ROME
The Commentator
Tim Hedges
The weather has been hot since April, and Italians have been getting away to the seaside whenever possible, at weekends, saints’ days and sometimes pulling a crafty sickie.
But now the holidays proper are approaching, the two, three weeks, often a month spent showing off your beach body and chatting with the friends you always chat to at this time of year, under your reserved umbrella.
Not so, however, in the Vatican. Of course, the Pope has refused to use his summer house, Castelgandolfo in the Alban Hills (now a tourist venue), but there is no shortage of places to go. It’s just that there is a lot to do and, seemingly, not many people to do it. Beach body ready priests and monsignors are having to stay at the office.
Where to start? Australian Cardinal George Pell, who heads up the Vatican’s finances, has returned to Australia to face some historic child abuse allegations. He says he is innocent, and many Vatican observers believe him to be so.
Not that George Pell is a great loss to Francis. The Australian is a conservative, one of a number of cardinals who signed a letter to the Pope saying that there was progressive interference in the Synod on the Family. It was, of course, Francis himself who was interfering.
If Pell is innocent, people will suspect that someone has been stirring up trouble for him, and that someone will almost certainly be of the pope’s progressive faction.
Things are not going too well for Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. Last month police were called to a disturbance in a flat occupied by one of his senior aides, Luigi Capozzi. They found what has been described as a homosexual orgy.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.