Pope Francis: ‘No effort must be spared’ to prevent Catholic Church abuses
Pope Francis Ignoring child sex abuse scandal, the catholic church Loves Pedophiles that is the truth Pure Evilness Catholic leaders call on Pope Francis to resign
Ignoring child sex abuse scandal, Pope Francis urges ’emergency’ action to combat ocean litter
Amid a sexual abuse scandal, Pope Francis calls ocean litter an "emergency." (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
Amid a child sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, which Pope Francis has yet to directly address, Francis on Saturday decried the “emergency” of plastic debris littering the Earth’s oceans.What did Francis say?
Francis issued a message aimed at “galvanizing” Christians to begin working to conserve the Earth’s environment, according to the Associated Press. A more liberal pope, environmental conservation is one of Francis’ most emphasized issues.“Sadly, all too often many efforts fail due to the lack of effective regulation and means of control, particularly with regard to the protection of marine areas beyond national confines,” Francis said.
“We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic,” he explained. “Here, too, our active commitment is needed to confront this emergency.”
Why is this a problem?
It’s true that a multitude of Christians worldwide see the environment, and working toward its conservation, as a major issue.However, the Catholic church is currently facing a destructive sexual abuse scandal after Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal Nuncio to the U.S., released a scathing letter accusing Francis of essentially covering up sexual abuse allegations against Theodore Edgar McCarrick, the former Archbishop of the District of Columbia, who was forced to resign his position in the Church this year after the Vatican declared allegations against him to be “credible.”
“He knew that [McCarrick] was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end,” Viganò alleges.
Unfortunately, Francis has yet to address the allegations against him head on. He has said he would address them at a later date. But declaring ocean debris an “emergency” while the Catholic church faces a sexual abuse scandal is a declaration many found distasteful.
Are you freaking kidding me.
How about some emergency action on the demonic abusers & those covering up the abuse who are littering our church?!https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/pope-calls-plastics-littering-oceans-an-emergency/amp/?__twitter_impression=true …
How about some emergency action on the demonic abusers & those covering up the abuse who are littering our church?!https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/pope-calls-plastics-littering-oceans-an-emergency/amp/?__twitter_impression=true …
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans.
Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.”
Liz Wheeler
I know the Bible says judge not lest ye shall be judged. But I wouldn't want to stand before God on Judgment Day & God ask me, "What did you do when innocent children were sexually abused in my Church?" And my answer be, "My Lord, I spoke out about plastic in the ocean.
Pope Expresses Shame Over Pennsylvania Report on Sex Abuse
In letter to Catholics, pontiff says crimes against more than 1,000 victims over 70 years weren’t handled in a timely manner
ROME—Pope Francis in a letter to Catholics world-wide expressed
shame and repentance over the sexual abuse of children by priests,
following months in which the escalating scandal in several countries
has raised pressure on the Vatican.
The pope in Monday’s letter, his first to all the world’s Catholic faithful about the scandal, vowed to improve efforts to protect children and punish those in the church who commit sex abuse or cover it up.
Pope Expresses Shame Over Pennsylvania Report on Sex Abuse
In letter to Catholics, pontiff says crimes against more than 1,000 victims over 70 years weren’t handled in a timely manner.
The pope in Monday’s letter, his first to all the world’s Catholic faithful about the scandal, vowed to improve efforts to protect children and punish those in the church who commit sex abuse or cover it up.
Pope Expresses Shame Over Pennsylvania Report on Sex Abuse
In letter to Catholics, pontiff says crimes against more than 1,000 victims over 70 years weren’t handled in a timely manner.
DUBLIN —
Pope Francis said in an unprecedented letter to the world’s 1.2 billion
Catholics on Monday that the church has not dealt properly with
“crimes” against children and must prevent sexual abuses from being
“covered up and perpetuated.”
“We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,” Francis wrote.
The
2,000-word letter, the first by a pope addressed to the world’s
Catholics on the topic of sexual abuse, amounted to a direct response by
Francis to a rekindled crisis that has engulfed his papacy and eroded
the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church.
But
after years of high-level pledges to end abuse, the letter renews
questions about whether Francis will be able to follow through with a
more concrete plan to overhaul the Vatican’s handling of sexual
offenses.
His letter touched off mixed reactions
from across the Catholic world, with some noting that Francis did not
outline any specific new steps the church should take. But others said
that Francis is coming to grips with the scale of the crisis and has
increasingly described the problems as systemic or cultural, not simply
the result of isolated priestly behavior.
