UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia

Simply put, in the long, horrid road of American Catholicism’s tragic history of sexual abuse and cover-up, few days have been as stunning as this.

Add in the mounting questions swirling around Rome over the Pope’s commitment to tackling the global storm, and at least on some levels, it almost feels as if the ghost of 2002 has returned….

And yet again, just in time for Holy Week.

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Early this morning, word circulated from San Antonio that Fr Virgilio Elizondo, the widely-hailed godfather of Latino theology in the US – and with it, long the lead prophet of a Hispanic ascendancy that’s since come to comprise a plurality, if not the current majority of the nation’s 70 million faithful – had been found dead at 80 yesterday, amid the looming cloud of a lawsuit alleging his abuse of a…