Belgian bishop faces new abuse allegations
A Belgian lawyer said on Monday he had launched an inquiry into a new case of alleged sexual abuse by the former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who has already admitted to having abused his under-age nephews.
“The present case concerns sexual abuse in the 1990s,” at a care home in Loker, in western Belgium near the French border, the lawyer, Walter Van Steenbrugge, said.
He said he had handed the allegations to a court in Brussels and lodged an inquiry with it. It was up to the court to decide whether the statute of limitations ruled out a prosecution, and if not, whether or not to prosecute the bishop, he added.
Vangheluwe, who was bishop of Bruges from 1984 to 2010, is the highest-ranking member of the Belgian Catholic Church to be involved in a child abuse scandal which resulted in 475 complaints of molestation by priests.
Vangheluwe admitted in 2010 that he had abused one of his nephews during the 1980s, when the nephew was a child.
That case was beyond the statute of limitations, but he was forced to resign as bishop and left Belgium under Vatican orders.
He caused outrage in 2011 when he told a Belgian TV station that he had also abused a second nephew but that he did not consider himself a paedophile.
Complete Article HERE!
Pope’s ex-butler Paolo Gabriele to stand trial
The former butler to Pope Benedict XVI will stand trial for stealing confidential papers and leaking them to the press, a magistrate has ruled.
Paolo Gabriele was arrested in May after police found confidential documents at his Vatican flat.
He has been charged with aggravated theft, including stealing a 100,000-euro (£78,000) cheque, while a computer analyst faces complicity charges.
The Vatican says it will continue to investigate the leaks.
Mr Gabriele admitted he was the source of leaked letters published in a controversial book by an Italian investigative journalist in May.
The bestseller, entitled His Holiness, revealed private correspondence between the Pope and his personal secretary discussing corruption and malpractice among Vatican administrators.
The Vatican called the book “criminal” and vowed to take legal action against the author, publisher, and whoever leaked the documents.
‘Evil everywhere’
Mr Gabriele told investigators he acted because he saw “evil and corruption everywhere in the church” while the pope was “not sufficiently informed”.
As the Pope’s butler and personal assistant, Mr Gabriele was one of a select few lay people with access to the papal apartments.
If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison.
The 46-year-old has been living under house arrest at his family’s flat in Vatican City, where police discovered a stash of confidential correspondence taken from the Pope’s Secretariat of State.
As the Vatican has no jail, Mr Gabriele would probably serve his sentence in an Italian prison under an agreement between Italy and the Vatican, Italian media reported.
The Pop’s butler Paolo Gabriele sits in the Popemobile on 18 April 2012 Mr Gabriele had worked as the Pope’s personal valet since 2006
The Holy See also accuses Vatican employee Claudio Sciarpelletti, a computer analyst and programmer, of acting as Mr Gabriele’s accomplice.
He has been charged with aiding and abetting a crime.
The trial is not expected to start until October at the earliest, court officials said.
Scapegoat theory
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Pope, as the sovereign head of Vatican City, could intervene at any time to stop the trial or pardon Mr Gabriele.
The BBC’s David Willey, in Rome, says some Vatican observers believe Mr Gabriele may be the scapegoat for a wider conspiracy to smear certain of the Pope’s top aides.
The highly sensitive media leaks, dubbed “Vatileaks”, have been an evident embarrassment to the Pope, prompting the rare investigation, our correspondent says.
The scandal has dominated the columns of Italian newspapers, filling TV programmes and magazines.
The controversy began in January, when investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published letters from a former top Vatican administrator begging the Pope not to transfer him for having exposed alleged corruption.
Other leaked documents concerned “poison pen” memos criticising Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s number two, and the reporting of suspicious payments by the Vatican Bank.
Complete Article HERE!
Monsignor Is Caught in a Lie as Diocese Backs Out of Selling Property to a Gay Couple
–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry
The following story is a cautionary tale about how far some Catholic officials will go to dissociate themselves from marriage equality. It’s also a cautionary tale about lying and diligently checking to whom you may be forwarding an email.
Dianne Williamson, a columnist for Massachusetts’ Worcester Telegram, reports that when a gay couple offered to buy a mansion for sale from the Diocese of Worcester, they were rejected as buyers. A mistakenly forwarded email to the couple reveals that the diocese was concerned that the new owners might use the building to host gay weddings. Moreover, a diocesan official has been caught in a lie to the newspaper about why the diocese refused the sale.
Williamson’s column begins:
“It’s bad enough that the Catholic Church discriminates against gay people. But it’s poor form — and possibly illegal — to document the bigotry and then mistakenly email it to the victims.
“This embarrassing etiquette lapse occurred as James Fairbanks and Alain Beret were pursuing the purchase of Oakhurst, a 44-bedroom mansion in Northbridge, owned by the Diocese of Worcester. Fairbanks and Beret had searched for two years for the perfect renovation project, and hoped to turn the run-down estate into a banquet facility. Previously, the pair had transformed mansions in Vermont and Barre into similar businesses.”
