ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
NBC News

By Alastair Jamieson, Staff writer, NBC News

ROME — The abdication of Pope Benedict XVI is a move of global magnitude, but it is causing even bigger waves in Italy, where some experts believe the blanket media coverage could thwart the political comeback of Silvio Berlusconi.

The disgraced former prime minister is seeking a return to the spotlight by leading a center-right alliance in this month’s elections, triggered by the resignation of his successor, Mario Monti.

Berlusconi’s alliance is behind in the polls, not least because of the impending “bunga bunga” court case, where he is accused of paying for sex with an underage nightclub dancer.

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CANADA
CBC News

All bets are off in Quebec as to whether a local will become the next pope.

The provincial lottery commission said it will not follow the lead of some foreign gambling houses that allow people to place bets on who will be the successor for Pope Benedict XVI.

The organization is not swayed by the fact that fellow Quebecer Marc Cardinal Ouellet happens to be the odds-on favourite as well as one of the betting houses’ top picks.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Pope Benedict XVI will lose his infallibility – his supreme authority in Church matters – as soon he steps down on February 28, the Vatican says as it struggles to explain a virtually unprecedented situation.

“These powers go with the office, so they will pass to the next pope…. Whoever renounces no longer has the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide the Universal Church,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at a briefing.

The issue is complex for many Catholics who believe the election of a pope is divinely inspired and are accustomed to popes remaining in office until death.

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NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

By Robert Gavin

Updated 8:20 am, Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Here is the column Yaakov Weiss does not want you to read.

The 32-year-old suspended Orthodox rabbi from Colonie recently reached a $6,000 settlement with the family of one of the two youths he victimized in 2007 when they were 13.

The settlement resolved a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit against Weiss — who, in January 2010, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment for what he admitted was “inappropriate physical contact” with the boys on Whitehall Road. The crime took place at a mikveh, a bath used in Judaism for ritual immersion.

Weiss, former director of Chabad of Colonie, received 60 days in jail for his crime in 2010, but he still faced a civil lawsuit filed by the families of both victims.

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UNITED STATES
Raw Story

By Ben Child, The Guardian
Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney suggests Pope Benedict XVI’s departure stems from recent sex scandals

Oscar-winning film-maker Alex Gibney, whose documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God details a small part of the current wave of accusations surrounding the Catholic church, has suggested that the Pope’s resignation stems from the stain of recent sex scandals.

Gibney, whose film is out in the UK on Friday, told the Hollywood Reporter that the departure of Benedict XVI had brought great solace to people who had suffered abuse at the hands of priests. “His papacy will always be saddled with the stain of the sex abuse crisis,” he said, adding that the resignation “seems to me inextricably linked to the sex abuse crisis”.

Gibney’s film, which screened in the US on the HBO pay-TV channel last week, examines the case of five deaf men who were abused as boys by one predatory priest at the St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee during the 1960s. Despite taking their claims all the way to the Vatican in their quest for justice, they were consistently rebuffed. Benedict XVI, in his earlier capacity as Cardinal Ratzinger, was responsible for ordering all reports of sex abuse to be channelled through his office at the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, which he ran from 2001 to 2005.

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UNITED STATES
Richard Sipe

Nine of the 265 Roman Catholic popes have allegedly resigned their office, most for the good of the Church. The first according to the historian Epiphanius was Clement I around the year 100 C.E. The most recent was Gregory XII who abdicated the papal throne during the Council of Constance in 1417 to help settle the claims of three competitors for the papacy.

Benedict is a conflicted papal name. Two Pope Benedicts have resigned. In 964, after one month in office, Benedict V abdicated the papacy at the insistence of Emperor Otto I. Pope Benedict IX served three different terms between 1032 and 1048 when he resigned and was charged with simony and excommunicated by his successor Leo IX who instituted a concerted drive to purify the church of simony and concubinage.

There is no legitimate Benedict X in the line of papal succession. A “Benedict X” who acted as pope for nine months in 1058 was declared an anti-pope and excommunicated. The actual number of Pope Benedicts therefore is technically incorrect. Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI is actually only the fifteenth Pope Benedict.

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UNITED STATES
AMERICAblog

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk on-air with progressive talk show host Arnie Arnesen of WNHN, and after the show we began discussing the resignation of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. The resignation was sudden and almost unprecedented (the last voluntary resignation was in high medieval times).

There has since been lots of speculation about the cause (example here; another sample here). Benedict’s stated reason is his waning strength, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors. As Cardinal, Ratzinger was John Paul II’s enforcement officer — he rode herd on the many sex scandals and their “containment.” Was he involved in crimes of concealment? Almost certainly, but there’s little direct public evidence. Is there new explosive documentation that could lay the dead cat of scandal at his personal door? Nothing has been revealed so far that’s worse than what we’ve seen (search for “Munich”), and Ratzinger has weathered those storms.

Still, why so sudden? Is there something about the timing?

Fr. Marcial Maciel and the Rhode Island courts

At that point in our discussion Arnie pointed me to a couple of links I hadn’t seen involving a Rhode Island court case against the so-called “Legion of Christ,” a Catholic group with very close ties both to John Paul II and Ratzinger, and its notorious (and sexually prolific) founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel. I bring up Arnie Arnesen because she personally knows one of the principals in the lawsuit and has additional information. I’ll add her contribution below the news pieces.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 13 – The disgraced ex-butler of Pope Benedict XVI said he was “surprised” but not “amazed” by the Pope’s decision to resign, sources say. Paolo Gabriele, convicted of leaking papal secrets, has told friends that the Pope’s decision to step down as of February 28 may have stunned the world, but was not so shocking to him, sources have told ANSA. Gabriele, who was pardoned by the Pope and is now working as a clerk at St Paul’s hospital in Rome, was not speaking to reporters this week beyond saying hello to watching cameras. But friends say that he was aware of renovations at the monastery Mater Ecclesiae, where the Pope will retire next month, but assumed they were for a senior cleric.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Vinnie Nauheimer on February 13, 2013

What if you had the ability to undo egregious wrongs that affected hundreds of thousands of people worldwide would you, could you do it? What if there was only a sixteen day window for you to act? Would you find the time?

Pope Benedict XVI, you have just sixteen days to perform this wondrous task. You’ve heard all about the crimes. You’ve heard the pleas of survivors; they have haunted you since before you took the office of pope. They will haunt your legacy for eternity too if you pay no heed to this request. I’m begging you on behalf of survivors of clergy abuse and their families all around the world, set them free, hear the pleas, hear their suffering, take to heart their pain and publicize the global clergy abuse files regardless of the rank of the offending priest. Only you can alleviate the endless suffering of victims and their families by giving their suffering validity and naming their tormentors!

Whether you wanted it or not, God gave you the opportunity to change the church and put an end to the worldwide sexual abuse of children by priests and bishops. God has given you two opportunities, one as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the second as Pope Benedict XVI to clean up this evil mess festering within His church. In both instances, you have not been up to the task. Now with just days left before the voluntary end of your papacy, you have yet a third chance. We implore you, to summon the courage before God and man to do what you swore to do in assuming your position as a priest, protect the flock.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, February 13 – The Vatican’s bank will have a new boss within the next few days, despite the shock created by the pope’s resignation earlier this week, a spokesman said Wednesday. The hunt to find a replacement for the head of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the official name of the Vatican’s bank, is continuing successfully, said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office. “It’s likely that in the next days there will be the appointment of the president of the IOR,” Lombardi said two days after Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign as of February 28. “The process started a long time ago and I see no reason to stop due to the resignation of the pope”. The IOR has been without a president since May 2012 when its Italian head Ettore Gotti Tedeschi resigned, following a no-confidence vote by the board of directors of the bank. The job was temporarily filled by Vice-President Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz. Vatican experts have speculated that part of the reason Gotti Tedeschi’s split with the bank was over internal tensions linked to the bank’s efforts to get onto an international ‘white list’ of countries which are considered to have acceptable financial transparency laws.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | Tue Feb 12, 2013

(Reuters) – The Vatican has reached an agreement allowing the resumption of debit and credit card payments which Italian banking authorities had blocked within the tiny city state, the Vatican spokesman said on Tuesday.

“Credit card payments in the Vatican city state are once more activated,” Father Federico Lombardi told a news briefing.

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VATICAN CITY
Montreal Gazette

By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press February 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican says a new president of its embattled bank is expected to be announced within days.

The Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, has been without a leader since May, when its board ousted Italian banker Ettore Gotti Tedeschi for incompetence. It was a stunning move that came just as the Vatican was submitting its finances to a review by a Council of Europe committee in a bid to join the list of financially transparent countries.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Wednesday a new president would likely be named within the week.

The Vatican passed the Council of Europe Moneyval committee’s transparency test, but the IOR and the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency received failing grades. The new president will be tasked with bringing the IOR into compliance by Moneyval’s next review.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 February 2013 (VIS) – Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, presented the Holy Father’s activities up to 28 February.

Tomorrow, as announced in Tuesday’s briefing, Benedict XVI will meet with the Roman pastors in the Paul VI Hall. On the 15th he will receive, respectively, the “Pro Petri Sede” association and the president of Romania. On the 16th he will meet with the president of Guatemala. On those same days he will meet with the Italian bishops from Liguria and Lombardy on their ‘ad limina’ visits. However, the audience with the president of Cameroon, which was scheduled for 28 February, has been cancelled as well as the ‘ad limina’ visits scheduled with the Italian prelates from the Le Marche region between 25 and 28 February. On Saturday the 16th at 6:00pm, the Pope will meet with the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, and the following Saturday, the 23rd in the late morning, with the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano. “Both,” Fr. Lombardi clarified, “have expressed the desire to meet briefly with the Pope.”

From the 17th, after the Angelus, until the morning of the 23th, the Holy Father and the Roman Curia have the Lenten Spiritual Exercises, which will be led this year by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. As is traditional, for the Wednesday of that week there will be no general audience and no activity with the Pope is planned. On the 24th, he will pray the Angelus with the faithful who are gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

On the 25th, the Holy Father will receive some of the cardinals in a private audience. On the 27th, the general audience will take place in St. Peter’s Square. On the 28th, the last day of his pontificate, Benedict XVI will meet with members of the College of Cardinals in the Clementine Hall and at 5:00pm he will travel by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

February 11, 2013 |

This article has been updated.

Pope Benedict XVI today stunned the Roman Catholic Church — and the world — with his announcement that he would turn in his sceptre, effective February 28. To find a precedent for Benedict’s action, one needs to go back through six centuries of history to Pope Gregory XII’s resignation in 1415.

In a statement issued today in Latin, the pope wrote: “… in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

The Church’s Child-Abuse Scandal

Citing age and infirmity as his reason for leaving the papacy, Benedict’s action comes just weeks after he opened his celebrated Twitter account — and less than a month after the decades-old child abuse scandal drew nearer to the pope’s door, with revelations published in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month that Cardinal Roger Mahony, then Archbishop of Los Angeles, sought to evade the law in cases involving the sexual abuse of children by the priests in his charge by sending them to treatment facilities in states that did not require health professionals to report the crimes to authorities.

At the time that Mahony was covering up the crimes of his priests, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that oversaw such matters.

