Author: Richard Wagner

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Leading Benedictine nun in Germany calls for women priests

‘Why shouldn’t we pray for gender equality in the Church? It is most important that all discussions on reform be offered up to God,’ says Sister Ruth Schönenberger

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

The leader of one of Germany’s most important female religious communities has called into question the Catholic Church’s exclusion of women from the ordained priesthood.

“It is surely only natural for women to be priests and I cannot understand the reasons given as to why not,” said Sister Ruth Schönenberger, head of the Benedictine Priory of Tutzing, the Bavarian motherhouse of a worldwide missionary order.

“I am surprised that the presence of Christ has been reduced to the male sex,” she said in a recent interview with katholisch.de, the official website of the German Catholic Church.

“Here in Tutzing, we, too, have excellently qualified women theologians. The only thing they lack is ordination – nothing else,” said 68-year-old Schönenberger, prioress of Tutzing since 2015.

The priory is one of the most important in the Benedictine world. In 1885 it founded the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing, a congregation that today numbers some 1,300 sisters in 19 countries around the world.

Priesthood should not be based on gender

Schönenberger, who is responsible for the 70 members at the Tutzing priory and those at two other Benedictine convents, said the criteria for priesthood should not be based on one’s gender.

“Our present image/concept of the priesthood urgently needs to be fundamentally revised and I am genuinely surprised that priests themselves don’t protest more against present developments since they involve them,” said the prioress, noting that men and women should be treated as equals.

“The extent to which this power imbalance exists the world over is truly alarming and so is the fact that we have not learned to grapple with it more effectively. It is something we must rigorously tackle,” Schönenberger said.

She called for greater and open discussion on the issue to look for concrete steps that could be taken to remedy the imbalance “and not just comfort us women somehow – as, for example, by promising to look into the question of women deacons.”

Schönenberger said she and her fellow sisters often discuss the subject.

New forms of Eucharist?

“After all, we experience concrete examples of subordination day after day. If we, as a group of women religious, want to celebrate the Eucharist together, we have to arrange for a man to come and celebrate it, every single day. He stands at the altar and leads the celebration. We are not allowed to,” the Tutzing prioress said.

“We intend to look for forms (of celebrating the Eucharist) which suit us and develop new ones,” she added.

Worldwide prayers for gender equality in the Church

She said she and her community fully supported the prayer initiative for gender equality in the Church that was launched in February by Sister Irene Gassman, prioress of the Benedictine Monastery of Fahr (Switzerland).

The Swiss religious has invited Benedictine communities around the globe — as well as parishes and other communities — to include the “Prayer on Thursday” during compline (or night prayer) each week.

Schönenberger said prayer alone was not enough, but added: “Why shouldn’t we pray for gender equality in the Church? It is most important that all discussions on reform be offered up to God.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Dissident Catholics Assail Vatican Role at UN

By The Associated Press

A group of activist Roman Catholics asked the United Nations Thursday to revoke the Vatican’s observer status for failing to protect the rights of women, children and the LGBTQ community.

The group, calling itself Catholics for Human Rights, said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the Vatican must be stripped of its status in part because of the “magnitude of rape, sexual violence and torture perpetrated by clergy.”

The activists, including lawyers and theologians, also said the Holy See excludes women from positions of authority and opposes contraception, same-sex marriage and abortion.

In Rome, the Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it had no immediate reaction. Any change in the Vatican’s status would have to be decided by U.N. member states.

Catholics who disagree with the church’s teachings on abortion or who have been upset at its handling of sexual misconduct allegations have previously made similar demands for the U.N. to downgrade the Vatican’s status as a permanent observer, which allows it to take part in the world body’s policy discussions, but does not give it a vote in the General Assembly.

The Vatican’s role at the U.N. has also been opposed sporadically by groups who say it is a religious organization, not a nation.

Members of the activist group gathered Thursday in a building across the street from the U.N., where the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was holding its annual conference.

