UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Pope Francis must end now the Vatican’s pervasive secrecy and media manipulation policies that he inherited from ex-Pope Benedict. Francis bravely confronted corrupt Vatican officials at Christmas. Now before Easter, Pope Francis must confront their longtime incompetent leader, ex-Pope Benedict, whose proxies still seek to stymie Francis’ reform efforts. Francis must now release the so-called Gay Lobby Report and make the ex-Pope’s butler available with impunity for media interviews. Francis will begin his 80th year in less than ten months and is running out of time. It is now or never.
Papal moral authority, the main source of modern papal power, will continue to decline as escalating governmental investigations and insider leaks from the ex-Pope’s proxies and others steadily erode worldwide trust in Catholic Church leaders. When criminal actions have occurred, as evidently they have at the Vatican, it is inevitable (and proper) that official refusals, to meet reasonable requests for access to relevant information and records, will be seen as hiding the truth.
The latest demand for reasonable archive access is from Jesuit educated Gerald Posner, author of the important new expose, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” , see at [Amazon]“. Posner’s latest plea for transparency about Holocaust victims’ related secret archives, almost three quarters of a century later, is now in the frequently conservative Los Angeles Times, “It’s high time for Pope Francis to open the Vatican Bank’s files” here,
. As Francis faces continued opposition from the ex-Pope’s proxies, likely with the ex-Pope’s acquiescence if not encouragement, it is even more important to set the full record straight now, please see, ” ‘There is an ‘anti-Francis faction’ in Rome, says Irish priest” here,
, and see also, “Pope Francis vs. Pope Benedict: Who is Infallible ? ” here,
The overall implications and fatal flaw of Francis’ present approach are discussed in my remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here [Christian Catholicism] .
Reporters often object to their colleagues being bullied, as they should. Vatican bullying also impedes reporters’ digestion of persistent papal propaganda. Vatican reporting is already a tough enough assignment without “Jesuit bouncer tactics”. Yet, an Italian TV reporter who dared to ask, at the recent sex abuse commission’s farcical press conference about holding bishops accountable, why there were delays in the Vatican’s controlled criminal trial of Archbishop Wesolowski (who is accused of sexually abusing five youths in the Dominican Republic), had her microphone taken from her at the direction of Jesuit Fr. Lombardi, the pope’s spokesman, for daring to press the question. So much for accountability and transparency! Bullying always backfires, at least with the media. Fr. Lombardi should publicly apologize to the reporter, who was just doing her job, well and bravely at that! Lombardi cannot expect the “softball treatment” from all reporters that he too often gets, for example, from the Boston Globe’s John Allen or the National Catholic Reporter’s Josh McElwee.
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