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VATICAN CITY
NDTV

Vatican City: The conclave to decide the successor to Pope Benedict will start as early as March 15, the Vatican said on Wednesday.

The conclave, when cardinals gather to elect a new pope, will start between 15 and 20 days from when the papal seat is vacated on February 28, Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told a news conference.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 13, 2013

Rome —
For some time to come, people will ponder the significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s stunning decision Monday to renounce his papacy. Ecclesiologists will debate its meaning for understanding the papal office, while spiritual writers may explore its potential as a case study in graceful withdrawal and letting go.

In the here and now, however, the most burning question is what it means for the politics of electing the next pope.

At first blush, the tendency was to think that staging a conclave while the previous pope was still alive might make it less likely that the cardinals would vote for change. The logic was that they would be hesitant to do anything perceived as disrespectful while the old pope was still around.

Even if one takes the Vatican at its word that Benedict will have no role in the process, it’s hard to imagine that every syllable he utters for the next 15 days and every gesture he performs won’t be dissected as possible signals to the cardinals who will gather in mid-March to cast their ballots. (In his general audience today, Benedict talked about the importance of opposing abortion, euthanasia and destroying embryos for medical purposes. It’s a good bet that in Thursday’s Italian papers, somebody will read that as putting pressure on the cardinals to elect a pope who will hold the line in the culture wars.)

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VATICAN CITY
The Seattle Times

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY —
Pope Benedict XVI told thousands of faithful Wednesday that he was resigning for “the good of the church” – an extraordinary scene of a pope explaining himself to his flock that unfolded in his first appearance since dropping the bombshell announcement.

Looking tired but serene, the 85-year-old Benedict basked in a standing ovation when he entered the packed hall for his traditional Wednesday catechism lesson. His speech was interrupted repeatedly by applause, and many in the audience of thousands had tears in their eyes.

A huge banner reading “Grazie Santita” (Thank you Your Holiness) was strung up at the back of the room.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Alicia Wood
The Daily Telegraph
February 13, 2013

TOP Catholic church leaders have been called to appear at a state inquiry into child sex abuse.

The NSW special commission of inquiry was formally opened yesterday to investigate allegations of a police cover-up of child sex abuse cases in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Bishops Conference, Archbishop of Adelaide Phillip Wilson and retired bishop Michael Malone will all give evidence.

All three previously worked in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and investigated allegations against paedophile priest Father Denis McAlinden.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By TOM MCILROY
Feb. 14, 2013

REPRESENTATIVES of more than 30 survivors of clergy sexual abuse will give evidence to a Victorian inquiry when it returns to Ballarat on February 28.

A large group of survivors and advocates is expected to attend the hearing at the Ballarat Lodge with evidence related to a group submission from the Ballarat region to be heard.

Participants in the group submission elected not to give evidence when the inquiry first visited Ballarat on December 7 last year, seeking to avoid additional trauma during the Christmas period.

Geelong priest Father Kevin Dillon is expected to give evidence during a regional hearing on Friday, becoming the first Catholic priest in active ministry to speak to the inquiry.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

James Carroll

For most people, the reckoning with the infirmities of advanced old age is a poignant but mundane part of the life cycle. Not so for popes, as this week’s global astonishment suggests, for they are thought to hover over human affairs just as the church itself does. “The church is distinguished from civil society,” Pope Leo XIII solemnly declared in 1885. “It is a society chartered as of divine right, perfect in its nature.” This perfect society, Leo wrote, cannot “be looked on as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it.” This manifesto hints at the larger significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign his office: If a pope can come and go so easily, then how is the church different from a country or a company?

After Benedict’s surprise announcement Monday, much has been made of the nearly 600 years since the last papal “resignation” — a misnomer, since Pope Gregory XII, one of multiple claimants to the Chair of Peter, was, in effect, fired by a reforming church council. But for far longer than that the papacy has been the linchpin of the Catholic Church’s claim to transcendence. That popes are human has always been clear (St. Peter, the first pope, denied Christ three times), but popes have also been living signs of the sacred. In modern times, the boundary separating the Roman pontiff from all other humans is reinforced by his mode of dressing, his rhetorical style, and his isolated splendor. He is himself a sacrament of what “distinguishes” Catholicism, in Pope Leo’s word. …

From his point of view, Benedict has seen only a solemn obligation to defend the church, and that explains his failure to address the abuse scandal forthrightly. It also explains his protection of the cover-up bishops, beginning with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. In May 2001, seven months before the Globe first revealed Law’s enabling of the Rev. John J. Geoghan, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to every Catholic bishop defining crimes “perpetrated with a minor by a cleric” as falling under his jurisdiction — a mandate widely interpreted as requiring strict confidentiality and cutting civil authorities out. “Cases of this kind,” Ratzinger declared, “are subject to the pontifical secret.” When asked about the letter upon Ratzinger’s election as pope, a Vatican spokesman said, “This is not a public document, so we would not talk about it.”

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VATICAN CITY
IOL (South Africa)

February 13 2013
By Daily Mail

The first Papal resignation in six centuries may have been the result of Vatican pressure, it was reported on Tuesday.

A rebel faction of cardinals is alleged to have pressurised Pope Benedict to get softer treatment for senior clerics accused of condoning child abuse.

The push against Benedict, it is said, added to the effects of illness and declining mental grip to tip the Pope over the edge into resignation.

The meeting that may have influenced Benedict’s resignation on Monday was a visit to his private rooms on Saturday evening by Cardinal Angelo Soldano, according to accounts circulating in Rome.

Soldano, a former Vatican Secretary of State – the senior political and diplomatic post – is said to have argued with Benedict over his hard line against clergy accused of sex abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
World Bulletin

Italian journalist Giovanna Chirri, who announced the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the world, described the moment of writing the news and said, “When I was writing the news for publishing, one side of me said ‘do it’ and the other said, ‘you might be doing a mistake’.”

Giovanna Chirri, The Vatican correspondent of the Italian news agency ANSA, told the story of the news in regards to the Pope’s resignation to AA.

Chirru, who knew Latin, was following the ceremony of the “Consistory for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto” when the Pope made the announcement of his resignation.

“The Pope made a detailed speech in Latin. He was talking about the need to restructure the Conclave process. It was very clear, however; we did not have his text of speech. We weren’t expecting this. When I was writing the news for publishing, one side of me said ‘do it’ and the other said, ‘you might be doing a mistake’. It was a little difficult,” Chirri said.

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NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

[Peter Garcia – Los Angeles archdiocese]

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writeron Wed, Feb 13, 2013

Monsignor Peter Garcia’s career as a pastor in Los Angeles ended in 1984 after families alleged that he had sexually abused boys as young as 7 in his parish.

But Garcia was later assigned to churches in Belen and Socorro from 1985-87, according to records made public as a result of a settlement between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and victims of clergy abuse.

And in 1987, former Archbishop of Santa Fe Robert Sanchez helped decide that New Mexico pastors who supervised Garcia not be told about his history of sexual abuses, according to a 1987 letter.

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AUSTRIA
Tidewater Review

Michael Shields
Reuters
7:45 a.m. EST, February 13, 2013

VIENNA (Reuters) – A leading dissident Austrian priest whose call to disobey some Roman Catholic teachings drew a rebuke from Pope Benedict last year urged Church leaders to throw off their secrecy and canvas churchgoers on who should lead them next.

Rev. Helmut Schueller, head of a group of priests who openly challenge Church positions on taboo topics such as priestly celibacy and ordaining women, said selecting a successor to Benedict was a chance to embrace public debate.

Schueller says his group represents 10 percent of Austria’s clergy and enjoys broad public support for its pledge to break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.

“If things were going well, the conclave fathers would at least be going out to the Church grassroots and calling meetings to really hear what the faithful expect,” he told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

While it may seem overly pessimistic to say that the next Pope will fail too, it is just being realistic; and yet there is also room for much optimism. The papal resignation is tantamount to an admission of failure and will lead to de-mystification of the papacy quickly. Pope Benedict XVI, soon to again be non-Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger, and his Vatican clique led by Cardinal Sodano et al., have already set the stage for the next failure.

The sudden call for a quick election conclave substantiallly diminishes any chance of a real opposition being mounted by non-Vatican Cardinals. Since the Pope apparently knew for some time he would resign, the suddenness seems well planned. The recent public shaming of Cardinal Mahony, evidentally with a papal blessing, and the related inevitable aggravated prosecution risk for Mahony, should chill any real opposition anyway, as was likely Ratzinger’s intention. Ratzinger will soon be living a few hundred yards away from the new Pope in his refurbished retirement base, hardly a monastery, that was built 20 years ago to house a dozen nuns that were reportedly all moved out by last November when renovation started. Perhaps they joined Nuns on the Bus?

Of course, the media loves the chance to report superficially the “papal election horserace”, even if their picks are uninformed and wild speculation, often intended apparently to garner some local readers or repay or enhance old sources. It is nice theater; but mainly irrelevant. Ratzinger and Sodano already likely know who will be the next Pope and one would be foolish to bet against them. Since the weather is bad in Rome this time of year, perhaps Cardinals might save some money by just mailing in blank proxies to Sodano.

The reason for some optimism is that the Vatican clique’s apparent raw power grab will now just accelerate the sinking of the Vatican Titanic that much sooner. Even overly trusting Catholics will see through the clerical charade. Various prosecutors and survivors lawyers will now be able to reach Ratzinger, who loses his legal immunity in a few weeks. While they may not serve him with subpoenas in Vatican City, they will wait for their chance, perhaps aided by Ratzinger’s former butler or another “Vatileaker”. It will likely only be a matter of time, even if no more scandals erupt as predictably they will. Once the rule of international law starts pulling hard directly on papal threads, the Vatican hierarchy will be quickly uncovered and forced to initiate reforms, perhaps after some senior officials face prosecution, which cannot be too far off. …

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:

[Click here for the petition.]

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BBC News

By Michael Hirst
BBC News

Pope Benedict XVI’s successor takes the helm at a difficult time for the Catholic Church.

In the West, the Church is struggling to fill pews as congregations dwindle, while the number of priests is also falling.

Meanwhile, the rise of evangelical Churches, especially in Latin America and Africa, is checking the growth of Catholic congregations, which are also threatened in some areas by religious intolerance. …

Sex abuse

Some feel the Catholic Church has failed to deal properly with child sex allegations
Benedict XVI has spoken of the Church’s shame for “unspeakable crimes” committed by paedophile priests, as well as offering heartfelt apologies to victims, groups of whom he has met during his trips overseas.

But many critics feel the Vatican was – and still is – far too slow, too reluctant and too secretive when it comes to acknowledging and investigating sexual abuse.

The new Pope will have the task of continuing to ensure perpetrators are held to account, and to ensure the changes introduced by Benedict XVI are implemented – particularly when it comes to bishops signing up to child protection guidelines.

David Clohessy, Executive Director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the BBC: “The next pontiff must do more to safeguard children.

“He should stop issuing apologies and making gestures, and instead demote bishops who continue to conceal heinous crimes.

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UNITED STATES
The Patriot-News

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on February 12, 2013

Benedict XVI may be nearing the end of his papacy, but survivors of clergy sexual abuse say he still has plenty of time to ensure predator priests are brought to justice and ensure children are protected.

