Tag: Vatican

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Whiff of scandal clouds Pope ceremony in Vatican

Pope Benedict XVI will place red hats on the heads of 22 new cardinals on Saturday amid an atmosphere of scandal-mongering, rumour and media leaks from inside the Vatican.

The leaks concern alleged internal divisions and even malpractice among the senior bishops and cardinals at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church.

Most of the new cardinals will be granted the right to take part in the election of Pope Benedict’s successor.

It is the fourth Vatican Consistory since Benedict was elected Pope seven years ago, and is being held to bring the College of Cardinals to its full electoral quorum of 120, after deaths and age disqualifications depleted its numbers.

It must be the world’s oldest exclusively male club – the average age of members is 78.

The Italian contingent will grow to almost a quarter of the total – more than that of any other country and making it more likely that the next pope will be Italian, after the choice of a Pole and Benedict – a German – in recent decades.

The Pope’s Italian aide, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has been instrumental in pushing Italians for promotion.

Key appointments among the new cardinals are the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, and the Bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong Hon.

During Saturday’s ceremony Pope Benedict is due to announce the date for the canonisation of the first Native American saint, a Mohawk girl called Kateri Tekakwitha who lived in the 17th Century.

Corruption allegations
In the run-up to this Consistory it emerged that the Pope’s current ambassador (nuncio) to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, had written to the Pope confidentially last March, alleging corruption, nepotism and cronyism inside the office where he worked.

Elderly men dominate the College of Cardinals
Nepotism is a word charged with heavy meaning inside the Vatican. For centuries popes were accustomed to appoint their own nephews as cardinals, sometimes when they were only in their teens.

Archbishop Vigano’s letter was leaked by an Italian investigative journalist during a TV transmission on the independent Italian Channel La Sette. The Vatican has not contested that the letter is genuine.

Another leak concerns attempts by the Holy See to combat suspicions of money-laundering by the Vatican Bank.

Published by the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, which has consistently reported on alleged suspicious transactions at the bank, the document bears the signature of Cardinal Attilio Nicora. He heads a new internal committee tasked by the Pope with helping the Holy See comply with international banking regulations, aimed at combating international financial crime.

The letter suggests serious divisions of opinion inside the Vatican over how best to prevent it becoming a fiscal paradise, a tax haven for dodgy commercial operations run by nominees who have no right to hold accounts at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

Whistleblowers criticised
During the 1980s the IOR – the formal name of the Vatican Bank – was at the centre of a major international financial scandal which resulted in a loss for the Vatican of $250m (£158m). Vatican Bank accounts are supposed to be held only by religious orders and members of the clergy.

The Vatican’s own daily newspaper Osservatore Romano wrote in a recent editorial that officials who revealed sensitive internal documents were “wolves” and that Pope Benedict was ready to stand up to their “irresponsible and undignified behaviour”.

The Pope’s spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, compared the leaks to America’s Wikileaks scandal and said they were intended to show the Vatican and its central government in a bad light.

The Pope himself appeared to refer to the poisonous atmosphere prevailing inside the frescoed halls of the Vatican this winter, when he told local Rome seminarians training to become priests: “There is a lot of talk about the Church, a lot of things being said. Let us hope there is also talk about our faith!”

Money clearly preoccupies the men currently running the Catholic Church.

A closed-door meeting of an internal Vatican watchdog finance committee this week formally expressed concern at the prevailing crisis, “which has not spared even the general economic system of the Vatican”.

While promising to “improve the administration of the goods and resources of the Holy See” the committee called upon the world’s 1.3 billion Catholic faithful to dig deeper into their pockets to continue funding the Vatican.

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican paper brands leakers irresponsible “wolves”

The Vatican newspaper on Wednesday suggested those responsible for revealing sensitive internal documents alleging corruption and a cover-up were irresponsible, undignified “wolves,” the latest twist in what has become known as “Vatileaks.”

But an editorial in the Osservatore Romano, while renewing criticism of some media handling of the scandal, also said that the Catholic Church should see the current image crisis as a chance to purify itself.

