Sex and the City - Pedophile Protectors Vote for a Pope

Sex and the city. The Vatican city, that is. The city of the religion where priests took a vow of celibacy and got away with raping children. With the papal conclave 48 hours away, Dan Rivers reported from CNN live on a case involving a cardinal who will be part of the conclave, Cardinal Calcagno. He protected a pedophile Father Geraudo who started raping an altar boy in 1981 at least once a week and continued for 5 years. That boy was Franceso Zanardi, who spoke to CNN. He said he was not the only victim from amongst his classmates but he is the only one who is determined to seek and find justice.

Zanardi grew up very conflicted and became addicted to heroin in his 20’s. It was only after he went to rehab and had counseling that he realized he took drugs because of the abuse. That’s when he decided to find out how Geraudo had been able to get away with raping him for so long. Zanardi’s fight for the truth has exposed a trail of protection that leads directly to then Cardinal Ratzinger – who subsequently became Pope Benedict XVI.

Zinardi discovered that in 1980 a letter sent from an archbishop to bishop Calcagno of  Savona clearly shows that the church was aware of Geraudo’s crimes more than 3 decades ago. In 1980 he was reported for abuse of minors, but he was simply moved from parish to parish. He even set up and ran a home for troubled children in a church rectory.

In 2002 Geraudo confessed that he was a pedophile and even that wasn’t enough for the church to throw him out. Then in 2003 bishop Domenico Calcagno wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger who was then the enforcer of church doctrine, asking for advice on what he should do about Geraudo.

 “As far as possible” Calcagno said he intended to avoid letting Geraudo have responsibilities that would bring him into contact with children. His letter was accompanied by a church dossier on Geraudo, and Calcagno said “nothing has been leaked to the papers, no complaints have been filed with the police”.

The church was clearly only concerned with its image and protecting its priests. The victims weren’t mentioned in any of the documents and of course no efforts were made to identify them and help them. Neither Ratzinger nor Calcagno made any moves to defrock Geraudo or investigate. Two years later Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2005 Geraudo was sent to a Catholic scout camp in Piedmont, where he abused another boy. He was convicted for this crime, but he only received a one year suspended sentence. It was only in 2010 that the church forced him to resign, even though he had admitted to being a pedophile 8 years earlier. When Bishop Calcagno had become Cardinal, he was accused of having protected the pedophile. The church’s response was “the accusations regarding Cardinal Domenico Calcagno when he was bishop of Savona in Italy were investigated by both the church and by the legal system, by the judge and the accusations were without foundation.”

Cardinal Calcagno, who is taking part in the conclave to elect the next pope, declined to comment. Francesco Zanardi took a petition to the Vatican demanding that Calcagno be disqualified from the papal conclave, but he was turned away by plain clothes police.  But Zanardi is not giving up. His case has been taken up by SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), a pressure group representing people abused by priests. But the vote takes place tomorrow. So that’s two Cardinals that the world knows protected pedophile priests. Calcagno and Mahony.

Neither of them is considered to be Pope material, but that they have a say makes a mockery of the whole process. That Ratzinger protected Geraudo if only by default, makes a mockery of the position of Pope.  It’s the victims who speak and the journalists who help them who are the real heroes of this story that seems to never end.  Francesco Zanardi represents the Italian abuse network Rette L’Abuso. He also reports for vaticancrimes.us and has worked in collaboration with the Protect Your Children Foundation. Last year he went on a hunger strike in Rome to protest abuse by clergy.

Sex and the City - Vatican Vote is Business as Usual

It’s difficult some times to figure out which century we’re living in, as the debate rages about whether or not Cardinals who have at some point been complicit in protecting pedophile priests should be allowed to vote for the next Pope, and Cardinals themselves entering the fray, defending each other. How this can even be a debatable point is beyond me. I feel sometimes as if I’m reading a novel set in Medieval Italy.

Former archbishop of San Francisco Cardinal William Levada said from a seminary in Menlo Park before leaving for Rome to vote in the conclave that he believed Cardinal Mahony should be allowed to vote because he had said sorry for his errors in judgment. Well that makes it all fine and dandy then.  He is quoted on Fox news as saying “There are some victims groups for whom enough is never enough, so we have to do our jobs as best we see it.”

How those two thoughts are connected is hard for me to understand. Possibly I’m just not holy enough. Cardinal Levada’s perspective, however, makes perfect sense in the light of the fact that he too “kept some accused molesters in the church and failed to share some allegations with police or parishioners.” (foxnews.com)

Channel News Asia reported that Monsignor Charles Scicluna had defended the Cardinals who had kept quiet about pedophile priests saying they had to do it for fear of scandal.  He added that Canon law dictates that they have a right and a duty to vote and that wisdom is not God-given only to saints, but also to sinners. To really bring his argument home, he added ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’.  (channelnewsasia.com)

This from a stalwart member of an organization that teaches children that if you die without going to confession and Mass on Sunday you’ll go to hell. But it’s not a sin for Cardinals to protect pedophiles no.  Heaven, we must defend the Vatican from scandal. If a few children in another diocese have to take it up the you know what, it’s a worthy sacrifice.