“It may sound naive, but we haven’t yet given up on this one. He does have 15 or 16 days in office,” said David Clohessy, director of the the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.”

Benedict on Monday stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics with his announcement that he would resign his at the end of the month. The frail 85-year-old pontiff cited poor health as reason for his decision.

In the wake of his announcement, victims advocates like Clohessy — as well as experts on the Catholic Church — have criticized the German-born pope for failing to do what he once promised: to have the church do “all in its power” to bring predator priests to justice and protect children.

“He’s issued some apologies and made some gestures but it’s virtually all symbolism,” Clohessy said. “In a practical way, he’s taken no truly effective tangible steps that make children across the globe safer. For most victims a symbolic gesture at this juncture is too little, too late.”

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IRELAND
Deutsche Welle

Among victims of clerical child abuse in Ireland, response to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation has been muted. John Kelly of SOCA (Survivors of Child Abuse) told DW why he thinks the pope didn’t meet his obligations.

DW: What was your first reaction to the resignation?

John Kelly: Well, for myself and the majority of victims of clerical abuse, it was one of indifference. For the very simple reason that he won’t be missed. There was great hope that this particular pope was going to do a lot, and to challenge things within the college of cardinals … to do something about child abuse. He did apologize and that is fantastic, but in the end it gave us false hope, and it was all rhetoric, because it was never followed up with anything of substance.

Why do you think he failed to do more?

Well, this Pope is an academic, and what he is very good at is protecting the institution of the church. But I believe that he is actually responsible for compounding this abuse by not tackling it more fully.

I wrote a number of letters to the pope, and in one, I said, “look, you have it in your power to do something, these victims haven’t got justice with the state authorities, and you have it in your power, under Canon Law to do something. You can either disband or suspend their licence, there are loads of penalties available to you,” but even then he didn’t do that, which is very depressing, and leaves me with no hope for the future.

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VEREINIGTEN STAATEN
euronews

Viele Opfer katholischer Priester in Irland und den Vereinigten Staaten ziehen eine negative Bilanz des Pontifikats von Benedikt XVI. Der scheidende Papst habe nichts unternommen, um pädophile Priester oder die Hierarchie, die diese deckte, zu bestrafen.

Die USA waren in den letzten Jahren wiederholt von Missbrauchsskandalen erschüttert worden.

Der Vorsitzende des Opferverbandes SNAP David Lorenz bedauert, “der Papst hat sich bei den Iren entschuldigt. Er hat sich in den USA entschuldigt, ebenso in Australien, Deutschland und Spanien, für das, was dort vorgefallen ist. Aber es waren leere Worte, es folgten keine Taten. Ich befürchte, wir bekommen einen Papst, der bei diesem Thema genau so untätig und rigide ist, wie Benedikt es war.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
aktuell

Die Missbrauchsopfergruppe “Eckiger Tisch” sieht den Rücktritt von Papst Benedikt XVI. als Chance für eine überfällige Erneuerung der katholischen Kirche. “Der erste Schritt dazu könnte die Öffnung der Kirchenakten im Vatikan zu den Missbrauchsfällen für unabhängige Untersuchungen sein”, sagte Sprecher Matthias Katsch, selbst Betroffener an einer Jesuitenschule, am Dienstag in Berlin. Ein zweiter, noch größerer Schritt, wäre eine freiwillige, großzügige Entschädigung der vielen Tausend Betroffenen weltweit durch die Kirche.

Papst Benedikt habe mit dem sexuellen Missbrauch in Einrichtungen der katholischen Kirche weltweit umgehen müssen. Er habe sich sicher bemüht und die Untätigkeit seines Vorgängers beendet, räumte Katsch ein. “Aber letztlich war er nicht in der Lage, wirklich etwas an den strukturellen und doktrinären Ursachen zu ändern.”

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MEXIKO
Neopresse

Von Emilio Godoy

Mexiko-Stadt, 12. Februar (IPS) – Nach der Rücktrittsankündigung von Papst Benedikt XVI. würdigt die Öffentlichkeit in Europa vor allem die Verdienste des 85-jährigen Kirchenoberhaupts. Aus Mexiko kommen dagegen unverhohlen kritische Töne. Unabhängige Experten werfen Benedikt vor, sexuellen Missbrauch durch Bischöfe und Priester nicht ausreichend geahndet und die Opfer weitgehend sich selbst überlassen zu haben.

Joseph Ratzinger, der sich am 28. Februar aus dem Papstamt zurückziehen wird, hinterlässt nach Ansicht des mexikanischen Religionssoziologen Bernardo Barranco “ein sehr schwieriges Erbe”. Er kehre seinem Amt zu einem Zeitpunkt den Rücken, in dem sich die Kirche “mitten in einer ernsten Krise” befinde, betont Barranco. Der Umgang mit dem Thema habe deutlich gezeigt, dass es in der Kurie zu Spannungen darüber gekommen sei, wie mit Fällen von sexuellem Missbrauch umzugehen sei und inwiefern sie vertuscht werden sollten.

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CANADA
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Hearing at Garden Hill, Manitoba
Garden Hill First Nation High School
February 19 and 20, 2013
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day

The Hearing will provide an opportunity for Residential School Survivors to share with the Commission and Canada the unique experiences of children who attended Residential School.
The purpose of the Hearing is to inform the public about the Commission’s work and statement gathering process, and provide Survivors with time to reflect and share their experiences. This is also an opportunity for all Canadians, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to learn more about and bear witness to the legacy of the Residential School system.

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UNITED STATES
The Hollywood Reporter

Having exposed the church in his new documentary “Mea Maxima Culpa,” the filmmaker says of Benedict XVI: “His papacy will always be saddled with the stain of the sex abuse crisis.”

Pope Benedict’s XVI’s resignation “seems to me inextricably linked to the sex abuse crisis,” Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, whose newest documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, exposes those abuses, said in the wake of Monday’s surprise announcement.

“I don’t have proof that that’s so, but it just seems like it,” the director said, noting that in addition to his own film, which began airing on HBO on Feb. 4, there has been a new wave of coverage of the Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide sex scandal because of the recent court order that forced the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release its files, documenting how Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other officials covered up the cases of 122 priests accused or convicted of molesting children, as well as a widening investigation in Australia.

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VATICAN CITY
Aljazeera

Pope Benedict XVI’s impending resignation has already fuelled all the usual speculation about candidates for his successor, accompanied by profiles, photos and odds of election. Behind the hoopla is the question, what sort of leader will really be best for the Church?

Benedict’s own admission that an elderly man cannot undertake the globe-trotting that effective relations require suggests that as a rule, a younger, healthier leader would be a wise choice. But the Church also faces the question what style of leadership would be most fruitful.

Despite the vision of Vatican Council II, which recommended collegial authority and granted the laity almost complete province over action in the world, Pope John Paul II’s and Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificates have echoed an ultramontane, top-down model in which the authority of the pope supersedes that of the bishops, individually or in national organisations.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

Wait, haven’t we heard this story before? Or was that Swami Satchidananda, or a host of other spiritual leaders who were caught with their hands down devotees’ pants? Joshu Saski, a 105-year-old Japanese Zen Buddhist, has been accused of groping and sexually harassing female students for decades. Since he brought his brand of Buddhism from Japan to Los Angeles in 1962, Sasaki has taught thousands of Westerners at his two Zen centers in the region and one in New Mexico, where he allegedly engaged in “repeated non-consensual groping of female students.”

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Kaitlyn Offer
PerthNow
February 13, 2013

A DEFENCE lawyer for a teacher accused of child sex offences in the 1980s has again questioned a victim’s recall of events in her closing address.

Lindsay William Hutchinson, 63, is on trial accused of six charges of carnal knowledge against nature, six charges of indecently dealing with a child, and three charges of unlawful and indecent assault.

The charges relate to the repeated sexual abuse of a young Christ Church Grammar School student between 1983 and 1985, when Mr Hutchinson was the music director as well as a conductor of the school choir, the St George’s Cathedral choir and another choir that he created.

Mr Hutchinson has pleaded guilty to some of the charges, but has denied the more serious charges, including allegations of rape, and the alleged incidents occurred on school camps and at Mr Hutchinson’s then home.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Anthony and Chrissie Foster
From:Herald Sun
February 14, 2013

ON the 28th of February, Pope Benedict XVI will step down from his Roman throne mired in a shame that runs deep.

On clergy abuse, he has been an impotent Pope, who like his predecessors, fellow cardinals, bishops and priests, has done precious little to protect children, provide justice to victims, or banish criminals from the ranks of an organisation that places itself as a moral leader yet doesn’t seem to recognise that raping a child is a crime.

As Pope Benedict, he has spent the past seven years obfuscating the clergy child sexual assault issue within the church, just as he did to us when we attempted to advise him as to how his church could better treat its child victims.

That was in Sydney at World Youth Day in July 2008. At that time our daughter Katie, a clergy abuse victim, had been receiving 24-hour care for the previous nine years after running in front of a car while binge drinking to forget her torment.

Emma, another of our daughters and also a victim, had committed suicide only six months earlier.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

The special commission of inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has been formally opened.

The inquiry is separate to the national royal commission into institutional abuse and was announced by the NSW Government last year.

The State Government made the move after Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox went on the ABC’s Lateline program to say the Catholic Church and police were guilty of a cover up of sexual abuse by priests in the Maitland diocese.

Opening the inquiry, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC spoke of the devastating effect sexual abuse has on a child by exploiting their vulnerability.

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CALIFORNIA
New Tang Dynasty

Pope Benedict stunned the Roman Catholic Church on Monday when he announced he would stand down, saying he no longer had the mental and physical strength to carry on.

Church officials tried to relay a climate of calm confidence in the running of a 2,000-year-old institution. But the decision could lead to uncertainty in a Church already besieged by scandal for covering up sexual abuse of children by priests.

The announcement came less than two weeks after 12,000 pages of church files unsealed under court order showed former Los Angeles Diocese archbishop Roger Mahony worked to send priests accused of abuse out of state to shield known abusers from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

In Los Angeles Monday, Catholic archbishop Jose Gomez led a noontime mass and addressed the resignation as “the act of a saint.”

[Jose Gomez, Catholic Archbishop]:

“His decision to resign is a beautiful, Christ-like act of humility and love for the Church. This is the act of a saint, who thinks not about himself but only about the will of God and the good of God’s people. I personally have a great affection for Pope Benedict. In my opinion, he is one of the wisest persons in our world today.”

Mahony, who was stripped of all public duties by Gomez after being linked to efforts to conceal child sex abuse by priests said that he planned to participate in the process to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

Gomez removed Mahony last month from all public and administrative duties following the release of the documents.

Mahony, who was archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011, has apologized for “mistakes” he made as archbishop.

Outside the mass, churchgoer Fernando Montanez said that he himself was a victim of child abuse, but learned to forgive Mahony and Benedict for their lack of action on abuse.

[Fernando Montanez, Victim of Abuse]:

“I was one of those abused people at my parish. I went through a number of … a range of stages: anger, hate, frustration. Through the patience of Cardinal Mahony, our bishop, back then John Paul and then Pope Benedict XVI, I was able to heal. I think I’m a better person now, stronger, more faithful and I pray for the priest that molested me. I also pray for Cardinal Mahony.”

