As the Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father knows his mission is also a day-to-day Via Crucis. After the Irish sex scandal reports, and then the German, something closer to home even if it is rather peripheral.
I was going to write two lines about this in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread because it involves translating a non-priority item, but now Reuters has an English overview that chooses to involve the Pope, just because of a Vatican connection, but trust Phillip Pullella to indulge in his usual reprehensible attempt to associate the Pope with anything negative, especially if it is somewhat salacious...
New woe for Vatican as usher
is linked to prostitution
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY, March 4 (Reuters) – One of Pope Benedict's ceremonial ushers and a member of an elite choir in St Peter's Basilica have been implicated in a gay prostitution ring, in the latest sexual scandal
to taint the Vatican.
[Just to make it clear from the start: The principals are a ranking civil bureaucrat who had the backing of Cardinal Sodano in 1995 when he was appointed a 'Gentleman of His Holiness' by John Paul II, and a Nigerian seminarian who happened to belong to a secondary Vatican choir. The Vatican yesterday promptly said the 'Gentleman' would no longer be considered such, and the seminarian has been dismissed from the choir - neither fact is reported by Pullella, though the Vatican made the announcements yesterday, and Pullella's story was filed today.
A Vatican source explained that although appointments as 'Gentleman of His Holiness' are traditionally held for life, the Vatican will simply stop asking Balducci to carry out any services and will also drop his name from the listing in the Annuario Pontificio, the official directory of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.]
Ghinedu Ehiem, a Nigerian, was dismissed by the Vatican on Wednesday from the Giulia Choir after his name appeared in transcripts of police wiretaps, published by an Italian newspaper, in an unrelated Italian investigation.
The wiretaps were carried out in connection with a probe into corruption in contracts to build public works, including the planned venue in Sardinia of last year's G8 summit. The summit was eventually moved to the Abruzzo region as part of efforts to help it recover from an earthquake.
Among four people arrested last month in the corruption probe was Angelo Balducci, an engineer who is a board member of Italy's public works department and a construction consultant to the Vatican. Balducci was arrested on corruption charges, and the allegations of prostitution emerged only later.
Balducci is also a member of an elite group called "Gentlemen of His Holiness", ushers who are called to serve in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on major occasions such as when the Pope receives heads of state or presides at big events.
[Pullella expressly does not mention that Balducci was appointed in 1995 and was therefore already in place when Benedict XVI became Pope, but it is very germane to the report, because otherwise, the casual reader simply assumes that Balducci was named by the present Pope.]
"Gentlemen of His Holiness" carried the coffin of the late Pope John Paul at his funeral in 2005.
Excerpts of the wiretaps and police documents published in the Italian newspaper
La Repubblica showed that Ehiem, 40, had been in regular contact with Balducci before Balducci's arrest last month and the subject of their conversation was gay sex. [In the wiretaps, he is heard describing physical characteristics of some boy prostitutes to Balducci.]
A police document prepared for magistrates and published in part by
La Repubblica said Balducci was in contact with Ehiem and an Italian who were part of what the police called "an organized network ... to abet male prostitution."
It was not immediately possible to contact Ehiem's lawyer.
Equally objectionable is the Anglophone media's exploitation - and obvious attempt to pin guilt by association - of the recently uncovered sexual abuses by priests in German Catholic schools 'in the Pope's own country'! As though he ever had anything to do with clergy or schools that were not part of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.
But as I commented when this German story first emerged, God forbid someone will come up with sex abuses committed by priests and religious in his jurisdiction when Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop. You can bet German media started raking the muck for this (much as the American MSM sent a whole army of investigative reporters to Alaska in 2008 to dig up any dirt on about Sarah Palin, and got zilch).
It's been over two months now, so keep your fingers crossed... It's not unlikely that the Pope himself would have immediately asked Archbishop Marx in Munich to carry out a quiet investigation if any cases may have occurred in the archdiocese since 1977.
In Germany's biggest sex abuse scandal,
focus is on priests at Roman Catholic schools
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
BERLIN, March 3 (AP) - In the home country of Pope Benedict XVI, new revelations of child abuse by Roman Catholic priests at German high schools are
surfacing almost daily.
