The Vatican denounced the scandal of child abuse before the U.N. General Assembly Monday but made no mention of the Church’s own crisis with allegations of mishandling abusers pointing to Pope Francis himself.
It “is urgent to promote the protection of children today, as children are regularly victims of armed conflict, violence, various forms of exploitation and abuse, and are exposed to hunger and extreme poverty,” said the head of the Vatican delegation, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, in his address.
“The way we care for every child shows the depth of our humanity and of our appreciation for the dignity and rights of every person,” Gallagher said.
“For its part, the Catholic Church, at all levels, is committed not only to promoting the protection of children, but also to creating safe environments for them in its own institutions, in order to address the heinous scourge of sexual abuse and violence against children,” he added.
Pope Francis is coming increasingly under fire for his refusal to answer allegations that he knowingly rehabilitated serial homosexual abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, elevating him to a position of influence in the Vatican despite his crimes.
On August 25, the former Vatican nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, released a bombshell report calling for the pope’s resignation and alleging that at least since 2013 Francis was fully aware of McCarrick’s misdeeds entailing decades of abuse of priests, seminarians, and laypeople, and yet lifted sanctions that had been imposed upon him by Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Francis has refused to confirm or deny the allegations and offered a response of “no comment” when pressed by journalists to say when he learned of McCarrick’s abuse. He has gone on to portray himself as a victim of attacks, depicting his accuser as being in league with Satan.
“Neither the pope, nor any of the cardinals in Rome have denied the facts I asserted in my testimony,” Archbishop Viganò wrote in reply, referencing the legal principle that silence denotes consent.
If they deny my testimony, he added, “they have only to say so, and provide documentation to support that denial. How can one avoid concluding that the reason they do not provide the documentation is that they know it confirms my testimony?”
“The pope’s unwillingness to respond to my charges and his deafness to the appeals by the faithful for accountability are hardly consistent with his calls for transparency and bridge building,” he said.
The pope has also denied petitions by the U.S. bishops to launch a full investigation into the McCarrick case, eliciting criticisms of stonewalling attempts to get to the bottom of the scandals.
Frustrated with the pope’s inaction, the U.S. bishops conference (USCCB) announced its own lay-led investigation into McCarrick’s abuse, focusing on the four dioceses in which McCarrick worked: New York, Metuchen, Newark, and Washington, D.C.
Unlike the Vatican, however, the USCCB does not have the canonical authority to mandate compliance with such an investigation, so it will depend on the voluntary cooperation of the four dioceses involved.
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Archbishop Viganó: Pope ‘Compared Me to Great Accuser, Satan’ for Exposing Corruption
Arbp. Carlo Vigano.
(YouTube)
(CNSNews.com) -- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said Pope Francis “put in place a subtle slander” against him by comparing him to “the great accuser, Satan” in a homily, according to an open letter released by LifeSiteNews which is dated Sept. 29 but was released Sept. 27.
Vigano made his remarks in this letter following an Aug. 22 “Testimony,” in which the archbishop, the former papal nuncio to the United States, detailed the corruption and predatory homosexuals in the episcopacy and how Pope Francis covered-up the homosexual abuses perpetrated by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In the Testimony, Vigano called on Pope Francis to resign.
Vigano was made an archbishop by Pope St. John Paul II in 1992. He has worked at the highest levels of the Vatican and for the Vatican Secretary of State since 1978. He served as the apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to the United States from 2011 to 2016, under both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
“Now, the Pope’s reply to my testimony was: ‘I will not say a word!’” Viganó wrote in the Sept. 29 letter. “But then, contradicting himself, he has compared his silence to that of Jesus in Nazareth and before Pilate, and compared me to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church – though without ever uttering my name.”
Vigano continued, “If he had said: ‘Viganó lied,’ he would have challenged my credibility while trying to affirm his own. In so doing he would have intensified the demand of the people of God and the world for the documentation needed to determine who has told the truth. Instead, he put in place a subtle slander against me – slander being an offense he has often compared to the gravity of murder.”
Pope Francis. (YouTube)
In his new letter, Viganó repeated his allegation against Pope Francis and condemned the Pope’s failure to offer any substantial confirmation or denial of the allegation.
“Neither the pope, nor any of the cardinals in Rome have denied the facts I asserted in my testimony,” Viganó stated. “‘Qui tacet consentit’ surely applies here, for if they deny my testimony, they have only to say so, and provide documentation to support that denial. How can one avoid concluding that the reason they do not provide the documentation is that they know it confirms my testimony?”
