ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
Chiesa

by Sandro Magister

ROME, February 14, 2013 – On the evening of an unremarkable Thursday in Lent, at 8 p.m. on February 28, Joseph Ratzinger will take the step that none of his predecessors had dared to take. He will place upon the throne of Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Which another will be called to take up.

There is the power of a revolution in this action that has no equal even in centuries long ago. From that point on, the Church enters into unknown territory. It will have to elect a new pope while his predecessor is still alive, his words still resounding, his orders still binding, his agenda still waiting to be implemented.

Those cardinals who on the morning of Monday, February 11 were convoked in the hall of the consistory for the canonization of the eight hundred Christians of Otranto martyred by the Turks six centuries ago were stunned at hearing Benedict XVI, at the end of the ceremony, announce in Latin his resignation of the pontificate.

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VATICAN CITY
moneycontrol

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Few authors can boast that Pope Benedict helped sell their books, but the pontiff’s shock resignation has boosted interest in all things Catholic just as veteran Vatican journalist John Thavis is about to publish.

“The Vatican Diaries,” a behind-the-scenes look at the faith’s fabled nerve centre, goes on sale on February 21, just one week before the pope takes the nearly unprecedented step of quitting as the head of the world’s largest church.

Thavis, who covered the Vatican for 30 years until retiring from his post as bureau chief for the U.S.-based Catholic News Service last year, had long known Benedict believed a pope could resign and worried he might do it before the book came out.

But he says he was as shocked as anyone else when the pope announced his decision on Monday. The book is not an analysis of the soon-to-end pontificate, but the stories it tells amount to what Thavis calls “a mosaic history of Benedict’s papacy.” …

Q. In the book, you call the Vatican “a kind of showcase for missteps, distractions and mixed messages, a place where the pope is upstaged by his own gaffes or those of his top aides.” Did this come out in your daily reporting?

A. “There were some things I couldn’t say until I sat down to write a book. There were some judgements I couldn’t have expressed in news stories, and not only because I worked for a Catholic news agency. I couldn’t say in my daily reporting how disgraceful I found the Legionaries of Christ’s effort to spin or deflect criticism from their founder (Fr Marcial Maciel, who sexually abused boys and secretly fathered several children).

“I also couldn’t say how ridiculous I found it that the Vatican still feels the need to edit the pope’s spoken words to journalists, as if there was an official version that will supercede his actual words.”

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UNITED STATES
CNN

CNN’s Max Foster talks about controversies the next pope will face, including sex abuse allegations within the church.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The outgoing head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, has hinted he will withdraw into seclusion after stepping down at the end of this month.

“Even if I am withdrawing into prayer, I will always be close to all of you… even if I remain hidden to the world,” he told a meeting of Roman priests.

The pontiff, 85, shocked the world’s biggest Christian Church on Monday when he announced his resignation.

He cited his advanced age as the reason for resigning.

The Pope appears to be planning a complete retreat from the public eye, the BBC’s Alan Johnston reports from the Vatican.

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UNITED STATES
Center for Constitutional Rights

February 11, 2013, New York – In response to news that Pope Benedict XVI plans to resign, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the statement below. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a case with the International Criminal Court on behalf of the organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) against the pope and other high-level Vatican officials for crimes against humanity in September 2011 and provided additional documentation in the case in April 2012. The prosecutor is currently reviewing the evidence.

“This pope is responsible for rape and other sexual violence around the world, both through his exercise of superior responsibility and through his direct involvement in the cover up of specific crimes. Tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, continue to suffer because he has placed the reputation of the church above the safety of its members. His resignation will make international prosecution easier for national systems of justice that still grant immunity to current heads of state.

In this case, all roads really do lead to Rome. Not only does Pope Benedict XVI bear responsibility in his official capacity for the church-wide policy of systematic and widespread concealment and enabling of the crimes, but he bears individual responsibility in a number of cases in which he ensured that perpetrators would be shielded and protected and left in place to assault more victims.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 14, 2013

Rome

Conventional wisdom about Benedict XVI holds that he’s a strong teaching pope but weak on the business management side, reflected in the “Vati-leaks” mess and other internal breakdowns. Yet defenders argue he’s actually been a reformer, perhaps nowhere more so than on Vatican finances.

The next few days seem likely to bring one final twist to the story, with the naming of a new president for the embattled Vatican Bank.

On Tuesday, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, announced during a reception for the 84th anniversary of the Lateran Pacts that a new president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, better known as the “Vatican Bank,” would be named shortly. Yesterday that was confirmed by Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson.

“It’s plausible that the appointment could come in the next few days,” Lombardi said. “It’s a process that’s been underway for a long time, and I don’t see why it should stop because of the pope’s resignation.”

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INDIANA
Indianapolis Star

Written by
Vic Ryckaert

A Greenwood church entered into an agreement with state officials Wednesday that allows it to continue running a day care.

The Little Angels Daycare and Preschool in White River Baptist Church, due to shut down today, can keep operating after it agreed to improve up safety standards and become a fully licensed day care by Aug. 13, said Marni Lemons, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.

The church day care at 1222 Demaree Road cares for about 130 children.

FSSA officials notified the day care on Jan. 31 that it was revoking their registration because an inspector found a church official accused of sexual abuse had been allowed near children.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Kate Campbell and Natasha Boddy, The West Australian
February 14, 2013

A Perth jury has found a former music teacher at an exclusive boys’ school guilty of repeatedly sexually abusing a teenage student in the 1980s.

The District Court jury took less than four hours today to convict Lindsay Hutchinson, 63, of 12 charges, including carnal knowledge against nature, unlawful and indecent assault and indecent dealing with a child.

Hutchinson pleaded guilty to three indecent dealing charges, involving touching the victim between 1984 and 1985, but denied the more serious charges, including rape.

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CALIFORNIA
Loyolan

Posted on February 14, 2013

by Kevin O’Keeffe

Change can be a good thing, but how can you say that when the supposed reason for the change is anything but good?

It’s pretty grim to celebrate someone’s allegedly poor health, but Monday’s announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is stepping down from his position – the first such resignation in almost 600 years, according to the article “University reacts to the Pope’s resignation” appearing on Page 1 of this issue – isn’t what I’d call “bad news.”

It’s the perfect time for major transition and progression for the often socially conservative Roman Catholic Church, which is, in my opinion, quickly losing touch with young people like myself. Many in my demographic were baptized Catholic, myself included, but quickly became disillusioned with the Church’s outmoded teachings on the role of women in the church and, especially in my case, homosexuality.

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CANADA
Metro Ottawa

By Alex Boutilier
Metro Ottawa

Ottawa Police have charged a retired Roman Catholic Priest with indecent assault against a seven-year-old.

The charges come after a three month investigation into a “series of inapropriate contacts” between a Roman Catholic Priest and a seven-year-old boy in Ottawa between 1971 and 1973.

Jacques Faucher, 76, faces one count of gross indecency and one count of indecent assault. He will appear in court on Thursday for a bail hearing, and the investigation is ongoing.

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OHIO
Daily Call

By Will E Sanders
Staff Writer

TROY – A resident pastor from Troy’s First United Methodist Church remains held at the Miami County Jail on a $100,000 bond related to sexual allegations involving a 15-year-old female parishioner.

Michael “Mic” D. Mohler, 26, of Troy, was arraigned in Miami County Municipal Court on Wednesday morning on a charge of sexual battery, a third-degree felony that carries a potential prison sentence of one to five years and sexual registration.

