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 II – Heroes who Take On the Catholic Church

I always marvel at the courage of anybody who takes on a large corporation, either as a whistle-blower, like Jeffrey Wigand who blew the whistle on big tobacco in the US, and those who were abused by Catholic priests and who take on the Catholic Church.

I know what it is to face the terror of speaking out, because you’re dealing with organizations that have a big PR engine whose message, very powerfully portrayed, is about ‘we care’. They also have unlimited resources, zero integrity, and any number of patsies who will do their dirty work for them in squashing you and their methods, not least of which is to make you think you’re crazy, are bone-crushing. You are one tiny, lone and vulnerable voice in a big, big, nasty world. And if you take it to court you’ve got to know that you will be fed to the wolves.

Hard enough when you’re somebody like Jeffrey Wigand who was a scientist and a brilliant one, a man who had known his power. He lost his marriage, his life was constantly threatened, and he lost his career. Beautifully, though, he didn’t lose his children or their respect, and he changed careers, began teaching. Found out he loved it. He’s still a teacher. A remarkable man. A great movie was made about him, starring Russel Crowe and Al Pacino, The Insider.

But imagine what it must be like for people who stand up for themselves when they have slaughtered self esteem from abuse in childhood by a priest. Imagine what it must feel like when Catholicism has had their loyalty and they’ve believed everything they were taught about its goodness. And with the most holy of holies, God’s right hand man and all his righteous Cardinals, turning his face away from them, they pit their fragile and wavering self belief against a monstrously clever and diabolical PR machine. Now that is heroic. 

That even one person should have had to fight this good fight against the Catholic Church and the might of the Vatican fills me with outrage. Some part of me, having grown up Catholic, still finds it hard to believe, it’s not supposed to be like this. 

Well, there have been a lot of heroes fighting that fight. The US has had by far the largest number of reported cases, but abuse has been reported in 14 countries in Europe, including Ireland of course, in Australia, Canada, and a couple of African countries.  The numbers are horrific, but I’m sure they don’t represent anything like the reality. 

And what about countries like, for instance, South Africa and Zimbabwe? Google “pedophile priests in the USA” and there are 1,3 million results. Substitute ‘South Africa’ or ‘Zimbabwe’ for ‘USA’ and you get one result – the Wiki article which shows no results for either country. The likelihood that it just didn’t happen there is zero.

In fact, I know that the man who was parish priest in St. James, a Cape Town suburb that is more like a small town at the sea-side, raped a girl who was more or less my mother’s contemporary. They went to the same school where the parish priest reigned. I met the woman when she was in her seventies. It was pure coincidence – if you believe in coincidence. I did some work for her and she recognized my mother in me.

She was an alcoholic. She told me that the priest, who knew her family well, came to her home when she was a child and raped her. Then he would visit for lunch on Sunday and sit opposite her as if nothing had happened. The chances of that woman being his only victim are zero.

When I was a child the parish priest, Father O’Dwyer, who was heavily involved with Marymount College where I and my sisters went, used to fiddle with girls’ top buttons during religious instruction. My mother had a nervous breakdown and during her worst years he visited her at home. One day I was there alone. He knocked on the front door. From my upstairs bedroom I could see who it was I was terrified. 

I didn’t answer the door, but I came downstairs and hid in the downstairs toilet. He prowled around, past the window – I just saw his shadow, so the window must have been curtained – and tried to get in at the back door. Much of my memory of those days is blank but that man has haunted me, and I remember that my mother told me later he had said to her it was her duty to have sex with her husband and that to enjoy it was a sin. 

What was he doing talking to her about sex during her darkest hours, for much of which time she was on heavy medication? What was he doing visiting her at all in that state and when my father wasn’t there? 

So that’s one priest who I know for sure was a pedophile and another priest who is suspect at many levels. I also know of another, from Mutare, Zimbabwe, where I grew up, but I can’t write about it because I don’t have the permission of the other person involved. I want to know more about these three priests, but when I Google them there’s nothing. I know I won’t find information easily. It’s not as if anybody at the Vatican is going to say “I’ll help you.” 

I feel like a very small person in a very big, nasty arena.

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.