Pope Francis was often quiet on Argentine sex abuse cases as archbishop

Molestation victims of Argentine priests say the then-archbishop did not offer apologies or restitution.

By Nick Miroff

Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, ­media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Julio Cesar GrassiGrassi called his foundation Felices los Niños, “Happy Children.”

Today, Grassi is a convicted sex offender who remains free on a conditional release after being sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2009 for molesting a prepubescent boy in his care.

Yet in the years after Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — has declined to meet with the victim of the priest’s crimes or the victims of other predations by clergy under his leadership. He did not offer personal apologies or financial restitution, even in cases in which the crimes were denounced by other members of the church and the offending priests were sent to jail.

Since he was elected to the papacy Wednesday, media attention has focused primarily on Bergoglio’s actions during the “Dirty War” years of Argentina’s military dictatorship. But at a time when the Vatican is facing a costly legal and moral crisis on several continents over sex crimes committed by its priests, Bergoglio’s handling of pedophilic clergy under his authority offers insight into how he might approach the scandals.

There is no evidence that Bergoglio played a role in covering up abuse cases. Several prominent rights groups in Argentina say the archbishop went out of his way in recent years to stand with secular organizations against crimes such as sex trafficking and child prostitution. They say that Bergoglio’s resolve strengthened as new cases of molestation emerged in the archdiocese and that he eventually instructed bishops to immediately report all abuse allegations to police.

In September, after an Argentine priest from a rural area was convicted of abusing dozens of boys between 1984 and 1992, the archbishop’s office released a statement saying the case had “reaffirmed our profound shame and the immense pain that result from the grave mistakes committed by someone who should be setting the moral example.”

But during most of the 14 years that Bergoglio served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rights advocates say, he did not take decisive action to protect children or act swiftly when molestation charges surfaced; nor did he extend apologies to the victims of abusive priests after their misconduct came to light.

“He has been totally silent,” said Ernesto Moreau, a member of Argentina’s U.N.-affiliated Permanent Assembly for Human Rights and a lawyer who has represented victims in a clergy sexual-abuse case. Victims asked to meet with Bergoglio but were turned down, Moreau said. “In that regard, Bergoglio was no different from most of the other bishops in Argentina, or the Vatican itself.”

The Catholic Church has paid out at least $2 billion in the United States alone to settle abuse claims, according to monitoring groups. In many Latin American countries, though, the scope of crimes has only begun to surface, and in Argentina, no victims have received restitution in public settlements, rights groups and lawyers said.

The case of Father Grassi has been particularly troublesome to children’s advocates here because Bergoglio was widely viewed as close to the young priest, who told reporters before his conviction that he spoke with Bergoglio often and that the archbishop “never let go of my hand.”

Grassi was not expelled from the priesthood after the guilty verdict. Instead, church officials led by Bergoglio commissioned a lengthy private report arguing that Grassi was innocent.

The report was submitted as part of the priest’s legal appeal, which is pending, and prosecutors say the document has helped Grassi avoid jail time so far. A court has granted him a provisional release that allows him to continue residing across the street from the classroom and dormitories of Happy Children.

The sprawling, gated complex in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires once had more than 600 students and resident orphans. It became the economic and religious hub of the community as Grassi channeled private donations into its schools, vocational workshops, bakeries and playgrounds.

Today its classrooms are mostly shuttered. The foundation’s grounds are choked with weeds and uncut grass, its swings are rusting, and its statuary is dimmed by creeping mold.

“He gave with one hand, but he took away with the other,” said neighbor Sabina Vilagra, whose husband worked as a janitor at the foundation and was called to testify in the trial.

“He had his favorites — always boys,” said her daughter, Florencia Vilagra, who also worked at Happy Children at the time.

“He would give them bicycles or toys and would designate one as his special ‘secretary,’ ” she said.

There were three accusers in the trial — given the names “Ezequiel,” “Gabriel” and “Luis” to protect their identities — who ranged from ages 9 to 13 at the time of the abuse, according to prosecutor Juan Pablo Gallego.

