ABUSE TRACKER

LOS ANGELES (CA)
U.S. Catholic

By Bryan Cones

It’s hard to generate much sympathy for Cardinal Roger Mahony, especially given the onslaught of files recently released that showed unacceptable failure to adequately respond to the Los Angeles’ archdiocese clergy sex abuse problem. Last week, however, the L.A. Times reported what many bishops have long complained about, if only privately: an outmoded Vatican legal structure that made it virtually impossible to remove a priest intent on resisting laicization.

Case in point is Father Kevin Barmasse, who as far back as 1993 had been accused of giving alcohol to and molesting teenage boys. Barmasse appealed to Rome, since as a priest he has separate legal protections provided by canon law. Despite Mahony’s personal interventions in Rome, it took 10 years to remove Barmasse from the clerical state, due partially to the sheer lack of staff in the Vatican (along with other issues, no doubt).

Mahony could, of course, simply turned Barmasse into the police–and that’s likely what he should have done, presuming that criminal behavior was involved, which seems quite obvious unless it is legal in California to give underage boys alcohol. But to me it also signals the complete inability of the Vatican apparatus to deal with problems of this magnitude. If the church had an empowered tribunal system, which was intended in the revision of canon law but removed by Pope John Paul II, the system might have actually worked. Instead, a staff of a mere 45 people at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith is trying to deal with a problem completely beyond most people’s competence.

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WORCESTER (MA)
The Crusader

By Elizabeth O’Brien
News Editor

Published: Friday, February 15, 2013
Updated: Sunday, February 17, 2013

On Monday, February 11 at around 11:30 a.m., some members of the Holy Cross community may have seen a woman standing on College Street who appeared to be protesting something and answering questions to anyone who came up to her. The woman – Kate – was participating in a vigil for justice after the Holy Cross administration mishandled a very traumatizing event that Kate went through.

She asserts that she was sexually assaulted by a Jesuit priest while on a study abroad trip as a student at Holy Cross. Many years later, in 2003, Rev. Michael McFarland, S.J., the former President of the College, apologized for what happened and offered assistance. He also promised confidentiality, as did Rev. Dennis J. Yesalonia, S.J., the general counsel of the College of the time.

However, the next year Kate found out that Fr. McFarland had released private information to a third party. She has continued to reach out to members of the Holy Cross administration, including the College’s current president Father Philip Boroughs, S.J.. Allegedly she is ignored, and some of her confidential information keeps on being released without her consent. Fr. Boroughs has taken action against Kate such as banning her from campus and creating an internal list with her name on it.

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AUSTRALIA
The Jewish Press

Australian Holocaust survivors are furious with US-based Rabbi Manis Freidman for apologizing for comparing sexual abuse with diarrhea but not for expressing regret for remarks he made around 30 years ago that the Nazis should not be blamed for the Holocaust because it was part of a Divine plan.

Rabbi Friedman recently posted a YouTube, which since has been removed, in which he stated that that sexual abuse, like diarrhea, “should be kept private and that victims of abuse are that damaged.”

He had said in the clip that anyone who abuses others sexually can do mitzvot to atone for his acts and that the victim must get over the abuse. “[If} You’ve learned that not every uncle is your best friend, you’ve learned an important lesson,” according to him.

Rabbi Friedman apologized for his “completely inappropriate use of language,” called sexual abuse one of the “worst crimes imaginable” and added that perpetrators of molestation should be prosecuted by the police.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

EXCLUSIVE by JORDAN BAKER
From:The Sunday Telegraph
February 17, 2013

THE new Pope must save the Catholic Church from waning influence amid the evils of modern society – and may well be an Italian – says Cardinal George Pell, one of the 117 men who will elect a new pontiff next month.

In an exclusive interview, Cardinal Pell said the vote was “enormously important for the Church”.

“If we go under, we surrender to the tides that are breaking up families, decreasing the birth rate, the challenges of alcoholism and drugs and pornography. If we collapse or we wobble disastrously, it won’t be for the good of the western world at all,” he said.

Cardinal Pell will fly to Rome on Friday, where he will meet other cardinals before being secluded inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to choose a replacement for the retiring Pope Benedict.

There are factions – Cardinal Pell describes it as “different schools of thought” – and this will be evident in the discussions among cardinals, although he says the lobbying has not yet begun.

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AUSTRALIA
CathNews

The new Pope must save the Catholic Church from waning influence amid the evils of modern society – and may well be an Italian – says Cardinal George Pell, one of the 117 men who will elect a new pontiff next month, reports The Sunday Telegraph.

In an exclusive interview, Cardinal Pell said the vote was “enormously important for the Church”.

“If we go under, we surrender to the tides that are breaking up families, decreasing the birth rate, the challenges of alcoholism and drugs and pornography. If we collapse or we wobble disastrously, it won’t be for the good of the western world at all,” he said.

Cardinal Pell will fly to Rome on Friday, where he will meet other cardinals before being secluded inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to choose a replacement for the retiring Pope Benedict.

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RHODE ISLAND
The Hartford Courant

By DAVE ALTIMARI, daltimar@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
5:49 p.m. EST, February 17, 2013

As Gabrielle Mee lay on her deathbed in a Rhode Island hospital in 2008 the leader of the Connecticut-based Legion of Christ asked her bank to transfer $400,000 from her personal bank account to the church “as soon as possible.”

The bank complied, and the money was the last of nearly $60 million that Mee either gave or bequeathed to the religious organization over nearly 20 years, court records unsealed late last week in Rhode Island indicate.

The documents were part of a now-dismissed lawsuit filed by Mary Lou Dauray, Mee’s niece, in an attempt to overturn Mee’s will, which left everything the woman had to the church group.

Among the thousands of pages of documents are depositions of some of the highest-ranking members of the Legion, bank records, and personal letters that Rev. Marcial Maciel, the now-disgraced founder, wrote to Mee over the years.

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VATICAN CITY
Economic Times

Pope resigns: Next pontiff’s election will depict a lot about Church’s ideologies

By Bennett Voyles

Whether the beleaguered Pope Benedict XVI is simply worn out or just saw his February 10 announcement of abdication as a way to call a snap election that will keep his conservative faction of the Roman Catholic Church in power, it didn’t take long for betting to begin on who the next pope might be.

Paddy Power, Ireland’s largest bookmaker, is now offering 11/4 odds on Angelo Scola, cardinal of Venice, 7/2 on Peter Turkson of Ghana, and 9/2 on Marc Ouellet of Quebec, Canada. Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea, Ladbrokes has Cardinal Turkson in the lead, followed by Marc Ouellet and Angelo Scola.

It might seem irreverent to bet on the future leader of the 1.2 billion-souled flock like a horse race, but maybe the bookies are on to something. Turning the election into an actual race could put a little more Roman back into the Roman Catholic Church, and give it a welcome dose of positive publicity. After so many sordid scandals in recent years, the spectacle of those scarlet robes billowing around a restored Circus Maximus would be long remembered by the faithful and heathen alike. It would also have the practical advantage in ensuring that the College of Cardinals selected its strongest – or at least its sharpest-elbowed – member, either of which are useful qualities in a SupremePontiff.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

By Susan Spencer TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
susan.spencer@telegram.com

Will the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics bring more of the same or is it time for a change?

As Central Massachusetts Catholics last week observed the beginning of Lent, the six weeks leading to Easter, they grappled with the unexpected announcement last Monday of Pope Benedict XVI’s plan to resign at the end of the month, and the implication for the church’s future.

“I’m just as surprised as anyone else. I didn’t think popes could retire,” said Pat Olsen of Rutland, on her way to Ash Wednesday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Worcester. …

In looking toward the next leader, views ranged from a desire to carry on in the same vein as Pope Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, to wanting to reach out more to youth and being open to ordaining women, gays and married priests.

Ms. Olsen said, “We hope that they choose somebody who would be progressive and responsive to the needs of the younger generation.”

Rommy Medrano of Worcester, a Dominican Republic native who attends St. Paul’s, said she wished the new pope would move the church in a positive direction, moving beyond the specter of the worldwide sex abuse crisis to focus on the good work the church does. …

Chris Beggs of Milford said: “The pope has had a lot to contend with, with all the sexual abuse going on … Anyone who becomes pope will have to handle that. That takes a lot of stress.

“I think he (the next pope) should be younger so he can relate to the younger people who have fallen away from the church.”

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UNITED STATES
Dale O’Leary

February 15, 2013

In response to the scandal over sexual misconduct with persons under 18 by members of the Catholic clergy, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops commissioned the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem. The study The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002, was released in 2004 (JJR I)[1]. This was followed up by a Supplementary Data Analysis in 2006 (JJR II)[2].

In discussing childhood sexual abuse (CSA), it is necessary to remember that while people feel reassured when they receive a statistic to two decimal points, statistics are like snapshots, taken at a particular time in a particular place, from a particular point of view. In order to know how reliable statistics taken from a published study are, it is necessary to know how the group studied and any comparison groups were assembled, what questions were asked, and how were they asked. Can the statistics presented in a particular study be generalized or are they only relevant to that particular group at that particular place and moment time? Do the results agree with the results from a number of other well designed studies? The JJR study is well designed and provided a unique opportunity to look at the problem of CSA.

According to JJR I, 4,392 clerics were accused of CSA. This represents about 4% of clerics in active ministry during that period. While the number of alleged victims of clergy abuse in the JJR is unacceptable high (10,667 total allegations), the publicity generated by the coverage of the scandal, and the fact that the Church was offering financial settlements may have encouraged those who had not previously revealed their abuse to come forward. Some of those who did reported abuse that had occurred decades earlier. This added the fact that the Church as a hierarchical institution was able to give the researchers’ access to records, means that JJR is probably one of the more comprehensive studies of CSA.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden and Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Wherever journalists and bookmakers may be getting the names on their lists of top candidates for the next pope, it’s not from the cardinals who will actually vote in the election. Both custom and canon law forbid the cardinals to discuss the matter in such detail with outsiders.

Moreover, the true “papabili” — literally, pope-ables — are likely to emerge only after all the worlds’ cardinals — not just the 117 who will be under 80 and eligible to vote — begin meeting at the Vatican in the coming days.

One thing is already clear, however: because of their experience and the esteem they enjoy among their peers, certain cardinals are likely to serve as trusted advisers to the rest in the discussions and election.

Here, in alphabetical order, are 12 cardinals expected to have a major voice in the deliberations:

— Conventional wisdom has long held that the cardinals will never elect an American pope, lest the leadership of the church appear to be linked with the United States’ economic and geopolitical dominance. But the extroverted and jocular Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 63, charmed and impressed many in the College of Cardinals in February 2012 when he delivered the main presentation at a meeting Pope Benedict XVI had called to discuss the new evangelization. The pope himself praised the New York archbishop’s presentation on how to revive the faith in increasingly secular societies as “enthusiastic, joyful and profound.”

— Although not a familiar name in the press, Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, 60, is a major figure among his peers in Europe, the church’s traditional heartland and the region of more than half the cardinal electors. He was elected to a second five-year term as president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences in 2011.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Press TV (Iran)

Recently released documents in Los Angeles suggest Vatican bureaucracy hampered bishops trying to deal with allegations of abusive priests.

The documents show Cardinal Roger Mahony’s frustration as he tried to ensure one priest, the Rev. Kevin Barmasse, did not return to pastoral work.

Barmasse, who allegedly abused at least eight teenage boys after plying them with alcohol, appealed to Rome.