“Looking ahead to the future, no
effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such [abuses]
from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being
covered up and perpetuated,” Francis wrote.
The
letter was issued at a time when revelations in the United States and
around the world are roiling the church — and prompting new scrutiny
over how the institution’s hierarchy handles abuse cases. A Pennsylvania
grand-jury report released last week documented seven decades of abuse
by 300 priests. It detailed cases of children who were allegedly raped,
manipulated with alcohol and “brushed aside” by church leaders.
This
weekend, Francis will travel to Ireland, a country scarred by decades
of sexual abuse in parishes and in Catholic-run schools. In Dublin, many
have demanded that Francis acknowledge during his trip the role church
higher-ups played in silencing victims and helping to keep pedophile
priests on the job.
The Catholic Church has been dealing for more than
three decades with publicly known cases of abuse. But the latest wave
has caused anger among Catholics who say the Vatican has been slow to
make meaningful reforms.
“The public, and
Catholics in particular, are truly fed up with this. It’s beyond
frustration,” said Peter Isely, a founding member of Ending Clergy
Abuse, a global survivors and activists group. “They’ve had decades to
do something. What it appears to look like is that nothing has
significantly changed.”
Isely said that Francis is beginning to “correctly describe” the problem.
Popes
have previously written letters on sexual abuse, but they were directed
at individual countries — not at the broader Catholic world. In 2010,
Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter to the Catholics of Ireland,
told victims of abuse and their families that he was “truly sorry” and
that the church in Ireland needed to acknowledge the “serious sins
committed against defenseless children.”
Earlier this year, Francis sent a letter to the people of Chile
describing a culture of “abuse and coverup.” That move was particularly
notable, coming just months after the pope, in a much-criticized move,
had defended a Chilean bishop facing accusations of abuse.
“He
has shown the capacity to change, and I think that’s the single most
important lesson he has given us about himself,” said Jason Berry, a
reporter and author who has covered sexual abuse for decades. “If he can
evolve on this issue forcefully, he might have a chance at achieving
some kind of genuine reform.”
Berry said that
Francis’s letter was a first step — but that to go further he would have
to contest a “calcified power structure that is honeycombed with
secrecy.”
“He does not have a brain trust
around him that is focused on systemic reform,” Berry said. “Right now
they’re putting out fires.”
In his letter Monday, Francis specifically mentioned
the Pennsylvania grand-jury report, but he did not reference other
scandals in the United States, Chile or Australia. Francis said the
Pennsylvania report reflected “abuse of power and of conscience.”
“The
heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was
long ignored, kept quiet or silenced,” Francis wrote. “But their outcry
was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought
even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling
into complicity.”
The
U.S. church has also reeled from revelations about Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick, who resigned last month amid allegations that he abused
seminarians and minors. McCarrick was able to climb the church’s
hierarchy, becoming one of the U.S. church’s most powerful figures, even
after two New Jersey dioceses paid out settlements in response to his
alleged misconduct.
The McCarrick allegations, coupled with the report
from Pennsylvania, have prompted American bishops to reckon with their
failure to deal more forcefully with alleged abusers — whether they are
priests or prelates.
One of the leaders whose
actions have raised questions is Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop
of Washington, who during a previous posting in Pittsburgh disciplined
some accused priests but reassigned others who were under scrutiny to
new parishes, according to the grand-jury report.
Wuerl
has defended his record and said the report shows that he acted “with
diligence.” An Archdiocese of Washington spokeswoman said Wuerl has
canceled a planned trip this week to Ireland, where he was scheduled to
give a keynote speech at the World Meeting of Families.
Last
week, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, said the U.S. church should give a wider role to lay
people in holding clerics accountable.
In
his letter, Francis said he was aware of efforts in parts of the world
to “come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection
of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as
implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate
or cover up these crimes accountable.”
“We have
delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary,”
Francis wrote, “yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a
greater culture of care in the present and future.”
Francis
also criticized the culture of clericalism — which some outsiders say
creates a chasm of power between clerics and laity. Francis wrote that
clericalism “helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are
condemning today.”
Kathleen Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center
for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame,
said Francis’s critique of clericalism gives her hope for reforms to
come.
“He spoke about clericalism far more forcefully and explicitly in this letter,” she said.
More
important, though, she said, is that church leaders welcome further
investigations like the grand-jury report in Pennsylvania.
