Cardinal was in physical relationship with accuser

Cardinal Keith O’Brien had a long-standing physical relationship with one of the men whose complaints about his behaviour sparked his downfall as leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

The man left the priesthood in the middle of the last decade but rejoined and is living on the continent in a post the cardinal helped him secure.

Cardinal-O-Brien-and-Pope-Benedict-XVIThe complainant is known to have been in regular telephone contact with Cardinal O’Brien until recently and was a frequent visitor to St Benets, his official residence in Edinburgh’s Morningside.

It is understood the cardinal confessed to the relationship after it was recently revealed there had been several complaints to the Vatican about his sexual behaviour towards priests in the 1980s. It is thought to be part of his reference to his sexual conduct as “a priest, a bishop and a cardinal”.

It also emerged the dramatic downfall of Britain’s leading Catholic cleric was spurred by gay priests angry at his rhetoric and hypocrisy about same-sex marriages.

All those who complained about Cardinal O’Brien and alleged they had been abused by him were known to him for decades. At least two are known to have been in same-sex relationships and had become exasperated at double standards in his statements about gay marriage.

In the six months building up to him being forced to stand down last month, the cardinal had been under some pressure from priests to tone down the rhetoric.

However, his statements, such as describing homosexuality as a “moral degradation”, were a tipping point for those previously close to him.

The first complainant alleged an assault in the Vatican on the day Cardinal O’Brien was made a cardinal. He is living outside Scotland, having taken temporary leave from the church. He was given leave of absence from the Diocese of Aberdeen and is understood to be in a relationship with an Anglican churchman.

This complaint, made in September 2012 and known among some members of the Catholic clergy in Scotland beforehand and immediately afterwards, led to the four others lodging their own complaints with the Vatican.

The man was due to speak to The Herald but is understood to have taken advice not to do so by his bishop.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “The priest concerned is a priest of the diocese of Aberdeen currently on a leave of absence from parish ministry.”

One senior church figure said that while some fundamentalist Catholic groups had previously linked the priest with Cardinal O’Brien “there were many questions that others were asking about the relationship”.

Another source said: “These guys, we now know, were part of an inner circle. In the 30 years since these allegations took place there’s been ample time to complain. The Cardinal has had a huge profile for the past decade. But the door wasn’t just shut on them, it was bolted in the past 18 months.

“I believe they wanted to silence O’Brien – as he’s about to do another conclave, and make a huge deal of it. As he’s retiring, a decision’s been taken to go public and take him down.”

Another said: “If you’re asking me to describe what this is about in one word, it’s revenge. I’ve no doubt the allegations did take place in the 1980s but they’ve come out to – destroy O’Brien.”

One clerical source said: “I can’t answer for those who have complained and it could well be that their reaction [to the anti-gay rhetoric] was at the heart of this. I thought his words were very harsh and I’m not alone in that. There certainly were those who were close to the Cardinal, an inner circle.

“One particular priest was a very close friend of the Cardinal. It seemed to some to be a very unusual friendship.”

A Catholic Church spokesman said: “Some clergy were not in favour of Church efforts to persuade the Scottish Government against same-sex marriage.

“It is also the case that objections were raised to Cardinal O’Brien’s robust rhetoric.

“A number of complaints about Cardinal O’Brien were passed directly to the Vatican. Whether they were precipitated by his comments on homosexuality is not known, since the detail and nature of the complaints were not shared with the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland.”

Complete Article HERE!

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 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!

Flocks and shepherds

As a conclave gathers to elect a pope, many in the Catholic church want change

St Basil

WANTED: man of God; good at languages; preferably under 75; extensive pastoral experience; no record of covering up clerical sex abuse, deeply spiritual and, mentally, tough as old boots. It is a lot to ask, but that is the emerging profile of the man many of his fellow-cardinals would like to see replace Benedict XVI as the next pope.

On March 4th the princes of the church began a series of preliminary “general congregations”, the first step to electing a pontiff. They have much to discuss. After four sessions, they had still not—as expected—fixed a date for the Conclave, the electoral college, made up of cardinals below the age of 80, which will actually choose the next pope.

