Pope Francis covered up for bishop who had gay porn on his phone, Vatican journalist says

If the shoe fits . . .

A prominent Vatican journalist has accused Pope Francis of covering up for an Argentine bishop who had gay porn on his phone.

Inés San Martin, who is one of the most respected journalists in the Vatican press corps, asked Archbishop Charles Scicluna at a press conference after the abuse summit: “We know there is a bishop in Argentina, Zanchetta, who had gay porn on his phone involving young people.

“How can we believe that this is in fact the last time we’re going to hear ‘no more cover-ups’ when at the end of the day, Pope Francis covered up for someone in Argentina who had gay porn involving minors?

“How can we believe that this is going to change now?”

Followed by fumbling:

Archbishop Scicluna appeared to be taken aback by the question, responding: “Well I’ll quote what the Holy Father said this morning about the law. About the case, I’m not, I’m not, you know, I’m not authorised… I mean, yeah.”

And then, putting a stop to the whole thing:

Vatican interim press office director Alessandro Gisotti then cut off Archbishop Scicluna’s response, saying that questions about specific cases were not permitted.

It’s how it’s done in an organization pledged to openness.

For specifics on the Argentinian . . .

Do cricket players swing for the fences?

If not, we have here an addition to UK patois, because baseball players do this a lot, and I am gobsmacked to see it as headline for a Times of London publication article.

Haruki Murakami
© Sipa/REX/Shutterstock

Still swinging for the fences: Murakami in conversation

Roland Kelts talks to the novelist about his legacy, his critics and the pleasures of translation (see below)

OK. Looked it up and answer is yes.

Not to worry, then, about further corrupting the Queen’s English.

But baseball is older, right? Wrong.

And look that up for yourselves. It’s too rich and complicated an issue for this blog. Sorry.

Changed my mind about that:

Cricket is older, the first definite mention of the game is found in a 1598 court case concerning an ownership dispute over a plot of common land in Guildford, Surrey. A 59-year old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played creckett on the site fifty years earlier when they attended the Free School.

Derrick’s account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surrey circa 1550, the first published account of baseball wasn’t untill 1744 where a publication in England by children’s publisher John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut and a rhyme entitled “Base-ball.” There were older games that can be seen as precursors to both games.

If you want the modern versions of the game, the first international cricket match was played in 1844 while the first official game of baseball played with codified rules was 19th June 1846.

OK!

Francis Allies Reveal Their Plans for Revolutionary Change – Crisis Magazine

The churchmen behind the Francis papacy.

On March 3, 2013, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor—an alumnus of the St. Gallen mafia—met with then-Cardinal Bergoglio over risotto and wine. It was the evening before the pre-conclave general congregations—as Murphy-O’Connor recalls in his memoirs—and the old friends were discussing “the sort of person we felt the cardinals should elect.”

A day earlier, an anonymous cardinal had been quoted saying, “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.” Later, Murphy-O’Connor would utter that same phrase, adding: “But pray to God we have him for much longer than that.”

A covering-up group:

Asked, before the conclave, if he’d advise that the new pope be “free from any kind of taint of cover-up,” Murphy-O’Connor at one point said: “You’re not going to get a saint straight away, you know; we’re all sort of, we’re all sinners” (31:31).

Murphy-O’Connor had himself covered up for a notorious abuser who went on to molest other young victims, some disabled.

Then?

One of the priest’s confirmed victims claimed that when he abused her Murphy-O’Connor and others were present and involved—yet the CDF’s [Congreg. for Defense of the Faith] 2013 investigation into Murphy-O’Connor was stopped because it lacked Pope Francis’s approval.

Sources for a respected Vaticanist claim that an angry Francis interrupted Cardinal Müller [CDF prefect, later demoted] while he was saying Mass, ordering the investigation’s shutdown.

Phew.

Source: Francis Allies Reveal Their Plans for Revolutionary Change – Crisis Magazine

No rest for the . . . Holy Father!

L’affaire Zanchetta:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis may have wrapped up his clergy sex abuse prevention summit at the Vatican, but a scandal over an Argentine bishop close to him is only gaining steam.

The Associated Press has reported that the Vatican knew as early as 2015 about Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta’s inappropriate behavior with seminarians. Yet he was allowed to stay on as bishop of the northern Argentine diocese of Oran on until 2017, when he resigned suddenly, only to be given a top job at the Vatican by Francis, his confessor.

New documents published by the Tribune of Salta newspaper show that the original 2015 complaint reported that Zanchetta had gay porn on his cellphone involving “young people” having sex, as well as naked images of Zanchetta masturbating that he sent to others.

Francis is carrying that “Who am I to judge?” business too far, it seems.

But you promised, Pope Francis . . .

. . . there would be something concrete!

On the first day of the summit Thursday, the pope fed hopes for concrete reforms when he gave bishops guidelines for discussion that suggested a code of conduct and the involvement of laity in their oversight.

There were speeches:

. . . three full days of televised speeches from bishops, laywomen, and a Nigerian nun who denounced the bishops for their “mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency” in handling sex abuse.

Hopes sprang, as for . . . .

. . . a new Vatican office dedicated to policing misconduct by the hierarchy. Others wanted the pope to put “zero tolerance” into canon law and bring the world-wide church into line with the small number of national bishops’ conferences that require all clerical sex abusers who are convicted in church trials be removed permanently from ministry.

Alas, he couldn’t bring himself to do either . . .

Pope Francis laid an egg?

Vatican AP report finds silver lining, noting that the just ended synod about abuse

was never going to meet the expectations placed on it by victims groups, the media and ordinary Catholics outraged over a scandal that has harmed so many and compromised the church’s moral authority so much.