‘Qui tacet consentit’ is a Latin phrase that means ‘Who keeps silent, consents.’
Viganó criticized the Pope for “perhaps” being “tempted to try to act as a substitute” for God.
“Has Christ perhaps become invisible to his vicar?” Viganó asked. “Perhaps is he being tempted to try to act as a substitute of our only Master and Lord?”
Viganó also appealed to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who allegedly told him about Pope Benedict’s sanctions on McCarrick in 2013, asking Ouellet to “bear witness to the truth.”
“Your Eminence, before I left for Washington, you were the one who told me of Pope Benedict’s sanctions on McCarrick. You have at your complete disposal key documents incriminating McCarrick and many in the curia for their cover-ups. Your Eminence, I urge you to bear witness to the truth,” Viganó wrote.
In his letter, Viganó admitted that his decision to publish the original Testimony with the allegations against the Pope was “the most painful and serious decision” he had ever made.
Homosexual predator Theodore McCarrick, an archbishop of the Catholic Church. (YouTube)
“My decision to reveal those grave facts was for me the most painful and serious decision that I have ever made in my life. I made it after long reflection and prayer,” Viganó wrote.
“Well aware of the enormous consequences that my testimony could have, because what I was about to reveal involved the successor of Peter himself, I nonetheless chose to speak in order to protect the Church, and I declare with a clear conscience before God that my testimony is true,” he added.
The Archbishop also provided a justification for his decision to break the “pontifical secret” that he had “promised to observe.”
“The purpose of any secret, including the pontifical secret, is to protect the Church from her enemies, not to cover up and become complicit in crimes committed by some of her members,” Vigano wrote. “I was a witness, not by my choice, of shocking facts and, as the Catechism of the Catholic Churchstates (par. 2491), the seal of secrecy is not binding when very grave harms can be avoided only by divulging the truth.”
Viganó ended the letter with an appeal to Catholics to “never be despondent” and to maintain “complete confidence in Christ Jesus.”
“Finally, I wish to encourage you, dear faithful, my brothers and sisters in Christ: never be despondent! Make your own the act of faith and complete confidence in Christ Jesus, our Savior, of Saint Paul in his second Letter to Timothy, Scio cui credidi, which I choose as my episcopal motto,” Viganó wrote.
‘Scio cui credidi’ is Latin for ‘I know whom I have believed.’
CATHOLIC LAY GROUP DEVOTES OVER $1 MILLION TO EXPOSE CARDINALS GUILTY OF ABUSE OR COVER-UPS
- New U.S. lay group called Better Church Governance Inc. announces annual audit of cardinals to expose those credibly connected to scandal called the Red Hat Report.
- The group’s leaders intend to hold the highest levels of church authority accountable, including the pope.
- A team of close to 100 researchers, investigators, and journalists, some of whom reportedly worked for the FBI, will compile the report.
A new lay group devoted to keeping Catholic leadership accountable has designed an audit to ferret out all cardinals credibly accused of abuse or cover-ups.
The group, named Better Church Governance Inc. (BCG), announced the designs for the Red Hat Report at its private launch event on the campus of Catholic University America on Sunday evening. The Red Hat Report, which the group’s organizers intend to produce by April 2020, will be an annual audit of every papal elector and will publicly reveal the names of Cardinals against whom it finds credible allegations. (RELATED: Pope Calls For Prayers Against ‘Great Accuser’ After Vigano Accuses Him Of Cover-Up Again)
The group said the report is intended “to hold the hierarchy of the Catholic Church accountable for abuse and corruption, and to develop and support honesty, clarity, and fidelity in Church governance,” according to Crux Now.
Members of the group devoted over $1 million toward the production of the Red Hat Report, which will be compiled by a team of about 100 investigators, researchers, and journalists. Each cardinal in the report will be ranked on a rating system of “Strong Evidence of Abuse/Corruption, Some Evidence, Positive Evidence Against Abuse/Corruption.”
The group’s operations director, Jacob Imam, said that the report would not only make cardinals’ previously lesser known scandals known to all, but would also help to ensure that the papacy would be in good hands.
“What if we would have had someone else in 2013 who would have been more proactive in protecting the innocent and the young?” Imam asked the event’s attendees.