It was the latest chapter in a saga in which the Vatican has had to scramble to deal with what one spokesman called its own version of “Wikileaks” and what the Italian media have dubbed “Vatileaks.” It also coincided with the publication of new leaks about the Vatican bank.

The editorial was ostensibly to mark the 30th anniversary of the arrival in Rome from Germany of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected pope in 2005, to take up the powerful post as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer.

But in a section about current events, it described the pope as a man who “is not stopped by wolves” and that he was ready to stand up to “irresponsible and undignified behavior.”

A senior Vatican official familiar with the newspaper’s editorial line, asked if that part of the editorial which referred to wolves was criticizing those who have leaked the documents, said “even them” and added: “They certainly are not boy scouts.”

From leaked letters by an archbishop who was transferred after he blew the whistle on what he saw as a web of corruption and cronyism, to a leaked poison pen memo which puts a number of cardinals in a bad light, to new suspicions about its bank, Vatican spokesmen have had their work cut out responding.

But the editorial said the Church should see the entire episode, which some say is part of a power struggle inside the Vatican, as an opportunity for renewal.

The “irresponsible and undignified behavior,” the editorial said, “winds up becoming intertwined with the noise of the media, which is inevitable and certainly not disinterested, but which we need to see as an occasion for purification in the Church.”

EMBARRASSING LEAKS

The flurry of leaks has come at an embarrassing time – just before a usually joyful ceremony this week known as a consistory, when Benedict will admit more prelates into the College of Cardinals, the exclusive men’s club that will one day pick the next Roman Catholic leader from among their own ranks.

The latest image crisis began last month when an Italian television investigative show broadcast private letters to Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former deputy governor of Vatican City and currently the Vatican ambassador in Washington.

The letters showed that Vigano was transferred after he exposed what he argued was a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to contractors at inflated prices.

Other leaks centre on the Vatican bank, which is trying to put past scandals behind it. They include the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano in a tangle of lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafias and the mysterious 1982 death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi – “God’s banker.”

The Vatican bank, formally known at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), aims to comply fully with EU standards on financial transparency in order to make Europe’s “white list” by June.

But the Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper which has published most of the leaked documents about the Vatican bank, ran more confidential letters on Wednesday which it said pointed to an internal clash over just how transparent the bank should be about its past dealings.

Complete Article HERE!

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Top priest banished

A disgraced Harlem priest who arranged Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 Mass at Yankee Stadium has been sentenced to “a life of prayer and penance” by the Vatican for his alleged molestation of up to 10 kids decades ago.

Wallace Harris, the former popular pastor of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, also now by order of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is living in a Catholic-run residence “under very, very close supervision,” said Dolan’s spokesman Joseph Zwilling last night.

Zwilling pointedly said that Harris — once the archdiocese’s top-ranking black priest and chairman of the senate representing all of the archdiocese’s priests — is not living in a location near families, and is barred from ever publicly acting as a priest.

In 2008, Harris, 64, both gave the invocation at former Gov. David Paterson’s and arranged for the Pope’s triumphant Mass in Yankee Stadium.
But months later, he was suspended from St. Charles Borromeo by the archdiocese after two men claimed he had molested them at the now-closed Cathedral Preparatory High School and College in the 1980s. Seven more men — including a retired NYPD cop — later made similar accusations against him to the Manhattan DAs office.

No charges were ever brought because the statute of limitations had expired.
But in 2010, Harris officially resigned and was barred by Dolan from presenting himself publicly as a priest.

Recently, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved the recommendation of the archdiocese’s review board and assigned Harris to “a life of prayer and penance.”
“He did not fight it,” Zwilling said.
That ruling was first reported by Catholic New York, the archdiocese’s official newspaper.

The Congregation’s action fell short of laicizing — commonly called defrocking — Harris, which would have totally stripped him of his priesthood and returned him to lay status.

By leaving him technically a priest — albeit one who can only say Mass for himself — the Congregation kept him under the direct authority of Dolan, whose orders he must obey or face further discipline.