“Given the pastoral situation in the United States today, which is all too well known, bishops need to be able to act quickly and decisively in cases of alleged clerical misconduct to assure the People of God that their rights are being fully protected,” Mahony wrote in a 1994 letter to a Vatican official the cardinal had met with during a visit to Rome four months earlier.

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VATICAN CITY
The Weekly Standard

Feb 25, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 23 • By JOSEPH BOTTUM

In 1294, Peter of Morrone—San Celestino, little St. Celestine, as popular devotion calls him—was elected pope of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Spirit moves where it will; perhaps a shy, ascetic monk was necessary at that moment, to remind the church of its truest calling. The college of cardinals thought so, at least, desperate after two years of failing to choose a successor to Nicholas IV.

Still, no one should have been surprised that a man who had previously lived as a hermit in a cave in Abruzzi would prove one of the least competent administrators the world has ever seen. He never actually made it to Rome, ruling—if the word is allowed a certain looseness—from Naples and attempting such governance practices as disappearing for the whole of Advent to fast and pray. After five months and eight days in office, the saint had simply had enough. Citing his desire for a purer life, his physical weakness, his ignorance, the perverseness of those around him, and a longing for tranquillity, he issued a papal decree that popes had the authority to leave their office, and then took advantage of his decree to resign the papacy and flee to a monastic retreat in the forest. …

In 2005, a devout and serious theologian named Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, taking the name of Benedict XVI in honor of St. Benedict, one of the founders of Western monasticism and, in interesting ways, one of the founders of the West itself. At the time of his election, commentators made much of Ratzinger’s nod toward the Christian root of European self-understanding. They might have been better served by paying attention to his nod toward the monastic element—for in February 2013, Benedict XVI suddenly and inexplicably reaffirmed Celestine’s decree of papal authority to resign and announced his own resignation from the office, effective at the end of the month. He would, he informed the world, be spending the rest of his life in prayer, isolated within a monastery.

In certain ways, the decision is intelligent. For the rigors of an extremely public office, the 85-year-old pontiff is increasingly and recognizably unfit. Always something of an isolated figure, he was a man with few close advisers. “He never talked to anyone,” a Vatican official told me, “not really.” He seemed to have no friends who were also high officials in the church—no counselors who could understand the stresses of his position. Worse, his natural distaste for the glad-handing part of the job was a constant burden. John Paul II drew strength from crowds; they revived his spirit even in his infirm old age. Benedict saw and felt the press of people as a burden, necessary but uncongenial, and as the almost eight years of his papacy went by, one could see the endless papal audiences exhausting him more and more.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Tom Kington
February 17, 2013

VATICAN CITY — A week after Pope Benedict announced his resignation, more than 50,000 supporters jammed into St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for his next-to-last weekly blessing, as it emerged the aging pontiff may have gone blind in one eye.

Addressing the cheering crowd, which was larger than usual for the Sunday Angelus, Benedict appeared to criticize the infighting that has plagued the Vatican during his reign.

“The church, which is mother and teacher, calls on all its members to renew their spirit, turn back firmly toward God and ignore pride and egoism to live in love,” he said, before asking in Spanish for prayers to be said for the next pope.

Benedict, 85, shocked the Vatican and the world Feb. 11 by announcing that he would step down at the end of the month due to failing health, although Vatican insiders have also cited a toll taken on the pope by power struggles behind the Vatican walls.

New evidence is emerging of Benedict’s declining physical condition. Peter Seewald, a German journalist who has interviewed Benedict on numerous occasions, said that when he last saw the pope 10 weeks ago, his hearing had deteriorated and he appeared to have gone blind in his left eye.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Radio Vatikan

Eine Woche nach der Rückzugsankündigung des Papstes treffen sich die deutschen Bischöfe von Montag bis Donnerstag zu ihrer Frühjahrsvollversammlung in Trier. Bei der turnusmäßigen Sitzung dürften auch der Amtsverzicht Benedikts XVI. und die bevorstehende Papstwahl zur Sprache kommen. Der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz gehören vier Kardinäle an; Anfang oder Mitte März werden sie ins Konklave einziehen und gemeinsam mit 113 weiteren Kardinälen einen neuen Papst wählen.

Unter Leitung des Vorsitzenden, Erzbischof Robert Zollitsch, nehmen 66 Mitglieder der Bischofskonferenz an der Trierer Tagung teil. Dort steht unter anderen das Thema „Pille danach“ auf der offiziellen Tagesordnung. Nach der Abweisung einer vergewaltigten Frau durch zwei katholische Kliniken in Köln hatte Kardinal Joachim Meisner Ende Januar eine neue Position zur „Pille danach“ verkündet, die er zuvor mit dem Vatikan abgestimmt hatte. Demzufolge sind nach einer Vergewaltigung Präparate ethisch vertretbar, mit denen die Verhinderung einer Befruchtung beabsichtigt wird. Die Bischöfe in Nordrhein-Westfalen haben sich dieser Position bereits angeschlossen; die Bischofskonferenz insgesamt strebt in dieser Frage eine einheitliche Linie an.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Jason Horowitz

VATICAN CITY — In the early 1990s, college friends of Carlo Fusco, a law student in Rome, introduced him to Paolo Gabriele, an amiable Roman with dark hair and chubby cheeks. The two young men recognized one another as kindred Catholic spirits and chatted in pizzerias and coffee bars. After college, Fusco lost track of Gabriele but happily ran into him years later at a night mass at Santa Maria in Via Lata, a 17th-century church built atop the warren of rooms where tradition holds the apostle Paul lived under house arrest. (“Verbum Dei non est alligatum — The word of God is not chained” is etched on a column in the crypt.)

Gabriele would later become a prisoner himself, after being convicted in the pilfered-documents scandal known as “VatiLeaks” that has cast a pall over Benedict’s last year in office. But back then, he talked intensely about his relationship with God to Fusco, who by then had become the equivalent of a divorce lawyer on the church court. Gabriele’s career had taken a turn across the Tiber. He told Fusco that his parish priest, a man with Vatican connections, had recommended him for a maintenance job in the Holy See. His rise there has since become the stuff of legend.

“Who cleaned this bathroom?” Fusco said one powerful cardinal asked Gabriele upon exiting the spotless facilities. Gabriele was the Mr. Clean in question, and he moved up to polishing the Vatican’s ornate marble and got ever closer to the pope. Fusco said over lunch in an upscale Rome restaurant that he was surprised to run into Gabriele again in the early 2000s, after an audience Pope John Paul II held for lawyers credentialed to the Vatican, in the frescoed Clementine Hall.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Pope Benedict XVI’s leaked documents show fractured Vatican full of rivalries

By Jason Horowitz

Published: February 16

Vatican City — Guests at the going-away party for Carlo Maria Viganò couldn’t understand why the archbishop looked so forlorn. Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Viganò ambassador to the United States, a plum post where he would settle into a stately mansion on Massachusetts Avenue, across the street from the vice president’s residence.

“He went through the ordeal making it very clear he was unhappy with it,” said one former ambassador to the Vatican, who attended the Vatican Gardens ceremony in the late summer of 2011. “And we just couldn’t figure out, us outsiders and non-Italians, what was going on.”

There was no such confusion within Vatican walls. Benedict had installed Viganò to enact a series of reforms within the Vatican. But some of Rome’s highest-ranking cardinals undercut the efforts and hastened Viganò’s exile to the United States.

Viganò’s plight and other unflattering machinations would soon become public in an unprecedented leak of the pontiff’s personal correspondence. Much of the media — and the Vatican — focused on the source of the shocking security breach. Largely lost were the revelations contained in the letters themselves — tales of rivalry and betrayal, and allegations of corruption and systemic dysfunction that infused the inner workings of the Holy See and the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI. Last week, he announced that he will become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bild

Von:ROMAN EICHINGER und MARTIN S. LAMBECK

BILD am SONNTAG: Papst Benedikt XVI. ist am Montag überraschend zurückgetreten. Darf man Gott den Dienst aufkündigen?

ERZBISCHOF ROBERT ZOLLITSCH: Er hat Gott den Dienst ja nicht aufgekündigt, sondern gesagt: Meine Kräfte reichen nicht mehr aus, um diese Verantwortung voll wahrzunehmen. Dann soll es jemand anderes machen. Ich sehe das als Zeichen der Ehrlichkeit und Bescheidenheit. Auch der Stellvertreter Christi auf Erden ist ein Mensch.

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DEUTSCHLAND
16 Vor

Erstmals seit 30 Jahren findet eine Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz wieder in Trier statt. 66 Bischöfe und Kardinäle werden ab diesem Montag im ERA-Kongresszentrum tagen, erwartet werden außerdem Kleriker aus mehreren Erdteilen. Nach dem angekündigten Rücktritt des Papstes rechnen manche schon mit einer Art Mini-Konklave, doch dürfte Benedikts historische Entscheidung eher im informellen Teil des Treffens eine Rolle spielen. Die Kirchenvolksbewegung hingegen hofft auf ein deutliches Signal aus Trier: “Wir brauchen einen neuen Führungsstil und mehr Dezentralisierung, so wie das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil es bestimmt hat”, verlangt Christian Weisner von “Wir sind Kirche”. Mehrere Initiativen und Verbände wollen mit einem kritischen Begleitprogramm die Missbrauchsaffäre in den Mittelpunkt rücken.

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UNITED STATES
PolicyMic

James Banks

The big news with Catholicism this week is that the pope has chosen to retire. I should note that I am not Catholic. My family has been moving in and out of the Church for a few generations now, but my feet are still planted firmly on the South side of the Tiber. Therefore, I can understand why retiring is a perfectly sensible move for a guy who is 85-years-old given the contentious issues that the Church had to deal with in recent years weighing down on his shoulder.

The ambivalence with which some Catholics are greeting his abdication is understandable. After all, the pope is supposed to be the successor of St. Peter. That is not a job that people walk away from in the way that they walk away from being, say, the bean counter for Bethlehem Steel. As New York Times’ Ross Douthat points out, if God wanted a new ambassador on earth, He probably would have said so.

That being said, one should keep in mind the other recent major story regarding the Roman Catholic Church. This one was a story from North America that followed from the publication of documents suggesting that Cardinal Mahoney (formerly Archbishop of Los Angeles) participated in the cover up of serious cases of sexual abuse during his tenure.

Most of the journalism that covers the sexual abuse scandal, particularly from people who are not otherwise interested in the Church, misses the point. There is no real evidence linking celibacy or other characteristics of the priestly lifestyle to a proclivity for pedophilia. The average priest is probably less prone to sexually abuse an altar boy than a public school teacher is a student. There is absolutely no compelling evidence that the Catholic clergy has more perverts than any other religious or secular organization.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Daily Forward

In a letter to the editor of the Miami Herald, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said that one of the leading candidates to replace Pope Benedict XVI is an anti-Semite.

Responding to a list published last week after the resignation of Benedict, which identified Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras as a possible successor to the current pope, Dershowitz wrote: “He has blamed the Jews for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners! He has argued that the Jews got even with the Catholic Church for its anti-Israel positions by arranging for the media — which they, of course, control, he said — to give disproportionate attention to the Vatican sex scandal. He then compared the Jewish controlled media with Hitler, because they are ‘protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution against the church.’”

Maradiaga, in a May 2002 interview with the Italian-Catholic publication “30 Giorni,” claimed Jews influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

At the time, the Anti-Defamation League expressed public outrage at the cardinal’s comments. In a later conversation with Abraham Foxman, ADL national director, Maradiaga apologized and said he never meant for his remarks to be taken as perpetuating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control of the media, and promised never to say it again.

