VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
The Open Tabernacle
July 21, 2023
By Betty Clermont
By his words, omissions and actions, Pope Francis has failed to reduce and sometimes abetted the clerical rape and sexual torture of children around the world, the persecution and deaths of women and LGBTQ+ persons in the culture wars, the suffering of Ukrainians and the persecution of people of faith in China.
SEXUAL TORTURE OF CHILDREN
“The widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church amounts to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” the UN Committee Against Torture stated on May 23, 2014.
Nine years later, a report by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul stated “Catholic clergy in Illinois sexually abused more than 1,900 minors.” Former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Raoul’s predecessor, began investigating the scope of state clergy sexual abuse in 2018 after a Pennsylvania grand jury report documented the abuse of 1,000 minors in that state. “The revelations in that report shocked numerous state attorneys general who pledged to investigate clergy within their own states – Illinois included,” CBSNews.com reported on May 23, 2023.
Raoul’s report “discloses the names of 451 substantiated child sex abusers and provided narratives and details on the abuse they committed while serving the Church. Some had a single victim, while others had dozens. One who died in 2015 abused 36 children … Another priest raped a 10-year-old girl in his classroom …The depth and breadth of the sexual abuse varied.”
“Nearly every survivor struggled with mental health issues, the report found, with some turning to alcohol, addiction and others having anxiety, and feelings of unworthiness … Some survivors struggled with suicidal thoughts, while others dealt with physical health and financial issues. One survivor, Terry Neary, believes that the public naming of sexual abusers [which Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich had failed to complete] is a game changer for child sexual abuse survivors,” as quoted by CBS.
“Widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church”
“An investigation by the Spanish Catholic Church into child sexual abuse by members of the clergy and non-clerical staff has so far identified 728 alleged abusers and 927 victims since the 1940s, according to its first report,” Reuters stated on June 2, 2023. “Last year, the office of Spain’s national prosecutor wrote in a letter that the Church’s internal investigation was ‘partial’ and ‘of little use’… The issue came under a spotlight in Spain in 2021 after El Pais newspaper reported more than 1,200 alleged cases, years after sexual abuse scandals had rocked the Church in countries such as the U.S., Ireland and France,” Reuters wrote.
The global scale of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has included not only Spain, Ireland and France, but also Australia, Canada, Chile, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Belgium, Germany, New Zealand, Guam, Italy, Argentina, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Colombia, India, Poland and Brazil.
In the U.S., not only Pennsylvania and Illinois but also reports by Grand Juries and Attorneys General in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Michigan, Georgia and Maryland had similar findings according to the BishopAccountability website.
Yet in his entire pontificate, Pope Francis has not taken a single effective action to save our children. Rather, from the beginning, he has shown his contempt for their lives.
One month to the day after his election in March 2013, Pope Francis appointed eight cardinals to be members of a council as his closest advisors. One of them was Cardinal George Pell who had made headlines in Australia for decades. As archbishop and creator of the 1996 Melbourne Response, a system “designed to control the victims and protect the Church, Pell intended to minimize the crimes, conceal the truth, manipulate and intimidate the victims. … Some relatives of abused children have called the cardinal a ‘sociopath.’”
The John Ellis case “was all about deterrence.” Ellis sued now Cardinal Pell, head of the Sydney archdiocese, in 2006 over abuse he suffered as an altar boy. Pell spent more than $1m fighting Ellis despite him asking for just a tenth of that amount in settlement, put him through “distressing and unnecessary cross-examination” and threatened him with legal costs. Pell’s “Ellis Defense” is “an exemplar of litigation going wrong, causing further trauma for a victim of abuse.”
“Pell personally knows hundreds of the people involved – the victims and their families as well as the abusers. … He was a very senior authority in the Catholic Church when the court cases began in the 1990s and the top Catholic figure in Australia until he went to Rome … He was the leader of a system that protected the guilty and failed innocent people… He was the man in charge during many years of this scandal. Therefore, he can be held accountable and responsible for it.” independentaustralia.net stated.
Pope Francis also chose Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa as another of his close advisers. Errazuriz had made national headlines for protecting Fr. Fernando Karadima, the “worst scandal” of the Chilean Church. “Power is the true point of the case. The [sexual abuses against children] were not possible without a network of political, social and religious power working for 50 years,” stated political analyst Ascanio Cavallo, Dean of the Journalism School of the Adolfo Ibáñez University.
According to court testimony in a 2011 civil complaint filed against Karadima, Errázuriz tried to shame accusers into dropping claims and failed to carry out formal investigations for years. A judge dismissed the criminal case against Karadima in November 2011 because the statute of limitations had expired but also determined that the allegations were “truthful and reliable.”