Robert Hoatson, a former New Jersey Catholic priest who has been a harsh critic of the church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases, blasted the decision, saying, “Msgr. Wallace Harris should be defrocked by the Vatican and Cardinal-designate Dolan should petition the Holy Father to do so.”
“The many victims who have already come forward to report their abuse by Harris deserve better,” Hoatson said. “By relegating Harris to a life of prayer and penance, the Vatican is sending a message that he will never truly be held accountable for his extensive and despicable abuse of young men.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican prosecutor warns bishops to follow church law on child abuse

This is perfect!  “I’m not saying that we should start punishing everybody for any negligence in his duties. But … it is not acceptable that when there are set standards, people do not follow the set standards.”  Talking tough, but there will be no consequences unless you’re caught red handed.

Vatican prosecutor bluntly warned Catholic bishops Wednesday that they could be disciplined if they do not follow church law and standards when managing priests who have abused children.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna, who handles sex crime prosecutions for the Vatican, told reporters that bishops would be held accountable under church law for how they deal with abusive clerics.

“It is a crime in canon law to show malicious or fraudulent negligence in the exercise of one’s duty,” Scicluna told journalists, according to an Associated Press report. “I’m not saying that we should start punishing everybody for any negligence in his duties. But … it is not acceptable that when there are set standards, people do not follow the set standards.”

It’s a familiar topic for Catholics in Kansas City, where Bishop Robert W. Finn and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph are facing misdemeanor charges in Jackson County for purportedly not reporting suspicions of child abuse by the Rev. Shawn Ratigan.

Finn and lawyers representing the diocese have entered not-guilty pleas to the charges, and trial is scheduled for September.

Scicluna is participating in Rome at a four-day church conference on child abuse that concludes today.

His tough new talk of church discipline for bishops raises a curtain on a church legal system of which even Catholics may only be vaguely aware.

Canon law, the church’s own regulatory system, generally comes to mind only when a Catholic seeks an annulment. It is, however, a legal system that traces its history back well more than 1,000 years.

Canon lawyers say church law complements civil law on child sexual abuse and dictates how clergy are to properly respond to such reports.

Lawyers with an interest in the myriad court cases spawned by the Kansas City scandal occasionally have used canon law to explain how and why the church is responding to its new legal quagmire.

Former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, who was commissioned by the diocese to study the church’s handling of the Ratigan case, recognized the importance of canon law. He devoted more than 10 pages of his report, which was released two months before charges were filed, to an explanation of church law.

But canon law should not be viewed as a religious mystery, one expert said recently.

Nicholas Cafardi, former general counsel for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, dismissed a notion recently making the rounds among Kansas City lawyers that the diocese could not resolve its case through a plea agreement because the diocese — as an expression of the “Body of Christ” — could not make the required admissions.

“The canon is not a theological document,” Cafardi said. “ ‘The Body of Christ’ is a great theological concept, but it doesn’t do anything for us legally. We don’t want to use theological concepts to create legal relationships.”

The law and the church

Codified in the 12th century and extensively revised twice in the 20th century, canon law set out the structure of church governance, defined the responsibilities of clerics and established a legal system with rights, standards of evidence and expectations for church lawyers, judges and prosecutors.

The church laws most directly applicable to the U.S. church on child abuse issues are known, in shorthand, as the “Essential Norms.” U.S. bishops crafted the norms in 2002, and the Vatican quickly recognized them as binding church law.

Cafardi noted that church law is in almost complete harmony with secular law in dictating how the diocese and its leaders are to handle child abuse cases.

“There’s nothing in the Code of Canon Law that says you are relieved of your responsibilities under civil law,” Cafardi said.

Under the norms, clerics are required to report child abuse to civil authorities and then cooperate with their investigation.

Other canon lawyers said that if Kansas City clerics were confused or uncertain if they should have reported Ratigan under civil law, canon law made their responsibilities clear.

Just seven months before Ratigan’s laptop, allegedly containing disturbing photographs of naked girls, landed on the desk of a chancery official, Pope Benedict XVI said child pornography was an act of sexual abuse of a minor.

Under canon law, a church official with evidence of that crime must trigger the diocese’s child abuse investigation and reporting programs, including calls to civil investigators, experts said.

In the early days of the Ratigan scandal, Monsignor Robert Murphy, Finn’s second in command, delayed notifying civil authorities until he had obtained narrow legal opinions that the images were not pornographic, according to the Graves report.

