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Fallen Scottish Cardinal who called homosexuality 'grotesque' had 'priest boyfriend for years who told the Vatican they were lovers'
Fallen Cardinal Keith O'Brien was in a 'longstanding physical relationship' with another priest despite his outspoken views on homosexuality, which he had called a 'moral degradation', it was claimed today.
The former head of the Catholic Church in Scotland is alleged to have been having an affair for years with one of the four men that eventually forced his resignation.
Cardinal O'Brien is said to have confessed to the relationship after the Vatican was warned about his behaviour towards other priests during the 1980s.
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Marsh 23 th 2013 |
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Vatican buys Europe's biggest gay bathhouse and sauna
One day ahead of the papal conclave in Rome, The Independent has revealed that the scandal hit Holy See has purchased a $31 million share of the Rome apartment block that houses Europe’s biggest gay sauna.
It's a move that has left a sea of red faces to match the red capes of the horrified cardinals. But Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelization of Peoples, who is due to participate in today's election at the Sistine Chapel, may be blushing more than most.
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Marsh 13th 2013 |
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Top French cardinal says not to put all the blame on Church for sex abuse
Putting the blame for paedophilia on the Roman Catholic Church is a way of avoiding the issue, a top French cardinal says.
“There is a kind of opinion that is an easy way of ridding (society) of the issue of paedophilia by putting it on the Church,” Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, told AFP in an interview.
“We shouldn’t be duped. It’s easy because that prevents asking the question within society itself,” said Vingt-Trois, 70, one of the 115 cardinals set to elect the next pope in a conclave starting on Tuesday.
“Paedophilia is not solely a Church problem. Eighty percent of victims of paedophilia are in families, and we don’t talk about that,” he said, rejecting what he called a “fascination” over the issue in connection with the Church |
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Marsh 11th 2013 |
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Cardinal Roger Mahony: I Forgive Those Who Are Angry at Me for Covering Up Child Rape
But instead of talking about the things he’s done wrong, he flipped it around andthrew it back on the victims of his purported crimes and those who rally behind them:
In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated. In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people. I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage — at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.
Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.
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Marsh 2 th 2013 |
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Pedophilia & Corruption: Will next Pope stop Catholic hell?
 Pope Benedict XVI retires, becoming the first pope to abdicate in six centuries. Saying he wants to exit public life and remain 'hidden to the world' - he leaves his successor, to be named next month, to redeem the Church's reputation, following a string of child abuse and corruption allegations. There is little hope that even with Pope Benedict XVI stepping down, the Catholic Church will see an end to high-profile pedophile scandals. All Catholic clergy are culpable, David Lorenz of a priest abuse survivor network told RT.
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Marsh 1 th 2013 |
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Sex scandals, corruption hit the church: Kevin Barrett
 A political analyst tells Press TV that there are all kinds of sexual decadence, blackmail and financial corruption at the highest levels in the West and unfortunately it seems to have touched the Catholic Church.
The comments came after a new report said that Pope Benedict XVI decided to resign as head of the Catholic Church after learning about the extent of sex and graft scandals inside the Vatican. On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI, the spiritual leader of Christians, said he intends to officially step down from his post at 1900 GMT on February 28 since he is no longer able to carry out his duties because of his advanced age.
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February 27 th 2013 |
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Pope Benedict to seek immunity and protection from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on February 23
 International Tribunal calls on Napolitano to "not collude in criminality", and announces global campaign to occupy Vatican property and launch human rights inquiry in Italy
Rome (9 am local time):
Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, has scheduled a meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano for Saturday, February 23 to discuss securing protection and immunity from prosecution from the Italian government, according to Italian media sources.
Ratzinger's meeting follows upon the apparent receipt by the Vatican of a diplomatic note from an undisclosed European government on February 4, stating its intention to issue an arrest warrant for Ratzinger, who resigned from his pontificate less than a week later.
In response to the February 23 meeting, the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS), through its field Secretary, Rev. Kevin Annett, has written to President Napolitano, asking him to refrain from assisting Ratzinger in evading justice.
