UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on February 10, 2016 by Betty Clermont
“The world looks to this great wisdom of yours,” the pope told China’s Xi Jinping. Francis “urged the world not to fear China’s growing power and conveyed a message of friendship” to the president in an interview published Feb. 2.
Pope Francis granted a 40-minute private audience to Iran president Hassan Rouhani on Jan. 26. If they discussed Iran’s alliance with Russia supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s “extermination” of his civilian population, it was not mentioned in the Vatican’s press release – a strange omission for a pope who is always urging compassion for the Assad’s refugees.
Pope Francis will meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and Cuban president Raul Castro on Feb. 12 in Cuba. Kirill is a close ally of Pres. Vladimir Putin, so the meeting has Putin’s approval. Kirill will be in Cuba at the invitation of Castro to celebrate the historic ties between the Russian Orthodox church and the island nation, a result of Cuba’s historical alliance with Russia. The meeting was probably arranged after Castro met Kirill in Moscow when he went to discuss with Putin “increased bilateral cooperation with Russia and the implementation of joint projects” last May and then flew directly to a private meeting with Pope Francis.
Pope Francis’ prestige outside the Catholic Church rests entirely on his being viewed as a moral authority. Yet recent events prove his continuing contempt for past, present and future victims of clerical sex abuse. The only outspoken member of the pope’s sex abuse commission was booted out on Feb. 6. “Peter Saunders has frequently argued that the panel is writing ineffectual guidelines instead of exposing predator priests who continue to molest children.” …
Peter Saunders, a British survivor of clerical sex abuse who was ousted from the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, said that he felt betrayed by Pope Francis.
“Of course Pope Francis has established he is part of the problem,” Saunders said in an interview. “That breaks my heart because when I met him 18 months ago I thought there was a sincerity and a willingness to make things happen, and I am afraid that has been dashed now.”
“The way the Church and the commission operates,” Saunders said, “is also at the heart of why abuse within the Church is still so rampant and widespread.” He added: “It is because everything has to exist under conditions of secrecy and darkness and I am not prepared to work like that and I am not prepared to be silenced on an issue as important as child protection.”
“As a parent, it breaks my heart when I hear of serious allegations of abuse that are not going to be tackled.” Saunders said the notion that clerical sex abuse was a problem of past decades – an argument Vatican officials have assiduously promoted – had to be challenged. “This is not in any sense a historical issue or problem,” he said. “It has to be tackled now. The pope could do so much more and he is doing next to nothing.”
“This is a societal problem – but if the Church, the so-called moral leadership of the world, does not take a lead in this area it would quite rightly be considered morally bankrupt in every other area.”
Saunders now says he realizes the commission was always going to be about “smoke and mirrors” and that he is convinced the Church will never act alone to cure the “cancer” in its midst. “I made it clear that I would not be a member of a public relations exercise. The protection of our children is much more important than that.”
In fact, the commission was inaugurated as a “public relations exercise.”
On July 1, 2013, the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) sent a request to the pope for “detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse” committed by clergy and religious for the past 15 years and set Nov. 1 as a deadline for a reply.
Pope Francis responded to the CRC on Dec. 4 by stating his government would not disclose that information. He was criticized by the media for his response.
The next day, the creation of an “advisory” Commission on the Protection of Minors with no authority was announced.
Saunders also acknowledged that a Vatican tribunal supposedly instituted last June – reported as the pope’s “most significant move yet to deal with the sexual abuse scandals” by the media – to crack down on bishops who cover up for predators “exists in name only.” The new system gave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the authority to “judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors.”
In a January report: “A former official in the Diocese of Regensburg (Germany) accused Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), of systematically covering up sexual abuse cases during his decade as bishop of the Bavarian diocese. Fritz Wallner, who once worked as chairman of Regensburg’s lay diocesan council, claims that the then-Bishop Müller and his vicar-general, Mgr Michael Fuchs, introduced what Mr. Wallner called, ‘The Regensburg System,’ which prevented such abuse cases from coming to light.” (Müller’s appointment of Fr. Peter Kramer, an already-convicted child sex abuser, as pastor in Regensberg, was well-known before Pope Francis promoted him to cardinal.)
Of course, if Pope Francis was really going to hold bishops accountable who failed to deal properly with clergy sexual abuse, he’d have to start with himself. As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the pope advocated for convicted sex offender, Fr. Julio Grassi, and tried to discredit his young victims.
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