| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 32.449
Post: 14.534 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Another lie unmasked from the cardinal the pope has kept on
as 'apostolic administrator' of the Archdiocese of Washington
Wuerl knew McCarrick abuse allegations in 2004
by Ed Condon and JD Flynn
An allegation of misconduct against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick was reported to Cardinal Donald Wuerl in 2004, despite Wuerl’s insistence he knew nothing about McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct until 2018.
Wuerl forwarded the report to the apostolic nuncio in Washington, DC, the Diocese of Pittsburgh said Thursday.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington confirmed to CNA that an allegation against McCarrick was presented to Wuerl while he served as Bishop of Pittsburgh, as part of a complaint made by laicized priest Robert Ciolek.
In a statement, the Diocese of Pittsburgh said Jan. 10 that laicized priest Robert Ciolek appeared in November 2004 before its diocesan review board to discuss an allegation of abuse Ciolek had made against a Pittsburgh priest.
During that meeting, “Mr. Ciolek also spoke of his abuse by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. This was the first time the Diocese of Pittsburgh learned of this allegation,” the statement said.
“A few days later, then-Bishop Donald Wuerl made a report of the allegation to the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.”
The disclosure is the first confirmation by Church authorities that Wuerl was aware of allegations against McCarrick before the Archdiocese of New York announced in June 2018 a credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor made against McCarrick.
The news raises questions about 2018 statements from Wuerl that denied he had even heard “rumors” about his predecessor as Archbishop of Washington.
Ed McFadden, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington, told CNA that in 2004 Ciolek “asked that his complaint against McCarrick be forwarded to the [apostolic] nuncio. And it was.”
“Wuerl forwarded the file and his complaint to the nunciature in 2004. At that time Ciolek asked for complete confidentiality, and that his name never be mentioned.”
The statement from the Diocese of Pittsburgh confirmed that Ciolek had originally insisted on confidentiality, but also that he had recently authorized the diocese to speak about the matter.
“Mr. Ciolek asked that the allegation regarding then-Cardinal McCarrick be shared only with ecclesiastical – that is – Church authorities,” the statement said. “In November 2018 Mr. Ciolek authorized the Diocese of Pittsburgh to respond to press inquiries about this matter.”
The diocese confirmed that Ciolek visited Pittsburgh recently to review files related to his complaint, and that diocesan officials were aware that he intended to discuss the matter with the press.
Ciolek reached a settlement agreement with three New Jersey dioceses in 2005 in connection with clerical sexual abuse allegations. The settlement awarded Ciolek some $80,000 in response to allegations that concerned both McCarrick and a Catholic school teacher.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh said it was not aware of the settlement until July 2018. Similarly, the Archdiocese of Washington said Wuerl was unaware of the 2005 settlement until that time.
Details of Ciolek’s settlement were first reported in September 2018. At that time, the Washington Post reported that the settlement agreement included references to Wuerl, and to the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Neither the Pittsburgh diocese nor McFadden offered detail on the specific allegations made against McCarrick, but McFadden said they concerned behavior by McCarrick at his New Jersey beach house, where the archbishop is alleged to have shared beds with seminarians, and exchanged backrubs with them.
McFadden said Ciolek “never claimed direct sexual engagement with McCarrick” in his complaint to Wuerl.
The news that Wuerl received a formal complaint against McCarrick as early as 2004, and forwarded it to the apostolic nunciature in Washington raises serious questions about the intended meaning of Wuerl’s 2018 statements concerning McCarrick.
Wuerl wrote in a June 21 letter that he was “shocked and saddened” by allegations made against McCarrick.
In the same letter, Wuerl affirmed that “no claim – credible or otherwise – has been made against Cardinal McCarrick during his time here in Washington.”
In a Jan. 10 statement, the Archdiocese of Washington said that “Cardinal Wuerl has attempted to be accurate in addressing questions about Archbishop McCarrick. His statements previously referred to claims of sexual abuse of a minor by Archbishop McCarrick, as well as rumors of such behavior. The Cardinal stands by those statements, which were not intended to be imprecise.”
“Cardinal Wuerl has said that until the accusation of abuse of a minor by Cardinal McCarrick was made in New York, no one from this archdiocese has come forward with an accusation of abuse by Archbishop McCarrick during his time in Washington.”