The ITCCS letter states, in part,
"I need not remind you, Mr. President, that under international law and treaties that have been ratified by Italy, you and your government are forbidden from granting such protection to those like Joseph Ratzinger who have aided and abetted criminal actions, such as ordering Bishops and Cardinals in America and elsewhere to protect known child rapists among their clergy. |
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February 14 th 2013 |
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Catholic Hell: Faith fails as sex abuse in church silenced
Reputation of the German Catholic Church have resulted in more and more worshippers turning their backs on it. Child abuse, sexual harassment cases committed by priests that don't even get to court are seen as the main reason for dramatically shrinking congregations. You may find some of the details in Peter Oliver's report disturbing.
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February 4 th 2013 |
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Pope’s child porn 'normal' claim sparks outrage among victims
Belfast Telegraph
Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict's claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn't considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
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| December 22th 2012 |
Sexual abuse crisis threatens the very foundations of Catholicism
George Pell is an easy target for both liberal critics in the Catholic Church and secularist tormentors in the media.
In his recent, defensive press conference, he suggested the church was being singled out as the only institutional offender in the child sex abuse crisis. It was grist to the mill of those who are convinced the cardinal Archbishop of Sydney is making excuses for clerical crime.
His insistence that the rite of confession must remain a secret between confessor and penitent - no matter how evil the offence that is revealed - was seemingly more evidence that he was putting the church's reputation and customs ahead of abuse victims. As his brother bishop Geoffrey Robinson conceded, it was painful.
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| November 27 th 2012 |
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Catholic Church in Australia reveals 620 sex abuse cases
RawStory- The Catholic Church in one Australian state has revealed that at least 620 children have been abused by its clergy since the 1930s, sparking a fresh call Saturday for an independent inquiry.
The Catholic Church in Victoria revealed the number in a submission to a state parliamentary hearing on Friday but said the instances of abuse reported had fallen dramatically from the “appalling” numbers of the 1960s and 1970s.
“It is shameful and shocking that this abuse, with its dramatic impact on those who were abused and their families, was committed by Catholic priests, religious and church workers,” Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said. |
| September 24 th 2012 |
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Catholic Cardinal Authorized $20K To Pay Off Pedophile Priests, Then Railed Against ‘Immorality’ Of Gay Marriage
Cardinal Timothy Dolan has led the charge against same-sex marriage, describing gay and lesbian unions as “unjust,” “immoral,” and unnatural. “This is a very violation of what we consider natural law that’s embedded in every man and woman and we’re really worried as Americans that it’s going to be detrimental to the common good,” Dolan said in a radio interview in June, as New York prepared to legalize marriage equality. “[W]e still worry about the detrimental effect upon society, upon culture, and certainly upon our individual churches.”
But church documents showing that Dolan paid off priests who had been accused of sexually abusing minors suggest that the prominent Catholic leader was willing to overlook these very same religious convictions to help colleagues accused of egregious wrong doing. The documents, obtained by the New York Times, also show that Dolan lied to reporters when he initially dismissed news of the payments as “false, preposterous and unjust” |
| June 6th 2012 |
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Spanish bishop legitimates rape
The Archbishop of Granada, Javier Martinez, said in his Christmas sermon that it was acceptable for women who have had an abortion to be raped. Author Manuel António Pin expresses his outrage in the daily Jornal de Notícias: "The Spanish Church won't let anyone dissuade it from its intolerant traditions. ... After [Prime Minister] Mariano Rajoy, who is close to the Church, announced his intention of 'extirpating the putrid secular abortion law' that was passed under Zapatero's government I was given a copy of a Christmas sermon delivered by the Archbishop of Granada in which he says that 'a woman who has an abortion gives a man absolute licence to abuse her body without restrictions because she has committed a sin as if she had a right to do so'. ... For the Archbishop Hitler's and Stalin's crimes (he forgot Franco's) were 'less dreadful than abortion'. In such situations even a non-believer wishes there was a God to condemn these people." |
| January 7th 2012 |
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THE POPE, THE PRIESTHOOD, AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN: The Untold Story
Hundreds of thousands of children have been sexually abused by Catholic Church priests - and we praise the Pope, the leader of a religous cult that allows priests to rape little boys and then protects the priests.
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| December 7th 2011 |
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German Bishops caught in massive porn scandal - why didn’t they listen to the faithful?
