UNITED STATES
Catholic League
[Via BishopAccountability.org:
Pope’s record on abuse in Argentina is posted online
Pope Francis and Clergy Sexual Abuse in Argentina
El papa Francisco y los abusos sexuales del clero en Argentina]
March 13, 2014 by Bill
Filed under Special Reports
According to BishopAccountability.org, “He [the pope when he was a bishop in Argentina] released no documents, no names of accused priests, no tallies of accused priests, no policy for handling abuse, not even an apology to victims.”
The report excerpts a quote from a 2010 interview where Archbishop Bergoglio was asked about pedophilia. In part, he responded by saying, “in my diocese it never happened to me.” What the report left out was his condemnation of pedophilia, and his criticism of the way some bishops handled the problem of sexual abuse.
BishopAccountability highlights five cases where Bergoglio may have had knowledge of abuse allegations, but it is clear that it has no evidence that he knew about any of these cases. Moreover, only one of the priests was an archdiocesan priest from Buenos Aires (more on him below); two were religious order priests and two were from other dioceses.
The report estimates that between 1950 and 2013, “more than 100 Buenos Aires archdiocesan priests offended against children.” Again, the report cites no evidence for this claim. It further undermines its credibility when it makes a strained analogy: it compares the size of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires to the number of priests accused in the dioceses of Manchester, Providence, and Los Angeles. Even a high school dropout would have chosen a Latin American analogy.
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