Pope Francis Reins in U.S. Bishops’ Measures Against Sex Abuse
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Pope Francis has temporarily suspended efforts by the United States bishops to address the issue of clerical sex abuse, ordering them to wait until he can meet with them in February together with the presidents of other national bishops’ conferences from around the world.
The U.S. bishops are currently gathered in Baltimore, Maryland, for their annual fall meeting, which was to focus on dealing with the sex abuse crisis. During the opening session of the meeting Monday morning, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the bishops’ conference (USCCB), informed the assembly that he had been contacted by the Holy See on Sunday afternoon with instructions not to move forward with a vote on several concrete measures to respond to the abuse crisis.
On announcing the news, Cardinal DiNardo expressed his “disappointment” with the decision. Since last August, DiNardo has been insisting that the Vatican initiate a formal investigation into the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s serial homosexual abuse, a request that was ultimately denied after DiNardo traveled to Rome to present his petition to Pope Francis.
“At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items in our docket regarding the abuse crisis,” DiNardo said Monday.
“We are not, ourselves, happy about this,” DiNardo said during a press conference. “We have been working hard to get to the action stage, and we’ll do it, but we have to get past this bump in the road.”
The measures proposed by the USCCB included a code of conduct for bishops, the creation of a lay commission to address the abuse issue and the McCarrick case, a third-party hotline to report bishops accused of abuse or mishandling of abuse cases, and “protocols for bishops resigned or removed because of abuse.”
Pope Francis had initially suggested that the bishops suspend their fall meeting altogether, replacing it with a weeklong silent prayer retreat. The bishops opted to continue forward with the meeting, including days reserved for prayer as well.
In explaining the pope’s decision, the Vatican ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, said that Francis is concerned about “communion,” wanting the whole Church to move together rather than having national bishops’ conferences make their own policies.
Oddly, Pope Francis has often spoken of the need for decentralization, encouraging local churches to take more initiative in addressing pastoral issues because, in many areas of church life, one size does not fit all. In dealing with clerical sex abuse, however, this is apparently not the case.
When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cardinal DiNardo said it was “quizzical.”
In August, a former Vatican nuncio to the United States accused a number of high-ranking prelates — including the pope himself — of culpable mishandling of the McCarrick case, declaring that Francis had known about McCarrick’s crimes and sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI and yet reinstated him to a position of influence in the Vatican.
The pope has refused to confirm or deny the allegations made in the report, including the question of when he learned of McCarrick’s history of abuse.
Pope Francis went on to call out the former nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, comparing him to Satan. Days later, the pope said that pastors accused of misconduct are like Jesus on Good Friday, who responded with silence to the accusations laid against him.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, called the last-minute order from the Vatican “truly incredible.”
“What we see here is the Vatican again trying to suppress even modest progress by the U.S. bishops,” said Doyle. “We’re seeing where the problem lies, which is with the Vatican.”
“The outcome of this meeting, at best, was going to be tepid and ineffectual, but now it’s actually going to be completely without substance,” she said.
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Was a sexy Italian actor living with the man who would be Washington's new cardinal?
Was the man who who's widely believed to be Washington's new cardinal, Joseph Tobin of the Newark diocese, bunking with a houseboy?
It looks like it, given the reporting of the indefatigable George Neumayr.
I wanted to ask Tobin about a story I broke in October: that an Italian actor, Francesco Castiglione, was living in his rectory, which had caused murmuring among concerned Catholics in his archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. Some of those concerned Catholics had called me, suspecting that Castiglione was the real recipient of Tobin’s infamous accidental tweet from last February in which he declared to someone unknown, “Nighty-Night Baby, I love you.” An embarrassed Tobin had explained away the Twitter misfire as a late-night message to one of his sisters.My slippery walk to the Marriott proved productive. I lurked about the Marriott lobby for a few minutes, then looked up and saw Tobin emerge from the elevator and saunter over to the check-out desk. Here was my chance. I waited for him to complete his business, then introduced myself and asked him about Francesco Castiglione.Was Castiglione living at the rectory until I reported it? Tobin responded that, yes, Castiglione was living at his rectory “temporarily.” I asked him why. He said that Castiglione was taking “language classes” at Seton Hall. Asked why he would provide temporary housing to a random Seton Hall student, Tobin couldn’t offer an explanation.
Via another Neumayr tweet, here's an Instagram screengrab of the sexy Italian actor:
Here's the guy's IMDB page which by its photos is even more suggestive. Update: Or well, it was. The photos seem to have been taken down a few minutes ago. Here is a Google screengrab mostly of what had been there:
Which makes one wonder about the propriety of the whole picture - a big distinguished archbishop and cardinal, living it up with a young sexy Italian actor in the same house. Never mind the gay aspect, isn't Tobin supposed to be celebate? That love-tweet to the man is rather hard to believe was a misfire to his sister, given the living situation.
And this matters because Tobin is widely believed to be the next guy to take the cardinal's job in Washington, which has already been in a world of sexual scandal. It's the place that housed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who's been credibly accused of molesting the seminarians and later, children, and who was summarily removed to keep the long arm of the law away. Then it housed Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who was accused of covering up for McCarrick and who was forced to resign for it. Now Tobin in next? Here is what Neumayr tweeted earlier:
I hope you are sitting down. According to a source close to the DC chancery, "there is a 75-80 percent chance Tobin" will succeed Wuerl in 3 weeks. The chancery is "preparing" for Tobin, he says. I asked this source: Could raising hell stop it? He thought it worth a shot.
Seems there really is a lavender mafia, one covering up for another, and in succession, with business as usual going on as it always has. There seems to be a lot going on that has yet to be reported still - in the comments sections of Neumayr's tweets, parishioners report that Tobin's first acts as cardinal in New Jersey were to put on gay-friendly cathedral events, which might reveal more about what he's about.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Cardinal Tobin to TAS: Yes, the Italian actor Francesco Castiglione Lived at My Rectory <a href="https://t.co/HnCzm07FnD">https://t.co/HnCzm07FnD</a> <a href="https://t.co/opfh7Vt3iM">pic.twitter.com/opfh7Vt3iM</a></p>— 1Timothy3:15 (@DouayRheims) <a href="https://twitter.com/DouayRheims/status/1063175211409915904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Any question as to why there seems to be coverup racket plaguing the Catholic Church? Tobin denies he's going to be the next Washington cardinal, but nobody really knows. Now there is this.
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