When Pope Francis, who during the above period was cardinal primate of the neighboring Argentina, appointed Errázuriz to his council, one of the claimants called it “a shame and a disgrace.” On September 15, 2013, five months after his papal appointment, Errázuriz said that the archdiocese had no responsibility for their tremendous pain.
This pontiff’s reckless disregard for the suffering inflicted by his priests and bishops continues to this day.
On July 1, 2023, Pope Francis appointed a fellow Argentine, Archbishop Victor Fernández of the archdiocese of La Plata, to head the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). “The pope and the archbishop know each other well; Fernández has been called one of Francis’ ‘closest collaborators,’” reported Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a large online archive of documents, reports, and news articles documenting the global abuse crisis in the Church. “As DDF prefect, Fernández will have immense power, especially when it comes to judging and punishing priests who abuse children,” explained Barrett Doyle.
As Barrett Doyle stated:
In June 2018, “an article revisiting the 2008 allegations against La Plata archdiocesan priest Eduardo Lorenzo appearrd in the media outlet La Izquierda Diario . . . In August 2008, the sponsor of a teenage boy living in a group home had filed a criminal complaint accusing Lorenzo of sexually abusing the boy, then ages 14 to 16, for nearly two years.”
In January 2019, “parents of children attending a parish school in Tolosa began organizing to protest Lorenzo’s imminent transfer to their parish, citing the 2008 allegation against him.” In response to the protests, Archbishop Fernández released a statement that both the Church’s and criminal investigations reached the conclusion that the crime had not taken place. Baretti Doyle notes: “This isn’t accurate: the civil prosecutor archived the case citing insufficient evidence and a lack of merit. She did not determine that the crime hadn’t happened.”
In early February 2019, “the archbishop publicly agreed with a letter by Lorenzo accusing his detractors of ‘slanders, insults and defamations’ and that his critics had another agenda … February 24, “‘León,’ the alleged victim in the 2008 case, went public with his account of abuse by Lorenzo in the media outlet Pulso Noticias. In subsequent news accounts, León will further describe the sexual abuse he suffered, which allegedly included anal and oral rape.”
On March 25, 2019, “the prosecutor of La Plata, Ana Medina, re-opened the criminal case against the priest. Medina is the same prosecutor who archived the case in 2009.”
By July 10, 2019, “two more victims have come forward accusing Lorenzo of sexually assaulting them as minors … After the third victim came forward, Archbishop Fernández as a ‘precautionary measure’ prohibited Lorenzo from having contact with minors. Noting that his instructions are not ‘sanctions,’ however, the archbishop did not remove Lorenzo from ministry.”
“In October 2019, as the criminal case against Lorenzo deepened, the archbishop finally removed him from the parish, saying that Lorenzo had requested the leave ‘for health reasons.’”
“November 1, 2019, a news outlet reported an upcoming demonstration in front of Inmaculada Madre de Dios parish in Gonnet, where Lorenzo reportedly is still saying Mass. At this point, five victims of Lorenzo have come forward.”
“December 16. 2019, “The criminal court of La Plata ordered the arrest of Lorenzo. He was charged with corruption of minors and sexual abuse of at least five adolescents between 1990 and 2008.”
“December 17, 2019, Lorenzo killed himself. Archbishop Fernández released a brief statement, saying that Lorenzo had taken his life ‘after long months of enormous tension and suffering.’ He issued no words of comfort to the victims, saying only that he would pray for ‘those who may have been offended or affected’ by the charges against the priest.”
“For his handling of this case, Fernández should have been investigated, not promoted to one of the highest posts in the global Church. Nothing about his performance suggests he is fit to lead [the DDF],” Barrett Doyle concluded.
Later, on July 12, 2023, catholicculture.org, quoting from the Associated Press, noted the attorney for Lorenzo’s alleged victims, Juan Pablo Gallego, charged that Fernández “worked quickly” to “interfere in the judicial investigation” into abuse allegations against Lorenzo. Interestingly, the AP reported the attorney’s remarks in their Spanish-language article but omitted them in their companion English-language article catholicculture.org pointed out.
A Brief History of Pope Francis’ Contempt for Our Children
From day one of his reign, if Pope Francis genuinely desired to protect children around the world, all he had to do was ask any expert and he would have been referred to the dozens of reports by attorneys general, grand juries, individuals, commissions, and organizations published before his election in 2013.
The reports concur that, at the least, the pontiff could have taken these actions:
- The crime of child sex abuse should be reported to the police immediately.