 COLOGNE, October 31, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After ten years of being internally warned by faithful Catholics, including in a 70-page dossier sent to all of Germany’s main bishops, the scandal of the German bishops’ ownership of a publishing company that sells a large volume of porn has hit the mainstream media.
Last week the mainstream media outed the fact that the German bishops are 100% owners of one of the most profitable book companies in Germany. The huge company, in addition to offering many religious and other ethical books and items, also peddles 2500 porn titles and additional books highly offensive to Christian principles.
A spokesman for the bishops promised immediate corrective action. However, the false pretense of ignorance about the situation has only served to add to the scandal, especially for faithful Catholics who were treated with silence and even disdain when they repeatedly attempted for years to bring the scandal to an end out of public view.
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| November 16th 2011 |
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Ireland to close its embassy to the Vatican... but deny it is because of the Church's handling of sex abuse cases
Ireland will close its embassy to the Vatican as part of a cost-cutting programme prompted by the country’s EU-IMF bailout, it has emerged.
Relations between the Irish government and the Vatican, once traditional allies, are at an all-time low over the Church’s handling of sex abuse cases.
But Eamon Gilmore, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, denied the embassy closure was linked.
Gilmore told state broadcaster RTE: 'That was not a consideration. 'Our diplomatic relations with the Vatican will continue and they are valued.'
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| November 5th 2011 |
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Hague court urged to investigate Pope over sex abuse
(Reuters) - Victims of sexual abuse by the clergy want the International Criminal Court to investigate Pope Benedict and three Vatican officials, accusing them of allowing the rape and abuse of children.
The New York-based rights group Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and another group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), filed a complaint with the ICC alleging that Vatican officials committed crimes against humanity because they tolerated and enabled sex crimes
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| September 15th 2011 |
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Vatican approach to child abuse in Ireland absolutely disgraceful, says PM
Enda Kenny says laws being drawn up making it impossible for anyone to avoid obligation to report abuse allegations
 Ireland's prime minister has denounced the Vatican's approach to allegations of child abuse in the republic as absolutely disgraceful.
Enda Kenny said new laws are being drawn up that will make it impossible for anyone – even those high up in the Roman Catholic church – to avoid their obligations regarding reports of child abuse.
"The law of the land should not be stopped by crosier, or by collar," Kenny said.
He added that he hopes the response from the Irish government to the Cloyne report will clarify to everyone that the law of the land applies in situations where appalling actions took place.
Kenny called on the Vatican to repeat its commitment that civil law should always be followed. The Irish Catholic church and the Vatican have faced severe criticism over repeated attempts to deal with incidents of abuse behind closed doors rather than by handing over suspects to the Garda Síochána. |
| July 15h 2011 |
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 (GENOA) — The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests. Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse. |
| May 27th 2011 |
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Catholic group claims children raped by priests were ‘homosexual’ participants, not victims
 The anti-gay Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is going on the attack against "those who are distorting the truth about priestly sexual abuse."
The group bought an expensive full-page ad in The New York Times Monday that places the blames for the church's scandals on "homosexuality, not pedophilia."
And perhaps most shockingly, it also claimed that some children were active participants in the abuse.
"The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight -- they weren’t children and they weren’t raped," self-appointed Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote in the ad.
"We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape)," he added, referencing a 2004 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which was funded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. |
| April 14th 2011 |
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Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries
 The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.
Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.
The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.
In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions. |
| February 26h 2011 |
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Vatican ordered bishops to hide abuse
A newly revealed document shows that the Vatican instructed Irish bishops not to report child abuse cases in the 1990s, providing more evidence of the Roman Catholic Church's involvement in a massive cover-up of the scandal.
According to a newly disclosed letter written by Vatican officials back in 1997, Ireland's Catholic bishops were instructed to withhold evidence or suspicions of crimes related to any child abuse cases involving pedophile priests and to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
The letter also zeroes in on the new evidence that shows the Vatican ran afoul of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin assisting police officials to identify pedophile priests after the very first reports of Irish priests' implication in child abuse scandals surfaced.
The letter, which carries the signature of the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, asserts that the abuse cases should be dealt with within the purview of the Catholic Church instead of handing them over to criminal authorities.
"Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the highly embarrassing position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome," Storero asserted in the letter. |
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January 19th 2011 |
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Pope’s child porn 'normal' claim sparks outrage among victims
 Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict's claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn't considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.” |
| December 25th 2010 |
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Pope Blames 1970s Society for Pedophile Priests
Pope Benedict used his annual speech to Rome's cardinals and bishops on Monday (Dec. 20) to ask them to reflect on the church's responsibility in the child sex abuse scandals.
Benedict qualified his mea culpa by stating that the scandal (in which priests who sexually abused children were often ignored or protected by the Catholic Church) was partly justified by the broader social context. Benedict said that while the church accepted some responsibility, he could not be silent about ''the context of these times.... There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society." [History of Pornography No More Prudent Than Present] |
| December 23th 2010 |
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Ireland granted immunity to sex abuse church officials under pressure from Vatican, says WikiLeaks
 Ireland caved in to Vatican pressure to grant immunity to church officials in the investigation of decades of sex abuse by its clergy, newly released WikiLeaks documents have shown.
Requests made by the Irish government for information 'offended many in the Vatican' who believed they had 'failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigation'.
But even without assistance from Rome the Irish were able to substantiate claims of abuse between 1975 and 2004.
The Vatican also complained that 'some Irish politicians were making political hay with the situation by calling publicly on the government to demand that the Vatican reply.'
Secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone wrote to them insisting that requests must come down diplomatic channels.
The Irish exerted pressure behind the scenes to get senior officials to testify and senior church officials were sent to Rome to meet the Pontiff. |
| December 18th 2010 |
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Documents reveal Catholic Diocese in San Diego covered up for pedophile priests
 Newly released documents show the Diocese of San Diego long knew about abusive priests, some of whom were shuffled from parish to parish despite credible complaints against them.
Attorneys for 144 people claiming sex abuse made the papers public Sunday, after a retired San Diego Superior Court judge ruled last week that the previously sealed documents could be released.
The nearly 10,000 pages of records were from the personnel files of 48 priests who were either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse, or were named in a civil lawsuit.
The documents detailed one decades-old case in which a priest under police investigation was allowed to leave the U.S. after the diocese intervened.
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| October 26h 2010 |
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The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.
Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.
The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese. |
| September 30th 2010 |
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Catholic church using time limit to suppress child abuse cases, says lawyer
The Roman Catholic church was accused today of using the legal system to suppress evidence of clerical sex abuse after a Jesuit-run school lost an appeal against a court ruling giving a former pupil the right to pursue a £5m civil action.
The decision by the court of appeal was described by lawyers representing child abuse victims as "a blow at the church's culture of secrecy and denial" that would embolden other victims to come forward.
Governors at Preston Catholic college had argued that the claim by Patrick Raggett, 52, came outside the legal time limit. |
| August 29th 2010 |
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Catholic priest charged with raping teen girl
The priest, 50, allegedly abused the girl, aged 14 at the time, over a three-year period from 1990, telling her she "wouldn't go to heaven" if she did not comply, Alexander Retemeyer, a spokesman for prosecutors, told news agency AFP.
Hermann Haarmann, a spokesman for the diocese in Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, where the alleged rape took place, said the priest was suspended from duty in March when the woman came forward and a probe was launched.
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August 26th 2010 |
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Vatican rejects resignations of Irish bishops over child sex abuse scandal
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests in his archdiocese that Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field will remain in their jobs but will be given "revised responsibilities".
The bishops presented their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in December following a judge's damning report on the Dublin archdiocese that found the Catholic Church concealed the abuse of children by priests for three decades
In the letter he said: "Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops."
The archbishop said they were "to be assigned revised responsibilities within the diocese."
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| August 13th 2010 |
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Magazine exposes 'double life' of Vatican's gay priests
NOT FOR the first time in recent months, an Italian media source yesterday revealed embarrassing details of a flourishing gay “scene” within the Holy See in Rome.
Carmelo Abbate, an undercover reporter from weekly news magazine Panorama , provides in its latest issue graphic detail of a month-long series of gay parties and brief encounters in and around the Holy See, featuring openly gay priests.
Abbate, who introduced himself into the community thanks to an (unnamed) gay friend, begins his latter-day Decameron with a party in the Testaccio area of Rome |
| July 25th, 2010 |
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According to Pope Benny female priests are equal to pedophiles
Pedophilia is a sin, says the Pope, but so is any attempt to ordain female priests.