The papal spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the members of the general congregation, who include older cardinals, are not “hurrying things”. By March 6th, when they adjourned, the assembly had heard 51 speeches. As Father Lombardi tactfully put it, they spoke “freely and with rather effective colour”. That is code for candour—even bluntness. Indeed, given the crises the church faces, delicacy might seem remiss.

The procedure is usually to identify the main threats facing the church and then find the cardinal best able to deal with them. Of the subjects cited by Father Lombardi, half concerned the Vatican itself. Deeper questions include the loss of religious faith in Europe; the challenge from evangelical Protestantism in Latin America; persecution of Christians in the Middle East and clerical sex abuse. But none is as pressing as the turmoil in the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration.

Benedict, intellectually fearless yet personally timid, was unable to keep order. Many in Rome believe that was the true reason for his departure. The Curia has become a battleground. Prelates loyal to the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who in many cases were appointed by him or come from his native region of Piedmont, are at furious odds with papal diplomats who resented the appointment of a secretary of state with no knowledge of their business. Other feuds abound too. The leaking of documents by the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, though apparently motivated by genuine dismay at decisions taken in the Vatican, was entwined with this venomous plotting and squabbling.

Following the will of God
The findings of an investigative panel of three cardinals will cast a long shadow over the conclave. Last month an Italian newspaper wrote of a ring of gay prelates, some being blackmailed by outsiders. In the first general congregation, three cardinals—reportedly all Europeans—demanded (in vain) access to the findings. If the report will indeed be kept secret until it is handed to the new pope, it is unclear who made that decision. Secrecy fosters suspicions that the contents are dreadful.

The episode may also strengthen the resolve of the mainly English- and German-speaking cardinals who want a vigorous pope to clean up the Curia. This was last reformed under Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978. Cardinal George Pell, the burly archbishop of Sydney, said he wanted “a strategist, a decision-maker, a planner, somebody who has got strong pastoral capacities already demonstrated so that he can take a grip of the situation.”

For I have sinned

Among those watching the decision making in Rome with apprehension, fear and optimism is the Catholic priesthood. In many countries, their declining and ageing ranks are beset by the revelation of past scandals—both at the parish and at the top. This week Scotland’s most senior cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, admitted that his sexual conduct at times “has fallen below the standards” expected of him. A radio interview by his former counterpart in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, marked by a nervous laugh and opaque language, compounded the ire.

Victims of sexual abuse believe the reckoning has barely begun. They want not just proper investigation, but apologies and punishments—and in some cases cash. For them, Benedict exemplified the secretive, cautious response that aggravated the misconduct. It will be hard for any new pope to meet their expectations.

Along with frustrations of church politics and shame about misconduct, attendance at mass is falling. In America it has declined by over a third since 1960. In Britain data from the 2011 census show a similar trend, with numbers of Christians down 12 percentage points since 2001. Average Sunday attendance has fallen for the past 20 years. In mostly Catholic Italy only 39% attend on a monthly basis.

But parish life goes on. Timothy Radcliffe, the former head of the Dominican order, says priests are mostly happy, albeit overstretched. After a peak of 110 vocations in England and Wales in 1996, the figure dropped to a mere 19 in 2006. But this year 38 ordinations are expected. In a reversal of the old days of Western missionaries, many were born overseas. Father Stephen Wang, of Allen Hall seminary in London, counts men from Africa, India and Australia in this year’s cohort of 54.

Movements such as “Youth 2000” and World Youth Day encourage vocations through what has been called “evangelical Catholicism”, says Father Wang, in which the faith is “more confident” about presenting itself. Traditionalist groups such as the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter or the Institute of Christ the King are attracting younger members. The provost of the Brompton Oratory, a traditionalist church in central London, is Father Julian Large, a 43-year-old former journalist who draws a youthful following.