Not all victims of church abuse are as forgiving, however. Joelle Casteix, who heads the Los Angeles regional chapter of SNAP, an abuse survivors’ network, says that the church will most likely elect a new pope that will continue to protect cardinals who might be implicated in abuse coverups.

[Joelle Casteix, Head of Abuse Survivor’s Network]:

“The College of Cardinals, the voting membership of the College of Cardinals, especially those who are eligible to become pope, were all chosen by Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict – these are men who toe the company line. Many of them have been implicated in recent sex abuse scandals. It is to their utmost need and desire to elect someone who will protect their best interests, and someone who is going to clean out the church is going to cause a lot of problems for many sitting cardinals.”

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AUSTRALIA
Boorowa News

By Paul Bibby
Feb. 13, 2013

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is among a number of senior church figures who have been ordered to appear at the NSW Commission of Inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the Maitland-Newcastle region.

The summonsing of the archbishop, along with the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Father Brian Lucas, came during the formal opening of the inquiry by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC on Wednesday.

The inquiry will examine allegations that members of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese covered up the abuse of young children by the now-deceased priests Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.

It will also examine allegations by a child abuse investigator, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, that he was ordered by senior police to stop investigating such matters and had been directed to hand over his files in the Fletcher and McAlinden matters.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

By Annette Blackwell
From: AAP
February 13, 2013

THREE senior Catholic Church officials – including the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson – will testify at an inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse in a NSW diocese.

The inquiry, headed by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, will look at whether the church protected predatory priests in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, and in what circumstances Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox was ordered to stop investigating abuse allegations.

Separate public hearings will be held on both issues, starting in Newcastle in May.

On the formal opening of the inquiry in Sydney on Wednesday, an application was heard for leave to appear from Archbishop Wilson’s legal counsel.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Feb. 12, 2013

TWENTY years ago a Hunter woman’s attempts to stop a paedophile priest from within the church allegedly ended with a one-way ticket to England for him, and defeated silence for his victim.

On Wednesday, as the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry opens an investigation of church and police responses to allegations about Denis McAlinden, the woman – a key witness – had a message for other victims.

‘‘Now is the time,’’ she said on Tuesday, about breaking the public silence that allowed McAlinden to commit crimes against children for more than 40 years.

Pope Benedict’s surprise retirement showed we were living in historic times, she said, but it was her experience of speaking to the Newcastle Herald in 2010, and then police, that led her to encourage victims to make a submission to the NSW inquiry.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
February 13, 2013

The special commission of inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has been formally opened.

The inquiry is separate to the national Royal Commission, and was announced by the New South Wales Government last year.

The State Government made the move after Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox went on the ABC’s Lateline program to say the Catholic Church and police were guilty of a cover up of sexual abuse by priests in the Maitland diocese.

Opening the inquiry, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC spoke of the devastating effect sexual abuse has on a child by exploiting their vulnerability.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

THE NSW inquiry into child sex abuse in the Catholic church and an alleged cover up that included members of the NSW Police force, had its formal opening today.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen opened the special commission of inquiry into child sex abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, noting that the diocese has a “very troubled” history relating to child protection.

“Children are inherently vulnerable and innocent. The sexual abuse of children is abhorrent. It exploits their vulnerability, irreparably damages their innocence and casts a shadow over their whole lives,’’ Commissioner Cunneen said in her opening.

She said that if matters relating to the federal royal commission into child sex abuse and the church are raised in the NSW inquiry, the information would be passed on.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

A COMMISSION of inquiry into alleged Catholic Church cover-ups of child sex abuse in a NSW diocese will formally open in Sydney on Wednesday.

The special commission of inquiry was announced by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell in November, following explosive allegations made to the media by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox.

The senior investigator asserted the church had covered up evidence in relation to pedophile priests and hindered – and in some cases silenced – police investigations in relation to child abuse in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the Hunter region of NSW.

Inspector Fox also said he was asked to stop investigating certain matters relating to sex abuse in the diocese, and in January the terms of the special inquiry were amended to examine the circumstances of this.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY — Just days after Pope Benedict XVI returned from a 2010 trip to Britain where he met the queen and mended fences with the Anglicans, prosecutors in Rome impounded $30 million from the Vatican Bank in an investigation linked to money laundering.

In May, soon after the pope made an address on the priesthood, chastising those who sought to stretch the church’s rules and calling for “radical obedience,” Vatican gendarmes arrested Benedict’s butler on charges of theft after a tell-all book appeared, based on stolen confidential documents detailing profound mismanagement and corruption inside the Vatican.

Benedict had hoped that his papacy would rekindle the Catholic faith in Europe and compel Catholics to forge bonds between faith and reason, as he so loved to do.

But after a seemingly endless series of scandals, the 85-year-old who so ably enforced doctrine for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, seemingly came to understand that only a new pope, one with far greater energies than he, could lead a global church and clean house inside the hierarchy at its helm. In the end, Vatican experts said, he decided he could best serve the church by resigning, a momentous decision with far-reaching implications that are still not fully understood. …

It was another scandal-marred trip, this one to Mexico and Cuba in March, that seems to have finally persuaded Benedict to consider the idea of stepping aside, Vatican officials said.

The visit to Mexico was haunted by the specter of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful and deeply conservative religious order with close ties to John Paul’s papacy. Before he died in 2008, Father Maciel was found to have raped seminarians, fathered several children and engaged in drug abuse.

Throughout the visit, victims’ groups and other advocates organized news conferences and other events to call attention to what they saw as the church’s dismal record on sexual abuse, even though Benedict, as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal officer, had reopened an investigation into Father Maciel that ultimately disclosed his double life. But he failed to address the issue in Mexico, upsetting victims’ groups there and around the world. When he became pope, Benedict knew of what he spoke, but he struggled to make the mighty wheels of a 1,000-year-old bureaucracy turn smoothly.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By GARRY WILLS

Published: February 12, 2013

THERE is a poignant air, almost wistful, to electing a pope in the modern world. In a time of discredited monarchies, can this monarchy survive and be relevant? There is nostalgia for the assurances of the past, quaint in their charm, but trepidation over their survivability. In monarchies, change is supposed to come from the top, if it is to come at all. So people who want to alter things in Catholic life are told to wait for a new pope. Only he has the authority to make the changeless church change, but it is his authority that stands in the way of change.

Of course, the pope is no longer a worldly monarch. For centuries he was such a ruler, with all the resources of a medieval or Renaissance prince — realms, armies, prisons, spies, torturers. But in the 19th century, when his worldly territories were wrested away by Italy, Pope Pius IX lunged toward a compensatory moral monarchy.

In 1870, he elicited — from a Vatican council he called and controlled — the first formal declaration that a pope is infallible. From that point on, even when he was not making technically infallible statements, the pope was thought to be dealing in eternal truths. A gift for eternal truths is as dangerous as the gift of Midas’s touch. The pope cannot undo the eternal truths he has proclaimed.

When Pope Paul VI’s commission of learned and loyal Catholics, lay and clerical, reconsidered the “natural law” teaching against birth control, and concluded that it could not, using natural reason, find any grounds for it, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the secretary of the Holy Office, told Paul that people had for years, on papal warrant, believed that using a contraceptive was a mortal sin, for which they would go to hell if they died unrepentant. On the other hand, those who followed “church teaching” were obliged to have many children unless they abstained from sex. How could Paul VI say that Pius XI, in his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, had misled the people in such a serious way? If he admitted it, what happen to his own authority as moral arbiter in matters of heaven and hell? So Paul VI doubled down, adding another encyclical in 1968, Humanae Vitae, to the unrenounceable eternal truths that pile up around a moral monarch.

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AUSTRALIA
Fairfield City Champion

By Paul Bibby
Feb. 13, 2013

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is among a number of senior church figures who have been ordered to appear at the NSW Commission of Inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the Maitland-Newcastle region.

The summonsing of the archbishop, along with the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Father Brian Lucas, came during the formal opening of the inquiry by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC on Wednesday.

The inquiry will examine allegations that members of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese covered up the abuse of young children by the now-deceased priests Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.

It will also examine allegations by a child abuse investigator, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, that he was ordered by senior police to stop investigating such matters and had been directed to hand over his files in the Fletcher and McAlinden matters.

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VATICAN CITY
GQ

By Sean Flynn

February 2013

The whole thing began, as many cryptic scandals do, with an apparently innocuous phone call. In the spring of 2011, a friend that Gianluigi Nuzzi hadn’t heard from in quite some time asked to meet for coffee in Milan. Nuzzi’s friend didn’t work in journalism, which is Nuzzi’s business, and he didn’t mention that he might have the seeds of a story.

At the café they exchanged pleasantries, caught up. But then Nuzzi’s friend announced his true intention: He had another friend—he wouldn’t say who, exactly—who wanted to share some secrets from inside the notoriously leakproof walls of the Vatican. Nuzzi didn’t find this particularly surprising. People often want to tell him things: He’s on television, the host of an investigative news show called The Untouchables. But he didn’t find it particularly interesting, either. Though he’d written a well-received book in 2009 about the Vatican bank’s history of shady dealings, Nuzzi had no desire to become a specialist in the inner workings of the world’s smallest sovereign nation. And who knew what an anonymous source might be offering.

Still, his friend was insistent. Nuzzi told him to pass along Nuzzi’s cell-phone number.

Sometime later, Nuzzi got another call, this time from a man he did not know. He doesn’t know his real name, so he refers to him as The Contact. The Contact told Nuzzi that, if he was interested, he should take a train from Milan, where he lives and broadcasts his show, to Rome and then go to a bar near Piazza Mazzini. Nuzzi still didn’t know if he was interested, but this was the sort of thing—shadowy encounters with strangers—that Nuzzi enjoys. He has been a journalist for almost twenty years, mostly in print before moving to television a few years ago, and prefers working with confidential sources and documents. He likens himself to a submarine, prowling beneath the waves and surfacing only when he has something to report. Think of how many fish have yet to be discovered, he says, how many trenches still are unexplored!

Two men, both Italians in their forties dressed in conservative suits, met Nuzzi at the bar. They asked him many questions— about his professional interests, his tactics, how he keeps anonymous sources anonymous. They were affable and polite, but Nuzzi guessed they weren’t clerics. “They let slip a few words,” he later wrote, “that recalled the barracks more than the sacristy.” They offered no secrets. Rather, Nuzzi realized, they were assessing him, gauging whether he could be trusted.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Rumours are rife that the Pope’s resignation is not all it seems, despite the Vatican’s official statements.

Benedict XVI’s papacy has been dogged by controversies, including paedophile scandals and claims of money-laundering links to the Mafia.

So perhaps it is no surprise that his decision to quit has sparked a flood of conspiracy theories – especially after lightning struck St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican just hours after the announcement.
Five wild Pope rumours

1 A plot was hatched to force the Pope to stand down under threat of “shocking” new revelations from the money-laundering scandal. A full report, compiled by three cardinals, has never been revealed.