“Had we had the Red Hat Report, we may not have had Pope Francis,” a presentation at the event read.
Imam converted to Catholicism from Islam in 2015 and is currently a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University. He stated to Crux that neither the meeting nor the group’s goals were meant as an attack on the pontiff, but clarified that “I think it’s fair to say that a defender of traditional values is not something he would identify himself with.”
Imam claimed that, given the dearth of knowledge about Francis after the 2013 conclave, media outlets relied on sources like Wikipedia for information about the then newly elected pope. The Red Hat Report, according to Imam, would have changed that.
As for cardinals, Imam said that the report would seek to determine to what degree each of them were in agreement with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, rather than judge them according to a particular agenda.
“Cardinals need to be held accountable publicly, so there has to be some sort of culture of shame,” Imam said. “They know if they vote for this person…the people that they shepherd, and their pastors, will know about it.”
“This is difficult. There is a dark side to this decision. We recognize that. We are willing to take this on with prayer and fasting…because we can’t allow people to continue to allow our kids, the innocent, the young, seminarians to be devoured the ways that they are,” he added.
Philip Nielsen, managing editor of the Red Hat Report, used Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin as an example of a cardinal whose connection to banking scandals and mention in Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s letter of accusations the group believes should be more widely publicized.
“We can change that … by the next conclave, he needs to be known, worldwide, as a disgrace to the Church. Our plan would be to make sure that his Wikipedia page shows ‘Church Watchdog The Better Governance Group, names Parolin, ‘Extremely Guilty of Abuse’ etc. with a link to the report,” the email read, according to Crux.
The Center for Evangelical Catholicism, a not-for-profit corporation focused on fulfilling the Great Commission, is the fiscal sponsor of BCG.
Phil Scala, CEO of Pathfinder Consultants International, Inc. and who previously worked at the FBI, is listed as a member of the group’s board of directors. The group has also named three of its researchers – Professors Jay Richards of Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Economics, and Melinda Nielsen and Michael P. Foley of Baylor University.
Report: Catholic Church Faces Gravest Crisis Since ‘Protestant Reformation’
The Catholic bishops are gathering in Rome for a synod in a moment in which “the Church faces perhaps its gravest crisis since the Protestant Reformation in the form of the worldwide clerical sexual abuse scandals,” according to veteran Vatican analyst John L. Allen, Jr.
Allen, who heads up the Catholic online news outlet Crux, added that “the eyes of the Catholic world will be on how they choose to engage it.”
Much of this will depend on Pope Francis, since he currently seems to be the Church’s biggest obstacle to tackling the sex abuse crisis head-on. He has repeatedly refused to confirm or deny allegations that he knowingly rehabilitated serial homosexual abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and elevated him to a position of influence in the Vatican.
Moreover, the United States bishops have petitioned the pope to launch an “apostolic visitation” — a full Vatican investigation — into the McCarrick case, which so far has fallen on deaf ears. The president of the U.S. Bishops Conference (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, followed up on the petition by traveling to Rome last month to urge Francis to open the investigation but returned to the U.S. empty-handed.
Wednesday was the opening day of the Vatican Synod of Bishops on youth, and, according to Allen, it may well be “the most significant summit so far on this pope’s watch.”
“The clerical abuse crisis has badly damaged the Church’s moral credibility, made it difficult to move the ball on anything else the Church cares about, and called into question the standing and personal integrity of Church leaders at all levels,” Allen noted.
“Inside the Church and out, there’s a level of anger and disillusionment that’s crippling,” he said.
On August 25, a former papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, released an explosive, 11-page report in which he laid out a series of allegations against a number of high-ranking prelates, including Pope Francis.
The central accusation against the pope was that Viganò had personally informed him in 2013 of McCarrick’s record of abuse against priests, seminarians, and lay people, as well as telling him of sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. Despite this knowledge, Viganò alleged, Francis lifted the sanctions, involved McCarrick in diplomatic missions on behalf of the Holy See, and consulted him regarding the naming of new bishops for the United States.
News reports from early in the Francis pontificate would seem to corroborate charges that the pope gave McCarrick a new lease on life shortly after his election.
A 2014 article in the Washington Post stated that McCarrick was “one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Benedict XVI.”
“But now Francis is pope, and prelates like Cardinal Walter Kasper (another old friend of McCarrick’s) and McCarrick himself are back in the mix, and busier than ever,” the article stated.