Authorities with the sheriff’s office said Mohler served as a youth pastor at the church and the church’s website listed his position as “resident pastor,” a post in which he no longer servces.
The sheriff’s office and the Troy Police Department jointly investigated the allegations of sexual abuse that allegedly involved Mohler and the underage female.

Rev. David Leckrone, head pastor at First United Methodist Church, issued a written statement Wednesday afternoon and stated church officials are taking the “allegations extremely seriously.”

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UNITED STATES
TCPalm

Paul Janensch

Posted February 14, 2013

I was surprised to read recently that a Vatican official thanked the U.S. news media for their aggressive reporting of child sexual abuse by priests.

For a long time this was not the usual line coming from the Vatican or from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The usual line was to denounce the media for an “anti-Catholic bias.”

I am a Mass-attending Catholic. I am also a journalist who has been troubled by the Catholic hierarchy’s reluctance to release information about accusations against priests of child sexual abuse and financial settlements with victims.

The thanks to the U.S. news media came from Father Robert Oliver, a canon lawyer from Boston and the Vatican’s new prosecutor of child sexual abuse cases.

“I think that certainly those who continued to put before us that we need to confront this problem did a service,” Oliver was quoted by the Reuters news service as saying at his first news conference. …

I, too, have felt the wrath of a Catholic official for daring to look into accusations against priests of child sexual abuse. In the early 1990s, 10 years before the investigative reporting by The Boston Globe, I was the editor of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass.

Several men told us they had been molested by priests when they were boys. We found evidence to support their allegations, asked the bishop for his response and published news stories in which the accusers were named.

A monsignor who served as an aide to the bishop and knew I was a Catholic, telephoned me. “You are a disgrace to the church,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Pressure grows on Pope to leave Rome after he retires so he does not interfere with successor’s work

By Steve Doughty and Hannah Roberts

The Pope is under pressure to go into exile from Rome after he retires so that he does not interfere with the work of his successor, senior Roman Catholic sources indicated yesterday.

There is growing evidence that several cardinals are anxious that Benedict XVI should not carry through his plan to live in an apartment block inside the walls of the Vatican.

They fear the close presence of a retired Pope will create difficulties for the new man who will take over the Papacy this spring.

The suggestion that Benedict should be effectively evicted from his planned retreat and dismissed from Rome came just two days after the Pope’s sudden announcement of his resignation threw the church’s leadership into turmoil.

The Vatican has been gripped with rumours of faction fighting while potential candidates for the succession have been jostling for position for when 117 cardinals meet to elect a successor next month.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Editorial Board

Wednesday, February 13

ELEVEN AMERICANS will be among the 117 cardinals of the Catholic Church heading soon to Rome to select the next pope. One of them, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, for a quarter-century the archbishop of Los Angeles, is lucky not to be in prison, for there is no dispute that he orchestrated what amounted to a cover-up of clerical sexual abuse in Los Angeles.

By now it is familiar news, though no less stomach-turning, that top officials in the Catholic Church protected pedophile priests for decades — impeding criminal investigations, shuffling offenders to new parishes or abroad, and resisting disclosure. In so doing, they exhibited little concern for victims of sex abuse, usually boys.

Still, the scale of the misdeeds in Los Angeles, the largest archdiocese in the United States, counts as a particular disgrace. And it is Cardinal Mahony, who resigned as archbishop two years ago, who oversaw the whole dirty business. For that he has been publicly censured by his successor.

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UNITED STATES
Kelly Clark

A Pope hasn’t resigned since 1415, so it is easy to see why Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement of his own resignation has made headlines. Although he was not in the best of health when he took office, the expectation was that he would serve until he died – like all his predecessors in the past 600 years.

I come from a long line of Bavarian Catholics (even though the strain was diluted to Nebraska Lutherans by my generation), so was pleased to see a Bavarian Cardinal appointed Pope, even though I do not follow Vatican politics. Those who do are out in full force now, making all kinds of speculations about why this Pope resigned, who will succeed him, and just what role a retired Pope is supposed to play.

The most scintillating of this conjecture is whether the Pope’s resignation has any connection with the German Bishops Conference’s abrupt cancellation of a independent investigation into 70 years of sex abuse allegation against German clergy.

But we shouldn’t lose site of the real goal of putting an end to child sexual abuse, within the Catholic Church as well as in other institutions of trust. The next papal election is a side issue because reform will never come from within an institution. Real reform is the product of advocates who tirelessly pursue the protection of children through changes in criminal and civil statutes of limitations, litigation, investigative journalism, and hands-on support for survivors of child abuse.

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Countercurrents.org

By Francis A. Boyle

13 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org

As the Lawyer for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during Yugoslavia’s War of Extermination against the Bosnians, I represented all 40,000 raped Women of Bosnia, argued their case for genocide before the International Court of Justice in The Hague (the World Court of the United Nations System), and won two World Court Orders of Provisional Measures of Protection on their behalf on 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993. See my book “ The Bosnian People Charge Genocide!” (1996).

The Pope and his Cardinals and his Archbishops and his Bishops are ultimately responsible for the widespread and systematic Sexual Abuse of thousands of completely innocent children around the world, which constitutes a Crime against Humanity under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, in particular article 7(1)(g)—“rape”—and article 7(1) (k)— “Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” According to the well known principle of Command Responsibility under International Criminal Law, the Pope and his Cardinals and his Archbishops and his Bishops should all be prosecuted for their own criminal acts and the criminal acts of their subordinate priests for the reasons set forth in Rome Statute article 28(b):

“b) With respect to superior and subordinate relationships not described in paragraph (a), a superior shall be criminally responsible for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed by subordinates under his or her effective authority and control, as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such subordinates, where:

(i) The superior either knew, or consciously disregarded information which clearly indicated, that the subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes;

(ii) The crimes concerned activities that were within the effective responsibility and control of the superior; and

(iii) The superior failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution.”

To every Catholic Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishop, Priest, Abbot, Monk, and Brother in the entire world I ask: What did you know and when did you know it about your colleagues and friends and subordinates and superiors sexually abusing Children? And why did you not act immediately and effectively to stop them? As Jesus Christ said about protecting Children: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Caleb K. Bell| Religion News Service

Updated: Wednesday, February 13

There will be 11 Americans among the 118 Roman Catholic cardinals who will convene in the Sistine Chapel in mid-March to elect the next pope. They range from leaders of major archdioceses to retired prelates to top officials in the Vatican bureaucracy.

Here’s a look at the American “princes of the church” who will vote for the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics:

Raymond L. Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura
Age: 64
Born: June 30, 1948 in Richland Center, Wis.
Education: Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C.), Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome)
Ordained a priest: 1975 in Rome

Posts held: bishop of La Crosse, Wis. (1994-2003); archbishop of St. Louis, Mo. (2004-2008); prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (2008-present)

Elevated to cardinal: 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI

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CANADA
CBC News

A 76-year-old retired priest is facing two charges for the alleged sexual assault on a boy in the early 1970s.

Ottawa police arrested Jacques Faucher of Gatineau, Que., Wednesday on one count each of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male.

The alleged incidents happened between a Roman Catholic priest and a seven-year-old boy between 1971 and 1973.

The police investigation only began this past November but it continues.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

By Zev Singer, OTTAWA CITIZEN
February 13, 2013

OTTAWA — Ottawa police have charged a 76-year-old retired priest with the alleged sex abuse of a 7-year-old boy in the early 1970s.