In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, both are equally “grave delicts,” according to revisions in internal Vatican laws published Thursday.
The document clarifies canon (or church) law regarding trials for priests accused of child sexual abuse, mandating quicker juridical procedures rather than drawn-out ecclesiastical trials. It extends the statute of limitations for victims to lay charges, and also names as grave delicts the possession of child pornography, and the sexual abuse of mentally challenged adults.
But any goodwill Rome might have been hoping for with this new approach has been overshadowed in its latest rebuke to woman. The decree states that both women who attempt ordination and those who preside over the ceremony will be immediately excommunicated |
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July 18th, 2010 |
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The Vatican on Thursday issued new rules on the handling of abuse cases amid a worldwide scandal, ordering quicker investigations of paedophile priests and extending the statute of limitations.
Announcing the measures in a bid to fend off accusations of high-level complacency, the Church also classified child pornography as a crime and made the abuse of mentally handicapped people a crime as serious as paedophilia
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| July 16th, 2010 |
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The Catholic Church child abuse scandal in Belgium just got a whole lot worse. Belgian newspaper Het Laaste Niews is reporting that when authorities searched the home of the former archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, they discovered a hidden cache of documents and photographs on notorious child sex killer Marc Dutroux — documents that Danneels was not supposed to have. Here’s a Google translation of one of their reports |
| July 7th, 2010 |
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Pope Benedict's 'friend' accused of hitting children with carpet beater at Catholic orphanage
The Catholic Church abuse scandal in Germany moved closer to the Vatican today with claims of violence against both boys and girls committed by a friend and ally of Pope Benedict XVI.
Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg - appointed by the pope in 2005 - is accused of the systematic beating of children in his care when he oversaw a Catholic orphanage 30 years ago.
The Bishop, a controversial figure who tried to explain away rampant paedophilia in the Church by claiming the sexual liberation movement must share a 'significant' part of the blame, is accused of using a carpet beater on the bare behinds of victims as he screamed: 'Satan is in you and I must drive him out. |
| July 7th, 2010 |
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The Vatican is expected to slightly enhance its rules for punishing clergy who sexually abuse children, but the new policies, likely to be announced within days, will still fall short of what victim advocates say is necessary to protect minors.
Moreover, the changes are seen as fairly minor concessions in a decades-long battle to push Rome to act forcefully against abusers.
In addition, the new policy, which has reportedly been signed by Pope Benedict XVI, still has no provision for dealing with bishops who cover up for molesting priests and it is unlikely to clarify whether or how bishops should report abusers to civil authorities.
The new rules, which Vatican observers say could go into effect within days, will gather together norms that have been in place since 2001 to make it easier for the church to defrock or suspend priests accused of abuse. The policies were slightly modified in 2003, after another wave of sexual abuse revelations broke in the United States |
| July 7th, 2010 |
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In the 1980s American news media both print and broadcast began to report on growing evidence that an alarming number of Roman Catholic priests had engaged in serial sexual abuse of children and teens, and that the church hierarchy had not only failed to properly address the situation, but in many cases engaged in racketeering to protect accused clerics and thereby minimize scandal and financial losses. However, coverage and investigation by the media and by the authorities was intermittent and insufficient, so it was not until after the turn of the century that the issue became a major national scandal. In part because charges were not brought soon enough few clerics have faced criminal charges. Another wave of pedophilia charges in a number of countries has yet again inspired a wave of public concern about the ethics of the Vatican, this time focused in Europe. |
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Groups representing the victims of clerical abuse tonight expressed outrage after the pope criticised raids on the Catholic church by Belgian police.
Last week, police raided the home of a retired bishop, opened the grave of at least one archbishop and detained Belgium's nine current serving bishops as they met, seizing their mobile phones and only releasing them after nine hours.
Pope Benedict described the raids by officers investigating abuse claims as "surprising and deplorable" and demanded that the church be allowed a role in inquiries into child molesters in its ranks.
In a message to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Monsignor André-Joseph Léonard, the pontiff condemned the raids and offered his support to the bishops "in this sad moment |
| June 28th, 2010 |
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Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures, the Associated Press reports.
Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops' conference, gave the estimate during a press conference on the sidelines of the bishops' general assembly, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.
He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation or defrocking of the priest, or how many were reported to police. While saying the church officials cooperated with police, he insisted that Italian law doesn't require bishops to report suspected abuse.
Some lawyers for victims say bishops are required to report abuse since they are public officials. Vatican norms say bishops should follow civil laws in reporting abuse.
Crociata's comments came a day after the head of the bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, opened the bishops' annual meeting by asking families to trust the Catholic Church despite the scandal, insisting that it had never intended to underestimate the problem. |
| June 28th, 2010 |
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Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned human rights lawyer and United Nations jurist, wants to see Pope Benedict put on trial for allegedly protecting predator priests.
In a Guardian UK piece making its rounds this week in Catholic circles, Robertson demanded the pope be "put in the dock" so that the church might "feel the full weight of international law" over its thousands of pedophilia scandals.
The pope's conduct, he said, "amounted to the criminal offence of aiding and abetting sex with minors," making Benedict a justifiable target for either the International Criminal Court or a British court acting under the legal principal of universal jurisdiction. |
| June 28th, 2010 |
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Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, broke with tradition to launch a staunch rebuttal of the Pope's critics.
In the Easter Sunday Mass which preceded the Pope's "Urbi et Orbi" message, the dean of the College of Cardinals, told him: "The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the petty gossip of the moment."
Cardinal Sodano's address was highly unusual, and considered a measure of how seriously the Vatican is taking the paedophile priest scandals which have hit the Church in Ireland, the US, Germany and several other countries.
The Pope used his Easter address to call for mankind to undergo a "spiritual and moral conversion" but avoided any reference to the scandals over paedophile priests that have shaken the Catholic Church.
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| June 28th, 2010 |
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The head of the influential Catholic League says that the priest who allegedly sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin did not engage in pedophilia because 'the vast majority of the victims [were] post-pubescent."
Bill Donohue made the argument during a raucous debate on Larry King Live Tuesday night, during which he repeatedly pointed the finger to homosexuality -- rather than pedophilia -- as the cause of the church's sex abuse problems. |
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A report by prosecutors said that not one of the cases was referred to the police by the local bishop.
Sergio Cavaliere, a lawyer who has compiled evidence on the cases, said: "It's an alarming figure if you consider that it's only the tip of the iceberg, if you think about all the cases that haven't shown up in the media or that haven't gone to court." |
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An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.
The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with.
In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.
Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn't prepared for "that kind of an onslaught' |
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Pope Benedict XVI faced fresh criticism Saturday after attacks on the Catholic Church over the pedophile priest controversy were compared to anti-Semitism, further marring Easter Week celebrations.
Jewish groups and those representing victims of abuse by Catholic priests denounced the remarks by the pope's personal preacher during a Good Friday homily.
Rome's chief rabbi joined the chorus of criticism, saying in an interview published Saturday: "It's an inappropriate parallel and of dubious taste."
The comparison was not made on "any day, but on Good Friday, that is the saddest day in the history of relations between Christians and Jews," Riccardo Di Segni told the Italian daily La Stampa.
The parallel was drawn in a letter that Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Papal Household, said he received from an unnamed Jewish friend |
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NEW revelations about Pope Benedict XVI’s alleged role in covering up accusations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy have exposed the Vatican to the risk of lawsuits brought by victims around the world.
Mounting anger at the Catholic Church’s failure to act on predatory priests in the US, Europe and Mexico has plunged the papacy into an institutional crisis described by an American Catholic newspaper last week as “the largest in centuries”.
Yesterday the Vatican denounced the “aggressive persistence” of critics who were attempting to “involve the Holy Father personally in the matter of abuse”. A spokesman told Vatican Radio that the Pope’s record was “above discussion”. |
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The Catholic Church is in serious trouble and may have nowhere to run, depending on who you ask.
"I warned them about all of this," declared author Christopher Hitchens, appearing on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night. "Nothing good can come of a church that has as its' slogan, 'Leave no child's behind.' And then they went and chose as pope the man who was personally responsible, in his dioceses, and institutionally responsible for the cover-up. So now, there's no escape."