“Francis, who has put the Vatican back on the geopolitical stage, knows that when he needs a savvy back channel operator he can turn to McCarrick,” it said.
When challenged by journalists to respond whether the allegations made by Archbishop Viganò were true, the pope refused to answer, and has kept silence regarding the charges ever since.
A number of U.S. bishops have come forward to ask the pope to break his silence regarding when he learned of the crimes of former-cardinal McCarrick, insisting that the Viganò report contains a number of “credible allegations” that demand a response.
Last Thursday, Viganò himself said that the pope’s silence on the matter must be interpreted as a confirmation of the allegations.
“Neither the pope, nor any of the cardinals in Rome have denied the facts I asserted in my testimony,” Viganò wrote in a 4-page memo, adding that according to the law, silence denotes consent.
If they deny my testimony, he added, “they have only to say so, and provide documentation to support that denial. How can one avoid concluding that the reason they do not provide the documentation is that they know it confirms my testimony?”
“The pope’s unwillingness to respond to my charges and his deafness to the appeals by the faithful for accountability are hardly consistent with his calls for transparency and bridge building,” he said.
So, no matter what the official subject of the current synod of bishops is, Mr. Allen has suggested, the bishops themselves will want to talk about the sex abuse crisis, “and whether it’s on the synod floor or during coffee breaks or at lunches and dinners, that’s exactly what they’ll spend a good chunk of the month doing.”
The bishops gathered in Rome during October will feel “enormous pressure” to face up to the realities of the moment, Allen said, with victims of abuse, child protection advocates, and ordinary rank and file Catholics stung by the scandals “will all be looking to these bishops to supply some sort of hope.”
Whether Pope Francis will address the issues himself or continue to act as if they are unimportant remains to be seen.
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French Catholics demand parliament investigate child sex abuse by priests
A group of French Catholics has urged the parliament to establish a special commission tasked with investigating reports of pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church, which they say continues to ignore and cover the abuse.
"We call for the creation of a parliamentary investigative commission to probe the crimes of pedophilia and their concealment within the Catholic Church," says the petition published by the French Catholic weekly Temoignage Chretien, adding that the church in France is a subject to the law and cannot escape justice.
The instances of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church are not some isolated cases but a "systemic problem"acknowledged by the Pope himself, the petition says, adding that this problem cannot just be left for the Church to sort it out all by itself as "an interested party cannot be the judge."
"Today in our country the Catholic Church thinks it is enough to repeat the words of the Pope without taking any significant initiative to look into these crimes ... and especially their institutional and structural causes," the petition says, adding that the Church still prefers to either "ignore" or even "conceal" such instances of abuse.
The petitioners then cited the examples of Australia, Ireland and the US state of Pennsylvania, where "bodies, which are independent from the ecclesial institutions," have been created. At the same time, the petitioners said that their aim is not to "stir up a scandal but to end" the already existing "immense one" linked to the "deafening silence of the Catholic hierarchy in the face of suffering, which has, for the most part, been ignored or even concealed for too long."
The petition, which was published on Sunday, has already been supported by some French public figures and politicians, including the former health minister Roselyne Bachelot and MP Jacques Maire, who represents President Emmanuel Macron's 'The Republic on the move!' party. Two Socialist senators, Laurence Rossignol and Marie-Pierre de la Gontrie, also backed the appeal.
Some members of the French clergy also spoke favorably of the initiative. Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit said he has nothing against the "outside intervention" into the Church affairs "if the society believes it is important for [achieving] clarity and getting to the bottom of the issue."
Vatican covered up sex abuse by 300 ‘predator priests,’ 1000s of victims possible – PA grand jury on.rt.com/9cdz
Others, however, were seemingly more reluctant to support the measure that would put additional spotlight on the Church. The Church should not be "the only institution targeted," Luc Crepy, the bishop of the commune of Puy-en-Velay and the head of the Permanent Unit against Pedophilia, told the French media.
"It is a global problem of society," he added, warning that the Church "should not become a scapegoat" and saying that such commission should instead investigate all educational institutions working with children. "It would be unfair to say that the Church of France is doing nothing in the fight against pedophilia," he said, adding that "it may not be enough but a lot has been done in the last two years."