Jacques Faucher, of Gatineau, was arrested Wednesday and will appear in court Thursday for a bail hearing. He is charged with gross indecency and indecent assault on a male. The “series of inappropriate contacts” between the Roman Catholic priest and the boy is alleged to have occurred between 1971 and 1973.

Police say the investigation, which began in November 2012, is ongoing and they ask anyone with information about the alleged incident or other incidents to contact the Ottawa Police Service Sexual Assault/Child Abuse Unit at at 613-236-1222, ext. 5944 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477 (TIPS) or toll free at 1-800-222-8477.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Michele Somerville

Why did Pope Benedict XVI announce his resignation Monday? I’d like to imagine he took a sweeping look at his career as a priest and prelate, and while not discounting the value of this contributions as an intellectual, took note of the degree to which he, during the course of his own and the previous pontificates, permitted the “power” to snuff out so much of the “glory.” I like to imagine remorse moves him to wish to go off and pray — for forgiveness, and for the broken church he leaves in shambles. As a practicing Catholic, I’d like to be able to “take” the “pope at his word,” as Frank Bruni wrote (that he does) in his Feb. 11 New York Times opinion piece. But I cannot. I do not.

Here’s how the papal apologists will spin Ratzinger’s resignation. They will frame the decision as a bold and enlightened step. They will emphasize the humility in Ratzinger’s decision to relieve a church in turmoil of the liability of an aging pontiff. This lacks the ring of truth. For more than five centuries a system, the Roman Catholic hierarchs placed great faith in a system of electing, honoring and burying popes, whereby a cabal of papal advisors kept an aging pope for life propped up (Ratzinger personally handled much of such propping up even before John Paul was in his dotage!). This was the tradition the tradition-loving cardinals favored.

Ratzinger’s stepping down constitutes a dramatic break with tradition in a church in which tradition-loving Catholics cling for dear life to any shred of tradition they can grasp. The papal Public Relations team will deflect any suggestion that departing the papacy in advance of bodily death is in and of itself a soft scandal, and will insist that Ratzinger’s resignation is neither a sign nor a symptom of a Catholic hierarchy utterly compromised by corruption. Corruption among the Roman Catholic prelates is hardly something new, but today’s active Catholics, wherever they stand on the degree of orthodoxy spectrum, still approach the altar in hope that our church might mature as it endures. Joseph Ratzinger’s retrograde disposition with its overemphasis on secrecy and obedience has led a majority of active Catholics to turn a deaf ear to the pontiff.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott kmellott@tribdem.com

EBENSBURG — A Greensburg attorney has filed a notice in Cambria County court listing a fourth victim of alleged sexual abuse by Brother Stephen Baker at Bishop McCort, and she provided more specific information about one of the defendants named.

Meanwhile, attorney Susan Williams told The Tribune-Democrat on Tuesday that she has been contacted by someone she would name only as a male from Mount Aloysius College.

She provided no additional information whether the contact was sexual, Baker’s involvement or the age of the individual who contacted her.

“I will say I was contacted by someone from Mount Aloysius,” she said.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Pope Benedict XVI, in last public Mass, deplores ‘divisions’ roiling Catholic Church

By Anthony Faiola,

Wednesday, February 13

VATICAN CITY — Standing above the ancient tomb of Saint Peter, Pope Benedict XVI used his final homily as pontiff Wednesday to deliver a surprisingly blunt reflection on religious hypocrisy, suggesting the church he has headed was confronting internal “divisions” and sometimes presented a “disfigured” face.

Looking frail and aided by young priests as he moved beneath the vaulted canopy of the papal altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope appeared to implicitly address the Vatican power struggles and scandals that plagued his nearly eight-year tenure and, some have argued, potentially hastened his departure as leader of the Catholic Church. Presiding over his last public Mass — on Ash Wednesday, the opening of Lent, a period viewed by Catholics as a time of reflection and penance — he asked his flock to dwell on the true nature of a Christian life.

“We can reveal the face of the church and how this face is, at times, disfigured,” the German-born pontiff said, speaking in Italian. “I am thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the church, of the divisions in the body of the church.” He called for his ministry to overcome “individualism” and “rivalry,” saying they were only for those “who have distanced themselves from the faith.”

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BOSTON (MA)
WCVB

BOSTON —A group of activists in Boston on Wednesday called on outgoing Pope Benedict XVI to speak up about the sexual abuse of children by priests. The pontiff, who is 85, announced his retirement this week.

Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who has represented dozens of victims of sexual assault, said the Pope should release the names of all priests implicated in child abuse worldwide.

Garabedian said “releasing the documents, releasing the names of pedophiles, releasing the names of the bishops who were complicit is necessary so the victims can heal. It helps victims heal when they see the truth when they’re told the truth, when there is transparency.”

Robert Hoatson, a former priest who says he is also a survivor of abuse said, “we’re hearing stories that the pope broke a 600-year tradition by resigning but he didn’t break a 600-year tradition of covering up and being transparent and being honest and being open and telling us who the abusers are. And giving us all the documents relative to all the abuse that has taken place over the past 30 years at least that he’s been in charge of the congregation of the doctrine of the faith and as the pope.”

They were joined by Robert Costello, who says he survived abuse at the hands of a priest at a church in West Roxbury.

“Pope Benedict knows everything he knows where the bodies are buried, he knows who covered up what,” Costello said.

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VATICAN CITY
Advisor & Source Newspapers

Published: Wednesday, February 13, 2013

By Tom Heneghan, Reuters Religion Editor

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict may have shocked the world by announcing his resignation on Monday, but some cardinals apparently started maneuvering for the succession as long as two years ago.

Papal elections are among the world’s most mysterious, with no declared candidates and more bluffing than a high-stakes poker game. No cardinal can openly campaign for a job whose election is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

But behind the scenes, at meetings inside the Vatican’s thick walls and dinners at the finer Roman restaurants, the cardinal electors size up potential candidates among themselves and drop subtle hints to Vatican watchers in the media about who’s up or down.

This round of discreet discussions, dubbed “totopapa” or “pope sweepstakes” by irreverent Romans, was only kicked into a higher gear on Monday when Benedict announced the first papal abdication for centuries. It will go into overdrive when cardinals from around the world arrive in the next few days.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 13, 2013

Rome —
Earlier this week, confirmation that Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles will participate in next month’s conclave was greeted with trepidation by some, worrying that it may cast a shadow over the papal transition by stirring fresh debate over the church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis.

Two weeks ago, Mahony’s successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, relieved him of “administrative and public duties” over what Gomez described as a “failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care.” The move came in tandem with the release of archdiocesan files on abuse cases, many of which were handled by Mahony.

In that context, Mahony’s presence in Rome may raise eyebrows and stir commentary.

Today, Rome caught glimpses of a prelate who’s already been down that path, in the form of Cardinal Bernard Law.

Although now 81 and ineligible to vote in the conclave, Law was present both at Benedict XVI’s general audience in the Paul VI hall this morning and at the Ash Wednesday Mass this evening in St. Peter’s Basilica. He resigned as archbishop of Boston in December 2002 amid strong criticism of his handling of abuse cases and relocated to Rome as the Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major. He stepped down from that post in November 2011.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

Opposition parties have been accused of using the Magdalene Laundries report to score political points.