The child rape scandals that have savaged Catholic ranks for years starting in the United States, then flaring up in Ireland, Germany, Italy and other locations around the world, have finally come to implicate Pope Benedict XVI, according to recent reports.
At time of this writing, the most recent scandal flare-up involved a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, where up to 200 boys were molested by a man whom Hitchens said "was allowed to walk free and was buried with full honors as a priest." |
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Fresh revelations have been made directly implicating Pope Benedict XVI in mishandling the case of a paedophile priest in his former archdiocese of Munich.
According to the New York Times, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was copied in on a memo from his deputy in which the priest was transferred to parish duties in Bavaria that brought him into contact with children. As a result of that decision by the then vicar-general, Father Gerhard Gruber, the priest was able to continue abusing boys, for which he was later tried and convicted.
A spokesman for the archdiocese told the Guardian: "The report does not contain false information, but the interpretation – that Cardinal Ratzinger knew – is pure speculation." The spokesman added: "I do not know if any copy [of the memo] exists. But it is a usual procedure that a decision about priests goes to the office of the archbishop. But it is not usual that he takes note of every written piece of paper; every decision of the vicar-general." |
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German nuns investigated for sex abuse
The two sisters, along with four priests, are at the centre of fresh allegations of the abuse of minors in the diocese of Regensburg in southern Germany.
The new investigation was announced by a spokesman for the diocese, although there were no further details of when and where the abuse took place or how many children were involved.
The diocese is acting on some of the 300 claims of sexual or physical abuse at institutions run by the Church which have flooded in since Germany was swept up in a scandal which has also caused shock and anger in Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Brazil.
"The work of the last 14 days has shown us that serious wrongdoing was committed by spiritual leaders and members of the church," said the spokesman, Clemens Neck.
"We deeply regret what the spiritual leaders and church members did to these children and youths, and we ask for forgiveness on their behalf."
He said most of allegations dated back to the 1970s and had therefore expired under Germany's statute of limitations, but they would still be referred to the public prosecutors' office. |
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Arthur Budzinski says the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He says he asked the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to hear his confession, and instead the priest took him into a closet under the stairs and sexually assaulted him.
Budzinski, now 61, was one of about 200 deaf boys at the St. John's School for the Deaf just outside Milwaukee who say they were molested by the priest decades ago in a case now creating a scandal for the Vatican and threatening to ensnare Pope Benedict XVI.
Some of the allegations became public years ago. But they got renewed attention this week after documents obtained by The New York Times showed that Murphy was spared a defrocking in the mid-1990s because he was protected by the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope.
The Vatican on Thursday strongly defended its decision not to defrock Murphy and denounced what it called a campaign to smear the pope and his aides.
In recent weeks, Benedict has also come under fire over his handling of an abuse case against a priest in Germany three decades ago when he was a cardinal in charge of the Munich Archdiocese. |
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Pressure for more resignations among Ireland’s Roman Catholic hierarchy continued to grow yesterday when a bishop admitted that he had failed to report a paedophile priest to the police.
The admission by the Bishop of Clogher came as Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter — containing an unprecedented apology for the sex abuse scandals in Ireland involving churchmen — was read out to the faithful at Sunday Mass across the country |
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The Vatican is investigating 14 cases of alleged child sex abuse committed within the Spanish Catholic Church over the past nine years it emerged today.
The incidents of abuse are alleged to take have taken place between January 2001 and March 2010. Charles Scicluna, the promoter of justice in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said today they amounted to "less than one case every year".
Monsignor Scicluna stressed that Spain was one of the countries with the “lowest number of alleged abuse investigations” and said no convictions had been made |
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Armagh, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- Victims of child abuse by Catholic
clergy in Ireland have dismissed a long-awaited letter by Pope Benedict XVI as not going far enough.
"The Pope's letter indicates no fundamental change in the church's handling of this crisis," campaign group BishopAccountability.org said in a statement.
"The letter's underlying goal seems to have been to appease the outrage while keeping the church in control of its incriminating information," group leaders Terry McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle said Saturday, hours after the letter was published.
They said the pontiff had engaged in "extraordinary verbal gymnastics... to defend himself and the Vatican from the charge that they instructed bishops worldwide to conceal child sex crimes."