The diocese originally seemed very happy to sell the building, going so far as to suggest a lower bid because of renovations that had been done. But after they rejected the deal which was in progress, Williamson called a diocesan official to get an explanation:
“This week, Monsignor Thomas Sullivan, who oversees the sale of diocesan property, told me the deal fell through because of financing.
“ ‘They couldn’t come up with the money,’ he said. ‘This happens all the time.’
“I told him the potential buyers believed that he rejected the deal because of their sexual orientation, or the prospect of gay marriages someday being performed at Oakhurst. Was that an issue?
“ ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Msgr. Sullivan said. ‘It was an issue of them not having the financing. That was all.’
“As noted, if you’re going to discriminate, you should cover your tracks. Inadvertently attached to the email rejecting the counter offer is an email from Msgr. Sullivan to the diocesan broker:
‘I just went down the hall and discussed it with the bishop,’ Msgr. Sullivan wrote. ‘Because of the potentiality of gay marriages there, something you shared with us yesterday, we are not interested in going forward with these buyers. I think they’re shaky anyway. So, just tell them that we will not accept their revised plan and the Diocese is making new plans for the property. You find the language.’ ”
Fairbanks and Beret are now planning to sue the diocese; in Massachusetts it is illegal to refuse to sell because of a purchaser’s sexual orientation.
An added wrinkle in this story is that the Oakhurst mansion had previously been used as a treatment center for pedophile priests, but had been closed because of allegations of sexual abuse and financial mismanagement:
“Speaking of reprehensible, Oakhurst is perhaps best known as the former House of Affirmation, a treatment home for pedophile priests, which closed amid scandal in the late 1980s. Ironically, Beret was willing to overlook that history; he’s a devout Christian who at one time studied for the priesthood.
“ ‘I have plenty of sins,’ Beret said. ‘But being gay isn’t one of them. This is not a fight I wanted to pick. But for the sake of my dignity, I’m not walking away.’ ”
Complete Article HERE!
Cardinal George says mayor overstepped with Chick-fil-A remarks
Here is the pot calling out the kettle… This man has no shame!
Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago says the city’s mayor showed contempt for many residents’ beliefs by stating that Chick-fil-A’s stance on marriage was against “Chicago’s values.”
“Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the ‘values’ that must be held by citizens of Chicago,” the cardinal wrote in a July 29 online post, responding to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s assertion.
“I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval,” Cardinal George wrote.
He wondered: “Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a ‘Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities’ and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it?”
“I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, ‘un-Chicagoan.’”
The cardinal made his remarks on the Catholic Chicago blog after the mayor ventured into an ongoing controversy about the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain.
Many homosexual “marriage” advocates took offense at company president Dan Cathy’s support for “the biblical definition of the family unit” in a recent interview.
During a July 30 press conference, Mayor Emanuel said he stood by his July 25 statement that was interpreted by some as supporting a plan to bar the restaurant from the city’s First Ward.
After Alderman Proco Moreno said he would block the restaurant’s plan to open a new location, Emanuel issued a statement saying that “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”
“They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents,” the mayor stated. “This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”
But a spokesman for the mayor told NBC 5 Chicago that Emanuel did not intend to stop Chick-fil-A from opening, despite his conviction that the Christian-run company’s values were not those of the city.
In Monday’s remarks, the mayor appeared to identify the city’s “values” with government policy on homosexual unions, saying: “When it comes to values, there’s a policy as it relates to gay marriage. The values of our city are ones that welcome and recognize that, and I will continue to fight for that.”
Emanuel’s statement also appeared to identify civil unions – which Illinois implemented in 2011 – with homosexual “marriage,” which has never been instituted in the state. The mayor personally supports a measure to redefine marriage, which was introduced in February but has stalled in the legislature.
In his response to the mayor on Sunday, Cardinal George spoke out on behalf of Catholics, and others, whose “values” do not include what he called “gender-free marriage.”
The cardinal stressed that authentic marriage exists prior to any decree of the state or Church, due to the complementarity of the two sexes and their procreative potential.
The natural definition of marriage is not “bigotry,” nor is it unique to a particular religion, he said.
“People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life,” Cardinal George noted. “The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage.”
But the Chicago archbishop also pointed to Jesus Christ’s teaching on marriage in the Gospel of Matthew, in which the Lord affirms marriage as the unbreakable union of a man and woman as “one flesh.”
The citation prompted him to pose a question as to whether Jesus’ own “values” were still welcome in Chicago by Mayor Emanuel’s standards.
“Was Jesus a bigot?” he asked. “Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan?”
To answer your question, Francis; Jesus wan’t a bigot. But the same can’t be said about you. Sheesh!
Complete Article HERE!