“It is important to note that Archbishop Theodore McCarrick was appointed to the Archdiocese of Washington in November 2000 and named a cardinal in February 2001, years before Mr. Ciolek made his claims. Then-Bishop Wuerl was not involved in the decision-making process resulting in the appointment and promotion.”
Wuerl’s resignation as Archbishop of Washington was accepted October 12, 2018. The cardinal was appointed by Pope Francis as apostolic administrator, or interim leader, of the archdiocese until a successor is appointed.
The cardinal fell under heavy criticism in the second half of last year, after a Pennsylvania grand jury report about clerical sexual abuse released in July raised questions about his leadership while he served as Bishop of Pittsburgh.
Despite earning a reputation as an early champion of “zero-tolerance” policies and the use of lay-led diocesan review boards to handle accusations of clerical sexual abuse, Wuerl faced questions about his handling of several cases during his time in Pittsburgh after he was named more than 200 times in the grand jury report.
The disclosure also raises further questions about how McCarrick was able to remain in office and in apparently unrestricted ministry during retirement. In July 2018, a priest named Fr. Boniface Ramsey told the New York Times that he expressed to Church authorities concerns about McCarrick’s conduct with seminarians as early as 2000, when McCarrick was appointed Archbishop of Washington.
Concerned by the appointment, Ramsey said that he contacted then-nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo Higuera to report allegations of McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians in his beach house. Ramsey said that he had heard accounts of this misconduct from his own seminary students.
Ramsey said he put his concerns in writing at the request of Montalvo, who promised to forward them to Rome.
Ramsey subsequently released a letter from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, dated 2006 and signed by Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, acknowledging his complaint of 2000, apparently confirming that Montalvo had sent Ramsey’s letter to Rome.
Montalvo was still in his position when Wuerl reportedly forwarded Ciolek’s complaint in 2004, and would remain in Washington until August 2006, when he died suddenly.
McFadden told CNA that while he could confirm Wuerl sent Ciolek’s complaint to the nuncio as requested, neither he nor Wuerl were aware that any further action was taken on the matter.
“As far as we can tell, the nunciature never acted on that, but we don’t have any more information.”
Montalvo’s successor as nuncio in Washington was Archbishop Pietro Sambi. CNA has previously reported that in 2008, acting on explicit instructions from Pope Benedict XVI, Sambi ordered McCarrick to move out of the archdiocesan seminary in which he was living during his retirement.
That order, and other measures which may have been imposed on McCarrick during his retirement, were a central feature of the allegations of Sambi’s own successor, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.
In his now-famous “testimony,” released in August last year, Vigano insisted that Wuerl had been aware of restrictions placed on McCarrick during his retirement for several years, and that they directly concerned his interactions with seminarians.
In a subsequent letter, Vigano said that these measures were not technically “sanctions” but “provisions,” “conditions,” and restrictions,” and they may not have been imposed in writing by Pope Benedict.
In response to Vigano’s claims, Wuerl denied “receiving documentation or information from the Holy See specific to Cardinal McCarrick’s behavior or any of the prohibitions on his life and ministry suggested by Archbishop Vigano.”
But how can we denounce Wuerl - and other US bishops - for their lies, without even graver denunciation of the pope himself has become the most habitual liar of them all???
************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
On a different matter altogether - even if the basic issue remains the same, namely, the erratic way that even Catholic media choose to report on this pope:
On the previous page of this thread, I posted a LifeNews story about a letter that 20 former heads of government and/or state in Latin America sent to this pope. Yet apparently, no other outlet picked up the story besides Il Messaggero, whose January 9 report by it Vaticanista, Franca Giansoldati, started out with this (my translation):
With an almost spectacular initiative, never before seen, 20 former heads of state of Latin America took pen to paper to send Pope Francis a 'shocking' letter, substantially protesting the appeal he made on Christmas Day from the central loggia of St. Peter's regarding the current situation in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
I reproduce again a translation of the letter:
We the undersigned, as former chiefs of state and government, have signed statements concerning Venezuela and Nicaragua that stem from the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), and therefore come to you regarding your recent Christmas message in which you call for “harmony” among the peoples of both nations.
As we expressed in a previous message to your Holiness, we understand your concern for the suffering that today, without distinction, all Venezuelans and now Nicaraguans face. The former are victims of oppression by a militarized narco-dictatorship, which has no qualms about systematically violating the rights to life, liberty and personal integrity and, as a result of deliberate public policies and unbridled corruption, has scandalized the world and that have subjected them to widespread famine and lack of medicine. The latter case, in the middle of the year, there were 300 killed and 2,500 wounded in a wave of repression.