- The pope should impose ‘meaningful sanctions’ on any Church officials who fail to do so.
- The prelates, priests, deacons, men and women in religious orders and lay employees who were credibly accused should be removed from contact with children immediately.
- Church officials who aided, abetted or covered-up for the perpetrators must be held accountable.
- Church officials must turn over all their pertinent documents to civil authorities.
- Church officials must support removal of statutes of limitations – since it takes decades for victims to report their abuse – where they impede victims of child sexual abuse from seeking justice and redress.
On July 1, 2013, the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) sent a request to Pope Francis for “detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, brothers or nuns” for the past fifteen years and set November 1 as a deadline for a reply. The questions were sent as preparation for a public hearing scheduled for January.
The November 1 deadline came and went. Pope Francis responded to the CRC on December 4 by stating that it was not the practice of his government to “disclose information on specific cases unless requested to do so by another country as part of legal proceedings” and “that the Vatican can provide information only about known and alleged child sex crimes that have happened on Vatican property.”
A rarity, the pontiff’s response was criticized by the U.S. mainstream media. The next day, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley stated that Pope Francis would create a special Commission for the Protection of Minors. Although the commission had no authority other than to advise the pope on ways to address the subject, the American media lauded the pontiff for taking “action.”
The failure of Pope Francis to take effective actions was evident when Rev. Hans Zollner, appointed by the pope as president of the commission in 2014, resigned on March 29, 2023. “Initially, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, appointed by Pope Francis as the new commission president, released a statement saying that Father Zollner had new duties, and thus was resigning and thanking him for superlative service,” reported the National Catholic Register. Zollner put out his own statement, a denunciation of the commission’s failures. “When there is a lack of transparency, compliance, and responsibility, it opens the door to abuse and cover up,” all of which “have made it impossible for me to continue further,” quoted the cruxnow.com website.
Pope Francis’ Own Cover Ups
The 2014 UN Committee against Torture report came “after senior officials sought to distance the Vatican legally from the wider Church … saying priests were not legally tied to the Vatican but fell under national jurisdictions. But the committee insisted that officials of the Holy See – including the pope’s representatives around the world and their aides – have a responsibility to monitor the behavior of all under their effective control.”
The committee specifically urged a “prompt and impartial” investigation in the case of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the pope’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Wesolowski solicited sex for money from Santo Domingo’s poorest boys. “We learned from the children that Wesolowski took pictures of them while they were masturbating. Oral sex was performed,” Nuria Piera, an investigative journalist, said. “He abused that poverty and used that mechanism to approach children and take advantage of them for years,” Yeni Berenice Reynoso, National District prosecutor stated.
A dossier accusing Wesolowski of sex abuse of minors was sent to Pope Francis “sometime in July” 2013 by Santo Domingo Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez. The pope found the information credible enough to dismiss Wesolowski on August 21 via confidential letter. The ambassador left the country before a local TV program broadcast an exposé on August 31. Pope Francis had not reported Wesolowski to civil authorities nor tried to warn the public.
All prelates should make credible allegations public as a warning to avoid contact with the accused. The group, Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), defines failure to take these steps as a “cover up.”
Wesolowski “is now thought to be living in Rome and is protected from extradition by diplomatic immunity,” it was reported in January 2014.This was confirmed by a tweet made by Santo Domingo Auxiliary Bishop Víctor Masalles June 24, 2014. “For me it was a surprise to see Wesolowski walking along Via della Scrofa in Rome,”
It was not until September 25 that the Vatican said Wesolowski had been put under house arrest inside the Vatican City State. The next day, the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Serra reported that the prelate was arrested by order of the pope because “there was a serious risk that the nuncio would be arrested on Italian territory at the request of the Dominican authorities and then extradited.”
At the time of his arrest, Wesolowski had more than 100,000 computer files of pornography. Some were photos “the victims themselves were forced to take. The prelate stored part of this chamber of horrors on his own laptop. The material, which were classified by type, shows dozens of young girls engaged in sexual activities but the preference is for males. Images show youngsters aged between 13 and 17 being humiliated for the camera, filmed naked and forced to have sexual relations with each other or with adults. … Wesolowski is suspected of belonging to an international network that extends well beyond what has emerged so far,” the Italian paper stated.
I all, Pope Francis had allowed his prelate 15 months freedom to commit crimes involving child pornography.
November 22, 2014: Wesolowski was seen “walking quietly inside the Vatican City…in apparent freedom” and is presumed to still live there under house arrest.