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PHILIPIPINES
Manila Bulletin

By The New York Times

February 17, 2013

MANILA, Philippines — There is no formal nominating process for choosing the man to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, and campaigning for oneself is counterproductive. But the cardinals who will file into the Sistine Chapel next month to elect a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church have been quietly sizing up potential candidates for years.

They were impressed when the young soon-to-be-cardinal of Manila, Luis Antonio Tagle, told bishops gathered for a momentous synod in Rome last October that the church should listen more and admit its mistakes.

They took note a year ago when Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York delivered a winning address on evangelization to the College of Cardinals, the day before the pope gave him the red hat of a cardinal.

They deemed Cardinal Marc Ouellet a gracious host on their visits to the Vatican, where he guides the selection of bishops, but some said he practically put the crowd to sleep during his talk at the International Eucharistic Congress last June in Dublin.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By:Sandro Contenta
Feature reporter, Published on Sat Feb 16 2013

If God works in mysterious ways, then the Vatican has long been meticulous about following His example.

The Holy See’s pronouncements on Catholic doctrine claim the missile-like clarity of truth. But its politics and workings are monuments to obscurity.

Centuries of secrecy and intrigue turn even the most historic events into exercises in uncertainty. On Monday, when Pope Benedict made one of the biggest Vatican announcements in 600 years — his resignation — he did it exclusively in Latin, a dead language only one journalist in attendance understood.

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VATICAN CITY
Business Recorder

Sunday, 17 February 2013
Posted by Muhammad Iqbal

VATICAN CITY: Cardinal Kurt Koch, a close aide of Pope Benedict who will cast his vote for the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church, says there is no reason why the new pontiff cannot be African or Latin American.

Koch, head of the Vatican department that deals with Christian unity and relations with Jews, also said he had had no doubt that Pope Benedict would resign rather than rule for life, and said that future popes would be free to do the same.

“The challenges of the Church in the world are very different on different continents: in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America.

The question is ‘where will the challenges be greater, on which continent, should it be a pope for, above all, Latin America, for Africa ,” Koch told Reuters in an interview.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Tom Heneghan

February 17, 2013

After Pope Benedict’s papacy of almost eight years, the cardinals who will elect the next Catholic pontiff are more European, more conservative and more “Roman” than the conclave that chose him in 2005.

Benedict has handpicked more than half the men who will elect his successor. The rest were chosen by the late Pope John Paul, a Pole with whom the German pope shared a determination to reassert a more orthodox Catholicism in the new millennium.

Those two popes made sure any man awarded a cardinal’s red hat was firmly in line with key Catholic doctrine supporting priestly celibacy and Vatican authority and opposing abortion, women priests, gay marriage and other liberal reforms.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Cicero

Von Timo Stein

Die Zeitungen überschlagen sich mit Lobeshymnen auf den scheidenden Papst. Warum eigentlich? Mit der Lebenswirklichkeit der Menschen hat all das nichts zu tun

Schon erstaunlich. Ein geistlicher Führer dankt ab und die säkulare Welt spendet Applaus. Die Zeitungen überschlagen sich mit Lobeshymnen, Huldigungen und schmeichelnder Ehrerbietung. Kein Politiker, der nicht eine Meinung hat, der verherrlicht und Respekt zollt.

Allenfalls in Nebensätzen oder als Fußnote erschöpf sich dann das, wofür dieser Mann und seine Kirche auch stehen: Ökumene verstanden als Schulterschluss mit der Orthodoxie, mit Piusbrüdern, Missbrauchskandalen, Homosexuellenfeindlichkeit und einer Abtreibungspolitik, die jüngst eine mutmaßlich vergewaltigte Frau in Köln zu spüren bekam, als ihr zwei katholische Krankenhäuser die Behandlung mit der „Pille danach“ versagten.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott kmellott@tribdem.com

JOHNSTOWN — His name was Paul Stephen Baker, he was a friar, a member of the Catholic religious order known as the Franciscan Third Order Regular.

The group takes a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience.

Baker, 62, at the time he died Jan. 26 of a self-inflicted stab wound to the heart, was part of one of the largest religious orders in the world, but was committed to one of the smallest religious communities.

He was one of only eight religious brothers in the United States who are members of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate Conception Province, headquartered in Blair County at Hollidaysburg.

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VATICAN CITY
allAfrica

By Luke Lythgoe, 11 February 2013

ANALYSIS

In the wake of Pope Benedict XVI’s shock resignation, bookmakers and international media alike are heralding the prospect of Rome’s first black African pontiff.

With the shock resignation this morning of Pope Benedict XVI, the international media has gone into overdrive in an attempt to predict the next spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Could the world finally see its first black pope?

The Church (with more than one billion followers worldwide and counting) has had three ‘African’ popes in its history – all from the North African provinces of the Roman Empire and none since the fifth century. However, the latest papal election could very realistically see the first black – indeed, first truly non-European – pope.

In recent years, the Catholic leadership has become increasingly global in makeup, finally starting to represent Catholic demographics across the planet. Catholicism is truly global, with the majority of the Catholic community living in the Americas today. Second place goes to Europe, and third to Africa. However, over the last decade the number of Europeans adhering to the Catholic faith has been in decline, while Catholicism in Africa is on the rise.

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ROM
Zeit

Rom (dpa) – Der Theologe Hans Küng befürchtet nach dem Rücktritt von Papst Benedikt XVI. einen Machtkampf im Vatikan. «Es droht mit Benedikt XVI. ein Schattenpapst, der zwar abgedankt hat, aber indirekt weiter Einfluss nehmen kann», sagte Küng dem Nachrichtenmagazin «Der Spiegel».

Schließlich habe es auch kein Pfarrer gern, wenn sein Vorgänger nebenan sitze und alles beobachte.

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DEUTSCHLAND
LN Online

Wer dachte, dass sich mit der Wahl eines deutschen Papstes seine Landsleute stärker um die katholische Kirche scharen würden, täuschte sich. Die berühmte „Wir sind Papst“-Schlagzeile vor acht Jahren war witzig, aber das Wir-Gefühl blieb dann doch unterentwickelt.

Benedikt XVI. war im Alltagsbewusstsein der Deutschen eher eine geistliche Trophäe als ein Brückenbauer. Es gab auch unter katholischen Kirchgängern kaum verstärkte Bindungen in die geistige Welt des Vatikans.

Umgekehrt auch nicht: Joseph Ratzinger hatte nur wenig zu den Problemen zu sagen, mit denen sich seine deutschen Glaubensbrüder herumschlugen — auch nicht zur Bewältigung der Missbrauchsskandale.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Sex und Zölibat: Wenn es nach den Deutschen geht, soll der künftige Papst der katholischen Kirche vor allem moralische Reformen verordnen. Laut einer Umfrage wünschen sich dies 80 Prozent der Bevölkerung. In Rom bereiten die Gläubigen derweil Papst Benedikt einen triumphalen Abschied.

Berlin – Eine große Mehrheit der Deutschen wünscht sich vom künftigen Papst Reformen in der katholischen Kirche. Das geht aus einer Umfrage des Meinungsforschungsinstituts YouGov im Auftrag der Nachrichtenagentur dpa hervor. Demnach wünschen sich 80 Prozent der Befragten Reformen etwa hinsichtlich der Sexualmoral oder beim Zölibat. Nur sieben Prozent wollen das nicht.

Der Wunsch nach Reformen ist laut Umfrage bei Katholiken mit 85 Prozent und bei Lutheranern mit 87 Prozent besonders groß – deutlich schwächer ist er etwa bei orthodoxen Christen. Hier wollen nur 46 Prozent Reformen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
lokalo

TRIER. Wer heute über den Domfreihof in Trier spaziert, kann ihn gar nicht übersehen, den überlebensgroßen Kirchenmann, der sich im Verschweigen und Vertuschen der Missbrauchsfälle in der katholischen Kirche übt. Der Wagen kommt aus dem Düsseldorfer Karnevalsumzug und begleitet die Protestaktionen anlässlich der Frühjahrstagung der Vollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, die diese Woche in Trier statt findet.

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VATICAN CITY
Al Arabiya

By RANA KHOURY
EXCLUSIVE TO AL ARABIYA

The competition and speculations over who would be the next Vatican’s chief have been floating around since Monday, when Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and its over one billion Catholics by announcing his retirement.

The 85-year-old German pontiff said he took the decision with full freedom, due to his “advanced age” and failing strength of “mind and body.” He would officially be stepping down as head of the Catholic Church on Feb. 28.

The pontiff resigned amid a sense of crisis within the Vatican. The institution’s most recent scandals involve several documents leaked by the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, alleging corruption, internal disputes within the Vatican and other gossip. …

Amongst the 117 cardinals eligible to enter the secretive conclave to elect Benedict’s successor, Lebanese Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, head of the Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic Syriac Church that had affirmed its communion with Rome since 1180 A.D.

Vatican’s role in the Arab world

The Vatican’s influence in the Arab region has been increasingly highlighted in recent years.

According to Father R., a high-ranked Maronite Priest in Lebanon who prefers not be named, the main difference between John Paul II and the outgoing Pope, is that “Benedict, who has sent a lesson of humility to the world after his retirement, has approached the Arab Christians from a regional perspective, contrary to his predecessor who mainly accentuated his efforts on Lebanon and the solidarity between religions in the cedar land.”

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IRELAND
Irish Central

It is now quite likely the new pope could be elected on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th.

Usually, the conclave begins 15 to 20 days after the death of The Pope, says National Review blogger Michael Potemra. In this case the 15-to-20 day clock will start running on Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation day, February 28, which means the election will likely begin between March 15 and March 20.

Vatican sources have said it could possibly start before that but no final decision has been taken. …

Meanwhile, one of the front runners, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, may have disqualified himself according to The New York Times because of a very poorly received speech he made at the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin last year.

The Times quotes Vatican insiders as saying “some said he practically put the crowd to sleep during his talk at the International Eucharistic Congress last June in Dublin.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Teresa Watanabe and Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times
February 16, 2013

In more than two decades leading the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahony headlined immigration rallies, marched for worker rights and made national news by announcing he would defy a congressional bill he regarded as anti-immigrant.

But the man who replaced him in 2011 — Archbishop Jose Gomez — has shied away from such attention-getting actions. Instead, he plans to take 60 conservative Catholic business leaders on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City this fall in hopes of winning them over on immigration reform.

It’s a distinctly different style from that of Mahony, whom Pope John Paul II nicknamed “Hollywood” for his frequent media appearances.

“Cardinal Mahony was pretty much everywhere,” said parishioner Carlos De Leon as he departed from Ash Wednesday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels last week. “Archbishop Gomez seems much more behind the scenes. It’s a different management style.”

Yet Gomez has begun quietly making his mark on the archdiocese, the nation’s largest with 4.5 million Roman Catholics in 120 Southern California cities.

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ROME
Washington Post

Pope’s leaked papers were bad for Vatican, but good for reporters, publisher

By Jason Horowitz

The VatiLeaks scandal marred Benedict XVI’s last year as pope, embarrassed the church, exposed the dysfunction of the Vatican bureaucracy, and destroyed the career of the butler convicted for leaking the pontiff’s personals correspondence. But it has been very good for some Italians reporters and their publisher.

As the Vatican reeled and the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, sat in jail, Gianluigi Nuzzi became something of a celebrity in Italy. As part of the roll-out for the English translation of his blockbuster book, “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI,” Nuzzi has appeared as the hero of a GQ story about his source the butler, and now writes for the Italian Vanity Fair. He has become a familiar Vatican pundit on Italian television and Twitter, where he often directs vitriol at Benedict’s number two, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone.