One of Argentina’s best-known advocates for child-abuse victims, Sister Martha Pelloni, said she was called in several times to consult with psychologists who treated Grassi’s alleged victims. She said the meetings left her with no doubt that the priest was guilty, despite the church-commissioned report attempting to exonerate him. He was eventually convicted on the charges made by one of the boys. “A lot of Catholics have wanted to protect and defend him,” she said. “But the abuses were real.”

Still, Pelloni praised Bergoglio for evolving over the years and taking an increasingly firm stance against predatory clergy. Argentine law makes it a crime to fail to report allegations of abuse against children. “Now if you go to a bishop with a claim, they’ll say, ‘Report to the police,’ ” she said. “Bergoglio must have ordered that.”

Yet past victims of sexual abuse might have been spared if their cases, too, had received such decisive action, Bergoglio’s critics contend.

In one of Argentina’s most egregious abuse cases, another priest in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires was assigned to work with children even when church leaders knew of allegations against him.

After local parishioners accused Father Mario Napoleon Sasso of molesting children in a poor, rural province of eastern Argentina in the early 1990s, he was sent to a private rehabilitation center for wayward clergy, La Domus Mariae (the House of Mary), north of Buenos Aires. He lived for two years at the center and was then reassigned to work in a soup kitchen for poor children in a town outside the capital. There, he went on to sexually abuse girls as young as 3.

“His bedroom was adjacent to the cafeteria, and it had the only bathroom in the chapel,” said Moreau, the attorney for the victims’ families.

Moreau said that in 2003 he accompanied two nuns and a priest who had denounced Sasso, along with the victims’ families, to a meeting with the Vatican emissary in Buenos Aires. He said the families were told to be “patient” and were offered gifts of rosaries “blessed by the pope.”

“They just wanted to cover it up,” Moreau said.

Three years later, as the evidence against Sasso mounted, the families asked to see Bergoglio, Moreau said, but they never received a response. Sasso was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He has since been released on parole.

Religious-affairs scholar Fortunato Mallimaci, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires, said that as Pope Francis, Bergoglio will face an entirely different set of expectations for how to handle abuse claims. “In the United States and Europe, there is a clear separation of church and state,” he said. “Not in Latin America.” There, he said, civil society is often too weak to take on the power of the clergy, and suspicion falls first “on the accuser, not the accused.”

But, Mallimaci added, “as a bishop from Latin America, he is going to be very sensitive to what is going on in society around him and the politics of the era. If he wants to reestablish the church’s credibility, he’ll be the first to say that no abuse will be tolerated, whether in Washington or Rome or Buenos Aires.”

Complete Article HERE!

The Election Of Pope Francis Opens The Door On Another Sordid Vatican Story

More marvelous commentary from Enlightened Catholicism.

“The Great Spirit, she does have her coyote face”. So said a Native American to me once at a ceremony. The implication was that what seems on the surface a good thing sometimes leads to lessons and wisdom you never imagined. Sometimes it brings with it more light on more things than a person really wants exposed. Sometimes a person is more or less forced to go well beyond what they originally intended. Sometimes when the Spirit opens a door, instead of a tiled hallway there is a very fast moving conveyor belt that has no side stops. I think in the election of Cardinal Bergogolio as Pope Francis, the Spirit has once again opened a door on to one of those fast moving, one direction only, conveyor belts.

arch-angelThe behavior of the Roman Catholic Church in South America during the 70’s and 80’s is much more than a story of what the then Argentinian Jesuit Provincial and current Pope Francis may or may not have done. It’s way beyond that. It’s about a systematic implementation of a CIA strategy designed to keep American global corporate interests ascendant and the organized opposition to that ascendancy in check. In this geo political game, Pope Francis was a bit player, a loyal Jesuit soldier under the command of his clerical superiors in Argentina and Rome. He isn’t any longer. He is on the throne, no longer a mostly disengaged member of the College of Cardinals and that fact has opened the door to that very fast moving conveyor belt. The Vatican press office can try to stop that conveyor belt with denials, denunciations, and self righteous anger, but it isn’t going to work any better now than the same strategy did at the beginning of the clerical abuse crisis. For all the Vatican’s efforts at minimizing that crisis and stopping the conveyor belt behind that door, the belt is still running. The Church can not get off it and the exit has not been reached.

