

The Rev. Peter Kleigel, deputy pastor of the Sacred Heart parish in Osorno, is among those vocally opposing Barros's arrival.

"We're convinced that this appointment is not correct because, following canon law, a bishop must be well-regarded," he told the AP. "We need a bishop who's credible."

Such complaints come even as Francis said this month that a minster needs not only God's blessing, but the blessing of "his people" to do his work.

The controversy is being watched by victims, advocacy groups and others as a test of whether Francis will meet their demands to hold bishops accountable for having ignored or covered up wrongdoing by priests.

Anne Barrett Doyle from BishopAccountability.org, an online resource about abusive priests and complicit bishops, called the appointment "bafflingly inconsistent" with Francis's promise to root out abuse.

"The pope should have suspended and investigated Barros, not given him another diocese to run," Barrett Doyle said in an email to the AP.

Karadima led the parish of El Bosque for nearly six decades before allegations came to light in April 2010, when a news investigation into the abuse was broadcast on state television. Two months later, the archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, forwarded the allegations to the Vatican amid an eruption of abuse cases globally.

Victims say allegations against Karadima were reported earlier, but were ignored by the cardinal. Errazuriz, who is one of nine cardinals on Pope Francis' key advisory panel, has acknowledged in court testimony that he failed to act on several abuse allegations because he believed them to be untrue.

Karadima, who lives in isolation at a nun's convent, is barred from having contact with anyone outside of his own family.

Criminal charges against Karadima were dismissed in 2011 by Judge Jessica Gonzalez because the statute of limitations had expired. However, Gonzalez said that based on her interviews of Cruz and other victims during her yearlong investigation, she determined their accusations were truthful and dated "at least as far back as 1962."

Victims say they were between ages 14 and 17 when they first were abused by Karadima.

A letter detailing abuse allegations against Karadima was sent by some victims to Cardinal Francisco Fresno in 1982. But authors of the letter accuse Barros, who then was the cardinal's private secretary, of intercepting it and destroying it.

Francisco Gomez, 52, a publicist who says he was molested by Karadima, told the AP that he signed the letter drafted by two other victims. A friend of his who worked with Fresno, Juan Hoelzzel, told Gomez that Barros ripped it up after reading it — an account that was recorded in testimony during the criminal investigation.

Speaking to the AP, Gomez said he was told by Hoelzzel: "As long as Juan Barros is there, there is no doubt that this will happen again."

During Karadima's criminal trial, Barros confirmed that Hoelzzel, who has since died, had worked in the archbishop's office. Regarding the letter, court documents quote Barros as saying he had "no knowledge" of its existence, adding "I neither deny it nor affirm it."

In his letter on Monday, Barros said: "I never had knowledge of any complaint regarding Father Karadima while secretary to the Cardinal."

Barros is one of four bishops who were mentored by Karadima and defended him from the accusations.

Cruz has said that during the time he was abused, Karadima and Barros behaved intimately with one another in his presence.

"I saw Karadima and Juan Barros kissing and touching each other. The groping generally came from Karadima touching Barros's genitals," Cruz said in a January letter to Monsignor Ivo Scapolo, the papal nuncio in Chile. Cruz provided a copy of the letter to the AP.

Despite Francis' pledge to have no tolerance for abuse by priests, James Hamilton, another victim of Karadima's, said the appointment demonstrates to him that the church "had not changed."

Hamilton, now a 49-year-old doctor, said Barros enjoyed watching Karadima commit the abuse. "I saw how Barros watched it all," he said.

Since 2004, Barros has been bishop for Chile's military, an appointment made by Pope John Paul II. Previously, he was assistant bishop in the port city of Valparaiso and bishop of the northern city of Iquique.

No representatives of his former dioceses have spoken out in his defense. On Saturday, Chile's papal nuncio published a letter urging parishioners in Osorno to welcome Barros and "prepare, by way of prayer and good works, for the beginning of his pastoral governance."


Yet Pope Francis and the Congregation for Bishops are 'confident' that there was no objective reason to block or delay Barros's appointment. How about ordering an investigation at least into the charges made by Cruz - perhaps uncovering circumstances that could prove he is only making up his stories?

And how about the fact that the Pope and the Vatican ignored the petition sent by the faithful and priests of Osorno, along with almost half of Chile's parliamentarians?

Mons. Barros may well be innocent of any wrongdoing in all this, but the accusations are serious and sordid enough to be simply brushed aside, absent any formal investigation, just because JMB/PF and the Congregation for Bishops are 'confident' they made the right decision on appointing Barros.

I think it shows that, as in the case of Mons. Ricca at IOR, and Francesca Chiaoqui in the IOR Reform Commission, JMB/PF is not one to reverse any decision once he has made it, no matter how compelling the reasons are for reconsideration and retraction. It's the same cocksure confidence that he is always right that has made him defy the tradition honoring the true intentions of the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and that makes him say the Gospel is really about the poor and for the poor.

If he can be so bullheaded about something so fundamental for the faith, then it's no wonder he can ignore any objections to his questionable personnel appointments like they were nothing more than dust motes in the air.