[An outright exaggeration!]
The Catholic church in Germany — where around 30 percent of people consider themselves Catholic — has apologized for the incidents, but already there are calls for the government to take action because most of the cases date back to the 1970s and 1980s, beyond the reach of statutes and prosecution.
The first accusers came forward a month ago in Berlin. Since then, the list of schools and victims who say they were scarred and haunted by alleged abuses has grown.
First it was seven alumni of the prestigious Canisius Kolleg prep school in Berlin. Then it was Aloisius Kolleg in Bonn and then St. Blasien, another Jesuit-run boarding school in the Black Forest as well as other Catholic schools in Hamburg, Goettingen and Hildesheim.
Just days ago, the renowned boarding schools Ettal Monastery and St. Ottilien in Bavaria made headlines when allegations about child molestation by Benedictine priests there surfaced. The total number of alleged victims has reached at least 150.
[Ettal is in Bavaria, but I do not know if it is part of the Archdiocese of Munich, and the initial reports referred to offenses commited in the 1950s, but there have been subsequent references of alleged offenses in the 1970s-1980s. This report should also have mentioned that the abbot of the monastery resigned as soon as the reports surfaced.]
Ursula Raue, an attorney appointed by the Jesuit religious order to handle the charges, told The Associated Press she has been overwhelmed by the number of cases that flood her inbox and answering machine daily.
"This whole case has taken on a dimension of unbelievable proportions," she said.
Raue said she "heard from mothers, sisters and brothers, whose children or siblings took their own lives or cannot function in daily life because of deep psychological scars."
[A conscientious reporter would have added at least two lines about the statements made by the German bishops conference (DBK), and that the DBK president will be meeting the Pope at the Vatican this week to discuss the problem. By leaving out a number of relevant attenuating or positive facts, reporters can make any story appear completely negative against some one or some entity they do not sympathize with, in this case, the Church.
What I don't understand is, given how unpopular the Church is in Germany, and that Catholics are a minority, how is it that none of these victims and their families made any complaints - to the civilian justice system - at the time of the alleged incidents? Or even, say at the time the US scandals erupted bigtime. Was that not incentive enough for them to come out and make their accusations? Especially since most German bishops are hardly orthodox Catholics, and usually liberal, so it would have been a great liberal crusade for them to use against the Church establishment!]
P.S.
New development in this story:
Vatican plans apostolic visitation
of the Benedictine abbey in Ettal
Translated from
March 4, 2010
ROME - The Vatican has decided on an apostolic visitation to the Benedictine abbey of Ettal in Bavaria, at the request of the abbey officials themselves. This was announced today in the German press and confirmed by Ettal.
Along with some other religious institutions in Germay, Ettal is at the center of newly uncovered sexual abuses committed by priests.
It all began with accusations made in January against two priests of Jesuit-run Canisius high school in Berlin for offenses committed during a decade spanning the 1980s and 1990s. {School officials said both priests left the order in the early 1990s and are no longer employed by the school.]
This led to revelations in other Catholic schools, with a total of 150 cases so far.
The German bishops conference, after their annual plenary assembly last week, issued a public apology to the victims and their families, and said they would cooperate fully with the civilian justice system to seek redress for the victims.
The bishops also established an office to take charge of such matters, headed by Mons. Stephen Ackermann, Bishop of Trier.
Last Wednesday, Ettal abbey was searched on orders of the Munich magistrate in its investigation of possible sexual abuses committed against children who attended the abbey's boarding school. Since the end of the Second World War, no church institution has ever been the object of such a search.
Earlier, the prior of the Abbey, Maurus Krass resigned after admitting that he had not informed Church authorities of accusations of sexual abuse made in 2003-2005. Fr. Brnabas Boegle, director of the boarding school, also resigned.
Three religious in the Monastery of Wechselburg, in Saxony, were suspended after they were implicated in sexual abuses committed while they were assigned in Ettal. So far, 20 charges have been filed by former students against four priests.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/08/2010 04:22]