Pope Francis is faced with his first serious crisis and that crisis exists precisely because the Spirit influenced the Cardinal electors to choose a man from Argentina who was, minimally or not, entangled with the very same military junta who provided the training, along with the US School of the Americas, for the Contras in Nicuragua. The Contras were trained by the same SOA who also trained those who gunned down El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as well as six of Francis’ fellow Jesuits, and who were funded by CIA money filtered through the Vatican of JPII. That very Vatican whose CDF was headed by one Joseph Ratzinger who was tasked with silencing liberation theology, and whose diplomatic corps, under one Angelo Sodano, worked hand in glove with western intelligence agencies to promote agendas having exactly nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ. My guess is if we want to know what the connection was between Ratzinger and Sodano we need not look much further than the Vatican’s clandestine actions in South and Central America.

Pope Francis will not get off this conveyor belt until there is utter transparency concerning the Church’s involvement with the CIA and other Latin right wing interests during this time frame. It isn’t just a matter of purging the Vatican of financial and sexual corruption. It is a matter of purging the Vatican of the geo political games that fuel so much of that corruption. Roman Catholicism can not go forward until it is purged of the arrogance of the curia and the bizarre thinking that Jesus wanted a Church for the political domination of the poor. Francis can not establish a poor Church for the poor as long as clergy keep diplomatic secrets, because those secrets give others the leverage to manipulate both the Church and his papacy.

Pope Francis needs to open all the secret doors and windows and files and archives so that the Church can finally function in the light and not in shadows. He himself needs to understand he is no longer shackled by the personal vows of silence and obedience, vows which must have come close to choking him on his own priestly collar. We can not talk about a reformed Church while being continually dragged down by the worst secrets of the unreformed. Confess the secrets, trust in the mercy of God, and sin no more. Isn’t that how the mantra goes?

Complete Article HERE!

Hans Küng on Election of Pope Francis

By Michael Enright

For such a conservative group of middle-aged and elderly men, the Princes of the Church do seem to have a few surprises up the sleeves of their vestments. The 115 cardinals sequestered themselves in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, and emerged on Wednesday with tidings of a new Pope – and not one very many people expected.

Hans Küng wird 80Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected Pontiff and rechristened himself Pope Francis, signifying his humility and support for the poor and oppressed. He’s the first Jesuit to be made pope, and the first non-European in twelve hundred years to become heir to St. Peter.

Last week, Michael Enright interviewed the preeminent Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, about the crisis in the Catholic Church and the need for reform and liberalization (click here to read).

At the time, Dr. Küng wasn’t very optimistic about the prospects of the current cohort of cardinals choosing a reform-minded Pope. But the election of Francis has restored hope in many of the faithful, that reform in the Vatican might be possible.

We checking in with Dr. Küng again for his thoughts on Pope Francis. Micheal Enright spoke to Dr. Küng from his office in Tübingen, Germany.

Complete Article and audio clip HERE!

The sorry tale of the Catholic Church in Scotland continues to unfold

By Alistair McBay

It seems there is no end to the woes of the Catholic Church in Scotland in the wake of Cardinal O’Brien’s abrupt departure.

o'brianThe latest reports in the media examine the Scottish Catholic Church’s record on dealing with historic allegations of child sex abuse by clergy, with one former investigator hired by the Church in the mid-1990s now considering a formal request to the police to investigate the Church’s handling of abuse cases.

The revelations confirm the now all too familiar pattern of protecting the Church’s reputation first and foremost – allegations not taken seriously enough or simply dismissed, offending priests quietly moved to another parish where they could offend again, and the Church continuing to refer to the cover-up with euphemisms like “errors” in handling cases.

