BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

I noted recently that the Associated Press is a far worse enemy for the Church and the Pope than the New York Times is because it has worldwide tentacles. I posted in TOXIC WASTE earlier today a hateful hatchet job by Victor Simpson, which has now been taken up by many media outlets, if we go by the Yahoo and Daylife headline lists, under the general title "Vatican announces tougher checks for next Pope"! How did it get so fast from being Simpson's personal projection to being attributed to the Vatican itself????

Now comes Nicole Winfield negating, in effect, the validity of Cardinal Sodano's words of loyalty to the Pope - and of course, to discredit Sodano - because of Sodano's involvement in the protection of the late Fr. Maciel. I am only sueprised it took three days in coming...

It is unfortunate, of course, that Sodano has this presumptive blot on his record, but any reading or rereading of his Easter remarks and his interview with the OR will show he was very careful not to make any statement that the media could use to accuse him directly of hypocrisy in the sex abuse issue.

On Sunday, he referred to the present scandal only once, and indirectly, as 'chatter of the moment'. And in the interview with OR, he makes it very clear he is speaking of 'unjust attacks against the Pope' and his concern for Catholics who are "involved en masse in the serious and tragic sins committed by some priests, in which individual guilt and responsibility are transformed into a collective offence".


Former Vatican No. 2
becomes unlikely cheerleader
By NICOLE WINFIELD



VATICAN CITY, April 8 -- The former Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, has assumed the lead role in praising the Pope for his handling of clerical sex abuse and defending him against "unjust attacks" in the media.

But the retired Vatican secretary of state is an unlikely front man in Rome's battle for public opinion given his reported support for the Rev. Marciel Maciel, the discredited founder of the Legionaries of Christ.

Vatican investigators last month completed an investigation into the Legionaries after the order admitted that Maciel had fathered at least one child and had molested young seminarians.

The explosive revelations have called into question the very future of one of the Church's most prominent religious movements and the Maciel case now stands as one of the more egregious cases of Vatican inaction concerning priestly sexual misconduct.

Sodano has long been accused in news reports in U.S. Catholic publications and in a book and documentary "Vows of Silence" of having helped stall a Vatican probe into the founder, although there's no suggestion he did so to cover up any alleged misdeeds.

In fact, Legionaries officials today - even those who worked closely with Maciel - say they were completely blind to the double life that he lived for decades.

It was only in 2006, nine years after the allegations against Maciel first went public, that the Vatican announced that it had concluded its investigation and had disciplined the Mexican prelate. The Vatican invited him to a "reserved life of prayer and penance" - making him a priest in name only. Maciel died in 2008.

Given that, it was odd that Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, was selected to give a high-profile salute to the Pope at the start of Easter Mass on Sunday, praising Benedict as the "unfailing rock" of the Catholic Church.

"Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers," Sodano said.

Sodano followed up on Wednesday with a front-page interview in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, in which he blamed the "unjust attacks" against the Pope on people who oppose the Church's teaching on family and life - Vatican-speak for opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Sodano equated the scandal that Benedict is confronting to that facing Pope Pius XII, blamed by Jews for having failed to do enough to stop the Holocaust.

While Jewish leaders immediately questioned that parallel [Oh please! Spare us! Did they, really????], critics of Maciel seized on the irony of Sodano coming to Benedict's defense.

"It must have been extremely frustrating for the Holy Father to sit through that address, while knowing that the speaker himself had intervened to thwart the Vatican's investigation into one of the most intransigent abusers - Marcial Maciel," said Genevieve Kineke, a former member of the Legionaries' lay movement Regnum Christi who edits life-after-rc.com, a discussion forum for people who have left the movement. [Either she did not watch the telecast at all, and the Pope's genuine appreciation, or she thinks the Pope was himself being hypocritical in accepting the remarks at all! And is it not likely that Benedict XVI would have considered Sodano's gesture as the latter's way of making up to him, however late, for having opposed Cardinal Ratzinger's approach to the sex-abuse issue in the past? And that the Pope, as a Christian, accepted this in good faith?]

A message left at Sodano's home Wednesday was not returned.

Maciel founded the Legionaries in 1941 in Mexico City. The order's conservative view, strict loyalty to Vatican teaching and its success in enrolling recruits won the admiration of Pope John Paul II, whom Sodano served as secretary of state for nearly 15 years.