Reuters reported that on Feb 20, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was questioned “in a legal deposition about cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests while he was the head of the archdiocese of Milwaukee”. That diocese filed for a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 2011, citing the financial drain of having to settle all the sexual abuse claims against it. Magnanimously they acknowledged their mistakes in protecting pedophiles. ‘Missteps’ they called it.  (reuters.com)

I guess avoiding the scandal didn’t work out so well there. Milwaukee is the eighth diocese to file for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and the Church has paid out about $2 billion in settlements. And Cardinal Dolan is in the running for being the next Pope.

Anybody who is hoping that the next pope will be elected on the basis of his willingness and determination to actively root out all past and present pedophiles in the Church had better go back to that lovely tin of glue they’ve been sniffing. According to New York Times reporters Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo, this election is going to be about politics, as it always has been; a fight between ultra conservatives who want nothing to change and the slightly more liberal who see that the Church is losing its grip and should allow divorced Catholics who didn’t get an annulment to receive Communion and limited use of condoms. There are no candidates who wish to see women as priests or the end of celibacy. (nytimes.com)

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago is reported to have said that Cardinals don’t promote themselves, but they talk about each other. He said everybody simply wants to know what kind of qualities they have – and amongst the qualities he mentioned were caring about the poor, being “deeply rooted in apostolic faith”, being able to govern, and being a man of prayer.  He added that nobody is interested in where the Cardinals come from. (nytimes.com)

Notably absent from Cardinal George’s list of important qualities was ‘allegiance to truth’ or ‘the courage, will and determination to actively root out all past and present pedophiles in the Church.’ None of the articles I read mentioned any Cardinals who are running on that ticket. None are even running on the ticket of eliminating celibacy or allowing women to become priests. And of the 117 Cardinals who will vote, 67 were appointed by Benedict XVI; the other 50 were appointed by John Paul II. When the new pope is elected, he can appoint his own pals.  

It's a closed system, it's all about the Catholic hierarchy and what they want, and it's not about the people. Business as usual. My word, these men have entitlement. 

Image:  Portrait of Pope Leo X and his cousins, Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luidi de' Rossi (Raffael, 1483-1520)

Sex and the City: the Collapse of the Holy Roman Empire

Becky Anderson, speaking from Rome for CNN yesterday, told of how 3 as yet-unnamed Cardinals compiled a secret dossier about a gay network of Vatican clerics who have made themselves vulnerable to blackmail by male prostitutes. They presented it to Pope Benedict XVI, and as far as Becky understood, he will pass it on to his successor. “The Italian media is awash with these sex scandals at the Vatican” she said.

She added that the British media is awash with the scandal of allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with four priests dating back to the 1980’s. The allegations are leveled at the top British Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was, until yesterday, proclaiming his innocence and insisting he would exercise his right to vote. He was going to resign in March but the Pope forced him out yesterday.
 
Benedict XVI’s reactions to the two latest scandals are hard to understand. In all the years that he’s had the opportunity to actively investigate child rape by priests and the bishops who protected them, he hasn’t lifted a finger. Cardinal Mahony is still set to vote in the enclave. Yet Benedict XVI forced the resignation of Cardinal O’Brien, who didn’t rape anybody as far as we know. Nothing has been proved against him, any more than anything has been proved against the group of gay clerics, whose resignation Benedict didn’t force.  

Our resigned Pope is being ill-advised. Didn’t anybody ever tell these fellows that once you tell or live a lie, you have to fabricate and fabricate, weaving for yourself an illusion that fools many at first but eventually you’re the only one who believes in it. At that point, nothing that you do makes any real sense.

The Catholic church is falling apart at the seams, as it was bound to one day. It has operated with immunity for way too long, protected by its own laws that make it unassailable. Its excuse? That the hierarchy answers to a higher law because they are men of God. Well, that would be great if it did and they were, but it clearly doesn’t because they aren’t. 

Notwithstanding which the Vatican still holds huge sway over many of its subjects who deny any wrong-doing, pretty much in the same way that anti-Semites deny that the holocaust happened. But the massive power it had over minds up to the 1970’s has been waning for a long time, and the velvet curtains that once shielded the Vatican’s corruption from the world so well get more and more moth-eaten.  

The fall of Rome. If the Catholic Church was what it represents itself as, it wouldn’t have had a reason to fall. But it’s always been about the accumulation of temporal power and wealth and, under the guise of spirituality, has had a two-pronged strategy for subjugating people and limiting their capacity to think for themselves. The first is fear-mongering, using guilt and threat of eternal damnation as tools, and the second is to demonize sex, pitting it against spirituality. 