“It’s hard to name a state or religious group that’s done more than the Holy See to thwart the spirit and the letter of the Commission on the Status of Women, which affirms that the fundamental freedoms of all women and girls is essential for the achievement of gender equality,” said one of the activists, Mary Hunt, a theologian from Silver Spring, Maryland. “Today, the institutional church is essentially a global, male-run, top-down corporation whose product is religion.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Two Bishops Accused of Sexually Harassing Adults Are Barred From Priestly Duties

Bishop Michael Bransfield served as the highest-ranking Catholic official in West Virginia until his retirement in September. He was accused of sexual harassment and financial improprieties.

By Liam Stack

The archdiocese of Baltimore said on Monday that it had barred two bishops from performing priestly duties and referred their cases to the Vatican after an internal investigation into allegations that they had sexually harassed adults, including one claim that was dismissed by church investigators a decade ago.

The announcement shined a light on the alleged abuse of adults, an often overlooked corner of the Catholic Church abuse scandal, and drew parallels to the downfall of Theodore E. McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, who was expelled from the priesthood last month after the church found him guilty of abusing children and adult seminarians.

“When you have a situation like this, usually there is a power imbalance where the victim feels compelled to do what the priest is telling them to do,” said David Lorenz, an abuse survivor and local leader in Maryland with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “That was the case with Cardinal McCarrick and the seminarians.”

One of the men referred to the Vatican, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, served as the highest-ranking Catholic official in West Virginia until he retired in September. While the investigation into him focused on adults, he was implicated in the sexual abuse of children by a witness in a 2012 trial, according to news media coverage of the trial. He has long denied that claim.

Bishop Gordon Bennett was accused of sexually harassing a “young adult” in Jamaica in 2006.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore was named apostolic administrator of Bishop Bransfield’s diocese, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia, and was instructed by the Vatican to investigate the allegations against him, which grew to include claims of financial wrongdoing.

The investigation lasted five months, included five investigators who were not priests, and involved interviews with 40 people, Tim Bishop, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said in an interview. He said the archdiocese would provide no detail about either man’s accusers or the nature of any financial impropriety.

“The initial scope of the investigation was sexual harassment of adults, then it turned to talk more about financial improprieties under Bishop Bransfield’s leadership of the diocese,” Mr. Bishop said. He said in the investigation that “the archbishop would be likened to a prosecutor” and that “the Holy See will be the judge and the jury.”

The second man who was barred, Bishop Gordon Bennett, served as an auxiliary bishop in Baltimore from 1998 to 2004, when he was appointed bishop of Mandeville, Jamaica. The archdiocese said it received an allegation that he had sexually harassed a “young adult” in Jamaica in May 2006 and reported it to the Vatican embassy in Washington.

Bishop Bennett, a Jesuit, resigned from his post in Jamaica in August of that year. But church investigators cleared him of the allegation in 2009 and the Congregation for Bishops, in Rome, reinstated him to “limited episcopal ministry subject to oversight,” according to a statement from the Jesuits West Province.

It said he then worked for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and ran Jesuit retreats for laypeople for almost a decade. He has not served in public ministry since his case was reopened in August, and he is now undergoing cancer treatment, the province said.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore led an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by two bishops.

Bishop Bennett did not appear on lists of credibly accused priests released in recent months by either the Maryland Province, where he long worked, or the Jesuits West Province in Portland, Ore., to which he was administratively attached.

“That list dealt with men who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor,” Tracey Primrose, a spokeswoman for the province, said in an email. “He is accused of sexual harassment of an adult. There’s a big distinction there.”

Mr. Bishop said the penalties that applied to both men meant they could not act as bishops, could not participate in celebrating Mass and could not perform any of the Catholic sacraments, which include performing baptisms, confirmations and marriages.

He said reports on both men had been sent to the Vatican, which could keep the restrictions put in place by Archbishop Lori, enhance them or take “whatever action they feel is necessary,” which could include removing them from the priesthood.