On a recent afternoon, Nuzzi, dressed in a sharp black three-piece suit and three-quarter coat, arrived late to a panel discussion for a friend’s book about a predator priest in Rome. He carried a leather briefcase filled with documents in transparent plastic sleeves, had a mark across his cheek and a nick atop his glossed bald head.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

If “bad news” for this month’s and next month’s Popes restores the Catholic Church closer to its original consensual structure, it is “good news” for Catholics worldwide by making the neglected Gospels the “New Gospel” once again.

Catholicism is based principally on the broad guidelines left by an actual historical person, Jesus. But he left nothing in writing for his followers. Decades after Jesus’ crucifixion and oral devotional reports of his unique “after death experience”, several writings, called Gospels or “Good News”, began to appear in different communities about Jesus’ message and unique experience. The Gospels were written for purposes, by persons, and used sources, all mainly unknown with certainty today. These often impressionistic reports have errors and inconsistencies. They are contained in thousands of often conflicting copies of key manuscript fragments that were transcribed in multiple languages centuries later often in ancient language idioms. Over the centuries, these reports were included with other similarly problematic, often unrelated and sometimes inconsistent writings into the New Testament. Moreover, at the insistence mainly of Constantine and his imperial successors, these various and often Palestinian scriptural strands were prematurely squeezed into mandatory creeds using Greek philosophical terminology.

Problematic or not, Jesus’ message overrides all Popes’ statements, of course, especially since church history indicates many Popes were selfish autocrats who interpreted the Gospels for personal advantage or with incomplete information. Moreover, some papal statements cannot clearly be reconciled with the Gospel message. Popes since 1869 claim to be infallible, but Pope Benedict’s error-prone performance as Pope, and now especially his unexpected resignation, suggest otherwise.

Among some of the relevant guidelines generally ascribed to Jesus are that he was opposed to a self-important, excessively scrupulous and overly indulgent religious hierarchy and that he thought children should be protected from harm. These points have neither been consistently understood nor respected in the Vatican for decades, even for centuries. The “Good News”, or the Gospels, have often been disregarded by the Catholic hierarchy where a Renaissance culture of opulence and celibate incomprehension of children still predominate today. Where in the Gospels did Jesus say predatory priests are to be protected before innocent children? Where did Jesus instruct his followers to wear $30,000 outfits? Where did Jesus tell his followers to launder money? Prosecutors are steadily moving in and soon, new Pope or not, one Pope or two, international courts will resolve these major contradictions. Hence, current “bad news” for the Pope and his Vatican Cardinals’ clique that should undermine the Vatican’s ideological, self-serving and unsupportable interpretation of the Gospel message is “good news” for Catholics. …

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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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Women who spent time in the Republic of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries have called for a “fast, fair and just” settlement for their suffering.

It comes after a meeting between 17 women, who now live in the UK, and the Irish prime minister Enda Kenny, where they described their treatment to him.

Between 1922 and 1996 some 10,000 women and girls were made to work unpaid in laundries run by Roman Catholic nuns.

The group say they are expecting Mr Kenny to give a full apology next week.

Sally Mulready, who chairs the Irish Women’s Survivors Network, described the meeting as “significant”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Times

MARK HENNESSY London Editor

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s decision not to apologise immediately for the State’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries has been supported by British-based survivors, following a meeting in London today.

Mr Kenny, along with the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and Minister of State Kathleen Lynch, heard the personal stories of 15 of the women during a two hour meeting at the Irish Embassy this afternoon.

Later, Cllr Sally Mulready, who runs a support group for some of the women in Britain, said: “There was a consensus that the Taoiseach was quite wise not to have done so until he had read the report and before next week’s Dáil debate.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Examiner

A group of Magdalene laundry survivors have called for a “fast, fair and just” settlement following a meeting with the Taoiseach in London today.

Seventeen women who now live in the UK described their ordeals to Enda Kenny.

Afterwards they indicated that they are expecting a full apology next week.

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UNITED STATES
Sweeping Zen

By Eshu Martin

Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji is now 105 years old, and he has engaged in many forms of inappropriate sexual relationship with those who have come to him as students since his arrival here more than 50 years ago. His career of misconduct has run the gamut from frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students during interview, to sexually coercive after hours “tea” meetings, to affairs and sexual interference in the marriages and relationships of his students. Many individuals that have confronted Sasaki and Rinzai-ji about this behaviour have been alienated and eventually excommunicated, or have resigned in frustration when nothing changed; or worst of all, have simply fallen silent and capitulated. For decades, Joshu Roshi’s behaviour has been ignored, hushed up, downplayed, justified, and defended by the monks and students that remain loyal to him.

Based on my own experience as a student and monk in Rinzai-ji from 1995-2008 and many conversations during that time and since, it seems to me that virtually every person who has done significant training with him, the Rinzai-ji board of Directors, and most senior members of the Western Zen community at large know about his misconduct. Yet no one to my knowledge has ever publicly spoken out. Certainly, as an organization, Rinzai-ji has never accepted the responsibility of putting a stop to this abuse, and has never taken any kind of remedial action.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Adam Tebbe

By now, most everyone in the Zen Buddhist world has heard the news that Joshu Sasaki purportedly misused his position as a Zen teacher for his own sexual gratifications with many of his female Zen students. It’s not been the best of times for the Zen world, I’m afraid.

According to a report by an independent council of Zen teachers assembled to hear the stories of those affected, these sexual encounters were often initiated “in the formal setting, privacy, and ‘face-to-face’ encounters of the sanzen room.” Sanzen is a ritualized private meeting between a Zen student and Zen teacher. Their report also stated that there were reports of coercion and that Sasaki would at times frame the sexual contact as being a form of Zen teaching, or otherwise beneficial to the student. The council did a terrific job, considering morale and support for such an endeavor sure seemed to be at a low in the Zen community at large. It felt as though we’d arrived at some snapping point for readers who were sick of the coverage. The council, in my opinion, really deserves the thanks of the community. They collectively put in a lot of hours to offer us their report.

I am the editor at the website Sweeping Zen, where this story was first written about (see: Everybody Knows) by one of Sasaki’s former students, Eshu Martin of the Victoria Zen Centre. Eshu’s initial piece was an icebreaker of sorts, a shot across the bow that quickly grabbed the attention of many. Martin alleged a history of abuse and cover-ups involving his former teacher that stemmed his entire career. He received considerable backlash for his piece, accused of being nonspecific in his accusations. And, while it was partially true, readers did not know that at the time there was more information at his disposal which would and could be used if necessary. It was not released instantly because much of it needed to be said by Giko David Rubin, a priest ordained by Joshu Sasaki and his translator of many years (see: Some Reflections on Rinzai-ji). When Giko’s reflections on his experiences at Rinzai-ji and of Sasaki were first published, the mood was rather somber. It remains one of the most detailed and painful articles I’ve ever had to publish in my work at the website.

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VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The Vatican is awash with conspiracy theories about why the Pope is resigning, but Benedict has had the last word

By Peter Stanford

After the initial shock came the speculation. Pope Benedict XVI surprised even his closest advisers on Monday by announcing that he was standing down, but within hours the Vatican was awash, not just with the inevitable talk of who would succeed him, but also with whispers about the “real story” behind the first papal resignation in over 600 years.

Once the curia – or Vatican bureaucracy – started chewing it over, the theories it spat out were quickly flying around what the papal historian John Cornwell has characterised as “a palace of gossipy eunuchs”. And from there it is one short step to finding their way into the Italian press.

Dan Brown couldn’t have made it up. The ecclesiastical earthquake of a pope resigning has been attributed, variously, to Benedict nursing a fatal illness; to a head injury during his trip to Mexico last March that convinced him to abdicate; to being forced out after an acrimonious meeting with a group of senior cardinals two days before he announced his resignation; to his looming disgrace over either dodgy deals done by the Vatican Bank, past cover-ups of paedophile priests, or an “explosive” forthcoming report by a team of cardinals on a tendering scandal; and to a strategy to secure the succession for his favourite.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2013

VATICAN CITY — He’s God’s own man, but Italians think he should be theirs too.

Now, after a 35-year hiccup, they have a good shot at making that true again. As the derby begins to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the world this week by announcing his intention to retire at the end of the month, Italy is aiming to resume the line of homegrown pontiffs who reigned for more than 450 years until John Paul II, a Pole, came along in 1978.

Italians figure high on the list of likely successors to the German-born Benedict and, by a wide margin, form the single largest national bloc — though far from a majority — among the cardinals who will choose the next occupant of St. Peter’s throne.

But chances of a glorious restoration are tempered by strong candidates from other regions, missteps by senior Italians in the Vatican and the reality that the center of gravity of the global church has shifted, perhaps permanently, away from Europe. Many Roman Catholics believe that in the 21st century their leadership would be better off a little less Roman and a lot more catholic.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW, Rome Correspondent

Pope Benedict’s resignation is the most radical move in the Catholic Church in 50 years. Could it open the doors to a wider transformation? Don’t count on it

So, ironically, Benedict XVI, a pope widely perceived as a safe pair of hands and even more conservative than his predecessor, may have provoked the greatest change in the Catholic Church’s modern history. Cautious, timid, stubborn old Benedict, by stepping down from the Seat of Peter, could have initiated a process of radical rethinking not seen since the second Vatican Council, in the 1960s.

The holy father’s resignation is an intrinsically modern act, one that seems more temporal than spiritual, even for a man of deep faith. It makes him look less like the holy father of the universal church and more like the resigning CEO of a multinational company with a staff of 1.3 billion.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | February 15, 2013 5

What is the real reason for Pope Benedict’s decision to resign? What’s the story behind the story? Like thousands of others, I have been asking myself those questions since Monday morning. After a week of intensive reporting, and weighing the theories put forward by others, I have reached a conclusion. The real reason is the reason that the Holy Father put forward in his surprise announcement:

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

There is no conspiracy to unravel. There is no major medical news that has been hidden from the public. Nevertheless, there still is a story behind the story.

Throughout his pontificate, Benedict XVI has acted slowly but decisively. He has weighed arguments and planned carefully before making major policy decisions, but once he has reached a decision he has been steadfast. He spoke about the possibility of resignation as far back as 2010. His brother testifies that the question has been on his mind for months. Finally Benedict XVI reached the conclusion that he was no longer capable of doing the job that needs to be done—not because of any particular medical emergency, but because of the gradual decline in energy that comes with old age.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP
February 17, 2013

CATHOLIC Bishops in NSW have signed a letter urging parishioners and clergy not to bury their heads in the sand ahead of the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

In a publication signed by 15 bishops, including the Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell, parishoners and clergy are urged to reflect upon the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“We must not put our heads in the sand about any of this, or try to minimise or explain it away,” the letter published on Sunday states.

“The fact is that our Dioceses have all known cases of child abuse.”

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UNITED STATES
Get Religion

So many details will sound terribly familiar. At the heart of the news story is a powerful religious patriarch, surrounded by disciples who view him with a reverence that helps support an iron-clad climate of silence and secrecy.

In this case, however, the leader is Joshu Sasaki Roshi, one of the most famous Zen Buddhist monks in the world and a teacher who has had a tremendous impact in American elite culture. Now, it is being alleged (and in some cases confirmed) that since the 1960s he has sexually abused many, perhaps 100s, of his followers in Southern California and elsewhere.