Of course the height of spirituality is to have no sex at all. So the vow of celibacy makes priests, cardinals and the Pope, more spiritual than anybody else. They take the vows of poverty and obedience, too, and that allegedly adds to their special spirituality, makes them somehow closer to God. But the vows are just for show.   

Even if they haven’t accumulated personal wealth, which many of them have, Catholic clergy don’t experience poverty. They are well taken care of, they have decent clothes – some of them  very expensive clothes and jewelry -  a place to stay, food to eat, medical care if they get sick, a car to drive, petrol in the car. They can travel and their plane fare is paid for, and when they retire they have a home to go to. 

Monseigneur Rauber, Cardinal Danneels, Monseigneurs Vangheluwe and Jozef De Kesel who took over after Vangheluwe resigned when exposed for child abuse.

As for obedience, who do they obey? Not the rules of society. Priests answer to bishops, who answer to the pope, as do Cardinals. Oh wait a moment; some of those Cardinals elect that infallible being who answers to God. 

And we all know what happens to the celibacy vow. Well, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes all have minds of their own. They can at any time say "I can't be part of an organization where the reality doesn’t match the PR." 

But that would mean giving up a life that gives them enormous power, one of the perks of which is that they can commit or conceal crimes with impunity and make unwelcome moves on men lower down the hierarchy, and of course on children. And because they aren’t men of God but are just ordinary men with as much carnality, prejudice, inner conflict and self interest as the rest of us, they abuse their power, sometimes to the fullest extent that the abuse can stretch. 

Which is why Rome is falling, falling.

Protector of Pedophile Priests, Cardinal Mahony Retains his Power to Vote for a Pope

Words can be dramatic and effective tools for change, more effective than weapons if they reach to a person’s soul. They can also be cheap. The latest illustration of the latter is a post in Cardinal Roger Mahony’s blog on Wednesday February 20. This is the man who protected pedophile priests and was recently removed by his successor Archbishop Jose Gomez from all duties. He wasn’t defrocked by Pope Benedict XVI, though.

And he can still vote to elect the next pope. The California Catholic Daily said on Feb 14 that “Cardinal Roger Mahony praised outgoing Pope Benedict XVI for his legacy of spreading Catholicism throughout the world and said he looks forward to traveling to Rome to help elect a successor.” Well, he’s hardly going to criticize the man who let him get away with his crimes, is he? I don't suppose that in the new-found humility he speaks of in his blog, he's walking to Rome in sandals and wearing a hair-shirt. The blatant hypocrisy is astonishing and makes Mahony’s blog post even more sickening. The opening paragraph reads:  

“One very insightful and powerful Address has sustained me over these past difficult years as all of us in the Church had to face the fact that Catholic clergy sexually abused children and young people.” As if he had had nothing personally to do with any of it. The rest of the post is all about realizing what a bad man he has been; about his tremendous shift in consciousness and sudden attack of humility.  

“…In past years I can't recall myself desiring and choosing: 

*    poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches;
*    insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors;
*    worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent. 

But through God's grace, I am for the first time realizing that I should be praying for the very things from which I cringe, the disgrace I abhor, the fool that I seem. Lent is a long period of time, but I am not sure where I will be by Easter on this particular journey embracing and praying for humiliation. [But before I have to do any of that let me just go and vote.]

Christ, have mercy!”    

Christ have mercy on who? The soul of the pedophile-protector, or those who still live under the shadow of that terrible abuse? The children of those children, who have also been affected. Mahony's words are those of a narcissist who has no intention of really being accountable. After all, he didn’t give up his power.  

I’ve heard countless, moving stories of men and women who have treated others badly in their past and have gone back to each one to personally apologize. If Mahony had announced that he was going on a pilgrimage to say sorry to every child who was molested because of his actions; if he had invited the pope to defrock him and pushed for all other bishops who had behaved in the same way to be exposed and put on trial for collusion; if he showed with his actions that he was remorseful, he’d be believable.  

But he didn’t, so his words are cheap. More effective would have been to talk about the torment of the people who were abused as children and the role that he played, and to say that he would dedicate the rest of his life to making it up to them in whatever way he could and to help those who hadn't had the courage to speak out to do so, instead of egotistically telling us all about the spiritual advancement of his own precious soul. 

And far from showing any real remorse, he has even complained about being a scapegoat. But scapegoats don't get to elect popes. Mahony’s fall from grace wasn’t really a fall at all but a political maneuver that would allow him to retain his real power – playing a part in the control mechanism of who gets the role of pope; they don’t want another Pope John Paul I with real courage, integrity and vision and who can think and act for himself. What has happened with Mahony lays to bed any validity around accusations of conspiracy theory nuts and paranoia. It is living proof that the Vatican is far more concerned with its wealth and temporal power than it is with the emotional and real spiritual well-being of its subjects. 

Photo credit: California Catholic Daily