But Maciel spent the last years of his life fending off the accusations by former seminarians that he had sexually abused them - accusations which formed the basis of a book "Vows of Silence" by investigative reporter Jason Berry and the late Gerald Renner.

After years of denying the charges and questioning the motives of the accusers, the Legionaries admitted in a March 25 communique that "though it causes us consternation, we have to say that these acts did take place."

The Legion also admitted that Maciel had fathered a daughter, and that two other brothers had come forward saying they were his children from a relationship with another woman.

Sodano had long been one of Maciel's top supporters in Rome, having befriended the charismatic Mexican while Sodano was the Vatican's nuncio in Chile in the 1970s, Berry has written.

The National Catholic Reporter, a U.S. Catholic newspaper, has reported that Sodano helped shut down a preliminary investigation into the abuse allegations in 1998 being carried out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now pope.

There's no indication though that he did so to cover up for Maciel.

On Wednesday, Berry published a lengthy article in the National Catholic Reporter suggesting that Sodano and other top Vatican officials received payments from Maciel.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said he had no comment.


Regardless of his complicity in the Maciel case, Cardinal Sodano is no moron. Surely he was aware that no matter how careful he was in his statements on Sunday and his interview with the OR, the media would get back at him and resurrect the Maciel case to discredit the words he said in favor of Benedict XVI.

But he took that risk and spoke up as he did on Easter Sunday and in the OR interview, in the most unexceptionable manner, and I will always thank him for that... Especially since it was a statement of filial support that one would have expected Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to have expressed in a written statement on behalf of the universal Church, after the March 24-25 double-barrelled attack by the New York Times, perhaps right after Father Brundage's statement made it clear that he himself, Bertone, had acted properly in all ways on the Murphy case.

Cardinal Levada took that initiative, why didn't Bertone? But the Pope's #2 man has been pretty consistent so far about failing to step up to the plate when needed. His first statement about the entire issue was made to newsmen in Chile two days ago, which I have not seen reported by the Anglophone news agencies. As reported by the Italian news agencies, he did not say very much:


In Chile, Cardinal Bertone
speaks up for the Pope...

SANTIAGO, Chile (Translated from ANSA) - During Holy Week, Benedict XVI had "the support of the faithful in St. Peter's Square, which included many young people", said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in his arrival here today.

Asked by newsmen about the silence of the Pope regarding the sex-abuse issue during Holy Week, he answered: "Let us talk of Chile. Let us talk of the future. The Pope is strong. He is strong for all people."

He also said Benedict XVI was 'the great prophet of the third millennium', pointing to the reception given him by "enthusiastic people, especially the young" at Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square.

... and for himself



SANTIAGO, April 6 (Translated from Apcom) - The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, today rejected forcefully the charge that he covered up the case of the Milwaukee priest Fr. Lawrence Murphy, who was accused of abusing doezens of children in a deaf-mute school in the 1970s.

"It is not true, not true at all," he said. "You should know that. We documented everything. But let us not talk about this now or we will be here all day," Bertone said upon arriving in Chile for an eight-day visit.

"Enough already. Enough with this story," Bertone said to stop the insistence of newsmen who surrounded him on arriving at Chile's international airport.

He is in Chile to bring a message of solidarity from Benedict XVI for the country that was struck by a devastating earthquake on February 27. Latest official reports place the dead at 450, and damage at 30 billion dollars.

During his visit, the cardinal will also meet with the new President of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, then visit the areas struck by the earthquake.


I apologize not having posted these items earlier - I was hoping there would be more, or that OR would report on it. In any case, I do hope the Cardinal will have another chance to make a proper statement to the media while he is in Chile. Answering ambush questions at the airport when you have just flown in after a trip that must have lasted at least 12 hours is not exactly the right occasion for a proper statement. At some point, he will have a news conference about his trip, and we can only hope he starts it with a prepared statement on this subject, and make clear he will not answer questions about it because he came to Chile for a specific mission.


P.S. Tomorrow's issue of L'Osservatore Romano does have a story about Cardinal Bertone in Chile, with some answers he gave at a news conference yesterday in Punta Arenas, saying among other things, that he fully supports everything Cardinal Sodano said on Easter Sunday. He also said he expects Pope Benedict XVI to travel to Latin America evnetually, and that in fact, 'a visit to Chile in 2012 has been discussed"... Will translate the article later.