We are concerned that the call for harmony on the part of your Holiness which, given the current context, can be understood by the victimized nations that they should come to agreement with their victimizers. In particular, in the case of Venezuela, the government has caused the flight of 3 million refugees, which the United Nations predicts will reach 5.9 million in 2019.
The expression used by His Holiness, who we know which was in good faith and guided by his pastoral spirit, is being interpreted in a very negative way by the majorities of Venezuela and Nicaragua. Above all, there is currently, in these countries, a political dispute that demands understanding, tolerance between conflicting forces with different narratives within a normal or deficient democracy that today unfortunately does not exist there. Their entire populations are subjected to suffering by their governments, under regimes that serve a lie, and social and political leaders, opinion leaders and the press, who suffer jailings, persecution and death, as demonstrated by European and American human rights organizations.
Your Holiness: The encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram declares that the call to harmony must be made, fundamentally, "to those who govern the nations." "Those who oppress others and strip them of their due liberty can contribute nothing to the attainment of this unity” for the intelligence, of the spirits, of the actions, as your predecessor, St. Pope John XXIII, reminds us, and for which we long for the dear people of Venezuela and Nicaragua may regain, based on truth and justice, so that they may enjoy a just peace.
We wish your Holiness a very happy Feast of the Nativity. We look forward to meeting with you at an appropriate time.
Cordially,
Oscar Arias, Costa Rica
Nicolás Ardito Barletta, Panamá
Enrique Bolaños, Nicaragua
Alfredo Cristiani, El Salvador
Felipe Calderón, México
Rafael Ángel Calderón, Costa Rica
Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica
Fernando De la Rúa, Argentina
Vicente Fox, México
Eduardo Frei, Chile
César Gaviria T., Colombia
Osvaldo Hurtado, Ecuador
Luis Alberto Lacalle, Uruguay
Jamil Mahuad, Ecuador
Mireya Moscoso, Panamá
Andrés Pastrana A., Colombia
Jorge Tuto Quiroga, Bolivia
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Costa Rica
Álvaro Uribe V., Colombia
Juan Carlos Wasmosy, Paraguay
Twenty former heads of state or government in Latin America send a protest letter to the pope - and that's not considered news by anyone other than LifeNews and Il Messaggero??? Much less occasion for commentary? I will be charitable and think that those usually uninhibited critics of Bergoglio in the commentariat probably never saw the news item at all. But still...
P.S. Here's an additional reaction I found....
A call for harmony —
and a demand for truth
by REV. ROBERT SIRICO
ACTON INSTITUTE POWER BLOG
January 11, 2019
Pope Francis’s recent Christmas message, ‘Urbi et Orbi’, was a meditation on the roots of fraternity in the incarnation:
What does that Child, born for us of the Virgin Mary, have to tell us? What is the universal message of Christmas? It is that God is a good Father and we are all brothers and sisters.
This truth is the basis of the Christian vision of humanity. Without the fraternity that Jesus Christ has bestowed on us, our efforts for a more just world fall short, and even our best plans and projects risk being soulless and empty.
For this reason, my wish for a happy Christmas is a wish for fraternity.
The Pope is certainly right to call us to reflect upon the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man during the Christmas season. So many of our most cherished experiences of the Christmas season center on joyous celebration and solidarity with others in our families, churches, and communities.
Much of the rest of the Pope’s Christmas message focused on places in the world where those types of celebration and solidarity are more difficult to come by due to enduring conflict. The Pope mentioned particularly two nations close to my own heart: Venezuela and Nicaragua. What struck me as strange was that he failed to mention the sources of the conflicts there which I have followed so closely.
On January 5th twenty Latin American leaders, led by Noble laureate and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, sent an open letter to Pope Francis which stated plainly the situation in Venezuela and Nicaragua:
As we expressed in a previous message to your Holiness, we understand your concern for the suffering that today, without distinction, all Venezuelans and now Nicaraguans face. The former are victims of oppression by a militarized narco-dictatorship, which has no qualms about systematically violating the rights to life, liberty and personal integrity and, as a result of deliberate public policies and unbridled corruption, has scandalized the world and that have subjected them to widespread famine and lack of medicine. The latter case, in the middle of the year, there were 300 killed and 2,500 wounded in a wave of repression.