A Vatican trial for Wesolowski, age 67, was scheduled for July 11, 2015, but was halted due to the archbishop’s “illness.” On the eve of the trial, the ambassador was taken to the hospital. His lawyer “didn’t know what ails his client. ‘I saw him two or three days ago, and, given his age and his state of mind, he was fine,’ said Antonello Blasi.”
Wesolowski left the hospital on July 17. The BBC reported on August 11 that Wesolowski was free to “walk around the Vatican, around its 40 hectares [~100 acres].” No mention was made of any illness.
Wesolowski’s body was discovered on August 28 in his Vatican quarters. “Wesolowski’s sudden death has aroused doubts and suspicions in Dominican Republic and other countries.” “Many believe that Wesolowski could be the repository of untold secrets, which could, perhaps, be harmful to many powerful characters.”
Fr. Nicola Corradi
By open letter and video message “handed to Pope Francis” in May 2014, former students at the notorious Provolo Institute for the Deaf in Italy, where more than one hundred deaf and mute children had been sexually abused, informed the pontiff that one of the predators, Fr. Nicola Corradi, held a current position at the Provolo Institute in Argentina.
Pope Francis took no action to stop him.
Corradi and four others in the Argentine school were arrested in November 2016 and charged with raping and molesting at least 22 children. More reports poured in and “it’s now thought that as many as 60 children fell victim to abuse.” Prosecutors said the alleged anal and vaginal rapes, fondling and oral sex took place in the bathrooms, dorms, garden, basement and chapel. “Victims said they were forced to perform sexual acts on one another and made to watch other students being abused.”
“One of the alleged victims said she witnessed how a girl was raped by one priest while the other one forced her to give him oral sex.” Another accused a nun “of making her wear a diaper to cover up a hemorrhage after she was raped by a priest” when she was five years old.
The tormentors knew “the other children wouldn’t hear the screams as they were deaf.”
In May 2019, the Argentine group Church Without Abuses and the international organizations Ending Clergy Abuse and BishopAccountability met with victims “to show solidarity with the Provolo victims and echo their cry for justice,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org.
“Pope Francis owes them a personal apology for his complicity and silence. The Italian victims warned him for years that Corradi and others were working with children in Argentina. The pope did nothing,” stated Doyle.
Corradi was found guilty in November 2019 and sentenced to 42 years in prison.
VICTIMS OF THE CULTURE WARS
Women
“In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 569 board-certified OB-GYNs across the U.S., 68% say the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade has made pregnancy-related medical emergencies worse, while 64% report that the ruling has worsened pregnancy-related mortality,”.
“Sweeping restrictions and even outright abortion bans adopted by states in the year since the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling have had an overwhelmingly negative effect on maternal health care, according to the survey released June 1, 2023, that provides one of the clearest views yet of how the U.S. Supreme Court decision has affected women’s health care in the United States. The poll by the health research nonprofit KFF reveals that the Dobbs ruling – which ended federal protection on the right to abortion – affected how pregnancy-related medical emergencies are managed.”
“Increased fear of criminalization of abortion may also result in more limited access to services to manage miscarriages or stillbirths since almost all of the health care services used in these cases are identical to those used in abortions. Some clinicians may hesitate to provide these services because of concerns they could be conflated with providing an abortion, and some pregnant people may be reluctant to seek these services due to fear of criminalization,” noted the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Despite consistent public opinion in support of legal abortion, abortion is banned in 13 states. Some states are further testing the legal limits of the post-Roe landscape by passing extreme restrictions, such as a ban on helping a young person travel out of state to access legal abortion care,” according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Another life and death adverse effect was anticipated by those working to protect women from domestic violence. “Abortion restrictions have led to a significant uptick in intimate partner violence,” PBS News reported on July 14, 2023. “Part of what perpetuates that violence are control, isolation of victims by the abusers.”
“When we saw overnight in many places the loss of access to nearby abortions just evaporate, people began to suffer. And we’re seeing preliminary data, anecdotal evidence that suggests that all of the warning signs that we were hearing about before Dobbs came down are starting to materialize,” stated PNS health reporter, Laura Santhanam.
“Reproductive coercion is a form of domestic violence that we’re hearing more about, especially after Dobbs. What that means is an abuser could sabotage contraception, could intercept birth control, could otherwise just hinder a person’s ability to have control over their own body,” Santhanam explained.
“What we’re seeing in things like the National Domestic Violence Hotline is a nearly 100 percent increase in these calls about reproductive coercion alone. The experts there also told me that they have seen more than 20,000 calls related to nonconsensual sex … more than 3,000 calls per day, on average. And that’s the highest volume that they have seen ever since they were established in 1996,” she said.