Oh? AP predicted that? I mean if AP knew that, it made a great headline at the time, right? Or did they bite their tongues and save it for later? Is this a habit with them? In which case subscribers should ask their money back.

Meanwhile, some others:

* Wash Times:

Pope Francis closed his unprecedented summit on preventing clergy sex abuse Sunday by vowing to confront abusers with “the wrath of God,” but he did not offer any concrete protocols, an absence that won’t be missed by critics and victims, alike.

* Market Watch:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis closed out his extraordinary summit on preventing clergy sex abuse by vowing Sunday to confront abusers with “the wrath of God” felt by the faithful, end the cover-ups by their superiors and prioritize the victims of this “brazen, aggressive and destructive evil.”

But his failure to offer a concrete action plan to hold bishops accountable when they failed to protect their flocks from predators disappointed survivors, who had expected more from the first-ever global Catholic summit of its kind.

* Wall St. Journal:

ROME—Pope Francis on Sunday strongly condemned sexual abuse but offered no specific solutions, disappointing clergy and laypeople who had hoped for a breakthrough at an unprecedented global summit to address the crisis in the Catholic Church.

* On the other hand, via KCRA3, four days ago:

Pope Francis began an unprecedented summit in Rome to confront the Catholic Church’s clergy abuse scandal by saying that Catholics are not looking for simple condemnation, but concrete actions. [emphasis added throughout]

He just couldn’t pull it off.

‘The pope ignored them’: Alleged abuse of deaf children on two continents points to Vatican failings

You don’t have to go to the blogs for this story.

LUJAN DE CUYO, Argentina — When investigators swept in and raided the religious Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf, they uncovered one of the worst cases yet among the global abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church: a place of silent torment where prosecutors say pedophiles preyed on the most isolated and submissive children.

The scope of the alleged abuse was vast. Charges are pending against 13 suspects; a 14th person pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, including rape, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The case of the accused ringleader — an octogenarian Italian priest named Nicola Corradi — is set to go before a judge next month.

Corradi was spiritual director of the school and had a decades-long career spanning two continents. And so his arrest in late 2016 raised an immediate question: Did the Catholic Church have any sense that he could be a danger to children?

Yes.

The answer, according to a Washington Post investigation that included a review of court and church documents, private letters, and dozens of interviews in Argentina and Italy, is that church officials up to and including Pope Francis were warned repeatedly and directly about a group of alleged predators that included Corradi.

Yet they took no apparent action against him. [emphasis added]

Shame!

“I want Pope Francis to come here, I want him to explain how this happened, how they knew this and did nothing,” a 24-year-old alumna of the Provolo Institute said, using sign language as her hands shook in rage. She and her 22-year-old brother, who requested anonymity to share their experiences as minors, are among at least 14 former students who say they were victims of abuse at the now-shuttered boarding school in the shadow of the Andes.

No “field hospital” attitudes here:

Vulnerable to the extreme, the deaf students tended to come from poor families that fervently believed in the sanctity of the church. Prosecutors say the children were fondled, raped, sometimes tied up and, in one instance, forced to wear a diaper to hide the bleeding. All the while, their limited ability to communicate complicated their ability to tell others what was happening to them. Students at the school were smacked if they used sign language. One of the few hand gestures used by the priests, victims say, was an index figure to lips — a demand for silence.

“They were the perfect victims,” said Gustavo Stroppiana, the chief prosecutor in the case.

“The Vatican declined to comment on a detailed list of questions.” . . . .

Interior life, not to be abandoned in our search for community or commitment to a cause . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Instead, mes enfants . . .

“Abandon yourself entirely to the over-ruling of God, and by self-oblivion be eternally occupied in loving and serving Him without any of those fears, reflexions, examens, and anxieties which the affair of our salvation, and perfection sometimes occasion.”

Gold in them there hills . . .

Since God wishes to do all for us, let us place everything in His hands once and for all, leaving them to His infinite wisdom; and trouble no more about anything but what concerns Him. On then, my soul, on with head uplifted above earthly things, always satisfied with God, with everything He does, or makes you do.

Practically speaking . . .

Take good care not to imprudently entertain a crowd of anxious reflexions which, like so many trackless ways, carry our footsteps far and wide until we are hopelessly astray. Let us go through that…

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The villainous Bugnini, who made the Ordo Novus, as presented in newly translated book by highly regarded French historian Yves Chiron

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Held in low esteem, if any esteem at all, by traditionalists and tradition-leaning Catholics from all over the world.

The general theme of the book [Annibale
Bugnini, Reformer of the Liturgy, Angelico Press] could be summed up as this: Bugnini was immensely hard-working and a skilled networker, and in large bureaucracies these are the people who leave their marks upon events.

For better or worse, of course.

Anyhow, the final decree passed in Vatican Council 2 with a mere four dissenters. However . . .

Sometimes people draw our attention to the fact that only four of the Fathers voted against the Conciliar decree Sacrosanctum Concilium. Which is indeed an objective historical fact. But the leap is sometimes made of implying that everything which has happened since was directly and formally mandated by the Council, so that anybody who expresses a criticism is ‘anti-Conciliar’. This is…

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Idea for introducing yourself to one sitting next you at church before Sunday mass . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

. . . when the presiding priest or singing director urges you to do so.

Do not just say hi but hand out your card. Something they can take with themselves and maybe later call you and presto, some new business.

Or, and this is a big or, a number or address a person can call or write to later, trying to sell you something.

So forget it, not that it’s ever been tried.

Look. Just say hi and let go at that. With a smile, of course.

It’s what I do at the other greeting time, the handclasp of peace later in the mass, when I sometimes do not clasp a hand but wave, and then not to whole rest of church, of course . . . .

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