The claim was made by Labour Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch, during a Dail debate, lastnight, of a Fianna Fail motion calling on the government to apologise immediately to survivors of the laundries.

The sistersn of Mercy ran the magdalene laundry on Forster street in the city which closed in 1984.

Minister Lynch claimed that Sinn Fein had only recently shown an interest in the Magdalene survivors and was now using them as a “political football”.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 13, 2013

Rome —
Repeatedly over the last three days, media agencies have asked me to comment on the following question: Did Benedict XVI really resign just because he’s old and tired, or was it really because of the sexual abuse crisis, the Vatileaks mess, and the various other meltdowns that have occurred on his watch?

My answer has been that it’s not an either/or. Benedict may not have quit “because of” the pedophilia scandals or any other specific controversy, but it’s hard to believe they didn’t play a role, at least as background.

One can certainly take Benedict at his word that he feels his strength fading and simply believes he no longer has the capacity to do the job. Yet it defies reality to believe that the various sources of turmoil in the last seven years haven’t taken a toll and that they help account for the fatigue he now feels.

It’s clear they caused him anguish. Back in 2009, when his decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops triggered a global firestorm when it turned out one of them was a Holocaust-denier, Benedict sent a letter to all the bishops of the world to explain what had happened. He apologized for the Vatican’s handling of the situation and openly confessed his own consternation at the criticism it triggered.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

by Barbie Latza Nadeau Feb 13, 2013

American nuns—fiercely condemned under Pope Benedict for being too “radical”—are looking forward to a fresh start with a new pontiff.

Of all the scandals that have been pinned to Benedict XVI’s papacy, perhaps none has been more divisive than the so-called clampdown on American nuns last April. Its no wonder, then, that sisters across America are hoping that the next pope gives them a fairer shake. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, the head of the largest group of American nuns shares what she is looking for in a new leader.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By James Salt

There is a growing crisis within the leadership of the American Catholic church, and the Catholic faithful are desperate for change. Today, our church is less known for bringing good news to the poor and more for its forays into electoral politics and doctrinal inquisitions. The new pope has an opportunity to right the course of the American bishops and re-inspire a generation of American Catholics.

Take for example some recent Catholic controversies that highlight the crisis of leadership in Catholicism:

A Catholic hospital in Ireland allowed a patient in its care to die rather than terminate her non-viable fetus.

A Catholic high school administrator in Cincinnati was fired this week for expressing a personal opinion about marriage equality on his private blog. …

Robert Finn, the bishop of Kansas City, Mo., was convicted of protecting a pedophile priest but somehow still remains in charge of the diocese.

The Vatican initiated an inquisition of American nuns for focusing too much on the needs of the poor and not fighting enough against abortion and the rights of gays.

Employees and volunteers in the Diocese of Arlington, Va., are forced to sign a “loyalty oath” to the bishop or face termination.

These examples demonstrate a form of religious leadership that is far removed from the Gospel message of Christ. The Gospel’s call to love one another is the basis for the rich Catholic social teaching that sparked and nourished my love of God and church. It is this love that is absent from too many actions of our leadership. No wonder Catholics like me are despairing. We can’t find Christ in our church.

When I graduated college, I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and dedicated myself to serving the church through service to others. I did so because of a profound inspiration I found within the actions and teachings of our church leaders. I was inspired by Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago who articulated a seamless respect for all life, from the unborn child, to the victim of a drone strike. I was inspired by Bishop Dingman of Des Moines who sold his mansion as a way to live in greater solidarity with the poor. And I was inspired by Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle who embraced the reforms of the Second Vatican Council by fully empowering lay leaders in the ministry of the church. When I look for it, I can still find that inspiration in the humble servants of the church, but more and more, today’s bishops leave me wanting.

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UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

By MATTHEW PAYNE

Who will succeed Pope Benedict the XVI, who surprised the world by stepping down as Bishop of Rome this week?

“I am not running,” announced Vice President Joe Biden, according to CNN. Thankfully, with one candidate ruled out, there are a number of more serious contenders. Front-runners include conservatives and moderates, as well candidates who appeal to different demographic groups in different regions. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like an American election—minus the constant stream of 30 second television advertisements. Perhaps Mr. Biden would have fit right in.

All jokes aside, Pope Benedict’s early retirement puts us in a unique situation when it comes to selecting a successor. To start, the College of Cardinals—the group of men chosen to elect the next pope—will have more time than usual to evaluate their fellow clergy before the voting begins. That’s because unlike in past years, there is no death of a Pope to mourn. When a Pope dies, Cardinals are summoned to Rome immediately to begin intense meetings in an already unusual environment. But that’s not the case this time. In fact, Cardinal Francis George told the Chicago Tribune he would “make better use of the time before the voting begins.”

The media, along with millions of Catholics around the world, might do the same. As the resumes and philosophies of various Cardinals are vetted and scrutinized, it might even end up feeling like an election after all. So what might Catholics be looking for?

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UNITED STATES
Your Mileage May Vary….

So.

Unless you were hiding under a rock this week, you know by now that Pope Benedict XVI has announced… abruptly… that he will resign from the papacy effective February 28th of this year. Citing health reasons, Pope Benedict XVI said that he didn’t feel that his strength would allow him to continue, especially since his personal physician has barred him from any more trans-Atlantic flights.

What is interesting to me is both the abruptness of, and the rarity of, such a move. Pope John Paul II, in failing health, was propped up for years before he finally succumbed, and no Pope has resigned since 1415, and only once before that, in the 13th century. Interestingly, and perhaps ominously, both prior resignations were shrouded in scandal.

In my opinion, so is this one.

While the Pope very well may be in failing health, it is also undeniable that he was the central player in one of the blackest and most damning scandals to haunt the Vatican since the Sale of Indulgences in the middle ages.

Joseph Ratzinger, as a new Cardinal, was put in charge of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” (formerly known as “the Inquisition”). It was in this capacity that Pope John Paul II put Cardinal Ratzinger in charge of investigating charges of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. And therein lies the scandal.

Instead of rooting out the evil that was being perpetrated by a sin-laden clergy, Cardinal Ratzinger, in a confidential letter to every bishop, actually made reporting incidents of abuse to be an offense punishable by excommunication. You read that right. As the London Observer reported in 2005, clergy in the Catholic Church were warned not to share any information with law enforcement authorities or the press. Abuse and child rape allegations were to be investigated “In the most secretive way… restrained by a perpetual silence.. and everyone… is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office… under the penalty of excommunication.” (emphasis added).

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ROME
NBC News

By Alastair Jamieson, Staff writer, NBC News

ROME — The abdication of Pope Benedict XVI is a move of global magnitude, but it is causing even bigger waves in Italy, where some experts believe the blanket media coverage could thwart the political comeback of Silvio Berlusconi.

The disgraced former prime minister is seeking a return to the spotlight by leading a center-right alliance in this month’s elections, triggered by the resignation of his successor, Mario Monti.

Berlusconi’s alliance is behind in the polls, not least because of the impending “bunga bunga” court case, where he is accused of paying for sex with an underage nightclub dancer.

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CANADA
CBC News

All bets are off in Quebec as to whether a local will become the next pope.

The provincial lottery commission said it will not follow the lead of some foreign gambling houses that allow people to place bets on who will be the successor for Pope Benedict XVI.

The organization is not swayed by the fact that fellow Quebecer Marc Cardinal Ouellet happens to be the odds-on favourite as well as one of the betting houses’ top picks.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Pope Benedict XVI will lose his infallibility – his supreme authority in Church matters – as soon he steps down on February 28, the Vatican says as it struggles to explain a virtually unprecedented situation.