The
Catholic Church “should not be waiting for the attorney general to come
knocking but saying ‘Come in,’ ” Cummings said. “The only way to move
past this crisis is to understand its magnitude.”
The bault reported from Washington.
It is time to face the horrible truth: The Catholic church is a pedophile ring.
According to the grand jury report of six dioceses in Pennsylvania, over a period of 70 years, 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in Pennsylvania and church officials repeatedly covered it up. The release of the report is a searing indictment of the filth that has existed in the Catholic church.
Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. If you think this statement is hyperbole, consider that the grand jury report includes, but is by no means limited to, the case of a ring of pedophile priests in Pittsburgh, who raped their male victims, took pornographic pictures of them and marked them by giving them gold crosses to wear so that they could be easily recognized by other abusers.
The report was written by 23 grand jurors wrote over
the course of two years, and is very clear about how the authorities of
the church protected the clergy while further abusing victims with
payoffs, silencing and attempts to denigrate their character. Two
cardinals, Cardinal Wuerl and the now-deceased Cardinal Bevilacqua (who also figured prominently in the Philadelphia grand jury report), are among those who disciplined but moved around clergy who sexually abused children.
While this report covers only six dioceses in Pennsylvania (there are eight in total, but the archdioceses of Philadelphia and the diocese of Altoona-Johnston were the subject of three previous grand jury investigations), it is breathtakingly horrific in documenting the scope of sexual abuse of children. It chronicles in detail how the Catholic hierarchy from the diocese to the Vatican worked not only mitigate the church's legal exposure, but to maintain strategies to “avoid scandal.”
These
strategies used to subvert stories of abuse were so common that the FBI
reviewed a significant portion of the evidence collected and received
by the grand jury and found a series
of practices engaged in by church leaders to conceal the truth. For
instance, church authorities who documented the cases for internal use
never used the word "rape," only “inappropriate contact.” Investigations
were conducted by other clergy members, rather than trained personnel.
Church-run health centers, not lay psychiatric facilities, were used to
examine priests accused of pedophilia. Housing and funds were provided
for priests, even when it was known they were raping children. Priests
were moved from the area only if their communities found out, to other
communities where the abusers and abuses were not known. Most
importantly, the hierarchy was instructed to not inform law enforcement
about abuses reported by parishioners, but to consider any such case an
“internal personnel matter.”
These practices sanctioned by the church hierarchy allowed the abuse of children to continue.
The grand jury report is also rife with horror upon horror — anal rape, fondling, oral sex, child pornography, pregnancies, suicides — perpetrated upon children by priests, who were then moved about by church leaders who knew full well the despicable deeds they had done to children, and often did again.
For instance, one woman was raped by a priest at the age of seven in her hospital room after surgery on her tonsils, was raped again by the same priest at age 13, and then again at age 19 while pregnant; she considered suicide. What was the priest's punishment for that and the other rapes and molestations to which he admitted? Bishop Ronald Gainer of Harrisburg, in submitting the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: “I believe the scandal caused by his admission of the sexual abuse of minor girls has been sufficiently repaired by acceptance of the penal precept.” In other words, Gainer did not want the priest defrocked and so, as punishment, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith decided, after reviewing his file, that the priest in question should lead a life of prayer and penance.
Prayer, and penance. An inadequate, paltry response for repeatedly raping a child.
What is clear from this report — as well as the previous grand jury reports from Philadelphia in 2005 and 2011 and Altoona-Johnston in 2016 — is that the Catholic church cannot be and never should have been trusted nor expected to root out pedophiles in the midst, let alone punish them appropriately. Mercy was not extended to victims, but to perpetrators.
Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a pass for paying for abortions for young girls they raped and got pregnant.
Adding insult to injury, the Catholic church in Pennsylvania is currently fighting an effort by Rep. Mark Rozzi, himself a victim of clergy sexual abuse, to have the civil statute of limitation in such cases eliminated. Currently, victims can file civil claims until the age of 30 and criminal claims until the age of 50; the church supports the latter but opposes the former. Once again, the desire to protect the church, not the victims of the clergy, continues to be the priority for bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church.
It
is long past time for not only abusive priests, but monsignors, bishops
and cardinals to be held accountable by local, state and federal law
enforcement for their crimes against children. To date, the only
administrator convicted of any crime was Monsignor William Lynn of the
Archdiocese of Philadelphia, whose conviction was subsequently overturned,
and has been scheduled for retrial. But most of those who habitually
moved abusers, such as Cardinal Wuerl, enjoy the prestige and perks of
being high-ranking clergy, while many abused children must try to manage
their physical and psychological pain.