2 He has Parkinson’s disease like predecessor Pope John Paul II. The Vatican has denied the claim.

3 A new paedophile scandal is about to erupt. According to one blog, a document will emerge linking the Pope to a priest accused of molesting boys. The cleric was given therapy in 1980 and allowed to resume pastoral duties, only to commit further abuses and be ­prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who then headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, allegedly approved the priest’s transfer for therapy.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Feb. 13, 2013

AUSTRALIA’S first formal commission of inquiry into child sexual abuse will hold all hearings in Newcastle, it was announced today.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, heading the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, today confirmed that the first hearing will be held in Newcastle for two weeks from May 6.

The commission will open with evidence about police handling of allegations relating to a Catholic church cover-up of crimes committed by pedophile priest Denis McAlinden.

A three-week hearing into the church’s handling of allegations against McAlinden, spanning four decades, will also be held in Newcastle from June 24.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARY MINIHAN

Taoiseach Enda Kenny plans to travel to Britain shortly to meet women who spent time in Magdalene laundries and subsequently left Ireland.

After meeting members of the Magdalene Survivors Together group in Dublin on Monday, Mr Kenny yesterday indicated further meetings with other groups were planned. “I hope before the weekend to carry out a couple of other engagements both here and abroad,” he told the Dáil.

Mr Kenny’s spokesman last night said details of the meetings were being finalised but they would take place within six days.

The Taoiseach is widely expected to deliver an apology on behalf of the State next week when a debate on former senator Martin McAleese’s report on the Magdalene laundries begins in the Dáil.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN and MICHAEL O’REGAN

The Government will make a “considered and appropriate response” to the McAleese report on the Magdalene laundries, Minister of State Kathleen Lynch has told the Dáil.

Ms Lynch, who has long campaigned on the issue, said, “We will try to do this in a way that recognises the full complexities of the issues arising and meets the needs, insofar as we can, of the women who worked there.”

Her party colleague Dominic Hannigan called for “an official State apology to every woman who was sent to the laundries. Anything less is not good enough.” He read testimony from Maisy Kay, a woman who spent time in a laundry and on one occasion “got a fist to the face” from a nun.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By Ephraim Hardcastle

Human rights QC Geoffrey Robertson thinks Pope Benedict XVI will spend the rest of his days in litigation over worldwide child abuse cases brought against the Roman Catholic church. He says: ‘I think he’ll go down in history as the ostrich Pope, the one who stuck his head in the sand while the storm was brewing.’ Benedict is portrayed in a poor light in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, an award-winning US documentary released on Friday. Rather than being ignorant of clerical abuse scandals – as he has claimed – they say he was in charge of Vatican information-gathering on the subject. Deep waters.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg

By Margaret Carlson Feb 12, 2013

Nothing distinguished the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI so much as the way in which he is leaving.

We should be grateful that he realizes his body is failing him — most people in power do not — and is abdicating. But let’s not forget that it was Benedict who stood mostly mute as the sexual abuse of children by priests continued.

Benedict had a chance to be a great pope in one way and one way only: by recognizing the evil and dealing with it even when it meant punishing powerful prelates. He did not.

He had an opportunity to do so when he was appointed in 1981 to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was charged with dealing with the cascading number of sexual abuse cases. That appointment was odd given that when he was archbishop of Munich, Benedict — then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — had approved the transfer of priest and child molester Peter Hullermann. Even as he learned of the hundreds of Hullermanns and became the most knowledgeable high- ranking church official on the subject, Ratzinger chose to protect priests, bishops and cardinals at the cost of ignoring legions of abused children.

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ROME
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

On the day after one of the most dramatic moments in all church history, Curia cardinals and the Catholic faithful alike were still trying to absorb the full implications of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.

In a year, 2012, when the Vatican made international headlines because of a series of embarrassing leaks, most of them straight from the pope’s own study in the Apostolic Palace, Benedict’s resignation appears to have been one secret that was brilliantly well kept.

Different media sources, including most authoritatively the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, remain convinced that Benedict made his original decision that he would resign shortly after his visit to Mexico and Cuba in March of last year.

Apart from the obvious issue of simply getting older and thus finding it ever more difficult to travel, Benedict seems to have been influenced by a hitherto, unpublicised night-time fall experienced during the trip.

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VATICAN CITY
Tribune-Review

By The Associated Press

Published: Tuesday, February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The papal ring will be destroyed, along with other powerful emblems of authority, just as they are after a pope’s death. The retiring Pope Benedict XVI will live in a monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens and will likely even give up his beloved theological writing.

The Vatican went out of its way on Tuesday to declare that for Benedict, retirement means just that: retirement.

With speculation swirling about his future role, the Vatican’s chief spokesman explicitly stated that Benedict will not influence the election of his successor. …

As for the pope’s new name, Burke said Benedict would most likely be referred to as “Bishop of Rome, emeritus” as opposed to “Pope Emeritus.” Lombardi also said Benedict would take some kind of “emeritus” title.

Other Vatican officials said it would probably be up to the next pope to decide Benedict’s new title and wouldn’t exclude that he might still be called “Your Holiness” as a courtesy, much as retired presidents are often referred to as “President.” It was not even clear whether the retired pope will retain the name Benedict or revert to being called Joseph Ratzinger again.

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VATICAN CITY
Knox News

NICOLE WINFIELD – Associated Press (AP)
Posted February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY (AP) — It’s a political campaign like no other, with no declared candidates or front-runners and a well-adhered to taboo against openly gunning for the job. But the maneuvering to select the next pope is already under way a day after Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and announced he would retire on Feb. 28.

One African contender declared Tuesday it was time for a Third World pope — and said he was free if God wanted him.

Berlin’s archbishop urged mercy for the victor, given the terrible weight of the office, while Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera asked for prayers so that the best man might win.

It’s all part of the ritual of picking a pope, the mysterious process that takes place behind closed doors at the Sistine Chapel, where the “princes” of the church, the 117 or so cardinals under age 80, vote in next month’s conclave.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By JASON BERRY

Published: February 11, 2013

DURING his eight years as pope, Benedict XVI sought rebirth for the Roman Catholic Church by meeting with victims of predator priests and making several apologies for the church’s aching abuse crisis.

But he failed to buck the logic of apostolic succession, a position that sees cardinals and bishops following in a direct spiritual line from Jesus’ original apostles but has been warped into a de facto immunity given to men of the hierarchy.

Still, Benedict has one last chance to right some of the wrongs of the recent past by forcing out Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals and the man who, more than any other, embodies the misuse of power that has corrupted the church hierarchy.

Cardinal Sodano is hardly alone: a long list of leaders betrayed Catholics everywhere with their pathological evasions, sending known sex offenders into treatment centers to avoid the law, then planting them in parishes or hospitals where they found new victims.

But Cardinal Sodano ranks with the Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony as an egregious practitioner of the cover up. As John Paul II’s secretary of state, he pressured Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, in two notorious cases.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
TheMediaReport

In an episode that recalls something out of the 19th-century, anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement, a political cartoon in the Los Angeles Times by David Horsey portrays a Catholic priest as Satan.

Horsey’s bigoted work is sure to put smiles on the faces of those at the New York Times, SNAP, and other anti-Catholics.

Disinformation and a double standard

Horsey’s attack plays into the oft-heard falsehood that somehow there is still an abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In truth, there is not. Almost all of the stories we have read in recent years about cases in Los Angeles and elsewhere are about episodes from many decades ago.

Meanwhile, around the same time that Horsey’s cartoon aired, readers of London’s Sunday Times charged that another cartoon, a brutal assessment of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was “grotesque,” “offensive,” and “anti-Semitic.” The criticism was enough that News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the paper, immediately issued an apology.

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VATICAN CITY
The Fiscal Times

By DAVID FRANCIS, The Fiscal Times
February 11, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the globe’s 1.2 billion Catholics, shocked the world this morning when he announced he is resigning.

The resignation of a pope is an extremely rare thing: a sitting pope hasn’t abdicated for 598 years. Benedict, who recently joined Twitter in an effort to connect with youth, said he was resigning due to poor health and old age. But this pope has also been hounded by scandals since he ascended to the papacy in 2005.

The scandals that rightly receive the most attention involve the cover-up of sexual abuses by priests around the globe, including in Benedict’s native Germany. But financial scandals have also plagued Benedict’s short time as the Holy See.

The Vatican, an independent country, has its own bank known as the Institute for Work on Religion. Little is known about the bank – like the rest of the Vatican’s inner workings, the bank is hidden under a cloak of secrecy – but it’s suspected to have $4 billion in assets.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek

By Carol Matlack and Bernhard Warner on February 11, 2013

Memo to the College of Cardinals: You didn’t ask our advice, so we won’t give it, on the person you should choose as the next spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. But whoever it is, could you please ask him to get the ATMs in the Vatican Museum working again?

The Bank of Italy last month shut down all ATMs in the Vatican and blocked its museum’s ticket windows and shops from accepting debit and credit-card payments from visitors. It was the latest chapter in a messy scandal involving the Vatican Bank, which regulators say has failed to comply with international banking standards and money-laundering regulations.

True, the $120 million or so in annual revenue from Vatican visitors is peanuts compared with the tens of billions raised and spent annually by Catholic dioceses and institutions worldwide. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for the next pope to have a good head for business.

Pope Benedict XVI, who announced today he will resign on Feb. 28 for health reasons, “has had a very difficult papacy” from a financial standpoint, says Chester Gillis, dean of Georgetown College and professor of theology at Georgetown University. Settlements and judgments in sexual-abuse cases have cost billions of dollars already and forced some dioceses into bankruptcy. More such lawsuits are still pending.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 12 – A credit-card and ATM block that has plagued visitors to the Vatican since January is over, a spokesman said Tuesday. “The system of electronic payments with ATMs and credit cards has been reactivated,” spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. He said the new service was “guaranteed” by a deal with Swiss company Aduno Sa. On January 1 the Bank of Italy froze all credit-card and ATM transactions inside the Vatican City over its failure to fully implement international anti-money-laundering standards. In late December, the central bank denied Deutsche Bank Italy, the Vatican’s former provider of electronic-payment services, a permit because of the Vatican’s shortcomings in financial controls and oversight.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Wayne K. Spear

Jamie Doward’s April 24, 2005 Guardian column, “The Pope, the letter and the child sex claim,” closes with the assertion that the reign of Benedict XVI may well be judged in relation to the sexual crimes and criminals long cloistered by the Vatican, and indeed Joseph Ratzinger himself. As the current Pope departs, the time is full for a summation of these crimes as well as these criminals.

As consequence of the courage and tenacity of the victims — of which there are as many as ten thousand, according to the hJohn Jay College report— an indictment of the church’s top-most offices may now be assembled.

For years, rarely a month has passed without some new and lurid disclosure thickening the already rotten stench of a closed-rank institution obsessed with its self-preservation. In January we were informed of the Cardinal Roger Mahony’s removal from duties and the release of priest files which contain the “terribly sad and evil” acts (as Archbishop Gomez termed them) committed throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

This latest revisiting of a decade-long, international outrage recalls what is perhaps the most notorious case of Boston’s then Archbishop, Bernard Law, whose cover-ups of child rape led to disgrace and resignation late in 2002. Since that time many thousands of allegations have issued, and a disgusting pattern of institutional obfuscation and evasion, guided from the very top, has emerged.

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IRELAND
Sinead O’Connor

I would like to congratulate Pope Benedict on his wise decision to retire before the very worst of what has been going on is discovered. I appreciate his alluding to some of it in his statement and assure him The Most High forgives those who can faithfully say they did wrong.