Here is a key passage from a report in The Los Angeles Times:

A recent investigation by an independent council of Buddhist leaders has suggested that Roshi, a leading figure in Zen Buddhism in the United States, may have abused hundreds of others for decades. According to the group’s report, that abuse included allegations of molestation and rape, and some of the incidents had been reported to the Rinzai-ji board, which had taken no effective action.

“We see how, knowingly and unknowingly, the community was drawn into an open secret,” the council wrote, adding: “We have reports that those who chose to speak out were silenced, exiled, ridiculed or otherwise punished.” …

The council of Rinzai-ji oshos — senior Zen teachers ordained under Roshi — however, responded with a public statement: “Our hearts were not firm enough, our minds were not clear enough, and our practices were not strong enough so that we might persist until the problem was resolved. We fully acknowledge now, without any reservation, and with the heaviest of hearts, that because of our failure to address our teacher’s sexual misconduct, women and also men have been hurt.”

The allegations had lingered, literally, for decades and were allowed to become, in the words of one figure in the scandal “a tribal secret for 50 years.”

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By Joan Vennochi
Globe Columnist
February 17, 2013

THE CATHOLIC Church can’t get to a bright, new future until it finally breaks with the ugliness of the past.

One way to make such a break would be to keep Cardinal Roger Mahony from participating in the next election to determine a new pope.

If past is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote, keeping Mahony away from the upcoming conclave seems unlikely. Church leaders, from the pope down, never understood the depth of outrage over the long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal. Apology, not accountability, was supposed to quiet the rebellious.

But the scenario involving Mahony — the retired archbishop of Los Angeles — has its own distinction. Two weeks ago, Mahony was relieved of all public duties by current Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. What The New York Times called “an extraordinary moment in Catholic Church history” occurred after long-sought documents revealed that Mahony actively worked to protect priests who were abusing children from ­police, rather than protect victims from their abusers.

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CALIFORNIA
The Fresno Bee

By Lewis Griswold – The Fresno Bee

Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013

VISALIA — A bitter family feud between mega-church pastor Bob Grenier and his estranged sons escalated this month with a son’s claim in court papers that his father sexually molested him as a child.

The allegation by Paul Grenier, 31, is in a statement filed in Tulare County Superior Court in support of his brother Alex Grenier, 41, who is being sued for libel by their parents, Bob and Gayle Grenier. Alex was the first to publicly accuse his father of molesting Paul when he wrote about it online in 2011.

Now, Paul has gone public with the accusation, too. His court statement says that twice when he was 5, “I was forced to perform oral sex on Bob.” It also alleges instances of inappropriate touching.

But Paul Grenier has not filed a police report, even though state law allows adults to report alleged sexual abuse that happened when the victim was a minor.

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GERMANY
Washington Post

German journalist says Pope Benedict XVI talked last August of diminishing strength

By Associated Press,
updated: Saturday, February 16

BERLIN — Pope Benedict XVI said last August that his strength was diminishing and “not much more” could be expected from him as pontiff, according to a German journalist who interviewed him for a 2010 book in which Benedict said popes should in some circumstances consider resigning.

Journalist Peter Seewald recalled in an article for German weekly Focus published Saturday asking Benedict during a meeting last August at the pontiff’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, what more could be expected of him and his papacy. …

Seewald said Benedict replied: “From me? From me, not much more. I am an old man and my strength is running out. And I think what I have done is enough.”

In Saturday’s article, Seewald recalled asking the pope in August how badly the scandal over leaks of papal documents, in which the pope’s ex-butler was convicted of aggravated theft, had affected him.

It “is not as though I were somehow falling into a kind of desperation or world-weariness — it is simply incomprehensible to me,” Benedict said, according to Seewald.

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey Herald

ROYAL CALKINS
montereyherald.com
Posted: 02/16/2013

Some have written that when Roger M. Mahony became the priest of the farmworkers, allying himself closely with the United Farmworkers Union, it was an act of great courage. This was in the San Joaquin Valley and many of the biggest Catholic contributors there were growers, including many owners of the vineyards where Cesar Chavez began his organizing.

Others maintain that Mahony was largely posturing. They say that while he was sympathetic to the workers, he mainly was angling to accelerate his rise to the top of the church hierarchy.

Either way, it was a risk. Though he cost the church treasury by enraging much of the church’s core membership from Stockton to Bakersfield, he gained the star power that caused many church observers over the years to predict that he might be the first American pope.

Growing up mostly in the valley, I admired Mahony and the handful of priests who openly supported the UFW. Though I later would become seriously disenchanted with the UFW as a union, in those days it was an important and effective social movement. With Mahony’s help, in the church and in Sacramento, Chavez and the UFW were responsible for many overdue reforms in the fields. Banishment of the short-handled hoe, the requirement for toilets, fresh water, shade and rest breaks all were the result of legislation that never would have occurred without Chavez and, to some extent, Mahony. ..

As archbishop of Los Angeles for 25 years, Cardinal Mahony presided over huge regional growth in the church while also presiding over a conspiracy to protect pedophile priests. And he did it not by simply looking the other way. He was a ringleader of a successful effort to hide priests known to have molested many. He thwarted secular efforts to stop the abuse. He turned his back on a multitude of victims.

It took a series of court orders for the public to finally get a look at church records that reveal just how widespread the molestation was and just how hard the church administration fought to evade scrutiny. Officials under Mahony’s direction even shielded repeat offenders from therapists who might be obligated to report them.

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UNITED STATES
ABC News

By RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer
NEW YORK February 16, 2013 (AP)

Conventional wisdom holds that no one from the United States could be elected pope, that the superpower has more than enough worldly influence without an American in the seat of St. Peter.

But after Pope Benedict XVI’s extraordinary abdication, church analysts are wondering whether old assumptions still apply, including whether the idea of a U.S. pontiff remains off the table. …

Cardinal William Levada, the former San Francisco archbishop, was the first U.S. prelate to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful guardian of doctrine. Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former St. Louis archbishop, is the first American to lead the Vatican supreme court. And Benedict appointed others from the U.S. to handle some of his most pressing concerns, including rebuilding ties with breakaway Catholic traditionalists and overseeing the church’s response to clergy abuse cases worldwide.

But as Christopher Bellitto, a historian at Kean University in New Jersey who studies the papacy, said, “There’s a big difference between letting somebody borrow the car and handing them the keys.”

“The American church,” he said, “comes with a lot of baggage.”

Among the negatives is the clergy sex abuse scandal, which has affected every U.S. diocese and bishop.

The 11 U.S. cardinals expected to vote in the conclave will include Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Los Angeles archbishop who was recently stripped of public duties by his successor over his record on handling abuse cases. Also attending will be Cardinal Justin Rigali, who stepped down as Philadelphia archbishop after a landmark indictment of priests revealed he had kept several clergy on assignment despite claims they molested children.

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RHODE ISLAND
News 12

Updated: February 16, 2013
By The Associated Press MICHELLE R. SMITH (Associated Press), NICOLE WINFIELD (Associated Press)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – (AP) — The disgraced Roman Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ bent its own rules for a wealthy elderly woman while it also isolated her from some relatives, according to newly released court documents, and a lawyer says the moves show the order was intent on becoming the beneficiary of her $60 million fortune.

The Legion counters that widow Gabrielle Mee was independent, strong-willed and happy and was never coerced into anything. The fact she led a less-restrictive life than others in its community shows she freely gave them her money, the Legion argues. Mee died in 2008 at age 96. …

Mee’s niece, Mary Lou Dauray, sued the Legion after her aunt died. She said Mee was defrauded by an order whose leaders orchestrated an effort to hide its founder’s misdeeds from her aunt.

A Superior Court judge ruled in September that Dauray did not have standing to sue. But Judge Michael Silverstein took pains in his order to detail the process by which the Legion wooed Mee, bending the rules to let her become a “consecrated” member of its lay movement, giving her privileged access to Maciel and inviting her on special trips to Rome and Mexico.

Among the documents released Friday was a deposition from one of Mee’s friends, Joanne McKosker, who testified how the two had bonded in the 1980s through their deep Catholic faith. She said she would visit after Mee moved into a Legion center in Smithfield, R.I. Around 2001, she asked Mee for a $5,000 donation for an anti-abortion charity. After Mee gave it to her, McKosker was prevented from visiting or calling Mee again.

“Months that went on, my trying to see her,” she said. “I was getting, I was angry because I, I wanted to be still friends with her, you know, and I wanted, I felt she wanted, too.”

The Legion says Mee had her own private phone line in her apartment and it never screened her calls.

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INDIA
Times of India

NAGPUR: A 75-year-old priest was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing two girls aged 5 and 7 on Friday. A group of agitated women from Hazaripahad stormed the Gittikhadan police station on Saturday and demanded stern action against the accused Babulal Dwivedi.

The matter came to fore after one of Dwivedi’s neighbours — the wife of a tailor whose shop is located across the temple — observed him sexually abusing one of the girls on February 8. …

The women initially approached a temple trustee over the issue but he — as the agitated women claim — tried to hush up the episode.

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WASHINGTON
Wenatchee World

By Jefferson Robbins
World staff writer

Saturday, February 16, 2013

YAKIMA — A lawsuit that claimed sexual abuse by a Waterville Catholic priest was dismissed last week for lack of evidence.

The complaint said the plaintiff, called only “S.A.” in the court file, was sexually abused multiple times while a child between 1972 and 1974 by the Rev. Joseph Graaf, then the priest of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Waterville.

But the 2010 suit was dismissed Feb. 6 on the motion of the Diocese of Yakima, the defendant, which successfully argued that there was insufficient evidence to allow the claim to go to trial.

Yakima Superior Court Judge Robert E. Lawrence-Berrey agreed there was no evidence the diocese knew or should have known that Graaff presented a risk of abuse; or that the diocese created circumstances that allowed the claimed abuse to occur.

“Whether the abuse happened or not has never been established either,” diocesan spokesman the Rev. Robert Siler said Friday. “I suppose that would have been something that would have been up to a jury to decide, if there had been enough evidence to proceed to a trial.”

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RHODE ISLAND
Fox Providence

[with video]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Thousands of pages of documents from a lawsuit against a Catholic order have been unsealed, making public new details surrounding alleged sexual misconduct by its founder.

Eyewitness News obtained the legal documents and sat down with attorney Bernard Jackvony, who has been compiling evidence against the Legion of Christ for years to support a $60 million lawsuit filed by the family of a local woman who gave $60 million to the group and wants that money returned.

Gabrielle Mee bequeathed $60 million to the Legion of Christ a few years before her death in 2008, and her family is suing the Legion, arguing that its efforts to cover up that alleged sexual misconduct amounted to fraud.

The order’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, was discovered to have fathered three children with two women and allegedly sexually molested seminarians. The newly-unsealed documents indicate that the order’s second-in-command knew of the alleged misconduct but did not either report it or confront Maciel. The Legion finally acknowledged those allegations in 2009, a year after Maciel’s death, and the Vatican took over the order in 2010 after an investigation substantiated those reports.

Jackvony says that the documents, which include thousands of pages of testimony from Legion leadership, show that its leaders covered up Maciel’s misconduct and therefore the order defrauded her out of the money she bequeathed.

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INDIA
Bhaskar

Bhopal: A local court has ordered registration of a case against the Archbishop of Bhopal and two others for allegedly conspiring to make a priest and former spokesperson of the local church mentally unsound by administering drugs.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Alok Mishra ordered the filing of a case against Archbishop Father Leo Cornelio and the other two under IPC Sections 328 (causing hurt by means of poison etc with intent to commit an offence) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and has asked them to appear on March 1.

The order was given on February 7, a copy of which was received by the complainant on February 14.