We are concerned that the call for harmony on the part of your Holiness which, given the current context, can be understood by the victimized nations that they should come to agreement with their victimizers. In particular, in the case of Venezuela, the government has caused the flight of 3 million refugees, which the United Nations predicts will reach 5.9 million in 2019.
I would commend the entire letter to you. The letter quotes St. Pope John XXIII’s first encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram (On Truth, Unity, and Peace, in a Spirit of Charity) which teaches the need for both truth and truth-telling to reach any genuine unity and peace:
All the evils which poison men and nations and trouble so many hearts have a single cause and a single source: ignorance of the truth — and at times even more than ignorance, a contempt for truth and a reckless rejection of it. Thus arise all manner of errors, which enter the recesses of men’s hearts and the bloodstream of human society as would a plague. These errors turn everything upside down: they menace individuals and society itself.
We pray with Pope Francis for a harmonious, virtuous, and prosperous future for all Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. We pray that it may come the only way it can, through telling and acknowledging the truth which President Arias and the other signatures of the open letter to the Pope make plain.
Needless to say, the Vatican has yet to acknowledge receipt of the letter from the Latin American leaders, who apparently, according to their text, had already previously written him of the same concerns. You would think the Vatican would do so, if only out of elementary courtesy. But then, it has never acknowledged getting the DUBIA letter - the Pope claims he only learned of it through the media! Liar, liar, pants on fire!
How this pope can contribute
to theological advancement
in the far-off future
January 10, 2019
I often read in the past that it was an open theological matter whether canonisations are infallible or not. The prevalent opinion was that they are, and I followed it at the beginning of this pope's strange canonisation practices.
However, as the canonisations became more and more outlandish, and increasingly more clearly politically motivated, it became more and more difficult to reconcile the prevalent opinion with the reality on the ground. One could have swallowed the canonisation of JPII as an isolated episode, and concluded that the man must be in heaven because the Church has canonised him. [Surely Mundabor is in a small minority here who question whether Karol Wojtyla is a saint!] But several additional years of savage canonisations and beatifications have, in my eyes, settled the question: the minority position appears the correct one.
Obviously, this extraordinary events must be looked at in the light of this extraordinary period: an age of insanity that could, if God so allows, go on for a long time and bury us all.
At some point – and be it only when we are all six feet under – sanity will come back and the dust will settle. When the dust is settled, I think that the prevalent opinion will be corrected to adjust for the facts.
I can easily imagine that, in the Year of the Lord 2933, and hopefully again in an age of sanity, theologians will teach that canonisations are generally considered to be extremely valuable indicators of a person being in paradise, but without no absolute guarantee, particularly in times of high corruption within the Church; as seen in the string of canonisations proclaimed by the horrible Popes of the XXI Century, many of them revoked in stages in the years 2167, 2274 and 2488 by subsequent councils.
We need to see the Church not merely as a worldly organisation, but also as a divinely ordained process.
- The Church is the sum total of the Catholics of the last two thousand years and of all the years after us until Judgment Day.
- Francis’z abuses are, whilst enraging, merely Satan’s tantrums against powers he cannot control.
- We see in the disorder of the present age the consequence of our rebellion as Catholics starting from the Sixties.
- But we also see all ages of the Church as a process of progressive refinement of all aspects of truths, a real evolution that is never, as Francis is so fond to say, a revolution.
It seems to me that even in the midst of this mess, Providence is helping us to grow in theological and every day matters.
Think of this: When this insanity has ended, we will be cured of clericalism and papolatry for a very, very long time.
Out of the evil, God always makes something good.
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
P.S. In addition to MSM and Catholic media's apparent snub of the letter to the pope by 20 former heads of state/government of Latin America, I am still waiting for any media pick-up and commentary on an earlier and more substantive media snub: that of the wholly unexpected Islamabad Declaration earlier this week, which not even the official Vatican media have acknowledged.
Have I lost all sense of the newsworthiness of a story that nobody else seems to find this story significant enough, or significant at all?
It is sort of significant that the reigning pope has not named a new President for the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog since the death of Cardinal Tauran in July 2018. Perhaps Bergoglio is telling us he really does not need a new president as he is fully capable - and thre is no one as capable as he - of carrying out inter-religious dialog all by himself.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/01/2019 04:21] |