In writing the opinion in the Dobb’s decision, the Catholic Justice Samuel Alito stated that the states “need not even have an exception for incest or rape,” similar to the often-stated position of Pope Francis. The pontiff has often declared that every abortion – with no exception for incest, rape or even to save the life of the mother – should be outlawed.
“Pope Francis condemned abortion in new comments about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.” The pope compared abortion to “hiring a hit man” in a July 4, 2022, interview published by Reuters.
In a 2018 speech, “the pontiff asked, using a Mafia image: ‘Is it just to resort to a contract killer to solve a problem?’” as quoted by getreligion.org.
“It is really murder,” Pope Francis said Sept. 27, 2021. “That’s what abortion is, hiring a hitman to solve a problem.”
Pope Francis’ contempt for women has been evident during his pontificate:
- “Be a mother and not an old maid!” Address to nuns from around the world, May 8, 2013
- “Europe is now a ‘grandmother,’ no longer fertile and vibrant.” Address to the European Parliament, Nov. 25, 2014
- “… A Church that seems more like a spinster than a mother …” Homily at morning Mass, Dec. 9, 2014
“Pope Francis unequivocally stated that women cannot be ordained as priests,” in an interview published Nov. 28, 22.
In his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Catholic Justice Clarence Thomas urged the Court to “reconsider” the 1965 Griswold v Connecticut decision that established the right to privacy to use contraceptives.
“The Church strongly rejects the forced State intervention in favor of contraception,” Pope Francis wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, signed March 19, 2016 “Such measures are unacceptable even in places with high birth rates, yet also in countries with disturbingly low birth rates we see politicians encouraging [contraception].”
Also in Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis stated that “we need to return to the message of Humanae Vitae” (Pope Paul VI’s1968 encyclical banning contraception) and that the teaching of Humanae Vitae “should be taken anew.”
As regards Paul VI’s encyclical, Pope Francis said, “His genius was prophetic, he had the courage to place himself against the majority, defending the moral discipline, exercising a culture brake,” in a March 5, 2014, interview with Corriere de la Serra.
On May 31, 2023, the Vatican issued a new document reiterating the Church’s opposition to contraception, as reported by Crux Now.
LGBTQ+
The suspect accused of using an AR-style rifle to kill five people and injure19 others in a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced on June 26, 2023, to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
“Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states. Prosecutors could not seek the death penalty because in 2020, Colorado abolished the death penalty,” as reported by CNN.
Two reports released on June 22, 2023, “capture the growing anti-LGBTQ+ extremism across the U.S. that has led to protests, threats and violence against the queer community.” One of those, from the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBTQ+ organization GLAAD, “shows there have been more than 350 incidents of harassment, vandalism or assault from June 2022 to April 2023 which the report states coincide with an increase in rhetoric and legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” ABC News stated.
“The increase in threats coincides with the increased use of false anti-LGBTQ+ stereotypes by conservative figures that activists say have historically been used to marginalize the community and rile up a political base,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis stated. “Extremists, including elected officials, must be held accountable for inciting violence and using vile rhetoric against marginalized people who just want to live in safety and peace,” she said.
As regards homosexuals and lesbians, since his time as cardinal primate of Argentina, Pope Francis has consistently opposed same-sex marriage. He referred to those unions as “the work of the devil,” an “anthropological regression,” “disfiguring God’s plan for creation” and “a total rejection of God’s law”
The pope said that he follows the Church’s Catechism teaching that this “sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex” is “objectively disordered.” “For this reason,” he said, “the Church recommends that people with this deep-seated tendency not be accepted into ministry or into consecrated life (brothers and nuns).” In addressing a group of bishops, he said “”If you have even the slightest doubt [about their homosexuality], it is better not to let them in [the seminary].”
Transgender
“Transgender people have 7.7 times the rate of suicide attempts compared to others,” according to the new study published June 27, 2023, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “It’s possible the data don’t capture all suicides among transgender people or contain information on all transgender people,” the New York Times reported. “The findings could suggest an even higher risk of suicide” because “transgender people have been targeted by laws restricting bathroom use for transgender people, gender-related medical care and drag performances.” Also, “the study found transgender people died at younger ages than others, whether by suicide or from other causes, researchers said.”
“Trans people face widespread poverty, widespread discrimination, they’re more likely to experience homelessness, they’re overrepresented in our nation’s prison system and our nation’s foster care system,” Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union who focuses on transgender rights, told the Times. “That material lack has very real consequences on their lives, up to and including early deaths,” he said.