But Mr. Lorenz, the advocate for abuse survivors, criticized the decision by the church to conduct an internal investigation, even one that included a panel of laypeople. He pointed out that church officials had known about allegations against Bishop Bennett for 13 years.

“Here is another case where they are just holding it in, they are doing the investigation themselves and they have held themselves up to be the judge and the jury,” Mr. Lorenz said. “On the first accusation they should go to the police and say, ‘I, a bishop, am not qualified to run a criminal investigation so you should do it, not me.’”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Nun compares Church to criminals in its dealing with priests’ abuse

Sr Véronique Margron accuses Church of covering up reports of abuse of nuns

Sr Véronique Margron: ‘Any criminal organization would not have done worse.’

By Patsy McGarry

A leading French nun has accused the Vatican and Catholic bishops of having sanctioned the spiritual and sexual abuse (including rape, prostitution and forced abortions) of women religious in many countries and on every continent for over 20 years and probably much longer.

“Any criminal organization would not have done worse,” said Dominican nun Sr Véronique Margron, president of the French Conference of Men and Women Religious (CORREF)

She accused the Church leadership of responding to reports if such abuse of nuns with silence, cover-up and in-action. It was shocking, she said.

In an accompanying statement the liberal Catholic We Are Church (WAC) international group noted how in in 1994 Clare-born Medical Missionary of Mary
Report

Sr Maura O’Donoghue presented a detailed report on the abuse of nuns by priests to the Vatican based on six years experience in 23 countries and 5 continents.

In 1998 Scottish nun Sr Marie McDonald of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa presented another report on the abuse of religious women by priests in Africa to the Vatican

It recalled how in 2001 the European Parliament wrote to the Vatican calling for action to be taken about the sexual abuse of religious sisters by priests.

“But all to no avail. Just more silence, more cover-ups and more in-action. But in recent years courageous women who have spoken out despite the pressure to remain silent have highlighted this disgraceful behaviour,” it said

In a statement it continued:“it is a horrifying litany of spiritual and sexual abuse against women religious by men who claimed to be servants of Christ but were in fact servants of lust and power. There must be no more silence, no more cover-ups and No more in-action. The people of the church demand repentance and justice.”

Following the recent Vatican meeting on child safeguarding, attending by Catholic bishops and religious leaders from around the world WAC regretted that it had resulted in “an absence of concrete actions to safeguard children.”

“The clear message remains that any concerns about clerical child abuse should be reported to the civil authorities and not to the church authorities,” it said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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French cardinal Barbarin convicted over sex abuse cover-up

Barbarin was found guilty of failing to report the abuse of a minor between 2014 and 2015

The archbishop of Lyon, the most senior French Catholic cleric caught up in the paedophilia scandals that have rocked the church, was convicted of helping covering up abuse and handed a six-month suspended jail term on Thursday.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who was not in court, was found guilty of failing to report the abuse of a minor between 2014 and 2015.

His lawyers announced immediately that he would appeal the judgement.

“The reasoning of the court is not convincing,” lawyer Jean-Felix Luciani told reporters. “We will contest this decision by all the means possible.”

Barbarin, 68, faced long-standing allegations from victims’ groups that he failed to report a priest under his authority to police after learning of abuse which took place in the 1980s and 90s.

But prosecutors judged that those crimes were beyond the statute of limitations — meaning they were too old to prosecute — and declined to press charges.

During the trial, victims accused Barbarin of being aware of the abuse allegations from at least 2010 and then trying to cover up the scandal, under orders from the Vatican, from 2015.

Francois Devaux, who leads a victim’s group in Lyon, called Thursday’s verdict a “major victory for child protection.”

The Catholic Church has been roiled in recent years by claims against priests which have come to light in the wake of a global move by victims to go public with evidence.

Clerics have been denounced in countries as far afield as Australia, Brazil, Chile, Ireland, and the United States, leading Pope Francis to promise to rid the church of a scourge that has done enormous damage to its standing.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!