I also note with with interest the choice of a day so close to St Bernadette’s feast day to make the announcement. Perhaps her body could now be given a respectful burial and cease to be exploited in the macabre way it has been for decades.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 12, 2013

Analysis
Until the moment of his resignation at 8 p.m. Rome time Feb. 28, the Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is fully on the job as supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic church.

But as the first pontifex maximus to effectively give two weeks’ notice, what exactly will he be doing?

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said in a press bulletin Tuesday the pope intends to at least maintain his current public schedule, which includes a public service to mark the beginning of Lent Wednesday and a number of visits over coming days with pastors in Rome and bishops throughout Italy.

What Lombardi didn’t answer is whether the pope intends to use his remaining time to direct the functioning of the various Vatican offices, over which he has final governance and alone can give explicit orders.

Until Feb. 28, those offices essentially face a ticking clock. Once Benedict formally steps aside, their leaders must resign and all their work, except that considered most essential for the basic functioning of the church, must come to a halt.

Among offices facing the clock are the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, responsible for recommending priests for appointments as bishops in places throughout the world, and the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, known for acting as the church’s doctrinal watchdog.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Sara Malm

A 105-year-old Zen Buddhist master has been accused of sexually assaulting his female students during private teaching sessions.

Joshu Sasaki, best known for being the teacher of artist Leonard Cohen, has allegedly groped and sexually harassed women across the U.S. for over 50 years.

An independent council of Buddhist leaders recently admitted to ignoring years of accusations against the famously charismatic ‘roshi’.

Last month, a ‘witnessing council’ of senior teachers of Mr Sasaki’s Zen Buddhist community published a statement, admitting that the have ‘struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States’.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MARK OPPENHEIMER and IAN LOVETT

Published: February 11, 2013

Since arriving in Los Angeles from Japan in 1962, the Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki, who is 105 years old, has taught thousands of Americans at his two Zen centers in the area and one in New Mexico. He has influenced thousands more enlightenment seekers through a chain of some 30 affiliated Zen centers from the Puget Sound to Princeton to Berlin. And he is known as a Buddhist teacher of Leonard Cohen, the poet and songwriter.

Mr. Sasaki has also, according to an investigation by an independent council of Buddhist leaders, released in January, groped and sexually harassed female students for decades, taking advantage of their loyalty to a famously charismatic roshi, or master.

The allegations against Mr. Sasaki have upset and obsessed Zen Buddhists across the country, who are part of a close-knit world in which many participants seem to know, or at least know of, the principal teachers.

Mr. Sasaki did not respond to requests for interviews made through Paul Karsten, a member of the board of Rinzai-ji, his main center in Los Angeles. Mr. Karsten said that Mr. Sasaki’s senior priests are conducting their own inquiry. And he cautioned that the independent council took the accounts it heard from dozens of students at face value and did not investigate any “for veracity.”

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CANADA
CP24

The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013

MONTREAL — Word that a Canadian cardinal is a presumed contender to succeed Pope Benedict has been met with a mixed response in his own Quebec backyard.

Advocates for victims of sexual abuse by priests and even a member of the clergy aren’t quite in Marc Cardinal Ouellet’s cheering section.

The idea of a global icon emerging from here has stirred the local imagination.

But that excitement is tempered by the fact that Ouellet’s home province has become intensely secular and even anti-clerical over the years.

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PHILIPPINES
Straits Times

MANILA (REUTERS) – With attention turning from Europe to the “new” world, worshippers in the Philippines prayed quietly and took to social media on Tuesday in the hope their cardinal might be chosen as the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

Many Catholics in the Philippines, the largest Christian community in Asia, were shocked by Pope Benedict’s resignation, including their charismatic leader, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

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NEW YORK
WNYT

[paddypower.com]

Posted at: 02/12/2013
By: Bill Lambdin

TROY – In the United Kingdom, the short money at betting parlors is going to a 64 year old Cardinal from Ghana with strong ties to the Capital Region, Peter Turkson.

“Peter Turkson is the red hot favorite,” said Rupert Adams of William Hill Bookmakers. “Interestingly, we put him in at five to one yesterday when the big announcement occurred. He’s been backed quite heavily, in from five to three to one, which would suggest that some people think that he’s a genuine contender.”

Peter Turkson studied for the priesthood at a seminary along the Hudson in Rensselaer.

The future Cardinal and possible Pope carried the word and lived his faith in places like Arbor Hill.

He’s continued to visit here, taking part in a service at Siena College last May.

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VATICAN CITY
The Grio

VATICAN CITY (AP) — One of Africa’s brightest hopes to be the next pope, Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, says the time is right for a pontiff from the developing world, and that he’s up for the job “if it’s the will of God.”

In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, the day after Pope Benedict XVI announced he would soon resign, Turkson said the “young churches” of Africa and Asia have now become solid enough that they have produced “mature clergymen and prelates that are capable of exercising leadership also of this world institution.”

The church in the Third World doesn’t need a pope of its own to thrive, he said. It’s done just fine growing exponentially with European pontiffs. But Turkson said a pope from the global south, where half of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics live, would “go a long way to strengthen them in their resolve.”

Turkson, 64, became Ghana’s first cardinal when he was elevated by Pope John Paul II in 2003, while he was archbishop of Cape Coast. Six years later, Benedict tapped him to head the Vatican’s peace and justice office, which tackles issues such as the global financial meltdown, armed conflicts and ethical codes for the business world.

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ROME
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The cardinal who could become the first black pope said Tuesday that the Roman Catholic Church faces grave challenges in remaining relevant in the modern world even as he laid out a conservative vision of how to deal with society’s “alternative lifestyles”.

By Malcolm Moore, Rome
8:50PM GMT 12 Feb 2013

Cardinal Peter Turkson, a 64-year-old Ghanaian prelate, is the bookmaker’s early favourite to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.

He told The Daily Telegraph Tuesday that his biggest challenge, should he be elected, would be to maintain an orthodox Catholic doctrine while “at the same time knowing how to apply it so that you do not become irrelevant in a world that has continuous changes”.

Cardinal Turkson, who holds one of the most important jobs in the Roman Curia and has been repeatedly promoted by Pope Benedict, was quick to take a conservative line on gay marriage and other “alternative lifestyles”.

“We need to find ways of dealing with the challenges coming up from society and culture,” he said, adding that the Church needed to “evangelise”, or convert, those who had embraced “alternative lifestyles, trends or gender issues”. He added: “We cannot fail in our task of providing guidance.”

Cardinal Turkson has caused controversy in the past both by screening a video claiming that Europe faced being overrun by Muslims and by insisting that condoms were not the solution to preventing HIV. …

He acknowledged that he will be in the running when 118 cardinals enter into a conclave in the Sistine Chapel next month to select their next leader.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness, John R. Ellement and Martin Finucane
| Globe Staff
February 12, 2013

BRAINTREE — Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said today he was “kind of blindsided” by Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to retire while in office, and jokingly dismissed the suggestion that he might be chosen as the new leader of the Roman Catholic church.

“I haven’t lost any sleep about it,’’ O’Malley told reporters during an afternoon news conference at the Boston archdiocese’s headquarters here. “And I have bought a round-trip ticket so I’m counting on coming home.’’

O’Malley said he had not anticipated Benedict’s decision to retire Feb. 28 because of declining health instead of dying in office as most of his predecessors have done during the 2,000-year history of the church. Benedict is the first pope in nearly 600 years to retire.

“I was surprised as everyone else,’’ O’Malley said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Christian Century

Feb 12, 2013 by David Gibson and Alessandro Speciale

Pope Benedict XVI’s sudden announcement that he would resign by the end of the month took the church and the world by surprise, in large part because it was a move without precedent in the modern world.

But what comes next is as old and familiar as the papacy itself: Speculating about who will succeed to the Throne of St. Peter.

Indeed, within months of Benedict’s own election in 2005, church insiders and online oddsmakers were trying to figure out who might be next, given that Benedict – now 85 – was already aging, increasingly frail, and had himself declared that he did not expect his reign to be a long one.

So what will happen when the world’s cardinals gather before the splendor of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope? Who are the “papabile,” as the Italians say, the “pope-able” cardinals?

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

By Scott Alessi

With everyone from the New York Times to Stephen Colbert (complete with Papal Speculatron 7500) trying to figure out who will be the next pope, it is only natural that people at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would join in the fun. This morning, on day three of the USCCB’s Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, I was fortunate enough to sit at a breakfast table surrounded by a few bishops’ conference staffers. And despite the many interesting topics of conversation going on at the gathering, everyone wanted to talk papal picks.

Of course, no one really knew anything beyond the general speculation going around. Cardinal Angelo Scola sounds like a safe bet. Cardinal Marc Ouellet has long been talked about as a successor to Benedict and is just as often dismissed for being a Canadian (though it is still much more likely for him to become pope than anyone born on American soil). But gossip and speculation aside, who would people working toward peace and social justice want to see get the nod from the conclave? That one is easy: Cardinal Peter Turkson.

If you keep tabs on the church’s statements about justice and peace, you’ve likely heard Turkson’s name before. Turkson, from Ghana, has served as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace since being appointed by Pope Benedict in 2009. He hasn’t been afraid to speak up on important issues and has already been labelled by some as the “potential first black pope”–even long before Benedict announced his plans to step down.

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NEW YORK
Religion News Service

[with poll]

David Gibson | Feb 12, 2013

NEW YORK (RNS) Walk the streets of Manhattan, especially around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and ask passersby about Cardinal Timothy Dolan and two things stand out: one, they know who you’re talking about, and two, they like him. Often love him.

Both responses are unusual in the U.S. today: generally, Catholic churchmen are either interchangeable faces to the public, or, if they are known, it’s because of an unflattering headline.

Now Dolan’s extraordinary visibility and popularity are being cited as factors that could make him the first American with a realistic shot at being elected pope when the College of Cardinals gathers in March to elect a successor to Benedict XVI.

But will any of the factors that make Dolan a contender actually help him with the 117 other cardinals huddled in the Sistine Chapel to vote for the pope? He is as orthodox as any of them, but he is also an American, which was always seen as a disqualifier. Yet he is head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a player in church circles and secular politics. So maybe this time is different?

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

[with video]

When lightning struck the Vatican on the night of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, many in Rome could not help but question whether it was a sign from on high that a storm may be brewing for the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican is facing a raft of tough, almost unprecendented, challenges include appointing a new pope while the current one is still alive and finding a role for the retired pontiff.

Euronews correspondent Alberto De Filipis reports from Rome on the uncertain atmosphere around the Vatican:

“The Holy See has made its official statement about what’s going on. Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, with visible nerves, addressed journalists. Yet, a few questions remain unanswered”.

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AUSTRALIA
Goodiwindi Argus

By Catherine Armitage
Feb. 13, 2013

THE Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, agrees the idea of his becoming the next Pope is ”fantastic”, but he means fantastic in the traditional sense of fanciful, not the modern sense of terrific.

As election of the next pope approaches, ”some of the suggestions made will be simply fantastic”, Cardinal Pell said in an interview carried on the Sydney Archdiocese website on Tuesday. ”Some of them will be made to meet local demand for a candidate that they know.