Pope Francis said that transgender people constitute the very “annihilation of man as image of God.” He compared transgender people to “nuclear arms;” both are “a sin against God the Creator.”
“Today children – children – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the people and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible!” Pope Francis said in a conversation with Polish bishops in 2016.
Pope Francis said that “because it blurs differences and the value of men and women, gender ideology is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in an interview published the Catholic News Agency. dated March 11, 2023. The pontiff “has frequently used the term ‘ideological colonization’ throughout the 10 years of his pontificate, particularly to describe instances when aid money for developing countries has been tied to contraceptives, abortion, sterilization, and gender ideologies,” the author explained.
VICTIMS OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Putin
“The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said that Vladimir Putin is responsible for crimes against humanity. The commission said that in addition to the rapes and killings, mass burial sites have been found in several parts of Ukraine previously occupied by Russian troops, including some holding civilian bodies showing signs of torture,” according to a BBC report on March 17, 2023.
The same day, “the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over Ukraine war crimes. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” stated the same BBC report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on May 13, 2023. “In a tweet shortly after the meeting concluded, Zelensky said he’d pressed Francis ‘to condemn crimes in Ukraine. Because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor,’” John L. Allen Jr. reported on cruxnow.com.
“Speaking later during a special program on Italian television, Zelensky flatly ruled out a mediating role for the pontiff or the Vatican. ‘With all due respect for His Holiness, we don’t need a mediator between Ukraine and the aggressor that’s seized and occupied our territory,’ Zelensky said. Headlines in the Italian press drew the obvious conclusion: ‘Zelensky rejects the pope’s peace plan,’ reported Il Giornale, while Il Fatto Quotidiano went with, ‘Zelensky freezes out the pope, wants to negotiate on his own’ and Il Manifesto had, ‘The pope’s plan isn’t needed,’” Allen wrote.
“The Vatican ‘mediation’ between Moscow and Kyiv that Zelensky has refused is that which has been attributed repeatedly to the bidding of the pope, the last time after the words Francis himself spoke on his return from his trip to Budapest, on April 30, when he announced that for peace in Ukraine ‘a mission is underway, but it is not yet public,’ and ‘when it is public I will talk about it,’” Vatican expert Sandro Magister explained.
However, “the word from both Moscow and Kyiv was that they knew nothing of the initiative the pope had announced,” Allen stated. He also reminded his readers that since the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, “Francis has suggested Russia has legitimate security concerns, condemned the arms trade and called for a negotiated settlement.”
Pope Francis was asked twice during an interview with Telemundo television on May 26. 2023, if Russia should hand back the territories stolen from Ukraine. “He did not address that part of the question the first time but when pressed again, he said, ‘It’s a political issue,’” according to a Reuters report.
“A high-ranking official in the Russian Orthodox Church met with both Pope Francis and top Vatican diplomats on June 15, 2023,” cruxnow.com reported. Metropolitan Anthony Sevryuk, head of Patriarch Kirill’s external relations department, is the second-highest ranking official in the Russian Orthodox Church and is widely believed to reflect the attitude and approach of Patriarch Kirill, including his support of the war in Ukraine … “Sevryuk’s visit comes amid ongoing negotiations to organize a second meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, and while discussions are also underway to arrange the visit of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi to Moscow.”
“It is known that there is no love for Zuppi in Ukraine on the part of the Kyiv government. In the deluge of his words on the war he has always held back from clearly approving both the right of the Ukrainian nation to defend itself with arms against the Russian invasion and its continuous rearmament by many Western nations,” Sandro Magister reported as “honeyed words for Russia.”
Meanwhile, “the pontiff has yet to condemn or criticize Putin for his unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine” noted The Pillar website on June 6, 2023.
“The special envoy of Pope Francis plans to visit Moscow,” European Pravda reported on June 12. “During Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s stay, he will hold talks with representatives of the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church.”
“Zuppi kicked off his Moscow visit on June 28, 2023, by meeting Yuri Ushakov, a longtime foreign policy advisor to Putin … Zuppi met Patriarch Kirill and other leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church on June 29, just days after the Orthodox prelates stood uniformly behind Russian President Vladimir Putin during a short-lived insurrection by Wagner Group mercenaries,” reported cruxnow.com.
Pope Francis’ history of placating Putin
“Moscow was pleased after Francis opposed a proposed U.S.-led military intervention in Syria, a key Russian ally,” in September 2013. Putin credited Pope Francis “for stopping the military action” against Bashar al-Assad.