Patrick Wall, a canon lawyer and former Catholic priest, said that even before soliciting the legal opinions, Murphy was obligated under church law to make the report.

Because Murphy was asking questions about child pornography, he clearly was aware that it could have been present on Ratigan’s computer, Wall said.

“According to the law the Vatican established, he needed to call the cops, tell … Bishop Finn and start the process,” Wall said.

A lawyer representing Murphy declined to comment. He has not been charged in the case.

Though Finn has received unprecedented scrutiny from civil authorities for his handling of the Ratigan case, the scrutiny he faces within the church remains a mystery to the public.

He could get feedback on his work in the diocese next month when he and other regional bishops travel to Rome to meet with the pope and other church leaders. Though hardly routine, such visits are required under canon law.

And though bishops answer only to the pope, the pontiff has, relatively recently, assigned some oversight responsibilities to another church authority.

In a May 2010 update of church child abuse laws, Benedict gave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the authority to judge cardinals and bishops, as well as priests and deacons. That congregation, once known as the Inquisition, has been a powerful enforcer of church discipline since the 16th century. Scicluna serves the congregation as its promoter of justice.

Thomas Doyle, a priest and canon lawyer who once worked for the pope’s ambassador to Washington, said the congregation’s new authority is intriguing.

“They do have the authority to judge bishops now,” Doyle said. “How they’re going to apply that is going to be very interesting.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Survivor urges papal apology for protection of abusers

IT WOULD be “wonderful” if Pope Benedict publicly sought forgiveness for church leaders who put loyalty to their institution ahead of children’s safety, clerical sex abuse survivor Marie Collins told an audience in Rome.

Addressing a press conference to promote “Towards Healing and Renewal”, a four-day symposium being held this week at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the city, Ms Collins conceded it had not been easy to accept an invitation to attend the church-run event.

Pointing an accusatory finger at Irish primate Cardinal Seán Brady, she said: “We know that among the many reasons for the anger of survivors is that despite apologies for the actions of the abusers, there have been few apologies for the protection given to them by their superiors.

“There seems to be a lack of a penalty for any of these men in leadership who deliberately or negligently covered up for these abusers, letting them continue to abuse new victims unhindered . . . We have an example of this in our own cardinal primate.”

Ms Collins did not go into further detail but the remark was an apparent reference to the 1975 canonical inquiry in which Cardinal Brady, then a priest, took part, and during which two child victims of paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth were allegedly sworn to secrecy.

Ironically, Cardinal Brady will be attending this week’s symposium as the representative of the Irish Bishops’ Conference.

More than 100 bishops and 30 religious superiors from across the Catholic world will attend this week’s unprecedented event which officially opens tonight with an address by the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, US Cardinal William Levada, on “Sexual Abuse of Minors – a Multifaceted Response to the Challenge”.

One of the curious aspects of this week’s symposium is that it seems to sit in a “no-man’s land”, halfway between the Holy See and Roman clerical academia.

After all, strictly speaking, the symposium is not a Holy See initiative. However, it is significant that many senior Vatican figures, such as Cardinal Levada and Msgr Charles Scicluna of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are in attendance.

Likewise, senior Vatican “departments” have all been involved in preparing the symposium.

In addition, Friday’s opening press conference was addressed by the Holy See’s senior spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, who told reporters he hoped the event would represent a “broadening of horizons” for participants as well as a “step forward on the journey to reconciliation and renewal”.

Emblematic of the intended spirit of the symposium will be a penitential vigil in St Ignatius Church tomorrow night, attended by victims and churchmen and presided over by Canadian archbishop Marc Ouillet, prefect for the Congregation of Bishops.

Fr Hans Zollner, head of the organising committee, stressed the importance of the contribution of Ms Collins, saying on Vatican Radio yesterday: “One of the aims of this symposium is to let the victims be heard. It is very difficult to find people who are able and willing to speak in public of their pain and suffering. We have found this Irishwoman [Marie Collins] who is willing to talk to the symposium participants.

“This represents something very important. It is very important for those attending the symposium that they hear the voice of pain and suffering. This is a very important sign.”

Complete Article HERE!