Father Cornelio, however, told a news agency that the allegations levelled by Anand Muttangal, an ex-Public Relation Officer (PRO) for the archdiocese, were “baseless”.

“The allegations were totally baseless. Muttangal is levelling these charges as he was removed from the post of PRO following complaints of gross irregularities which were not expected from a priest like him,” he said.

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RHODE ISLAND
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Unsealed records show founder of disgraced Catholic order lived double life and fathered three secret children as Vatican ignored allegations of abuse

By Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press Reporter

Documents released Friday shed light on the inner workings of a secretive and now-disgraced Roman Catholic order called the Legion of Christ.

They include details on how the founder of the organization, the Reverend Marcial Maciel who died in 2008, lived a double life, fathering three children, and was accused of abusing seminarians. The Legion kept this information hidden.

Also revealed are allegations that theorganization solicited money from an elderly widow, eventually persuading her to bequeath it $60 million.

The scandal, which has tarnished the legacy of Pope John Paul II, is cited as an especially egregious example of how the Vatican ignored decades of reports about sexually abusive priests because church leaders put the interests of the institution above those of the victims.

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

by Elizabeth Espinosa
KTLA 5 Reporter

NORTH HOLLYWOOD (KTLA) – Before Cardinal Roger Mahony heads to Rome to help elect a new pope, he’ll be questioned under oath next Saturday (Feb. 23) about his handling of clergy sex abuse cases.

The kinds of questions Mahony will face: did a visiting priest from Mexico abuse a local North Hollywood parishioner? And did the church — under Mahony’s guidance — stall in notifying police about the alleged abuse?

A judge has cleared the way for the deposition of Mahony to proceed, and has ruled that attorneys will have four hours to question Cardinal Mahony on the subject.

Mahony has been deposed several times since the late 1990′s about issues of alleged sexual abuse within the church.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Times

Taoiseach Enda Kenny is in London today for a meeting with women who spent time in Magdalene laundries and subsequently left Ireland.

The meeting is taking place at the Irish Embassy in Grosvenor Place.

A report by former senator Martin McAleese found that some 10,000 women and girls entered Magdalene laundries after 1922 and that more than a quarter of the referrals had been made or facilitated by the State

Mr Kenny was criticised for stopping short of delivering an apology on behalf of the State on the day the report appeared.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MIRIAM LORD

Amid the noise generated by the publication of the McAleese report on the Magdalene laundries, perhaps the loudest sound of all is the silence emanating from its author.

Martin McAleese, however, had no obligation to stick around after he completed his investigation. None of the authors of the last four reports into abuse – from Ferns through to Cloyne – answered questions either.

We hear the Government would have preferred him to actively engage with the media at the launch, but it was his call and he decided against this.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Modern Popes have surrounded the papacy with historical myths that are drilled into Catholics as children. Pope Benedict XVI just destroyed one of the fundamental myths. Being Pope is just a job and, if he cannot perform, he needs to retire.

What? John Paul II had acute Parkinson’s Disease that disabled him fully for years. What Benedict is saying is that John Paul should have resigned, which is why John Paul’s secretary seems livid that Benedict retired. Of course, as with the priest child abuse and the financial scandals, Benedict did little effectively to address this need for papal performance standards.

If, as Benedict has clearly indicated, a Pope should go if he is unable to perform his duties, should he be removed if he is unwilling to perform or performs badly? Should there be term limits or maximum age limits? Of course, the only logical answer is yes to all of these related questions. But the Vatican is run by power politics, not logic, or even spiritual values for that matter. Some Vatican Cardinal will likely leak soon the real reasons Benedict is retiring.

It is time to change that and restore Catholic leadership to the consensual approach that Jesus and early Catholics followed for over three centuries until Roman Emperors converted the Catholic Bishops, including the Pope, into an imperial bureaucracy dominated by a Vatican clique that dictated top-down to Catholics to fill the clique’s coffers.

It is time for many more Catholic scholars to step-up and start telling uninformed Catholics the full story now, before another Grand Inquisitor is installed by “Ex-Benedict” and Cardinal Sodano. And they need to use the media and Internet now to do so. Enough with the comfortable evasions. It is high time to speak prophetically, and not just pedantically. …

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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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

ERIC REGULY
The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Feb. 16 2013

Italy is the country most closely associated with Catholicism. It is the home of the Vatican and, for two millennia, the heirs of the first pope, St. Peter.

It also has one of the lowest church attendance records in the 1.1-billion-strong Catholic world. Italian churches are becoming echo chambers, with pretty decorations, and Italy isn’t alone. Attendance is plummeting throughout Europe, along with the proportion of citizens who describe themselves as Catholic.

The church’s waning power will not come as a surprise to the Catholics and others who have been shocked by the sexual-abuse scandals and their cover-ups, last year’s “VatiLeaks” incident (when purloined documents alleged Vatican financial corruption), and the church’s unbending stances against gay marriage, contraception and women priests – the sense among many of the formerly faithful that the Vatican is centuries out of date.

So how what can the church do reverse the trend? What can restore the church’s popularity and relevance? These are questions that the College of Cardinals will no doubt consider when they weigh the pros and cons of the leading candidates (among them Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet) to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who will become the first pope to resign in six centuries when he leaves the Vatican on Feb. 28.

George Weigel, the American author of the best-selling biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope , says the church is “dying” in its European heartland. “In that way, Europe is similar to Quebec,” he says in Rome, where he is watching the papal transition. “The church withered away in both places in two generations.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 16, 2013

Rome —
Acknowledging that many people, including several cardinals, have questioned the need to wait until March 15 to open the conclave that will elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, a Vatican spokesperson on Saturday said the date is an “open question.”

The apostolic constitution governing the papal election, Universi dominici gregis, issued under John Paul II in 1996, specifies that the conclave must take place between 15 and 20 days after the beginning of the sede vacante, meaning the end of the previous papacy. Since Benedict’s resignation becomes official on Feb. 28, that would mean a conclave starting somewhere between March 15 and 20.

In previous sessions with the press this week, Vatican spokesperson Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi had left the impression that this provision of the rules was not open to revision.

In a briefing Saturday morning, however, Lombardi acknowledged that the waiting period was crafted with the expectation of a papal death, and is intended to give cardinals time to arrive in Rome. In 2005, 16 days passed between the death of John Paul II and the beginning of the conclave that elected Benedict XVI.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 11, 2013

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is a “holy shakeup” in the Catholic church, states one of the associations for women who wish to be ordained as Catholic priests.

“The Pope’s resignation is a positive sign that the Spirit is at work renewing the church,” states the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests in a statement.

“We need a top down shakeup and new structures of accountability in the Roman Catholic Church,” states the association, which ordains women outside the formal structures of the church. “Married priests, women priests, are only a few of the necessary steps the Vatican needs to take in a more just and compassionate church that honors the gifts of God in the people of God.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Evangelisch

Aus Anlass der Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung der katholischen Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Trier haben Opferverbände und kirchliche Initiativen eine konsequentere Aufklärung des sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche gefordert.

An den vier Tagen des Bischofstreffens, das am Montag beginnt, mache das “Aktionsprogramm Aufklärung!” mit begleitenden Veranstaltungen auf Versäumnisse aufmerksam, sagte Heiner Buchen, Sprecher der Saarbrücker Initiative gegen sexualisierte Gewalt in der katholischen Kirche dem Evangelischen Pressedienst (epd).

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Some local Catholics don’t feel Cardinal Roger Mahony should be able to participate in the upcoming papal conclave in Rome.

The organization, Catholics United, tells CBSLA and KNX 1070 Newsradio that they want the cardinal to recuse himself from the closed-door conference slated for next month in Rome in light of his alleged cover-up of a church sex abuse scandal.

“We just think it’s just wrong for him to go. He actually has written a letter saying sorry. And if he’s really sorry, he shouldn’t act like that,” said Andrea Leon-Grossmann, a local member.

Mahony will be among 120 men and women called to participate in the College of Cardinals to help pick the next pope following Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement this week that he will be stepping down as Pontiff on Feb. 28.

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IRELAND
Evening Echo

Saturday, February 16, 2013

THERE is a growing split in the Diocese of Cloyne over the treatment of Fr Tony Flannery the priest who claims he was threatened with excommunication by the Vatican over his liberal views.

Fr Gabriel Burke from Carrigtwohill has called on Fr Flannery to resign because his “Protestant-like beliefs make him no different to Dr Ian Paisley or William McCrea” — the Free Presbyterian minister linked to loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

Fr Burke was defending Fr Damien Lynch from the Fermoy parish, after a small number of parishioners walked out of noon Mass in Fermoy last week in protest at his homily criticising Fr Flannery.

Galway based, Fr Flannery had received widespread support from priests across Cork but criticism is now beginning to surface.

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MINNESOTA
YouTube – Minnesota SNAP

From the state capitol – a video presentation about introduction of the Minnesota Child Victims Act.

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CANADA
National Post

Joseph Brean | Feb 15, 2013

With Canadians in charge of the International Space Station and the Bank of England, the prospect one should also sit on St. Peter’s throne as Bishop of Rome and Pope to the world’s Roman Catholics no longer seems so far-fetched.

If early front-runner Marc Cardinal Ouellet does become the first non-European pope since an eighth-century Syrian, his papacy will reflect both the Church’s slow shift away from Europe, and the persistence of Benedict XVI’s dogmatic theology.

Common wisdom holds the former works for Cardinal Ouellet, the latter against him.

At 68, he is neither too old nor too young for the job, and even with all the traditional caveats about the uncertainty of Vatican Kremlinology, his odds — pegged by bookies at 7:2 — look good.

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CANADA
National Post

Robert Fulford | Feb 16, 2013

Catholics of many descriptions, and non-Catholics concerned about the Church’s influence, will be hoping next month that the cardinals elect a pope committed to changing the Church. Whatever their desires, however, they’ll probably be as little satisfied as the people who dreamt that Pope Benedict XVI would produce significant innovation.

A pope can push the Vatican slightly this way or that, but can no longer be expected to effect serious transformation. The bureaucracy is far too encrusted to be budged and for many more years will be kept busy dealing with sexual-abuse cases.

Even so, the Church does greatly alter itself, contrary to widespread opinion. It is not rigid, even when it tries to be. Those who have observed it over the last few decades have seen fundamental, unpredictable developments. They add up to the biggest Catholic reconstruction since the era that began with Martin Luther in the 16th century.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Was the Pope pushed? An abuse scandal, corruption and the dark intrigue behind Benedict’s shock resignation

By Guy Adams

The room full of people was still in shock at the news of his resignation when Pope Benedict XVI tottered across the marble floor towards a tall, heavy-set man in the red robe and skullcap of a cardinal.

As cameras rolled on Monday in the gilded Sala del Concistoro at the Apostolic Palace in Rome, Benedict grabbed the man by his shoulders, looked deep into his eyes and — struggling to hold back tears — shared a long embrace.

It was a public show of affection to one of the Pope’s most important fratres carissimi or ‘dear brothers’.

It was also a display of respect. For the man was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who as Dean of the College of Cardinals will organise the coming conclave at the Sistine chapel where 117 cardinals from across the world choose the next pontiff.

Yet in these ancient hallways, things are never entirely as they seem.

Dust may still be settling on Benedict XVI’s unexpected resignation, at the age of 85, but cynical eyes have begun to turn towards his relationship with Sodano the power-broker.