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An inquiry is vital, but the church's moral authority is lost for ever
There is only one conceivable reaction to the fast-spreading crisis in the Catholic church: horror. Only the most virulent anti-papist could ever have quite envisaged the scale of child abuse and the doggedness of the church's desire to stifle scandal. The rest of us are astonished and appalled. Quite rightly, Angela Merkel saw fit to intervene. After decades – perhaps we should rather be referring to centuries – of obfuscation, the Catholic church has to be called to account for what has happened. |
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ROME — The brother of Pope Benedict XVI has told a newspaper he is willing to testify in the sex scandal rocking Germany's Catholic Church, even though he says he knows nothing about the alleged abuse of boys in a choir he later led.
The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, in an interview published Sunday, also was quoted as saying by the Rome daily La Repubblica that there was "discipline and rigor" but no terror during his 30 years as head of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir in Germany.
The Regensburg Diocese said last week that a former singer came forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the early 1960s. The German newsweekly Der Spiegel has reported that therapists in the region are treating several alleged victims from the choir.
Ratzinger led the choir from 1964 till 1994.
The diocese has said it is hiring a lawyer to help it carry out a "systematic" clarification of abuse allegations.
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The time is 7am and an old, almost blind priest makes his way to the altar of the small St Johann church tucked in the shadows of the mighty Regensburg Cathedral. Later, after Mass, I try to approach the 86-year-old cleric and he waves his white stick at me, fending off the unknown, the prurient press.
Perhaps Georg Ratzinger, the choleric former choir director of the Domspatzen — the celebrated Cathedral Sparrows — was simply in a hurry to get to breakfast. There is no doubt, however, that he and his younger brother Joseph — now better known as Pope Benedict XVI — are on the defensive.
The revelations of priestly paedophilia sweeping through the Catholic world are shaking the trust of hundreds of thousands of ordinary believers. About 300 alleged victims have come forward in the past weeks and many more add their voices every day. Father Ratzinger’s cathedral choir is one of a dozen Catholic teaching establishments where children were abused by priests. Benedictines, Capuchins, Jesuits; all the great church orders are suddenly having to deal with adults seriously damaged by their school years.
Compared with the disclosures made in the Irish and American Catholic communities, the scale in Germany is modest, but the Pope is plainly rattled: the Church could soon be exposed to an unprecedented level of state intervention, an erosion of independence. |
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Campaigners had hoped that after his seven page letter on Saturday to Irish victims of child abusing priests in which he said he was "truly sorry" the Pope would use his weekly sermon to apologise in public.
But he failed to do so and instead he asked Roman Catholics around the world to be "indulgent towards sinners and pray to God to ask for forgiveness for our failings."
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Vatican hit by gay sex scandal
The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.
Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.
The explosive claims about Balducci's private life have caused grave embarrassment to the Vatican, which has yet to publicly comment on the affair.
While Catholicism does not condemn homosexuality outright, its teaching is that homosexual acts "are intrinsically disordered". The Catechism of the Catholic church states unequivocally: "Under no circumstances can they be approved." |
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On Satan’s trail with Don Gabriele, the world’s most famous exorcist
 "Are you afraid of the Devil?” The world’s most famous exorcist levels his gaze at me and then smiles. No, it is he who is afraid of me. I work in the name of the Lord. Poor Satan.”
Poor Satan?
“Oh yes. The Evil One shouts and makes noises, but we are made in God’s image, we have the Holy Trinity on our side. There is no need to be afraid of the Devil unless we give in to his temptations.” We are in the infirmary of the Society of St Paul, the order of Father Gabriele Amorth, in the shadow of St Paul’s Basilica, Rome. The Vatican’s chief exorcist was taken to hospital last autumn with a blood infection and is now convalescing — “they found nothing serious”. Perhaps it was the Devil who laid him low. “Oh no — just an illness. He has more serious evil to perform.
Father Amorth made headlines this week by suggesting that those who had “given in to Satan’s temptations” included paedophile priests and even some cardinals and bishops who paid only lip service to the Gospels.
The growing crisis over the clerical sex abuse now engulfing Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican, he said, was the work of Satan, who had even “infiltrated the Vatican corridors”.
Is the sex abuse crisis really due to the Devil? “Oh yes. All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including paedophilia.”
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