“These powers go with the office, so they will pass to the next pope…. Whoever renounces no longer has the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide the Universal Church,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at a briefing.

The issue is complex for many Catholics who believe the election of a pope is divinely inspired and are accustomed to popes remaining in office until death.

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NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

By Robert Gavin

Updated 8:20 am, Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Here is the column Yaakov Weiss does not want you to read.

The 32-year-old suspended Orthodox rabbi from Colonie recently reached a $6,000 settlement with the family of one of the two youths he victimized in 2007 when they were 13.

The settlement resolved a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit against Weiss — who, in January 2010, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment for what he admitted was “inappropriate physical contact” with the boys on Whitehall Road. The crime took place at a mikveh, a bath used in Judaism for ritual immersion.

Weiss, former director of Chabad of Colonie, received 60 days in jail for his crime in 2010, but he still faced a civil lawsuit filed by the families of both victims.

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UNITED STATES
Raw Story

By Ben Child, The Guardian
Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney suggests Pope Benedict XVI’s departure stems from recent sex scandals

Oscar-winning film-maker Alex Gibney, whose documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God details a small part of the current wave of accusations surrounding the Catholic church, has suggested that the Pope’s resignation stems from the stain of recent sex scandals.

Gibney, whose film is out in the UK on Friday, told the Hollywood Reporter that the departure of Benedict XVI had brought great solace to people who had suffered abuse at the hands of priests. “His papacy will always be saddled with the stain of the sex abuse crisis,” he said, adding that the resignation “seems to me inextricably linked to the sex abuse crisis”.

Gibney’s film, which screened in the US on the HBO pay-TV channel last week, examines the case of five deaf men who were abused as boys by one predatory priest at the St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee during the 1960s. Despite taking their claims all the way to the Vatican in their quest for justice, they were consistently rebuffed. Benedict XVI, in his earlier capacity as Cardinal Ratzinger, was responsible for ordering all reports of sex abuse to be channelled through his office at the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, which he ran from 2001 to 2005.

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UNITED STATES
Richard Sipe

Nine of the 265 Roman Catholic popes have allegedly resigned their office, most for the good of the Church. The first according to the historian Epiphanius was Clement I around the year 100 C.E. The most recent was Gregory XII who abdicated the papal throne during the Council of Constance in 1417 to help settle the claims of three competitors for the papacy.

Benedict is a conflicted papal name. Two Pope Benedicts have resigned. In 964, after one month in office, Benedict V abdicated the papacy at the insistence of Emperor Otto I. Pope Benedict IX served three different terms between 1032 and 1048 when he resigned and was charged with simony and excommunicated by his successor Leo IX who instituted a concerted drive to purify the church of simony and concubinage.

There is no legitimate Benedict X in the line of papal succession. A “Benedict X” who acted as pope for nine months in 1058 was declared an anti-pope and excommunicated. The actual number of Pope Benedicts therefore is technically incorrect. Joseph Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI is actually only the fifteenth Pope Benedict.

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UNITED STATES
AMERICAblog

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk on-air with progressive talk show host Arnie Arnesen of WNHN, and after the show we began discussing the resignation of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. The resignation was sudden and almost unprecedented (the last voluntary resignation was in high medieval times).

There has since been lots of speculation about the cause (example here; another sample here). Benedict’s stated reason is his waning strength, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors. As Cardinal, Ratzinger was John Paul II’s enforcement officer — he rode herd on the many sex scandals and their “containment.” Was he involved in crimes of concealment? Almost certainly, but there’s little direct public evidence. Is there new explosive documentation that could lay the dead cat of scandal at his personal door? Nothing has been revealed so far that’s worse than what we’ve seen (search for “Munich”), and Ratzinger has weathered those storms.

Still, why so sudden? Is there something about the timing?

Fr. Marcial Maciel and the Rhode Island courts

At that point in our discussion Arnie pointed me to a couple of links I hadn’t seen involving a Rhode Island court case against the so-called “Legion of Christ,” a Catholic group with very close ties both to John Paul II and Ratzinger, and its notorious (and sexually prolific) founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel. I bring up Arnie Arnesen because she personally knows one of the principals in the lawsuit and has additional information. I’ll add her contribution below the news pieces.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 13 – The disgraced ex-butler of Pope Benedict XVI said he was “surprised” but not “amazed” by the Pope’s decision to resign, sources say. Paolo Gabriele, convicted of leaking papal secrets, has told friends that the Pope’s decision to step down as of February 28 may have stunned the world, but was not so shocking to him, sources have told ANSA. Gabriele, who was pardoned by the Pope and is now working as a clerk at St Paul’s hospital in Rome, was not speaking to reporters this week beyond saying hello to watching cameras. But friends say that he was aware of renovations at the monastery Mater Ecclesiae, where the Pope will retire next month, but assumed they were for a senior cleric.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Vinnie Nauheimer on February 13, 2013

What if you had the ability to undo egregious wrongs that affected hundreds of thousands of people worldwide would you, could you do it? What if there was only a sixteen day window for you to act? Would you find the time?

Pope Benedict XVI, you have just sixteen days to perform this wondrous task. You’ve heard all about the crimes. You’ve heard the pleas of survivors; they have haunted you since before you took the office of pope. They will haunt your legacy for eternity too if you pay no heed to this request. I’m begging you on behalf of survivors of clergy abuse and their families all around the world, set them free, hear the pleas, hear their suffering, take to heart their pain and publicize the global clergy abuse files regardless of the rank of the offending priest. Only you can alleviate the endless suffering of victims and their families by giving their suffering validity and naming their tormentors!

Whether you wanted it or not, God gave you the opportunity to change the church and put an end to the worldwide sexual abuse of children by priests and bishops. God has given you two opportunities, one as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the second as Pope Benedict XVI to clean up this evil mess festering within His church. In both instances, you have not been up to the task. Now with just days left before the voluntary end of your papacy, you have yet a third chance. We implore you, to summon the courage before God and man to do what you swore to do in assuming your position as a priest, protect the flock.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, February 13 – The Vatican’s bank will have a new boss within the next few days, despite the shock created by the pope’s resignation earlier this week, a spokesman said Wednesday. The hunt to find a replacement for the head of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the official name of the Vatican’s bank, is continuing successfully, said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office. “It’s likely that in the next days there will be the appointment of the president of the IOR,” Lombardi said two days after Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign as of February 28. “The process started a long time ago and I see no reason to stop due to the resignation of the pope”. The IOR has been without a president since May 2012 when its Italian head Ettore Gotti Tedeschi resigned, following a no-confidence vote by the board of directors of the bank. The job was temporarily filled by Vice-President Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz. Vatican experts have speculated that part of the reason Gotti Tedeschi’s split with the bank was over internal tensions linked to the bank’s efforts to get onto an international ‘white list’ of countries which are considered to have acceptable financial transparency laws.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | Tue Feb 12, 2013

(Reuters) – The Vatican has reached an agreement allowing the resumption of debit and credit card payments which Italian banking authorities had blocked within the tiny city state, the Vatican spokesman said on Tuesday.

“Credit card payments in the Vatican city state are once more activated,” Father Federico Lombardi told a news briefing.

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VATICAN CITY
Montreal Gazette

By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press February 13, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican says a new president of its embattled bank is expected to be announced within days.

The Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, has been without a leader since May, when its board ousted Italian banker Ettore Gotti Tedeschi for incompetence. It was a stunning move that came just as the Vatican was submitting its finances to a review by a Council of Europe committee in a bid to join the list of financially transparent countries.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Wednesday a new president would likely be named within the week.

The Vatican passed the Council of Europe Moneyval committee’s transparency test, but the IOR and the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency received failing grades. The new president will be tasked with bringing the IOR into compliance by Moneyval’s next review.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 February 2013 (VIS) – Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, presented the Holy Father’s activities up to 28 February.

Tomorrow, as announced in Tuesday’s briefing, Benedict XVI will meet with the Roman pastors in the Paul VI Hall. On the 15th he will receive, respectively, the “Pro Petri Sede” association and the president of Romania. On the 16th he will meet with the president of Guatemala. On those same days he will meet with the Italian bishops from Liguria and Lombardy on their ‘ad limina’ visits. However, the audience with the president of Cameroon, which was scheduled for 28 February, has been cancelled as well as the ‘ad limina’ visits scheduled with the Italian prelates from the Le Marche region between 25 and 28 February. On Saturday the 16th at 6:00pm, the Pope will meet with the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, and the following Saturday, the 23rd in the late morning, with the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano. “Both,” Fr. Lombardi clarified, “have expressed the desire to meet briefly with the Pope.”

From the 17th, after the Angelus, until the morning of the 23th, the Holy Father and the Roman Curia have the Lenten Spiritual Exercises, which will be led this year by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. As is traditional, for the Wednesday of that week there will be no general audience and no activity with the Pope is planned. On the 24th, he will pray the Angelus with the faithful who are gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

On the 25th, the Holy Father will receive some of the cardinals in a private audience. On the 27th, the general audience will take place in St. Peter’s Square. On the 28th, the last day of his pontificate, Benedict XVI will meet with members of the College of Cardinals in the Clementine Hall and at 5:00pm he will travel by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

February 11, 2013 |

This article has been updated.

Pope Benedict XVI today stunned the Roman Catholic Church — and the world — with his announcement that he would turn in his sceptre, effective February 28. To find a precedent for Benedict’s action, one needs to go back through six centuries of history to Pope Gregory XII’s resignation in 1415.

In a statement issued today in Latin, the pope wrote: “… in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

The Church’s Child-Abuse Scandal

Citing age and infirmity as his reason for leaving the papacy, Benedict’s action comes just weeks after he opened his celebrated Twitter account — and less than a month after the decades-old child abuse scandal drew nearer to the pope’s door, with revelations published in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month that Cardinal Roger Mahony, then Archbishop of Los Angeles, sought to evade the law in cases involving the sexual abuse of children by the priests in his charge by sending them to treatment facilities in states that did not require health professionals to report the crimes to authorities.

At the time that Mahony was covering up the crimes of his priests, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that oversaw such matters.

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VATICAN CITY
NDTV

Vatican City: The conclave to decide the successor to Pope Benedict will start as early as March 15, the Vatican said on Wednesday.

The conclave, when cardinals gather to elect a new pope, will start between 15 and 20 days from when the papal seat is vacated on February 28, Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told a news conference.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Feb. 13, 2013

Rome —
For some time to come, people will ponder the significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s stunning decision Monday to renounce his papacy. Ecclesiologists will debate its meaning for understanding the papal office, while spiritual writers may explore its potential as a case study in graceful withdrawal and letting go.

In the here and now, however, the most burning question is what it means for the politics of electing the next pope.

At first blush, the tendency was to think that staging a conclave while the previous pope was still alive might make it less likely that the cardinals would vote for change. The logic was that they would be hesitant to do anything perceived as disrespectful while the old pope was still around.

Even if one takes the Vatican at its word that Benedict will have no role in the process, it’s hard to imagine that every syllable he utters for the next 15 days and every gesture he performs won’t be dissected as possible signals to the cardinals who will gather in mid-March to cast their ballots. (In his general audience today, Benedict talked about the importance of opposing abortion, euthanasia and destroying embryos for medical purposes. It’s a good bet that in Thursday’s Italian papers, somebody will read that as putting pressure on the cardinals to elect a pope who will hold the line in the culture wars.)

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VATICAN CITY
The Seattle Times

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY —
Pope Benedict XVI told thousands of faithful Wednesday that he was resigning for “the good of the church” – an extraordinary scene of a pope explaining himself to his flock that unfolded in his first appearance since dropping the bombshell announcement.

Looking tired but serene, the 85-year-old Benedict basked in a standing ovation when he entered the packed hall for his traditional Wednesday catechism lesson. His speech was interrupted repeatedly by applause, and many in the audience of thousands had tears in their eyes.

A huge banner reading “Grazie Santita” (Thank you Your Holiness) was strung up at the back of the room.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Alicia Wood
The Daily Telegraph
February 13, 2013

TOP Catholic church leaders have been called to appear at a state inquiry into child sex abuse.

The NSW special commission of inquiry was formally opened yesterday to investigate allegations of a police cover-up of child sex abuse cases in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Bishops Conference, Archbishop of Adelaide Phillip Wilson and retired bishop Michael Malone will all give evidence.

All three previously worked in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and investigated allegations against paedophile priest Father Denis McAlinden.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By TOM MCILROY
Feb. 14, 2013

REPRESENTATIVES of more than 30 survivors of clergy sexual abuse will give evidence to a Victorian inquiry when it returns to Ballarat on February 28.

A large group of survivors and advocates is expected to attend the hearing at the Ballarat Lodge with evidence related to a group submission from the Ballarat region to be heard.

Participants in the group submission elected not to give evidence when the inquiry first visited Ballarat on December 7 last year, seeking to avoid additional trauma during the Christmas period.

Geelong priest Father Kevin Dillon is expected to give evidence during a regional hearing on Friday, becoming the first Catholic priest in active ministry to speak to the inquiry.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

James Carroll

For most people, the reckoning with the infirmities of advanced old age is a poignant but mundane part of the life cycle. Not so for popes, as this week’s global astonishment suggests, for they are thought to hover over human affairs just as the church itself does. “The church is distinguished from civil society,” Pope Leo XIII solemnly declared in 1885. “It is a society chartered as of divine right, perfect in its nature.” This perfect society, Leo wrote, cannot “be looked on as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it.” This manifesto hints at the larger significance of Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign his office: If a pope can come and go so easily, then how is the church different from a country or a company?

After Benedict’s surprise announcement Monday, much has been made of the nearly 600 years since the last papal “resignation” — a misnomer, since Pope Gregory XII, one of multiple claimants to the Chair of Peter, was, in effect, fired by a reforming church council. But for far longer than that the papacy has been the linchpin of the Catholic Church’s claim to transcendence. That popes are human has always been clear (St. Peter, the first pope, denied Christ three times), but popes have also been living signs of the sacred. In modern times, the boundary separating the Roman pontiff from all other humans is reinforced by his mode of dressing, his rhetorical style, and his isolated splendor. He is himself a sacrament of what “distinguishes” Catholicism, in Pope Leo’s word. …

From his point of view, Benedict has seen only a solemn obligation to defend the church, and that explains his failure to address the abuse scandal forthrightly. It also explains his protection of the cover-up bishops, beginning with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. In May 2001, seven months before the Globe first revealed Law’s enabling of the Rev. John J. Geoghan, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to every Catholic bishop defining crimes “perpetrated with a minor by a cleric” as falling under his jurisdiction — a mandate widely interpreted as requiring strict confidentiality and cutting civil authorities out. “Cases of this kind,” Ratzinger declared, “are subject to the pontifical secret.” When asked about the letter upon Ratzinger’s election as pope, a Vatican spokesman said, “This is not a public document, so we would not talk about it.”