Sodano has lost little time in expressing his ‘sense of loss and almost disbelief’ at Benedict’s decision to quit, telling reporters that Monday’s announcement felt ‘like a lightning bolt in a clear blue sky’. But Vatican insiders smell a rat about those widely reported comments. They point out that, far from being surprised at Benedict’s announcement, Sodano had been told the previous Friday. And far from a ‘sense of loss’, previous form suggests the ambitious cardinal would have been delighted at the news.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Anthony Faiola

Published: February 15

VATICAN CITY — Inside a 13th-century monastery in a sleepy village north of Rome, the Rev. Salvatore Palumbo was allegedly serving more than one higher authority. Italian prosecutors say a Ferrari-driving lawyer who defrauded insurance companies used the priest as a frontman, with Palumbo stashing the illicit cash inside the secretive Institute for Works of Religion.

A.k.a. the Vatican Bank.

The arrests over the past six months of Palumbo and the 34-year-old lawyer, Simone Fazzari, highlight one major source of the scandals and power struggles that observers say contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation this week — the murky world of Vatican finances.

With ATMs offering transactions in Latin and a castle-like headquarters protected by spear-toting Swiss Guards, the financial arm of the Vatican has never been a run-of-the-mill bank. But a sense of crisis has been building around it and other Vatican financial dealings. …

Evidence suggests the outgoing pope sought to shed light on the dark Vatican books, but that effort yielded even more controversy. The former president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was forced to resign in May, alleging he was fired for getting “too close to the truth.” Last year, other documents leaked by the pope’s butler and other sources revealed the depth of the internal tug of war over financial transparency, with Vatican reformers pitted against traditionalists who appeared to believe the church should answer only to a higher power.

On Friday, the pope backed a decision by a commission of cardinals to name Ernst von Freyberg to head the Vatican Bank. The German-born lawyer and member of the ancient Knights of Malta was selected, the Vatican said, because of “his vast experience.” However, Italian commentators were quick to question why the choice was not left to the incoming pope.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A former bishop said to have failed to tell police about a paedophile priest has said there was no cover-up.

Retired priest Robert Coles was jailed on Thursday for sexually abusing three boys aged from 10 to 16.

It was said in court Coles told senior clergy, including former Bishop of Lewes the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, he had abused one of the children but the information was not given to police.

Bishop Benn said there was no ineptitude or cover-up on his part.

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CANADA
Catholic Register

Written by Ron Stang, Catholic Register Special
Friday, 15 February 2013 13:30

WINDSOR, ONT. – On one of the coldest days so far this winter a small group of men walked back and forth on the sidewalk in front of a central Windsor shopping plaza to protest the proliferation of pornography.

The men have been holding their silent anti-pornography protests for almost three years.

About four or five of them gather the first and last Fridays of each month at 5 p.m. for the one-hour picket along one of the city’s busiest streets, Dougall Avenue.

Their picket always takes place at the same location in front of a small shopping plaza where there is a store called Adult Video, which rents pornographic movies.

Their signs read: “Pornography Hurts Children, Pornography Destroys Marriage, Pornography Degrades and Enslaves Men.”

Mike Horoky, a Catholic deacon, started the protest. He said the location was chosen because of its high profile, especially during the rush hour.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[Kevin Barmasse – Los Angeles archdiocese]

By Victoria Kim and Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2013

In 1993, Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote to the Vatican with an urgent problem. One of his priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had been accused of plying teenage boys with alcohol and molesting them, sometimes during prayer.

In less than eight years, Father Kevin Barmasse had, as one church official put it in newly released files, “left a wake of devastation that is hard to comprehend.” Mahony yanked Barmasse out of his parish and wanted to make sure he couldn’t return. But Barmasse appealed to the one body that could overrule Mahony: the Vatican.

“The case has been there for many, many months,” Mahony wrote to one Vatican office tasked with handling priest misconduct. “The lengthy delay has created serious problems for my own credibility as a Diocesan Bishop.”

In the wake of the court-ordered release of 12,000 pages of confidential archdiocese records, Mahony has been criticized for hiding abuse allegations from police and failing to protect parishioners from accused molesters. But the documents suggest that Mahony at times had to press an unresponsive Vatican to get molesting priests out of the church.

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RHODE ISLAND
Vancouver Sun

By Michelle R. Smith And Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
February 16, 2013

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit brought against the Roman Catholic order Legion of Christ show the group’s former second-in-command testified he discovered the order’s founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered a daughter in 2006.

However, the Rev. Luis Garza said he never confronted Maciel about his double life and didn’t share the news with the group’s broader membership.

The documents, previously sealed in a lawsuit in Superior Court in Rhode Island, include thousands of pages of testimony from high-ranking leaders at the Legion, its members, and relatives of Rhode Island widow Gabrielle Mee, who bequeathed $60 million to the Legion before her death at age 96 in 2008. …

In a deposition December 2011, Garza says he became suspicious while visiting Maciel in 2006 at a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida, because of two women he saw there. He later learned they were Maciel’s daughter and her mother, a fact he confirmed with both women.

Garza said he obtained the daughter’s birth certificate as proof — listing the father as “Jose Rivas.” Later, it was revealed that Maciel used the “Jose Rivas” pseudonym with his other hidden family, a Mexican woman with whom he had two sons.

Yet Garza said he never asked Maciel about his daughter or discussed it with him, and he didn’t think it was necessary to share the news with the Legion’s membership or its lay movement, Regnum Christi. He said he only told the Legion’s superior and two other priests.

“I didn’t think at the time that the fact that fathering a child would change in any way the way we needed to behave vis-a-vis Father Maciel or the actions that we needed to do,” Garza said in the deposition. “Because we needed to comply with indications of the Holy See and also because there was an issue of privacy and respect for the mother and the daughter.”

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RHODE ISLAND
The New York Times

By SHARON OTTERMAN

Published: February 15, 2013

When Gabrielle D. Mee, a wealthy Rhode Island widow, left her $60 million fortune to a powerful Catholic order called the Legion of Christ in 2008, revelations had already begun to surface that its charismatic founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had molested under-age seminarians and fathered several children.

But a niece of Mrs. Mee, Mary Lou Dauray, came to believe that her aunt must have been kept in the dark about Father Maciel’s misdeeds, so that her fortune would go to the order. On Friday, thousands of pages of documents in a 2009 lawsuit that Mrs. Dauray filed were released to the public, shedding additional light on how the Legion managed information about its founder and came to control Mrs. Mee’s money.

The documents had been sealed by the court, but several news organizations, including The New York Times, sued to have them released. A Rhode Island judge ruled on Thursday that there was no reason they should not be made public. They had not been fully reviewed by The Times by Friday night.

They include depositions given by top leaders of the Legion, including the Rev. Luis Garza, the current head of the Legion’s North American operations.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Published: February 15

In giving up the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI was brave and bold. He did the unexpected for the good of the Catholic Church. And when it selects a new pope next month, the College of Cardinals should be equally brave and bold. It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff.

Now, I know this hope of mine is the longest of long shots. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit to move papal conclaves, but I would concede that I may be running ahead of the Spirit on this one. Women, after all, are not yet able to become priests, and it is unlikely that traditionalists in the church will suddenly upend the all-male, celibate priesthood, let alone name a woman as the bishop of Rome.

Nonetheless, handing leadership to a woman — and in particular, to a nun — would vastly strengthen Catholicism, help the church solve some of its immediate problems and inspire many who have left the church to look at it with new eyes.

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OREGON
Portland Tribune

Written by Kara Hansen Murphey|

An Arizona woman has filed a lawsuit against Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Lake Oswego, accusing church leaders of allowing her former youth group leader to sexually abuse her when she was growing up in Lake Oswego.

Cristie Marie Prasnikar, now 34, filed the lawsuit Feb. 14 in U.S. District Court in Portland. It names Ralph “Woody” Veerkamp, the local church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Review generally doesn’t publish the names of victims of sex crimes but has in this case because Prasnikar chose not to use an alias when filing public pleadings.

Veerkamp was reportedly chairman of a committee overseeing the Great Commission Subcommittee, known by many during the 1990s for its popular youth choir, which involved hundreds of youths from Lakeridge and Lake Oswego High as well as other area schools. In that role, Veerkamp provided educational, spiritual, moral and ethical guidance along with religious instruction to young people, including Prasnikar, according to the lawsuit.

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MINNESOTA
Brainerd Dispatch

Presently, Minnesota law limits lawsuits made against sexual assailants by victims to six years after they turn 18. A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers want to eliminate that time restriction.

Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, and House Reps. Steve Simon, (DFL-St. Louis Park), and Sondra Erickson, (R-Princeton), made the announcement with child victim advocates during a press conference Wednesday.

The proposed bill would lift the statute of limitations entirely, which would allow adults who had been abused as children to file lawsuits at any time.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Heather Steeves, The Oregonian
on February 15, 2013

A woman who grew up in Lake Oswego filed a $16 million lawsuit in federal court Thursday, accusing her church youth group leader of near-daily sexual abuse that went on for years.

Cristie Marie Prasnikar, 34, who now lives in Arizona, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland against Ralph Woodrow “Woody” Veerkamp, 65, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church of Lake Oswego and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. She is asking for $300,000 in economic damages, $6 million in non-economic damages and $10 million in punitive damages to set an example.

According to the lawsuit, Prasnikar joined an Our Savior’s youth group for high school students when she was 14 and was assigned to a group led by Veerkamp, an adult church-goer. The church’s Great Commission Subcommittee youth program drew hundreds of junior high school and high school students from the area in the 1990s.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 16, 2013

Rome

One difficulty in assessing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI on the sexual abuse crisis is that the people making the assessments tend to know more about one end of the equation than the other. That is, they’re either papal observers struggling to make sense of the scandals, or people on the front lines of the scandals trying to understand the pope.

A rare figure with deep expertise in both is Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, the academic vice-rector of the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome and head of its Institute of Psychology.

On the papal side, Zollner was born in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, more or less the hometown of Pope Benedict XVI, and holds degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Regensburg where the future pope once taught. In Rome, he’s had a front-row seat for the last part of Benedict’s tenure at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the almost eight years of his papacy.

In terms of understanding the dynamics of abuse, Zollner’s credentials are equally impressive. He was licensed as a psychologist and psychotherapist in 2004, and in 2010 and 2011 he served as a member of the scientific working group of the “Round Table on Child Abuse” created by Germany’s federal government.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Brad Oswald

It’s a historical documentary with current and ongoing implications, and the events of the past week have made it more timely now than when it was made.

The harrowing church-abuse film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God takes the position that the trail of denials and coverups related to sexual-abuse charges against Catholic priests reaches all the way to the highest office of the Vatican.

The announcement this week that Pope Benedict XVI will resign — the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years — gives added weight to filmmaker Alex Gibney’s (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) assertion that the pontiff’s role in the scandal, most notably back when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man directly in charge of dealing with all sex-abuse charges directed at the Catholic church, can no longer be deflected or ignored.

In announcing his resignation, Pope Benedict cited his age and failing health. In interviews this week, Gibney — who is in Britain promoting the U.K. premiere of Mea Maxima Culpa — said he’s convinced the sudden departure must be at least partially related to growing global pressure.

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CAMDEN (NJ)
Courier-Post

Written by
Jim Walsh
Courier-Post Staff

The Diocese of Camden wants to question an Ohio man for two days over his claim he was sexually abused by a priest, then repressed the memory for more than 40 years.

A lawyer for the diocese contends extensive questioning at a pretrial deposition, including asking the man to describe his abuse in detail, is necessary to protect the church’s rights.