The Church’s first line of defence is to claim that it had tackled the problem when it introduced formal guidelines in 1999 for the protection of children. But it was only five years earlier that O’Brien’s predecessor Cardinal Winning had enraged lay Catholics by stating that it was up to the victims of abuse to go to the police, not the Church authorities. A spokesman for the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children observed at the time that the Church in Scotland had “dealt with this issue in a shabby, damaging and incompetent way.” There is now emergent evidence that Cardinal Winning’s view was the one that still retained currency after 1999.

It gets no better for the Church when the names of those dismissive of investigators’ concerns are recalled. The investigator appointed by the Church in the mid-1990s suggested that the investigation remit be widened to include “inappropriate relations” among the clergy. Given the recent revelations surrounding the ‘inappropriate behaviour’ of Cardinal O’Brien with young priests and seminarians, this suggestion seems to have been made with some merit. But Bishop Roddy Wright of Argyll and the Isles had, according to media reports, expressed his disquiet at this. Bishop Wright, we now know, resigned shortly after this in the mid-1990s when it became known he had father­ed a child with a parishioner. He then abandoned his diocese and his vocation to marry a divorcee. No wonder the Bishop had been uncomfortable at the prospect of an investigation of ‘inappropriate relations’ among the clergy. It is not hard to see now that it may also have unsettled the then Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, one Keith Patrick O’Brien.

Bishop Wright was not alone in his disavowal of priestly celibacy. More recently we have had ‘Father Flash’ Roddy MacNeill from the island of Barra (who had an affair with his first cousin and is believed to be the father of her child) and Father Gerry Nugent who admitted to having sex with Angelika Kluk, (subsequently murdered by Peter Tobin who buried her body under the floor in Nugent’s church, St Patrick’s, where he had been working). There was also the case of Monsignor Creegan in the Diocese of Dunkeld, whose long-term mistress confessed to her affair with him after details of his illicit relationship with a second woman came to light.

So it would seem that the headline in the Daily Telegraph of 8 March that some Scottish priests under O’Brien’s watch were’out of control sexually’ would appear to be beyond challenge.

Another inconvenient truth for the Scottish Church is that you can have as many guidelines and policies as you want, but if bishops refuse to implement them, they are worthless. With the publication of the Nolan report in 2001, the Church boasted that its 1999 actions had preceded Nolan by two years, and claimed that “there is much sharing of information, expertise and resources among the eight Scottish Dioceses. There is also liaison between the Catholic and Reformed Churches in Scotland and a developing relationship with other Churches in Britain and Ireland.”

Was the Diocese of Cloyne in Ireland one of those with which this liaison occurred? For nowhere was the gulf between having procedures and actually putting them into practice more evident than in the case of Bishop John Magee in the Irish Diocese of Cloyne. Magee’s failures led to the Irish Government’s report revealing that the Vatican considered the Irish bishops’ child protection policies and guidelines to be a ‘study document’, not a definitive set of instructions and rules. This in turn led to the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s devastating speech in the Irish Parliament in 2011, when among other stinging criticisms of the Irish Catholic Church he noted the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children,” and this even after formal procedures had been put in place and reassuring noises as to future full compliance had been made.

Now it seems that a similar tale of guidelines and procedures being ignored has been the case in Scotland under His Eminence Cardinal O’Brien’s tenure. In 2004, five years after the introduction of child protection guidelines and seven years after the initial investigative report, the director of child protection for the Catholic Church in Scotland found the system in disarray.

In a detailed report on Scotland’s eight dioceses, carried out between December 2003 and March 2004, she found out that problem priests were inadequately supervised and potentially dangerous to children and young adults. The report, entitled A Review of Child Protection Practices, referred to the Church’s ‘secret archives’ and stated: “There is no consistent system of monitoring clergy who present, or may present, a risk to children. Active cases requiring some further
action indicate that unacceptable levels of risk to children may have been and could remain present.”

