ROME
Chiesa
Mercy for all except the hierarchical Church, too closed-off and backward to deserve the pope’s forgiveness. But in the meantime two cases with uncertain outcomes have exploded: the trial of Balda and Chaouqui and the clash with the supreme court of Chile
by Sandro Magister
ROME, December 4, 2015 – With the jubilee inaugurated last Sunday in the heart of deepest Africa, Pope Francis has bent an instrument of ancient devotion to a new purpose entirely his own.
The jubilees do not have a good reputation – it was precisely the selling of indulgences that scandalized Luther – and yet the pope has brought them back into vogue for the living and for the deceased, in remission of the pains of purgatory. No one can therefore accuse him of abandoning tradition.
But the form is one thing, the substance is another. Because Francis is keeping only one part of that tradition alive: forgiveness. A forgiveness that is for all those who step through the holy door, go to confession, and receive communion. Only that the holy doors are everywhere. Even the door of a prison cell can become one, the pope has said, if only one asks God for mercy. …
> Ricca and Chaouqui, Two Enemies in the House (26.8.2013)
Not with prudence, for having wanted to haul into the dock even the two Italian journalists who wrote about it, in a bizarre revival of the index of prohibited books.
And even less with mercy, seeing the salacious pages that have been leaked from the court documents and have exposed to public ridicule not only the monsignor and the lady, already highly active in inflicting damage on themselves, but also her unfortunate relatives, completely uninvolved in the matter.
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Bergoglio appeals to the people of the jubilee against the hierarchy for his other purifying enterprise as well, against clerical sex abuse of minors.
He says that he is unyielding with the bishops who cover up such misconduct and he has in fact removed some of them. But at the same time he shows himself merciful to excess with one cardinal who was one of his main electors in conclave, the Belgian Godfried Danneels, who in 2010 tried to conceal the sexual misconduct of the bishop of Bruges at the time, Roger Wangheluwe, with the victim being his young nephew. The scandal became public, but it does not appear to have bothered Pope Francis, who twice even put Danneels at the top of the list of synod fathers personally appointed by him, in a sign of great esteem, and promoted the cardinal’s protege as the new archbishop of Brussels:
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