Pope Francis Errs On Child Sex Abusers, Women & the Koch Brothers

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis is about to meet with all his Cardinals. He needs to change his basic losing strategy before he meets with them. The pope has admitted that he has made many mistakes. The pope, unfortunately, continues to make them with his flawed strategy, including mistakes (1) on his self policing of clerical sex abusers, as indicated here,

[ABC News],

(2) on disregarding Catholic women, as indicated here,

[ABC News],

and here,

[New York Review of Books],

and here

[National Catholic Reporter],

and (3) on aligning through his US bishops with the “low tax” billionaire Koch Brothers, as indicated here

[Religion News Service].

The Vatican continues to err in handling sexual abuse by priests. Pope Francis would do well to read the wise advice of Dr. Rosemary McHugh. a priest abuse survivor and an expert on women’s reproductive health. Please see her remarkable story entitled “Ireland: A Priest Predator & A Young US Doctor & An Archbishop” here.

Oddly, the usually meticulously careful AP Rome earlier today (1/31/15) reported that the pope’s regular (and overworked) Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, indicated that two Polish-born prelates were being investigated by Holy See authorities for alleged possession of child pornography.

AP earlier had reported that Lombardi on Saturday identified one of them as Monsignor Bronislaw Morawiec, an administrator at St. Mary Major Basilica, which was Boston’s disgraced former Cardinal Bernard Law’s former Rome base and is a church where Pope Francis sometimes prays. Presumably, Morawiec had been investigated by then top Vatican prosecutor, Fr, Robert Oliver, Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer. Cardinal Law’s former key legal aide, Oliver, is now the top staffer at the pope’s new “go slow” abuse commission that, after almost two years, will have its first full meeting soon.

AP’s original report indicated that the spokesman said Morawiec has already been convicted of fraud by the tiny city-state’s justice system. AP later withdrew the original story linked above, saying in a subsequent report, that Morawiec was not under investigation for child pornography possession, while still indicating that Morawiec has been convicted of fraud by a Vatican tribunal. Got that! He has been shown apparently to be a crook, but not a pervert, thank God.

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