ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

I overlooked posting this Saturday when I first saw it... But here's a typical media smear tactic - think up the worst headline possible, and omit the other side, even if you are also reporting it... Well, at least they asked the archbishop for his comment before they came out with the story, and that's a vestige of what used to be standard journalism practice!... Anyway, it's clear everyone in MSM now wants to the Woodward and Bernstein of Vaticangate and won't stop at anything simply to be in the running....


Britain’s top Catholic
‘protected’ a paedophile
by David Brown, Sean O’Neill, Julia Bradshaw

April 10, 2010


The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.



The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church’s child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police.

Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008.

Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict’s School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey.

Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca).

Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce’s child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster last year.

However, his predecessor knew of the allegations, a spokesman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor confirmed. The Cardinal has recently been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to sit on the Vatican body that appoints bishops.

The Pope was further embroiled in the worldwide clerical abuse scandal yesterday by the discovery of a letter which purports to show that he resisted the defrocking of an American priest because of the effect it might have “on the good of the universal church".



And it turns out that on the same day, another British newspaper accused another British bishop in a sort of copycat story to embellish its hook-line-and-sinker rehash of the AP story regarding the Oakland priest... The story takes elements from the Milwaukee case (deaf victims) and the 'Pope resists defrocking pedophiles' - almost like a 'copy and paste' operation now, using a template that the MSM have developed to make the Pope and every Catholic bishop and priest look like the sleaziest of criminals


Catholic Church decided
not to unfrock priest
who abused deaf boys
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Published: 9:00PM BST 10 Apr 2010

A priest who admitted indecently assaulting deaf boys at a school in Yorkshire has been allowed to remain as a cleric, it can be revealed, as the scandal over abuse cover-ups in the Catholic Church moves to Britain.

The Rt Rev Arthur Roche, the Bishop of Leeds, sent letters to the Vatican asking for advice on what action should be taken against Fr Neil Gallanagh, after details of his offences emerged, but decided not to unfrock him.

[It turns out further down that Roche did not recommend laicization, to begin with, and his spokesman explains why. The priest was retired and over 70 at the time his offenses were brought to light, he was no logner exercising priestly functions, and the diocese kept him under supervision. But most readers will never get that far because in the meantime, before telling the main story, this writer serves up the latest 'scandal' fabricated against the Pope!]

Victims' support groups said that the Catholic Church's failure to pursue the toughest possible course of action against Gallanagh seriously undermined its attempts to send a clear statement that priests guilty of abuse have been properly punished.

The disclosure comes as Pope Benedict XVI finds himself embroiled in new revelations over child sex abuse, following the emergence of a letter signed by him in 1985, before he became Pope, resisting the unfrocking of Stephen Kiesle, a US priest who had been convicted of offences against young boys.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland, in the US, and the Vatican about the proposed unfrocking of Kiesle, sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco.

In the letter, Cardinal Ratzinger – who was at the time the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has responsibility for tackling abuse by clerics – said the "good of the universal Church" needed to be considered in any unfrocking. He also urged "as much paternal care as possible" for Kiesle.

Kiesle was ultimately unfrocked in 1987. In 2004, he was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting molesting a young girl in 1995.

Now aged 63, he is on the registered sex offenders list in California. The Vatican says he was exercising due caution before sacking the priest.

Last month it was claimed that while he was a Cardinal in the 1990s, the current Pope also took a lenient approach towards another American priest who was suspected of having molested as many as 200 boys at a school for the deaf.

The Vatican has insisted that the Pope was never involved in blocking the removal of paedophile priests during his two decades as head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He held the position prior to becoming Pope in 2005.

The decision not to unfrock Gallanagh, who also abused children at deaf school, is likely to prove embarrassing for the Catholic Church in England and Wales, which has up until now escaped from being dragged into the crisis that has engulfed the Catholic church in several countries over the past year.

Catholic priests have been accused of abusing children in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Germany.

Gallanagh abused boys while working as the chaplain of St John's School for the Deaf in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, in the 1970s. The abuse first came to light in 2002, by which time he was working as a parish priest in Horsforth, Leeds.

In 2005, by then 75 and retired, Gallanagh pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two teenage pupils at the school. He was given a six-month suspended sentence and a further 11 charges involving boys as young as 11 were left on file.

However, he escaped being unfrocked – or laicised – following Bishop Roche's decision that it would be sufficient to stop him from exercising his ministry. [Which is entirely the bishops

"He is not in good standing with the Church as a priest," said John Grady, the bishop's spokesman.

"He is not allowed to exercise ministry of any kind. He has observed these restrictions to the letter."

The diocese did not refer the case to the Vatican until 2007, according to Mr Grady, by which time Benedict XVI was Pope.

"When the Neil Gallanagh case was sent to Rome, the diocese did not ask for laicisation," Mr Grady said.

"Bishop Roche took the view that Neil had had his faculties removed at the time of the disclosure – he had not acted as a priest or worn priest's dress – and still does not."

Gallanagh, who currently lives in a flat "under the observance of the church" and has been financially supported by the Church with a retirement grant, was moved to the school in 1973 despite having been fined for assaulting a nine-year-old boy 13 years earlier on the Isle of Man, while he was a priest in Northern Ireland.

At the time of the 1973 offence he told police "it was a horrible thing to do", adding: "I have been worried with this sexual trouble for some time and recently it has become an obsession with me."

Margaret Kennedy, founder of Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors (MACSAS), a support group, said that the Church had not gone far enough in punishing Gallanagh.

"Defrocking him would send out a statement that he's not fit to be a priest," she said.

"He should not be left with this honour. By not defrocking him it says that he is still a man of God and that is clearly not the case.

"It's insulting to the victims who have suffered that he has been allowed to remain as a priest."

The disclosure that Gallanagh has been allowed to remain as a priest comes after Archbishop Nichols recently cited the ability to defrock priests as one of the key changes Pope Benedict had introduced to protect children.

"He pushed forward, for example, a fast-track to defrock priests who have committed abuse," the Archbishop said. "He changed the statute of limitations in Church law."

Kevin Walton, who was abused as a boy at the school, said he was shocked to hear that Fr Gallanagh has been allowed to remain a priest.

“He was known to have abused before in Ireland, then to Boston Spa with vulnerable Deaf boys,” he said.

“The church has not acted strongly enough at all, too many silences, brushing under carpet, not saying any more about it, as if they hope things will quieten down.”