”Will you be staying in Rome or would that be fantastic?” the archdiocese’s head of communications, Katrina Lee, asked. ”Of course I will be coming home,” he said, laughing.

The Catholic theologian Paul Collins agreed. ”I don’t think George Pell has any chance of being elected,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Guyra Argus

By Barney Zwartz
Feb. 13, 2013

IT MIGHT be the world’s most exclusive election, where 120 elaborately garbed elderly men employing ancient rituals amid great ceremony set the course for a sixth of the world’s population, the 1.2 billion people who call themselves Roman Catholic.

It comes around, on average, every seven years, one of which will be 2013 thanks to the dramatic announcement by Benedict XVI on Monday that at 8pm on February 28 he will cease to be Pope.

By Easter, according to a Vatican spokesman, the 266th Pope will be installed. And this conclave offers the strongest likelihood yet that he may come from the developing world of Latin America, Asia or Africa – the first non-European Pope (if you don’t count the Roman empire).

While there are several strong candidates, known as papabile, none stands out. So, as always, lobbying, and what in Australia might be called factional deals, will be vital.

What the cardinals decide are the most urgent issues will determine their choice. At 78, Pope Benedict was not initially considered a serious candidate in 2005, but acceptance of his view that fighting secularism in Europe was a top priority – combined with some impressive performances as dean of the college of cardinals – led to his election.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2013 / 02:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the conclave to elect Pope Benedict’s successor, 11 of the 117 cardinals eligible to vote in the closed-room meeting will be Americans.

The Diocese of Rome will be “sede vacante” or vacant at 8 p.m. on Feb. 28, when Pope Benedict’s resignation goes into effect. On that day, 117 cardinals will be eligible to elect the successor to the Holy See. The conclave must begin within 20 days of his date of resignation.

All cardinals below the age of 80 come to Rome to participate in the conclave. Most of these cardinal-electors – 67 of the 117 – have been appointed by Pope Benedict himself.

Once the Diocese of Rome is vacant, nearly all offices of the Roman Curia, the administrative offices governing the Church, are suspended, and will have to be reconfirmed by the next pontiff. One of the few that continues, because of its urgent nature dealing with issues of absolution and indulgences, is the Apostolic Penitentiary.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By Jeffrey Kofman
@JeffreyKofman

Feb 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY–That didn’t take long. Just a day after the Pope’s stunning decision to resign there’s already a playful joke circulating here in Rome:

Question: What will they call the ex-Pope?

Answer: Ex-Benedict

In case you missed it, the answer is a cute play on the breakfast dish “Eggs Benedict.”

Kidding aside, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the church will deal with a situation that really is without precedent. Sure, popes resigned 600 and 800 years ago, but the situations are, well, hardly parallel. The closest might be Celestine V, known as the Hermit Pope, who resigned in 1294. He had lived in total seclusion and quickly realized he was not equipped to deal with the cut and thrust of 13th Century Vatican politics.

In his resignation Monday, Benedict XVI acknowledged his own mortal shortcomings: “in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

Standing in front of St. Peters at night, John Thavis, a veteran Vatican journalist and author of the soon-to-published “The Vatican Diaries” said it’s impossible to predict how a Pope and a former Pope will co-exist, “there is no job description for a retired Pope.”

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CALIFORNIA
ATNV

[with video]

By Stephanie Kayser and Sean Patrick Lewis

Monday, February 11, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he will be stepping down from his position on February 28.

Citing his age and diminishing strength as the reason for his resignation, he will be the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.

“In today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary,” said the pope. “Strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” …

“A new pope is only as good as the men who support him,” said Joelle Casteix, Western Regional Director for The Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests, “and we believe that anyone that Cardinal Mahony would elect as pope would be someone who would continue the cover-up of child sexual abuse.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

At what moment will Pope Benedict XVI lose his infallibility and his soverign immunity? Apparently, on February 28 when he formally resigns. Perhaps, the historically unsupportable claims of papal infallibility will cease soon. As to the lack of legal immunity, since Joseph Ratzinger can be sued and prosecuted after February 28, he apparently will follow Cardinal Law’s lead and stay safely on papal grounds evading subpoenas.

Ratzinger’s new Vatican quarters have been undergoing renovation apparently as his retirement base reportedly since the last nuns were removed in November. The editor of the forthcoming complete edition of his works, Archbishop Mueller, is now on site as chief Inquisitor at the CDF. Cardinal Law’s ex-aide is in as chief prosecutor. His handsome aide was just made a Bishop. The Pope is ready. He can now focus on his last written effort to push his narrow views, on his music and on dealing with prosecutors’ requests. He has Cardinal Sodano and their subservient Cardinals on site to continue to cover-up the sex abuse and financial scandals until they install their hand-picked and subservient successor, God forbid. Why didn’t Ratzinger think of this five years ago?

If you took a time capsule ride back to 1787 Versailles, you would be struck by the ruthless and unaccountable style of the French King. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic James Madison was drafting a Constitution that prohibited kings and provided for accountable and term-limited rulers who could be impeached for cause by elected representatives. By 1918, the idea of accountability had swept through Europe, except in Vatican City where an absolute monarchy still is the rule with a self perpetuating papal clique that can lock up a butler in a closet-sized room for months without real due process. Unless the imperial coercive structure is changed back to the Catholic consensual structure Jesus and his first disciples left behind, it matters little who is Pope. The insightful butler clearly understood this. …

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:

[Click here for the petition.]

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Local clergy abuse survivors have some thoughts on what they would like to see in the next Pope.

First, David Clohessy with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says he would like to see the next Pope order bishops worldwide to post the names of credibly-accused priests on their websites.

“We’d like to see the Pope take very clear and harsh disciplines, even against a handful of the hundreds of bishops across the globe who continue to conceal child sex crimes,” he said.

“At the risk of sounding harsh, this Pope has offered some nice words and nice gestures about the abuse crisis but virtually no meaningful action that protects children.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NPR

[with audio]

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the largest in the U.S. and Latinos make up a majority of its parishioners. Latino Catholics there are hopeful a new papacy will bring an end to the child sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the archdiocese.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The Pope’s departure comes as the largest Catholic diocese in the United States is struggling with recent revelations from newly released records about sexual abuse by priests. Now, the man in the middle of that scandal, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, will be among the cardinals who elect a successor to Pope Benedict. Latinos make up 70 percent of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. NPR’s Shereen Marisol Meraji reports on their reaction to the pope’s resignation.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELLS RINGING)

SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: The church of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles was here nearly 200 years ago, when this was Mexico. And it’s still mostly Latinos who go there.

SOCORRO HERNANDEZ: (Spanish spoken)

MERAJI: Socorro Hernandez was there praying with her friend, Elisabet Maldonado. She says, in her opinion, the church shouldn’t choose popes who are on in years.

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UNITED STATES
The Guardian

Karen McVeigh in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 February 2013

Victims of the child sex abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic church during Pope Benedict’s tenure welcomed his unexpected resignation on Monday, amid speculation over what prompted his departure.

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap), an organisation of 12,000 members worldwide, claim Benedict is personally responsible for widespread abuse within the church because he chose to protect its reputation over the safety of children. US lawyers who are currently suing the pontiff and other high-ranking Holy See officials for systematically concealing sexual crimes around the world, said his resignation may lead to more international prosecutions.

David Clohessy, executive director of Snap, condemned the pope’s “terrible record” on child sex abuse and said he hoped he would “finally show some courageous leadership on the abuse crisis” in his remaining days.

Clohessy told the Guardian: “Before he became pope his predecessor put him in charge of the abuse crisis. He has read thousands of pages of reports of the abuse cases from across the world. He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the church yet he has done precious little to protect children.”

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano
Tue., Feb. 12 2013

I have long admired the work of Mark Pinsky, the longtime religion reporter for the Orlando Sentinel and author of the best-selling The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of America’s Most Animated Family, a fabulous book that makes its points in a way that leaves you knowing Pinsky knows his Jesus from Jeebus. Guy’s a rock star, so imagine my shock years ago when first digging into the Eleuterio Ramos sex-abuse scandal and discovering that the first person to ever write about the Diocese of Orange’s worst-ever pedophile priest was none other than Pinsky.

His articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1993. Twenty years later, I finally had the chance to talk to Pinsky about them.

I got in contact with Pinsky through author Daniel A. Olivas, who wrote about his own Ramos encounter for The New York Times recently. Pinsky reached out to Olivas to congratulate him on the touching essay, and Olivas forwarded me Pinsky’s contact info.

In an email, Pinsky remembered well the trial–Ramos, his ultimate protector Michael Driscoll (now the Bishop of Boise), the incredulity of the church’s defense. But what he remembers the most was a note that former Orange Bishop Norman McFarland wrote to the Times after Pinsky’s piece appeared, calling it “predatory” reporting. Pinsky and his editors found the note so amusing they pinned it to the wall of the Times’ Orange County bureau.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Die deutschen Bischöfe stehen nach dem Scheitern des Forschungsprojekts zum Missbrauchsskandal massiv in der Kritik. Der Präsident des Kinderschutzbundes wirft der katholischen Kirche vor, sich dem Thema nicht mehr stellen zu wollen.

Hamburg – Der Präsident des Kinderschutzbunds, Heinz Hilgers, hat der katholischen Kirche nach dem Stopp des Forschungsprojekts über Kindesmissbrauch den Willen zur Aufklärung abgesprochen. “Ich habe den Verdacht, dass starke Kräfte in der katholischen Kirche jetzt nach der Methode Vergessen-und-Vergeben arbeiten”, sagte Hilgers der “Saarbrücker Zeitung”. “Es gibt derzeit keine Missbrauchsskandale, über die öffentlich berichtet wird, und deshalb glaubt man in Kirchenkreisen jetzt offenbar, den Mantel des Schweigens darüber hängen zu können.”

Die wissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsskandals ist nach einem Zerwürfnis zwischen der Kirche und dem Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen vorerst gescheitert. Der Leiter des Instituts, Christian Pfeiffer, will das Forschungsprojekt trotzdem fortsetzen – auch ohne Unterstützung der Bischöfe. Die wiederum suchen nun nach einem neuen Projektpartner.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Brennpunkt Ortenau

Anfang des Jahres kündigte die katholische Kirche den Vertrag mit dem Kriminologischen Institut Niedersachsen, das den Missbrauchsskandal in Deutschland wissenschaftlich untersuchen sollte. Die Erzdiözese Freiburg hat eine eigene Untersuchung in Auftrag gegeben. Wird sie tatsächlich alle Fälle von sexuellem Missbrauch in der Ortenau offenlegen?

„Gott schütze unser Tal“ steht unter dem Christuskreuz an der Dorfstraße in Oberharmersbach. Von 1967 bis 1992 hätte es eigentlich heißen müssen: „Gott schütze uns vor unserem Pfarrer.“ Denn was sich in dieser Zeit in dem kleinen Kurort abgespielt hat, erinnert mehr an einen Hollywood-Thriller als an die Realität. Pfarrer Bühler, der damalige Seelsorger der Gemeinde, hat während seiner gesamten Zeit in Oberharmesbach systematisch Ministranten und andere Jugendliche missbraucht. Schätzungen gehen von 100 bis 150 Opfern aus. „Mehrere Generationen von jungen Männern sind davon betroffen“, erzählt der Oberharmersbacher Raphael Hildebrandt. Auch ihn vergewaltigte der Pfarrer immer wieder. „Insgesamt waren es so 400 mal“, schätzt er. „Aber heute weiß ich: Ich hatte noch Glück. Andere sind doppelt so oft von ihm missbraucht worden.“

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UNITED STATES
Democracy Now!