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VATICAN CITY
IOL (South Africa)

February 13 2013
By Daily Mail

The first Papal resignation in six centuries may have been the result of Vatican pressure, it was reported on Tuesday.

A rebel faction of cardinals is alleged to have pressurised Pope Benedict to get softer treatment for senior clerics accused of condoning child abuse.

The push against Benedict, it is said, added to the effects of illness and declining mental grip to tip the Pope over the edge into resignation.

The meeting that may have influenced Benedict’s resignation on Monday was a visit to his private rooms on Saturday evening by Cardinal Angelo Soldano, according to accounts circulating in Rome.

Soldano, a former Vatican Secretary of State – the senior political and diplomatic post – is said to have argued with Benedict over his hard line against clergy accused of sex abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
World Bulletin

Italian journalist Giovanna Chirri, who announced the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the world, described the moment of writing the news and said, “When I was writing the news for publishing, one side of me said ‘do it’ and the other said, ‘you might be doing a mistake’.”

Giovanna Chirri, The Vatican correspondent of the Italian news agency ANSA, told the story of the news in regards to the Pope’s resignation to AA.

Chirru, who knew Latin, was following the ceremony of the “Consistory for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto” when the Pope made the announcement of his resignation.

“The Pope made a detailed speech in Latin. He was talking about the need to restructure the Conclave process. It was very clear, however; we did not have his text of speech. We weren’t expecting this. When I was writing the news for publishing, one side of me said ‘do it’ and the other said, ‘you might be doing a mistake’. It was a little difficult,” Chirri said.

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NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

[Peter Garcia – Los Angeles archdiocese]

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writeron Wed, Feb 13, 2013

Monsignor Peter Garcia’s career as a pastor in Los Angeles ended in 1984 after families alleged that he had sexually abused boys as young as 7 in his parish.

But Garcia was later assigned to churches in Belen and Socorro from 1985-87, according to records made public as a result of a settlement between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and victims of clergy abuse.

And in 1987, former Archbishop of Santa Fe Robert Sanchez helped decide that New Mexico pastors who supervised Garcia not be told about his history of sexual abuses, according to a 1987 letter.

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AUSTRIA
Tidewater Review

Michael Shields
Reuters
7:45 a.m. EST, February 13, 2013

VIENNA (Reuters) – A leading dissident Austrian priest whose call to disobey some Roman Catholic teachings drew a rebuke from Pope Benedict last year urged Church leaders to throw off their secrecy and canvas churchgoers on who should lead them next.

Rev. Helmut Schueller, head of a group of priests who openly challenge Church positions on taboo topics such as priestly celibacy and ordaining women, said selecting a successor to Benedict was a chance to embrace public debate.

Schueller says his group represents 10 percent of Austria’s clergy and enjoys broad public support for its pledge to break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.

“If things were going well, the conclave fathers would at least be going out to the Church grassroots and calling meetings to really hear what the faithful expect,” he told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

While it may seem overly pessimistic to say that the next Pope will fail too, it is just being realistic; and yet there is also room for much optimism. The papal resignation is tantamount to an admission of failure and will lead to de-mystification of the papacy quickly. Pope Benedict XVI, soon to again be non-Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger, and his Vatican clique led by Cardinal Sodano et al., have already set the stage for the next failure.

The sudden call for a quick election conclave substantiallly diminishes any chance of a real opposition being mounted by non-Vatican Cardinals. Since the Pope apparently knew for some time he would resign, the suddenness seems well planned. The recent public shaming of Cardinal Mahony, evidentally with a papal blessing, and the related inevitable aggravated prosecution risk for Mahony, should chill any real opposition anyway, as was likely Ratzinger’s intention. Ratzinger will soon be living a few hundred yards away from the new Pope in his refurbished retirement base, hardly a monastery, that was built 20 years ago to house a dozen nuns that were reportedly all moved out by last November when renovation started. Perhaps they joined Nuns on the Bus?

Of course, the media loves the chance to report superficially the “papal election horserace”, even if their picks are uninformed and wild speculation, often intended apparently to garner some local readers or repay or enhance old sources. It is nice theater; but mainly irrelevant. Ratzinger and Sodano already likely know who will be the next Pope and one would be foolish to bet against them. Since the weather is bad in Rome this time of year, perhaps Cardinals might save some money by just mailing in blank proxies to Sodano.

The reason for some optimism is that the Vatican clique’s apparent raw power grab will now just accelerate the sinking of the Vatican Titanic that much sooner. Even overly trusting Catholics will see through the clerical charade. Various prosecutors and survivors lawyers will now be able to reach Ratzinger, who loses his legal immunity in a few weeks. While they may not serve him with subpoenas in Vatican City, they will wait for their chance, perhaps aided by Ratzinger’s former butler or another “Vatileaker”. It will likely only be a matter of time, even if no more scandals erupt as predictably they will. Once the rule of international law starts pulling hard directly on papal threads, the Vatican hierarchy will be quickly uncovered and forced to initiate reforms, perhaps after some senior officials face prosecution, which cannot be too far off. …

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:

[Click here for the petition.]

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BBC News

By Michael Hirst
BBC News

Pope Benedict XVI’s successor takes the helm at a difficult time for the Catholic Church.

In the West, the Church is struggling to fill pews as congregations dwindle, while the number of priests is also falling.

Meanwhile, the rise of evangelical Churches, especially in Latin America and Africa, is checking the growth of Catholic congregations, which are also threatened in some areas by religious intolerance. …

Sex abuse

Some feel the Catholic Church has failed to deal properly with child sex allegations
Benedict XVI has spoken of the Church’s shame for “unspeakable crimes” committed by paedophile priests, as well as offering heartfelt apologies to victims, groups of whom he has met during his trips overseas.

But many critics feel the Vatican was – and still is – far too slow, too reluctant and too secretive when it comes to acknowledging and investigating sexual abuse.

The new Pope will have the task of continuing to ensure perpetrators are held to account, and to ensure the changes introduced by Benedict XVI are implemented – particularly when it comes to bishops signing up to child protection guidelines.

David Clohessy, Executive Director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the BBC: “The next pontiff must do more to safeguard children.

“He should stop issuing apologies and making gestures, and instead demote bishops who continue to conceal heinous crimes.

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UNITED STATES
The Patriot-News

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on February 12, 2013

Benedict XVI may be nearing the end of his papacy, but survivors of clergy sexual abuse say he still has plenty of time to ensure predator priests are brought to justice and ensure children are protected.

“It may sound naive, but we haven’t yet given up on this one. He does have 15 or 16 days in office,” said David Clohessy, director of the the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.”

Benedict on Monday stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics with his announcement that he would resign his at the end of the month. The frail 85-year-old pontiff cited poor health as reason for his decision.

In the wake of his announcement, victims advocates like Clohessy — as well as experts on the Catholic Church — have criticized the German-born pope for failing to do what he once promised: to have the church do “all in its power” to bring predator priests to justice and protect children.