The developments come as the Roman Catholic Church is facing numerous accusation of child sex abuse within its ranks in many countries. A 1,400-page Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, released in August, accused over 300 'predator priests' of sex abuse, and the Roman Catholic Church of covering it up for decades.
In 2017, the Australian Royal Commission concluded that more than 4,000 children – mostly boys – were allegedly sexually abused by Catholic priests over decades, adding that since the 1950s some 7 percent of priests in the country were alleged perpetrators.
In mid-September, an explosive report leaked to the German media revealed that as many as 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014 in Germany. The Church also failed to avoid the scandalous incidents involving child sex abuse in France. One of the France's most prominent cardinals, Philippe Barbarin, is due to stand trial in January 2019 on charge of covering for a known pedophile priest in the city of Lyon.
In the face of this wave of accusations, the Vatican said in September that it would summon the presidents of every national bishops’ conference across the globe for a summit on preventing clergy sex abuse and protecting children, which is scheduled for February 2019.
Philly Archbishop Chaput: ‘No Such Thing as an LGBTQ Catholic’
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput told the synod of bishops in Rome Thursday that in the Catholic tradition there is no such thing as an “LGBTQ Catholic,” as if people’s sexual proclivities determine their identity as persons.
“There is no such thing as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ or a ‘transgender Catholic’ or a ‘heterosexual Catholic,’ as if our sexual appetites defined who we are,” Chaput said, “as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ.”
The archbishop was not denying that some Catholics experience attraction to persons of the same sex. He was reacting to a passage of the working document of the synod of bishops, which he found to be unfaithful to the Catholic view of the human person.
“Some LGBT youths, through various contributions that were received by the General Secretariat of the Synod, wish to ‘benefit from greater closeness’ and experience greater care by the Church,” the text states.
In his address, Chaput stressed that Christians do not compartmentalize believers as if sexual attraction were constitutive of a person’s identity.
“This has never been true in the life of the Church, and is not true now,” the archbishop said. “It follows that ‘LGBTQ’ and similar language should not be used in Church documents, because using it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the Church simply doesn’t categorize people that way.”
What the Church holds to be true about human sexuality “is not a stumbling block,” he said. “It is the only real path to joy and wholeness.”
“If we lack the confidence to preach Jesus Christ without hesitation or excuses to every generation, especially to the young, then the Church is just another purveyor of ethical pieties the world doesn’t need,” he said.
Some observers took offense at the archbishop’s words. Jesuit Father James Martin, an outspoken advocate and spokesman for the “LGBT community,” openly disagreed with Chaput’s take on the Catholic tradition.
“Why should we use ‘LGBT’ or ‘LGBTQ’ in the church?” Father Martin asked on Twitter. “Because people have a right to name themselves, and this is the name many choose.”
“And there is such a ‘thing’ as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ and a ‘transgender catholic.’ They are members of the Body of Christ,” he said.
Why should we use "LGBT" or "LGBTQ" in the church? Because people have a right to name themselves, and this is the name many choose. And there is such a "thing" as an "LGBTQ Catholic" and a "transgender catholic." They are members of the Body of Christ. catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/10/0…
This is not the first time that Father Martin and the Archbishop of Philadelphia have clashed over homosexuality.
After the publication of Father Martin’s 2017 book, Building a Bridge, in which the priest “calls the Church to a spirit of respect, compassion and sensitivity in dealing with persons with same-sex attraction,” Archbishop Chaput chided the priest for failing to summon gay Catholics to “conversion,” rather than simply asking for “affirmation.”
What Father Martin’s book “regrettably lacks,” Chaput wrote, is “an engagement with the substance of what divides faithful Christians from those who see no sin in active same-sex relationships.”
The Church is not simply about unity, Chaput said, but about unity in God’s love rooted in truth. This means that active homosexuals (or anyone in an illicit sexual relationship) “need conversion, not merely affirmation.”
Chaput’s critique mirrored other reviews of Father Martin’s book that pointed out the conspicuous absence of any clear statement of Christian sexual ethics as if he were embarrassed by it or simply disagrees with what his own Church teaches about homosexuality.
According to the estimations of one Jesuit, some 50 percent of American Jesuits are homosexual.
“Roughly half of the Society under the age of fifty shuffles on the borderline between declared and undeclared gayness,” wrote Father Paul Shaughnessy, S.J., in a 2002 essay in the Weekly Standard.
The article bore the provocative title, “Are the Jesuits Catholic?”
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