Day: October 6, 2021

First Vatican sexual abuse trial absolves a former altar boy who served the pope

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Gabriele Martinelli had a years-long sexual relationship, but there was no evidence of coercion, the judges said.

But:

Numerous Vatican higher-ups, including Pope Francis, had received written warnings of a potential crime starting in 2013. But the Vatican brought indictments against Martinelli and Radice only six years later — after a wave of Italian media coverage. By then, Martinelli had been ordained.

A Washington Post investigation earlier this year detailed how Martinelli, now 29, had risen to the priesthood — with the help of prelates who brushed off the initial accusations and conducted only a cursory investigation.

Earlier, ball dropped:

The Vatican tribunal on Wednesday pinpointed one of the leaders in that initial probe, Bishop Diego Coletti, as having responded to the claims in an “absolutely superficial manner,” so as to “reach a quick dismissal.” Radice had worked with Coletti during that inquiry, the Vatican tribunal said, but could…

View original post 124 more words

He lied about U.S. funding of Wuhan institute, leaves U.S. Institutes of Health leadership post

Deep state fellow helped ChiComs figure out how to . . . do what?

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced his resignation on Tuesday, just weeks after documents exposed that he made “untruthful” comments about U.S. federal funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A bit more about this giant of the DC appointees:

Appointed by President Obama in 2009, Francis Collins made history by becoming the longest-serving NIH director and one who also served in three administrations: Obama, Trump, and Biden. Prior to his tenure at the NIH, he founded The BioLogos Foundation, which aimed to bridge a dialogue between science and religion. In 2007, former President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on the Human Genome Project.

And of course he appreciated the value of strong media presence:

During the coronavirus pandemic, Collins frequently appeared on television where he advocated for children wearing masks in schools while blaming unvaccinated Americans for the pandemic’s continuation.

Will he be missed? And by whom?

By WaPo, for one institution, which has this to report on the above matter:

Dr. Collins has faced some criticism, along with Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for not imposing stricter oversight on NIH research grants that were made through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Critics say risky “gain-of-function” experiments with bat coronaviruses should have been scrutinized by a Department of Health and Human Services panel. Dr. Collins has responded that the experiments “were not reasonably expected” to increase transmissibility of the viruses in humans, and the viruses studied could not have been the source of the pandemic strain.

The Wuhan laboratory is the focus of questions about whether an inadvertent leak might have led to the pandemic, but so far the virus origin remains unknown. Dr. Collins says he still thinks the evidence is most consistent with a natural origin, but he is frustrated by China’s refusal to be more open to further inquiry.

Oh. He’s been so long at the center of power — not in foreign relations, to be sure — but still answers a question with such naivete. Lots like him in the depths of officialdom, we may suppose.