Pope Francis had “quite a cordial and constructive meeting,” with Putin in November 2013, The Guardian reported. “The Russian president has continued to support al-Assad’s ‘extermination’ of his civilian population.”
On Feb. 4, 2015, the pontiff “called the [first] conflict between the Ukrainian government and Russia ‘fratricidal.’” Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, said Pope Francis’ statement was “particularly painful for all the people in Ukraine” because it was a foreign invasion.
Putin was “not welcome at the June 7-8, 2015, G7 summit meeting thanks to his government’s continued incursions into Ukraine’s territory. But two days after the meeting of Western powers, the Russian leader had his second meeting with Pope Francis,” TIME reported.
Between the pope’s first and second meetings with Putin, “some 1.2 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced according to the United Nations humanitarian office. Russia continues to deny that it is sending troops across the border or arming Russian-backed separatists, and international pressure mounts to address the crisis,” TIME stated. Meanwhile, “Pope Francis has been working to carefully move his relationship with Putin forward.”
“Did the pope just kiss Putin’s ring?” The Economist headlined regarding the Pope Francis’ meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill held in February 2016. The meeting “could not happen without a green light from Putin … Putin has aligned himself closely with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), making [the] private meeting politically charged, especially when Russia is at odds with the West over Ukraine and Syria. Putin clearly sees the value of his relationship with the ROC and the ROC’s relationship with the pope,” stated religionnews.com.
The Economist stated:
The meeting “is a diplomatic victory for Putin [and] helped to underscore Russia’s renewed standing as a global power…
Francis made clear in his interview before the meeting that on certain issues he agrees with Mr. Putin and disagrees with America and its allies…
The joint declaration issued after the meeting hewed close to the Kremlin’s positions on the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine…
The joint declaration deplores ‘hostility’ in Ukraine, but omits any mention of Russia’s role, casting it as an internal struggle…
Miroslav Marinovich, vice-rector of the Catholic University in Lviv, said that the sections relating to Ukraine were ‘obviously written in the Kremlin.’”
The joint declaration also included a denouncement of same-sex marriage. Putin “also takes the position held by Pope Francis that ‘tolerance of gender choice results from a Western imperial ideology.’”
“The Foreign Office of the Moscow Patriarchate held an international seminar at the end of January [2017] during which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches jointly spoke out against abortion.”The seminar was “a direct result” of the meeting between Pope Francis and Kirill.
As regards the current war in Ukraine, “Pope Deplores the War in Ukraine but Not the Aggressor” was the March 18, 2022 headline in The New York Times. “Francis has studiously avoided naming President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, or even Russia itself, as the aggressor.”
“While the Biden administration continues to shun President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, insisting on maintaining an economic embargo and supporting regime change, Pope Francis recently received Assad’s new envoy to the Vatican and continues to oppose sanctions and to support the reintegration of Syria into the regional and international community,” John L. Allen Jr., reported on May 21, 2023.
“Pope Francis’ Russia policy has come under withering attack from his own partisans,” noted Fr. Raymond J. de Souza on March 22, 2023. “Robert Mickens has called the policy one of ‘appeasement.’ Massimo Faggioli has written that ‘in the hours before the invasion, Francis’s personal appeals for peace were timid and reluctant (contrast them to those he made at the September 2013 prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square, while the United States was threatening action in Syria).’”
Xi Jinping
“A UN High Commission for Human Rights report, published on August 31, 2022, said that the government of Xi Jinping has committed abuses that amount to crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities in the Xinjiang region. The report contains victim accounts that substantiate mass arbitrary detention, torture, cultural persecution, forced labor, and other serious human rights violations, and recommends that states, businesses, and the international community take action with a view to ending the abuses, and advancing justice and accountability,” the Human Rights Watch organization wrote.
“Survivors of religious persecution and leaders from Muslim, Christian and Buddhist faith backgrounds warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill on July 12, 2023, that the persecution of people of faith by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has only grown worse in the past year, as churches are destroyed, people of faith imprisoned, and government efforts to take over church leadership continue,” reported the National Catholic Register.
“The 2018 Vatican China agreement on bishop appointments [the CCP would select bishops with the approval of the pope] has not brought improvement in religious freedom to vulnerable Catholics,” Frederick Davie, vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, noted in his remarks. “In fact, just this past year authorities detained and then forcibly ‘disappeared’ a number of underground Catholic bishops and other priests who refused to join the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Association,” quoted the Register.
“Pope Francis has decided to recognize the transfer of a bishop in China earlier this year without his knowledge or approval, the Vatican announced, despite the fact that it violates the terms of a 2018 provisional agreement on bishop appointments,” cruxnow.com reported on July 15, 2023. This is the second time in the past year Chinese authorities took such action.