Speculation is mounting over who will become the next pope after Pope Benedict XVI shocked the Catholic Church on Monday when he became the first pontiff to resign in almost 600 years. Benedict’s resignation comes as the Catholic Church is facing scrutiny over its handling of the widening priest sexual abuse scandal and its crackdown on liberal nuns. We’re joined by Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and Sister Simone Campbell of the Catholic social justice group NETWORK, which was heavily criticized by the Vatican last year. [includes rush transcript]

Guests:

Barbara Blaine, president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice group.

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CALIFORNIA
News 10

[with video]

Dave Marquis

El DORADO HILLS, Calif. – Teresa Rosson claims she faced abuse by her parish priest that might have stopped years sooner had then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger acted earlier.

“He’d tell you scary stories, you know, so he could touch you,” recalled Rosson, who said her parish priest, Fr. Stephen Kiesle, began sexually abusing her at age 11 in 1972.

“He would touch my thigh, move his hand up,” Rosson said of the abuse, which she claims began when Kiesle started a relationship with her mother.

In 1981, Oakland Bishop John Cummins wrote several letters to Rome asking that Father Stephen Kiesle be tossed out of the priesthood over allegations of sexual abuse of both boys and girls.

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UNITED STATES
Joey Piscitelli

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Joey Piscitelli

Pope Benedict XVI , aka Joseph Ratzinger, announced on February 11th that he would be resigning early as the leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide. The reason for the surprising decision by the pontiff was due to “deterioration, and incapacity”, and “advanced age”, as stated by the Vatican spokesperson in a public announcement.

It has been 600 years since the last resignation of a pope was announced. Some skeptics however, view the unusual move as the result of a culmination of assorted causes of “deterioration”. The Pope and the Vatican have been steeped in numerous scandals ranging from widespread sex abuse scandals and coverups, to money laundering.

Some of the scandals that are suspected of having high impact that have contributed to the deterioration of the empire under Ratzinger are notable, many of them recent. Among them:

– The release of the film Mea Maxima Culpa on HBO Feb 4th , 2013 which documents the involvement of Cardinal Ratzinger, ( Pope Benedict) – who is accused of coverups, and failure to remove sex abuser Father Murphy of Milwaukee School for the Deaf. Fr. Murphy molested and raped 200 pupils over a 24 year period. The Pope was the head of the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith at the time, which is the office that is responsible for removing abusive clergy. Ratzinger is accused of hierarchy complicity in several dozen sex abuse cases, whereas the Pontiff himself failed to remove the predator.

– The release of 12,000 internal file documents from the Los Angeles Diocese sex abuse scandal on January 31, 2013. The Catholic Church had fought having to release the files for six years. Thirty thousand files were supposed to be released as part of a settlement agreement with abuse victims 6 years ago, and many of the files – which implicate Bishops and Cardinals and hierarchy figures, have still not been released. Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, has been implicated in numerous clergy abuse transfers and coverups, many of them while under the jurisdiction of Ratzinger.

– In January 2013, the Italian treasury froze privileges for the Vatican to use Italian banking services because of the breach of money laundering regulations. The Pope hired Swiss money laundering expert Rene Brulhart to help the Vatican with the scandal.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Cindy Wooden,Catholic News Service | Feb. 12, 2013

Vatican City —
The Vatican monastery where Pope Benedict XVI intends to live began its life as the Vatican gardener’s house, but was established as a cloistered convent by Blessed John Paul II in 1994.

When Pope Benedict, 85, announced Monday that his age and declining energies prompted his decision to resign effective Feb. 28, the Vatican said he would move out to the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo while remodeling work was completed on the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens.

Pope Benedict said it was his intention to “devotedly serve the holy church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.”

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters Tuesday he did not know when the remodeling work would be finished and Pope Benedict could move in. He said, however, that because the monastery is small, the pope would be joined by a small staff, but another community of cloistered sisters would not be moving in.

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VATICAN CITY
The Huffington Post

By Cavan Sieczkowski Posted: 02/12/2013

Was it just Mother Nature or a sign from God?

Lightning appeared to strike St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on Monday just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, according to the BBC. The lightning strike happened around 6 p.m. local time.

Global news agency Agence France-Presse was the first to publish the startling photo of a lightning bolt coming out of the heavens and appearing to strike the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of Catholicism’s holiest sites.

AFP photographer Filippo Monteforte caught the amazing photograph on Monday evening during a storm. “It was icy cold and the rain was falling in sheets,” he told AFP. “When the storm started, I thought that lightning might strike the rod, so I decided it was worth seeing whether – if it DID strike – I could get the shot at exactly the right moment.”

He waited two hours before lightning struck twice and he captured a still image. “The first bolt was huge and lit up the sky, but unfortunately I missed it,” he told AFP. “I had better luck the second time, and was able to snap a couple of images of the dome illuminated by the bolt.”
n Post | By Cavan Sieczkowski Posted: 02/12/2013

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VATICAN CITY
WCAI

By Mark Memmott

On this morning after the surprise announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is resigning at the end of the month, NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli looks at the numbers and concludes it’s more than likely the next pope will be a European, just like nearly all the others.

Why?

As Sylvia told Morning Edition guest host Linda Wertheimer:

— 117 cardinals are eligible to vote at the upcoming conclave (only those under the age of 80 can take part).

— 61 are from Europe. That’s 52 percent of the votes.

— Of the 56 others: 19 are from Latin America, 14 are from North America, 11 are from Africa, 11 are from Asia and 1 is from Oceania.

What’s more, the cardinals who will choose the next pope are all in their positions thanks to the German-born Benedict and his predecessor, Polish-born Pope John Paul II. It’s hard to imagine those cardinals choosing “someone who would really veer” from those popes’ views of the world and the church, Sylvia said.

Put the numbers and the cardinals’ makeup together and, Sylvia concludes, “it will probably be a European.” Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71, is a leading contender.

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IRELAND
The Journal

SAINT MALACHY is not the most high-profile of saints – but the oncoming vacancy in the office of pope has thrust him back into the limelight.

Malachy is the supposed author of the ‘Prophecy of the Popes’ – a list allegedly written in 1139, but ‘rediscovered’ in 1590 – which claims to have predicted the identities (or at least attributes) of each pope between the time of its writing and the end of the Church.

While its authenticity is not affirmed by the Church itself, and while it is impossible to know whether the list was written retrospectively before it was first published in 1595, it appears to have been successful in some ways – though of course its predictions are suitably vague so as to apply to most cases anyway.

The argument that the list is a hoax gathers further weight with the fact that for each of the popes mentioned before 1590, it describes something historical about their upbringing or background – but only makes vague references to events in subsequent pontificates.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Abuse Survivors and Their Allies Remember Benedict’s Legacy: “Failed to Achieve,” “Words Rang Hollow,” “Never Once Contacted, Spoke To, or Apologized,” “Did Not Do Enough”

William D. Lindsey

And it’s not merely LGBT Catholics and their allies (I’m referring to my previous posting) who see Benedict’s legacy in decidedly more sober terms than do the leading luminaries who dominate the discourse at the center of the Catholic conversation: the same is true for Catholics who have survived childhood sexual abuse by clerics, and those who stand in solidarity with abuse survivors. Here’s a selection of statements from this group of important commentators:

Kristine Ward of National Survivor Advocates Coalition:

Pope Benedict made a sensible decision. It is evidence the papacy and the Church can change.

Let’s hope it is a signal of strength for the next pope to take the steps that the Church needs.

The Church is in bad shape and needs the tremendous power of the papacy to be used courageously and forcefully for good – starting with the sexual abuse crisis, the largest crisis the Church has faced in 500 years. . . .

And:

Pope Benedict should bar Cardinal Roger Mahony from entering the conclave. The Los Angeles documents are evidence enough that this high honor of voting for the next Pope should be withdrawn from him. There should be an empty chair to mark Mahony’s spot.

And:

The next pope should end corruption in the Church starting with a papal balcony announcement of the removal of criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishop Accountability:

Joseph Ratzinger leaves the papacy having failed to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests. He leaves hundreds of culpable bishops in power and a culture of secrecy intact. . . .

Benedict’s words rang hollow. He spoke as a shocked bystander, as if he had just stumbled upon the abuse crisis. But more than anyone in the Vatican, he knew about the damage done to innocent children. As archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Ratzinger had allowed the transfer of accused priest Rev. Peter Hullermann, and certainly managed many other abuse cases as well. Since 1981, when he was named head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith (CDF), he had been at the center of the Vatican’s abuse bureaucracy, reviewing many files and, unfortunately, implementing Pope John Paul II’s policy of not laicizing abusive priests. In Spring 2001, the Pope gave Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF sole responsibility for abuse cases, and in that role, Cardinal Ratzinger read hundreds of files and became the Vatican’s most knowledgeable and powerful person on this issue.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 12, 2013

Rome —
When you’re talking about a church with more than 2,000 years of history, you don’t get a chance to use terms such as “uncharted waters” very often, but that’s precisely where Catholicism finds itself in the wake of Benedict XVI’s bombshell announcement that he plans to resign Feb. 28.

At the moment, the list of unknowns about what it all means is considerably longer than the certainties. During a Vatican briefing Tuesday, reporters amused themselves by compiling a list of all the times the spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, replied to questions with some version of “I don’t have precise information on that.” They included:
• Exactly when will Benedict XVI depart for Castel Gandolfo after the formal end of his papacy at 8 p.m. Rome time Feb. 28, and when exactly will he return to move into a former monastery on Vatican grounds?
• What will happen to symbols of Benedict’s papacy, such as papal ring and seal?
• Will Benedict take part in the public ceremonies of his successor, such as the installation Mass of the new pope?
• What will Benedict’s title be after he steps down?
• Who exactly will move in with Benedict to run his household and act as aides?

Lombardi was charmingly frank in conceding that this is a “new situation” and it’s not always “immediately obvious” how things will play out.

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

Approximately 75 people attended the ACI meeting in Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow, on Wednesday the 6th February. The meeting was held in the Lord Bagenal Hotel and was organised by local man, Pascal O’Dea, from Bagenalstown. …

At the end of the ‘break out’ session the appointed rapporteur from each group summarised the views of the group members. The following are the key issues identified.

The church is seen to be in crisis following the revelations contained in the Murphy and Ryan Reports and the subsequent diocesan reports on the clerical sex abuse scandals. Despite the passage of time there is still anger and disbelief at the way some senior church leaders in Ireland, and elsewhere, placed the reputation of the institutional church above the well-being of victims.

A clear ‘disconnect’ was identified between the local church at parish level and what is seen as the institutional church at diocesan and national level, not to mention at the level of the Vatican. People expressed general satisfaction with the way the church operated at local level but highlighted the absence of leadership from those in positions of authority in the church in our country.

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