What the now-multiple Pennsylvania grand jury reports show clearly is that the Roman Catholic church has treated the protection of its pedophiles, rapists and sexual abusers as their highest priority. They have been unwilling and unable to police clergy sexual abuse while determined to keep responsibility for doing so within the Church — but they don't want to be held accountable for mishandling it. Like a criminal syndicate, it is time for the Church to be broken apart and cleaned out.
Anthea Butler is an associate professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World" (The University of North Carolina Press) and her forthcoming book is tentatively titled “From Palin to Trump: Evangelicals, Race, and Nationalism” (The New Press).
Anthea Butler The grand jury report about Catholic priest abuse in Pennsylvania shows the church is a criminal syndicate
The Catholic church hierarchy systematically covered up the abuse of at least 1,000 kids by 300 priests over 70 years.
It is time to face the horrible truth: The Catholic church is a pedophile ring.
According to the grand jury report of six dioceses in Pennsylvania, over a period of 70 years, 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in Pennsylvania and church officials repeatedly covered it up. The release of the report is a searing indictment of the filth that has existed in the Catholic church.
Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades. If you think this statement is hyperbole, consider that the grand jury report includes, but is by no means limited to, the case of a ring of pedophile priests in Pittsburgh, who raped their male victims, took pornographic pictures of them and marked them by giving them gold crosses to wear so that they could be easily recognized by other abusers.
While this report covers only six dioceses in Pennsylvania (there are eight in total, but the archdioceses of Philadelphia and the diocese of Altoona-Johnston were the subject of three previous grand jury investigations), it is breathtakingly horrific in documenting the scope of sexual abuse of children. It chronicles in detail how the Catholic hierarchy from the diocese to the Vatican worked not only mitigate the church's legal exposure, but to maintain strategies to “avoid scandal.”
Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades.
These practices sanctioned by the church hierarchy allowed the abuse of children to continue.
The grand jury report is also rife with horror upon horror — anal rape, fondling, oral sex, child pornography, pregnancies, suicides — perpetrated upon children by priests, who were then moved about by church leaders who knew full well the despicable deeds they had done to children, and often did again.
For instance, one woman was raped by a priest at the age of seven in her hospital room after surgery on her tonsils, was raped again by the same priest at age 13, and then again at age 19 while pregnant; she considered suicide. What was the priest's punishment for that and the other rapes and molestations to which he admitted? Bishop Ronald Gainer of Harrisburg, in submitting the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated: “I believe the scandal caused by his admission of the sexual abuse of minor girls has been sufficiently repaired by acceptance of the penal precept.” In other words, Gainer did not want the priest defrocked and so, as punishment, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith decided, after reviewing his file, that the priest in question should lead a life of prayer and penance.
Prayer, and penance. An inadequate, paltry response for repeatedly raping a child.
What is clear from this report — as well as the previous grand jury reports from Philadelphia in 2005 and 2011 and Altoona-Johnston in 2016 — is that the Catholic church cannot be and never should have been trusted nor expected to root out pedophiles in the midst, let alone punish them appropriately. Mercy was not extended to victims, but to perpetrators.
Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a pass for paying for abortions for young girls they raped and got pregnant.
Adding insult to injury, the Catholic church in Pennsylvania is currently fighting an effort by Rep. Mark Rozzi, himself a victim of clergy sexual abuse, to have the civil statute of limitation in such cases eliminated. Currently, victims can file civil claims until the age of 30 and criminal claims until the age of 50; the church supports the latter but opposes the former. Once again, the desire to protect the church, not the victims of the clergy, continues to be the priority for bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church.
Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars.
What the now-multiple Pennsylvania grand jury reports show clearly is that the Roman Catholic church has treated the protection of its pedophiles, rapists and sexual abusers as their highest priority. They have been unwilling and unable to police clergy sexual abuse while determined to keep responsibility for doing so within the Church — but they don't want to be held accountable for mishandling it. Like a criminal syndicate, it is time for the Church to be broken apart and cleaned out.
Anthea Butler is an associate professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World" (The University of North Carolina Press) and her forthcoming book is tentatively titled “From Palin to Trump: Evangelicals, Race, and Nationalism” (The New Press).
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