Pope Francis’ History of Placating Xi Jinping
In every year of Pope Francis’ pontificate, China is identified as a government which has “engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom” defined as “including torture, degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, abduction or clandestine detention, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons,” according to the U.S. State Department’s annual Religious Freedom report.
Nevertheless, Pope Francis “described the excitement he felt when he was about to enter Chinese airspace on a flight from Seoul to Rome in August 2014.” During that in-flight news conference, he said, “I think of the great Chinese sages, theirs is a history of knowledge, of wisdom” and that he wanted to go to China “Tomorrow! Oh, yes!”
The next month, Pope Francis issued an invitation to Xi Jinping to come to the Vatican and said he was willing to go to China. When the pope was in the U.S. in September 2015, he and Xi were in New York the same day. “The pope wanted to meet Xi and this message was communicated clearly to China.” No meeting has ever taken place.
Pope Francis told Xi Jinping, “The world looks to this great wisdom of yours,” in a widely reported February 2016 interview.
Since the Communists took control in 1949, there has been two Catholic Churches – an “underground” Church loyal to the popes and a Communist Party-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA). No pontiff before Pope Francis ever recognized the CPCA as a legitimate form of Catholicism and both the Vatican and Chinese government maintained their sole right to appoint bishops until this pontificate.
It was announced on August 5, 2016, that – after more than two years of negotiations – the Vatican and Beijing reached a preliminary agreement whereby a government-controlled organization would prepare a list of candidates for bishop and the pope would choose from among them. China and the Vatican signed an agreement on September 22, 2018, ratifying the above.
By signing a treaty with China, Pope Francis “has effectively given Xi Jinping a stamp of approval when the latter’s hostility to religious freedom couldn’t be clearer,” wrote Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch in December 2018. “Watching a major world faith come to an agreement with an authoritarian government that’s notorious for repressing religious freedom and to effectively cede some authority to that government sets a very worrying precedent,” Richardson stated. “The deal came as the religious-freedom environment in China reached its worst level in years, as the government has detained Muslim citizens in illegal detention camps, increased control over churches and temples, and sought to incorporate party ideology directly into religious doctrine,” she noted.
“The decision by the Vatican to negotiate a diplomatic relationship with China resulted in the recognition of government appointed bishops and also – in effect – deposed prominent Chinese religious leaders who had persevered through horrific persecution in previous generations in China,” Johnnie Moore, Commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated. “My personal opinion is that [the agreement] is one of the most alarming incidents as it relates to religious freedom in the entire year,” he wrote in a report issued April 29, 2019, as related by catholicworldreport.com.
“Being that the Vatican is both a Church and a State, it is my opinion that the Vatican now bears a significant moral and legal responsibility to help solve the problem which it helped create … by providing China license to viciously crack down on Christian communities and by providing the Chinese government further cover to continue its incomprehensible, inexcusable and inhumane abuses of Muslim citizens in the western part of the country … The Vatican made a terrible mistake, which it must take seriously. This debacle must be dealt with urgently and seriously,” Moore concluded.
Pope Francis has “muted any criticism” of Xi’s trampling “of human rights and religious freedom,” John L. Allen Jr. wrote on March 21, 2023. “Thus when Xi told Putin Monday that ‘China will work with Russia to uphold true multilateralism, promote a multipolar world and greater democracy in international relations, and help make global governance more just and equitable,’ it was rhetoric destined to play well in Rome,” Allen stated. “While Western leaders largely have dismissed China’s peace plan for Ukraine, styling it as little more than a reward for Russian aggression, the Vatican’s been quietly encouraging.”
In an interview accompanying the announcement on July 15, 2023, that Pope Francis recognized the legitimacy of a bishop appointed by the CCP without his approval, “Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin used the occasion to suggest that a ‘stable liaison office’ between the Holy See and China be opened, saying such a move would be ‘extremely helpful’ for ongoing dialogue. It was one of Parolin’s strongest statements to date about the idea of launching formal diplomatic relations,” stated Elise Ann Allen on cruxnow.com.
This March was the tenth anniversary of the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the Throne of St. Peter. Although seeking political influence is the antithesis of the Gospel, many popes have wanted to do do. Pope Francis is no different. However, by appeasing Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Bergoglio has proven himself to be a disastrous diplomat although he has coveted this role.
No one outside the Church looks to him for guidance on how to curb child sex abuse although he has instituted numerous useless studies and do-nothing committees.
Betty Clermont is author of The NeoCatholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (2009)