The brighter shore

In some respects the woes of the church in the West seem far away from the parts of the world where it is thriving. In a leafy sanctuary from the heat and frenzy of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s biggest city, Father Aurel da Silva sits under a tree on the tidy front lawn of a monastery. On the wall behind him hangs an oversize portrait of Michel Nielly, who a half-century ago established it as a beachhead for the Dominican order. Today it houses some 30 seminarians from across the region and its small wooden chapel attracts Abidjan’s elites for Sunday mass.

Near the guardhouse, employees raise money for local charities by selling mushrooms that grow in the monastery’s garden. Ceramic water filters distributed to the poor are also displayed prominently. A pink leaflet posted on a bulletin board advertises job-training programmes for unemployed youth. When violence engulfed Côte d’Ivoire after its disputed 2010 presidential election, the towering St Paul’s cathedral in the heart of Abidjan sheltered nearly 2,000 people.

The rapidly growing African Catholic church, says Father da Silva, has great ambitions as a social force. But autonomy must be the watchword. The doctrinal debates and papal intrigue in Rome hardly concern him. “I haven’t spent time in Rome, but I don’t need to,” he says. “What I do here is more important.”

Some of his seminarians have softer attitudes to the Vatican, but they insist that the church’s social message is secondary: spirituality comes first. The African church is no hotbed of liberalism. Its leading contender for the papacy, the Ghanaian cardinal Peter Turkson, is widely regarded as a conservative in the mold of Benedict.

But one of Father da Silva’s older colleagues stakes out a more radical position. The church must evolve, he says. His priorities are: the end of clerical celibacy, women’s ordination, and, above all, greater tolerance for dissent: “You have to accept other people’s way of thinking.”

Those views chime across continents and oceans. In the beautiful, desolate west of Ireland is the village of Moygownagh, the home parish of Father Brendan Hoban. He is a co-founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, which aspires to represent the 2m Irish people who attend mass at least once a month. It is campaigning for an end to celibacy, “inclusive ministry” (code for women priests) and a rethinking of sexual teaching, especially on contraception.

Nearly a quarter of Ireland’s 4,500 priests (and probably a higher share of its able-bodied, energetic ones) has joined. It is in touch with similar bodies in Austria, where a grass-roots initiative among priests incurred a papal rebuke last year, as well as France, the Czech Republic, Australia and the United States.

The Irish association has special credibility. It speaks for a country where the hierarchy is reeling from horrific revelations about abuse in church-run institutions and clerical cover-ups, but where the population, despite the onrush of secularism, remains relatively pious by the standards of the rich world.

The village exemplifies both the crisis and strength of Irish Catholicism. Half of its residents attend weekly mass and most of the remainder look to the church for rites of passage, from first communion to anniversary masses for the dead. Despite the recession, generous donations are paying for church refurbishment.

Moygownagh belongs to a small diocese with 32 priests serving 22 parishes; that number sounds high, and it reflects a flood of vocations in the 1960s and 1970s. But only seven priests are under 55. Father Hoban is nearly 65. When he retires, he expects that the village will be left without a priest of its own for the first time in centuries. In his parents’ time, he recalls, a local farming family would be proud if a son joined the priesthood. Now, he says, even a “faithful Catholic family might panic” if a son announced a similar vocation. “They would feel he was embarking on a life of stress, isolation and low social prestige.”

Almost all the church’s recent woes can be ascribed, in Father Hoban’s view, to the top-down decision-making which has marked the past two papacies. Like many Catholic liberals, he feels that the trouble started when the church hierarchy hijacked the devolutionary reforms of the second Vatican council and blocked change or implemented it badly.

The result, viewed from an Irish village, is that “Rome doesn’t listen to the national bishops; the bishops don’t tell Rome the truth because Rome doesn’t want to hear it; the bishops don’t listen to the priests, the priests haven’t listened enough to the people.” With lay involvement, the child-abuse cover-ups would not have happened. He does not want the church to be “literally democratic”, but nor should it “preserve structures inherited from the Roman empire.”

What do priests of his school expect from the conclave? “In some ways we don’t hope for that much, because all the cardinals have been appointed under the present order. But we hope that some can see the dysfunctionality of the Vatican in its present form…the cardinals need to bite the bullet and appoint somebody who can challenge the Curia.”

Complete Article HERE!