But an attorney for the priest’s accuser, Mark Bryson, asserts the request is “excessive and harassing.” He wants a federal judge to limit questioning of his client to seven hours, or a single day. And a group opposed to the Catholic Church’s handling of the sex-abuse issue contends the legal tactic is intended to send “an intimidating signal.”

“I think the church officials and lawyers think that, by making this as tough as they can, they’ll discourage others from coming forward,” said David Clohessy, a spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Diocesan Spokesman Peter Feuerherd sees it differently.

“This is a 45-year-old claim that should not be rushed,” he said Friday.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
10 TV

[CALLED to HUMILIATION – Cardinal Mahony]

Friday February 15, 2013

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony says he’s been publicly humiliated in recent days by unhappy people who are angry over his handling of the clergy abuse scandal.

The recently retired archbishop of the Los Angeles archdiocese said in a blog update posted Thursday that he understands the depth of their anger and has asked God to bless and forgive them.

Recently released files show that Mahony and other top archdiocese officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield priests accused of sex abuse to protect the church from scandal.

Mahony has apologized and contends he turned the archdiocese into a leader in terms of safeguarding children.

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INDIA
Times of India

BHOPAL: A trial court has registered a case against officials of the archdiocese of Bhopal, including archbishop for allegedly conspiring to administer poison to prove one of the priest in the diocese as mentally unsound.

Magistrate Alok Mishra ordered to register the case on February 7 and set March 1 as the date for hearing on a complaint against Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal, his vicar general Father VC Mathew and archdiocese spokesman Father Johnney PJ.

Father Anand Muttungal, former public relations officer for the archdiocese, was allegedly targeted by his superiors after he filed a court case over alleged misappropriation of funds by local church leaders.

“It was a major conspiracy to prove that I am mentally unstable. I have enough evidence to prove their corrupt activities,” said Father Anand.

Archbishop Cornelio, however, claimed that the allegations against him were baseless.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Jerusalem Post

By REUTERS

LAST UPDATED: 02/16/2013

LOS ANGELES – The archbishop of Los Angeles, who stripped his predecessor of duties last month over his handling of priest sex abuse cases, on Friday sent “warm wishes” as the former archbishop headed to Rome to help select a new pope amid the controversy.

Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world’s Catholics on Monday by announcing plans to retire at the end of the month, and Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, declared he would take part in the process to select a successor, a move that angered victims rights groups.

The announcement by Mahony, 76, came less than two weeks after 12,000 pages of church files unsealed under court order showed that he and a top aide, Thomas Curry, worked to send priests accused of abuse out of state to shield them from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A Dublin parish priest has resigned a senior position in the archdiocese in protest against the treatment by the Vatican of Fr Tony Flannery.

Fr Flannery has been silenced by Rome for questioning mandatory celibacy for priests, the Vatican ban on women priests and the harshness of church teaching on homosexuality.

Fr John Hassett has stood down as dean of the Maynooth deanery in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese “over an issue that is neither specifically my own nor diocesan.

However, justice has no frontiers.” In a posting on the Association of Catholic Priests website, he said: “In this case it is the disrespectful and unjust treatment of Fr Tony Flannery that moves me to this action.”

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ARIZONA
Pokrov

Author: Theodore Kalmoukos
Date Published: 2/14/2013
Publication: The National Herald

FLORENCE, AZ – The parents of Scott Nevins, Ashley and Diane, have retained attorney Stephen M. Murphy of San Francisco to represent them in a possible wrongful death lawsuit against the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA), the Metropolis of San Francisco, and Saint Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery.

Just outside of the St. Anthony’s Monastery in Florence, AZ, the 27 year-old novice (monk) Scott Ioannis Nevins took his life with a gun on the dawn of June 11.

Nevins was a novice for six years at St. Anthony, one of the 21 Monasteries established by Elder Ephraim, the former abbot of the Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos.

Nevins, from Modesto CA, was a convert to Orthodoxy. He had left the Monastery 15 months ago in the middle of the night in February 2011 and went to Oregon and enrolled in college. He returned the Monastery armed with two guns and a knife on June 11.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Angela Pownall, The West Australian
Updated February 16, 2013

Former Perth Catholic schoolboys have revealed they were sexually abused by a Christian Brother who taught for 20 years at prestigious WA schools run by the religious order.

Three men have told _The Weekend West _they were molested, and in one case raped, by Brother Daniel Virgil McMahon when they were schoolboys.

A former teacher, who worked with McMahon at Aquinas College, said he complained about his behaviour at the school, yet McMahon continued working with, and abusing, children.

They want the case investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

McMahon also taught at Trinity College, Christian Brothers College, Highgate, and St Patrick’s College in Geraldton before he began counselling children as the order’s vocations director. He moved to Tasmania in 1990, where he was ordained as a priest and lived until his death in May

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UNITED KINGDOM
UK Progressive

by Carl Matthes

“I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the Church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor,” announced Cardinal Roger Mahony, not the real Archbishop of Los Angeles.

The remarkably deft Mahony, who’s obviously been anointed with PR awareness, posted his statement online at 8:38 am, two hours before his successor, The Most Rev. Jose Gomez, could issue his own remarks about the Pope’s abdication. At midday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Gomez, the real Archbishop of Los Angeles, said, “…the pope’s decision to resign is a beautiful, Christ-like act of humility and love for the church.”

Mahony showed no such deftness or awareness in his multi-year obfuscation investigating possible sex abuse cases among his subordinate priests in America’s largest Catholic archdiocese. And, there is confusion over Mahony even releasing his got-mine-out-before-you-got-yours-out statement. On January 31 Gomez announced he had removed Mahony (in secular terms, “fired him”) from all public duties amid revelations that he plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.

It’s very hard for everyone to accept priests as pedophiles, but it’s obviously much harder for the Archbishop of Los Angeles to effectively silence Mahony.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

From our earliest catechism days we learn about the virtue of humility. We study it, we think about it; but we don’t embrace it.

And why? Because humility is all about self-effacing, about seeing ourselves as far more diminished than we had hoped. As a result, few of us set out to embrace humility for Lent or as a pattern for our lives. Most us us accept a few affronts and neglects as humility, and then move on.

But as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are actually called to the fullness of humility: humiliation, and publicly.

Today’s Gospel gives us the stark reality and immediate challenge: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” {Luke 9:23] Daily means each and every day, not now and then on our faith journeys, and on our terms.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 15, 2013

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles who was been publicly disgraced in past weeks over his handling of priests accused of sex abuse in the 1980s, has written that he is “asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation.”

“Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand,” Mahony writes in a post on his blog last night.

“I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility,” he continues. “Rather, I am being called to something deeper — to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.”

Mahony, who is 76 years of age, is expected to travel to Rome in coming days to attend the meeting of cardinals that will elect the next head of the Roman Catholic church following Pope Benedict’s pending resignation Feb. 28.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Daily News

City News Service
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/15/2013

[the archbishop’s letter]

LOS ANGELES – Archbishop Jose Gomez was urging Southland Catholics today to pray for Cardinal Roger Mahony, who will soon head for Rome to take part in the selection of a pope to replace Benedict XVI, who will retire at the end of the month.

Gomez also stressed that while Mahony — who has been under fire for oversight of priests accused of molesting children — no longer has administrative duties with the diocese, he remains a bishop in “good standing.”

In a letter sent to all priests in the archdiocese, Gomez noted that Mahony will be the senior American cardinal attending the conclave of the College of Cardinals that will choose the next pope.

“I am confident that Cardinal Mahony’s accomplishments and experience in the areas of immigration, social justice, sacred liturgy and the role of the laity in the church will serve the College of Cardinals well as it works to discern the will of the Holy Spirit in these deliberations that will lead to the election of our new pope,” Gomez wrote.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Sarah Parvini

LOS ANGELES (RNS) After the release of damning sex abuse documents that prompted a rare public rebuke from the current archbishop of Los Angeles, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony again finds himself in the spotlight — this time over his upcoming vote in the conclave to elect a new pope.

Despite allegations of hiding sexual abuse by priests and then being sidelined by current Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony remains a cardinal, a priest “in good standing” and under age 80 — all enough to make him eligible to be one of just 11 American cardinals to hold a vote in next month’s conclave.

“I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor,” Mahony wrote on his personal blog hours after the pope’s stunning resignation announcement.

Others, however, aren’t so excited.

The left-leaning group Catholics United, which has started an online petition objecting to Mahony’s role, said that the retired cardinal “should reexamine his priorities and stay home.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera – Los Angeles archdiocese]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Cardinal Roger Mahony will be deposed this month as part of a clergy abuse lawsuit set for trial in April.

A lawyer for a person who is alleging to have been abused by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera said Friday that an agreement has been reached that will allow him to question the cardinal about his handling of the case.

According to the Associated Press, Aguilar Rivera was a visiting Mexican priest in 1987 suspected of molesting 26 children during his nine-month stay.

The AP report says Aguilar Rivera fled to Mexico a year later after parents complained and remains a fugitive with warrants out for his arrest in both the U.S. and Mexico.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated February 14, 2013

A lawyer who successfully represented 40,000 women who were raped in the war in Bosnia writes that the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops and Vicars can be prosecuted in The Hague in their cover-up of the rape of tens of thousands of children raped by Vatican Catholic pedophile priests. He cites the articles of International Law that apply to the priestly sodomy crimes which fall under crimes against humanity, see news article below.

The reason why Benedict XVI resigned is not health but the Vatican Wealth and it was a papal coup d’état by the Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone, as cardinals call Benedict XVI as “Joe the Rat”, read more below.

The well-paid Vatican Pied Pipers are all out now in full force propagating Vatican hidden agendas in TV, news papers and in the Internet. The foremost Vatican Pied Piper is John L. Allen Jr. but we won’t waste space for his Vatican Deceits here.

The next pope has long been chosen, brainwashed and trained. All speculation out there is utter hypocrisy of Vatican Deceits Media Empire and Vatican pretence of black smoke and white smoke.

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INDIA
Daily Bhaskar

Bhopal: A trial court has registered a case against three officials – Archbishop and two senior priests – of the Archdiocese of Bhopal for allegedly indulging in a conspiracy to administer poisonous substance to a priest.

The case is registered against Archbishop of Bhopal Archdiocese Leo Cornelio, his Vicar General Father Mathew V C and diocesan spokesperson Father Johny PJ after taking cognizance of a complaint filed by former spokesperson of the diocese Father Anand Muttungal.

The priest in his complaint alleged that the top officials of the diocese were annoyed with him for questioning alleged misappropriation of fund from the diocesan society. Besides this, he had also moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking direction to punish those involved in it.

Last week on Thursday, judicial magistrate first class Alok Mishra has order to register a case against the accused. However, the court has posted its next hearing for March 1.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 15, 2013

Rome –

An appointment intended to nail down Benedict XVI’s legacy as a financial reformer today threatened to stir controversy on another front, as a German lawyer and businessman with ties to a company that makes military warships was named the new president of the Vatican Bank.

The Vatican announced today that Ernst von Freyberg would become the new head of the embattled bank, which in recent months has faced charges of failure to comply with anti-money laundering standards and a lack of regulatory oversight.

In a statement released today, the Vatican hailed the “professional and moral excellence” of the 55-year-old von Freyberg, noting that he not only sits on the boards of multi-billion dollar global firms, but is also a member of the Knights of Malta and organizes pilgrimages to Lourdes on behalf of the Berlin archdiocese.

Yet during a briefing this morning to present the appointment, a journalist asked about his ties to the Hamburg-based Blohm + Voss Group, a shipbuilding and engineering firm where von Freyberg has served as chairman since 2012.

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