She resigned after just four months, shortly after delivering her report to the Bishops. Further allegations of abuse are now appearing as more victims realise that they were not alone in being abused by Catholic clergy, nor alone in having their initial complaints summarily dismissed. As Cardinal O’Brien is alleged to have told one complainant at the time of his abuse by the notorious Father Lynagh, “you are just another abused child, no-one will believe you.” But times change.

Earlier this month, Lord McConnell, Scotland’s former First Minister, told of his regret that almost ten years on since he made a landmark apology to historic child abuse victims of the Catholic order the Sisters of Nazareth, the victims had yet to see redress. In an interview with BBC Scotland, Lord McConnell said there had been “absolutely no progress” on compensation for victims, and called on the Scottish Government to “do the right thing”.

As we await the inevitable media-inspired ‘Popefest’ this week from the Vatican, we wonder if the new Bishop of Rome will adopt a fresh approach to these issues and take on the Herculean task of cleansing the Catholic equivalent of the Augean stables. We wonder if the Church, whether globally or locally in Scotland, will at last grasp the full meaning of the words transparency and accountability. We wonder too if the Scottish Government will front up to the challenge of announcing a full inquiry of the sort announced last year by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Don’t anyone hold their breath.

Complete Article HERE!

Cardinal Keith O’Brien faces new abuse claims

By MARTYN McLAUGHLIN

A FORMER trainee priest is to take legal action against Cardinal Keith O’Brien after claiming the cleric abused, groped and kissed him during a visit to a seminary.

cardinal-keith-o-brien-QUITSThe ex-seminarian, who was a teenager at the time of the incident, alleges that the disgraced former Archbishop of St
Andrews and Edinburgh abused him after inviting him into his room following dinner for an alcoholic drink.

The victim’s solicitor said his client had been left “disturbed” by allegations surrounding the cardinal in recent weeks, which had “brought the past back.” He decided to come forward in the hope of encouraging any other victims to speak out.

The claims by the former trainee priest, now married with children, are separate from the allegations that the cardinal “behaved inappropriately” towards three priests and a former priest in the 1980s.

With the Catholic Church in Scotland left in turmoil following the events of the past three weeks, the latest revelations have cast further shadows over the Vatican and will put added pressure on Pope Francis to mount a detailed investigation into the beleaguered cardinal.

Since the initial raft of allegations were made against him, the 74-year-old has stood down as an archbishop, and apologised to the church and the country for his sexual conduct, which had, he said, “fallen below the standards expected” of a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

The cardinal, who turns 75 on Sunday, vowed to spend the rest of his life in retirement, with no further part in the public life of the church in Scotland. While he chose not to participate in the recent papal conclave he is still a cardinal, and the possibility remains that Pope Francis could strip him of his red mitre.

The man at the centre of the latest allegations left the priesthood months after the alleged incident of abuse in the 1980s. He had been attending a senior seminary college after spending four years at Aberdeen’s Blairs College, where the cardinal was rector between 1980 and 1985.

In an interview recalling the alleged abuse when he was 19, he said: “We’d have some sort of drink in his room, beer or wine. He was just chatting away about the past, the future, and so on. He had been talking about himself, how he was going places, his career had been mapped out and that it was for God to decide.

“I can’t remember the exact phrase he used but he told me he would always look after me and how good a priest I’d be. Until this stage I’d thought how excellent it would be to be a priest in his diocese.

“But that’s when it happened. After a few minutes he released me and I was able to make my excuses and go. As an adult looking back, I ask myself how it could have happened. Neither of us was drunk.”

The former priest, now in his 50s, has asked to remain anonymous because he has children. His solicitor, Cameron Fyfe, said he thought the incident had been isolated until the recent

allegations came to light.

Mr Fyfe told The Scotsman: “My client told me he found the recent allegations very disturbing and they brought the past back, and made him decide to do something about it. I think he also thought there are other victims out there, and if he was to speak then others might come forward.

Complete Article HERE!