“He’s issued some apologies and made some gestures but it’s virtually all symbolism,” Clohessy said. “In a practical way, he’s taken no truly effective tangible steps that make children across the globe safer. For most victims a symbolic gesture at this juncture is too little, too late.”

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IRELAND
Deutsche Welle

Among victims of clerical child abuse in Ireland, response to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation has been muted. John Kelly of SOCA (Survivors of Child Abuse) told DW why he thinks the pope didn’t meet his obligations.

DW: What was your first reaction to the resignation?

John Kelly: Well, for myself and the majority of victims of clerical abuse, it was one of indifference. For the very simple reason that he won’t be missed. There was great hope that this particular pope was going to do a lot, and to challenge things within the college of cardinals … to do something about child abuse. He did apologize and that is fantastic, but in the end it gave us false hope, and it was all rhetoric, because it was never followed up with anything of substance.

Why do you think he failed to do more?

Well, this Pope is an academic, and what he is very good at is protecting the institution of the church. But I believe that he is actually responsible for compounding this abuse by not tackling it more fully.

I wrote a number of letters to the pope, and in one, I said, “look, you have it in your power to do something, these victims haven’t got justice with the state authorities, and you have it in your power, under Canon Law to do something. You can either disband or suspend their licence, there are loads of penalties available to you,” but even then he didn’t do that, which is very depressing, and leaves me with no hope for the future.

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VEREINIGTEN STAATEN
euronews

Viele Opfer katholischer Priester in Irland und den Vereinigten Staaten ziehen eine negative Bilanz des Pontifikats von Benedikt XVI. Der scheidende Papst habe nichts unternommen, um pädophile Priester oder die Hierarchie, die diese deckte, zu bestrafen.

Die USA waren in den letzten Jahren wiederholt von Missbrauchsskandalen erschüttert worden.

Der Vorsitzende des Opferverbandes SNAP David Lorenz bedauert, “der Papst hat sich bei den Iren entschuldigt. Er hat sich in den USA entschuldigt, ebenso in Australien, Deutschland und Spanien, für das, was dort vorgefallen ist. Aber es waren leere Worte, es folgten keine Taten. Ich befürchte, wir bekommen einen Papst, der bei diesem Thema genau so untätig und rigide ist, wie Benedikt es war.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
aktuell

Die Missbrauchsopfergruppe “Eckiger Tisch” sieht den Rücktritt von Papst Benedikt XVI. als Chance für eine überfällige Erneuerung der katholischen Kirche. “Der erste Schritt dazu könnte die Öffnung der Kirchenakten im Vatikan zu den Missbrauchsfällen für unabhängige Untersuchungen sein”, sagte Sprecher Matthias Katsch, selbst Betroffener an einer Jesuitenschule, am Dienstag in Berlin. Ein zweiter, noch größerer Schritt, wäre eine freiwillige, großzügige Entschädigung der vielen Tausend Betroffenen weltweit durch die Kirche.

Papst Benedikt habe mit dem sexuellen Missbrauch in Einrichtungen der katholischen Kirche weltweit umgehen müssen. Er habe sich sicher bemüht und die Untätigkeit seines Vorgängers beendet, räumte Katsch ein. “Aber letztlich war er nicht in der Lage, wirklich etwas an den strukturellen und doktrinären Ursachen zu ändern.”

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MEXIKO
Neopresse

Von Emilio Godoy

Mexiko-Stadt, 12. Februar (IPS) – Nach der Rücktrittsankündigung von Papst Benedikt XVI. würdigt die Öffentlichkeit in Europa vor allem die Verdienste des 85-jährigen Kirchenoberhaupts. Aus Mexiko kommen dagegen unverhohlen kritische Töne. Unabhängige Experten werfen Benedikt vor, sexuellen Missbrauch durch Bischöfe und Priester nicht ausreichend geahndet und die Opfer weitgehend sich selbst überlassen zu haben.

Joseph Ratzinger, der sich am 28. Februar aus dem Papstamt zurückziehen wird, hinterlässt nach Ansicht des mexikanischen Religionssoziologen Bernardo Barranco “ein sehr schwieriges Erbe”. Er kehre seinem Amt zu einem Zeitpunkt den Rücken, in dem sich die Kirche “mitten in einer ernsten Krise” befinde, betont Barranco. Der Umgang mit dem Thema habe deutlich gezeigt, dass es in der Kurie zu Spannungen darüber gekommen sei, wie mit Fällen von sexuellem Missbrauch umzugehen sei und inwiefern sie vertuscht werden sollten.

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CANADA
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Hearing at Garden Hill, Manitoba
Garden Hill First Nation High School
February 19 and 20, 2013
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day

The Hearing will provide an opportunity for Residential School Survivors to share with the Commission and Canada the unique experiences of children who attended Residential School.
The purpose of the Hearing is to inform the public about the Commission’s work and statement gathering process, and provide Survivors with time to reflect and share their experiences. This is also an opportunity for all Canadians, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to learn more about and bear witness to the legacy of the Residential School system.

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UNITED STATES
The Hollywood Reporter

Having exposed the church in his new documentary “Mea Maxima Culpa,” the filmmaker says of Benedict XVI: “His papacy will always be saddled with the stain of the sex abuse crisis.”

Pope Benedict’s XVI’s resignation “seems to me inextricably linked to the sex abuse crisis,” Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, whose newest documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, exposes those abuses, said in the wake of Monday’s surprise announcement.

“I don’t have proof that that’s so, but it just seems like it,” the director said, noting that in addition to his own film, which began airing on HBO on Feb. 4, there has been a new wave of coverage of the Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide sex scandal because of the recent court order that forced the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release its files, documenting how Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other officials covered up the cases of 122 priests accused or convicted of molesting children, as well as a widening investigation in Australia.

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VATICAN CITY
Aljazeera

Pope Benedict XVI’s impending resignation has already fuelled all the usual speculation about candidates for his successor, accompanied by profiles, photos and odds of election. Behind the hoopla is the question, what sort of leader will really be best for the Church?

Benedict’s own admission that an elderly man cannot undertake the globe-trotting that effective relations require suggests that as a rule, a younger, healthier leader would be a wise choice. But the Church also faces the question what style of leadership would be most fruitful.

Despite the vision of Vatican Council II, which recommended collegial authority and granted the laity almost complete province over action in the world, Pope John Paul II’s and Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificates have echoed an ultramontane, top-down model in which the authority of the pope supersedes that of the bishops, individually or in national organisations.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

Wait, haven’t we heard this story before? Or was that Swami Satchidananda, or a host of other spiritual leaders who were caught with their hands down devotees’ pants? Joshu Saski, a 105-year-old Japanese Zen Buddhist, has been accused of groping and sexually harassing female students for decades. Since he brought his brand of Buddhism from Japan to Los Angeles in 1962, Sasaki has taught thousands of Westerners at his two Zen centers in the region and one in New Mexico, where he allegedly engaged in “repeated non-consensual groping of female students.”

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Kaitlyn Offer
PerthNow
February 13, 2013

A DEFENCE lawyer for a teacher accused of child sex offences in the 1980s has again questioned a victim’s recall of events in her closing address.

Lindsay William Hutchinson, 63, is on trial accused of six charges of carnal knowledge against nature, six charges of indecently dealing with a child, and three charges of unlawful and indecent assault.

The charges relate to the repeated sexual abuse of a young Christ Church Grammar School student between 1983 and 1985, when Mr Hutchinson was the music director as well as a conductor of the school choir, the St George’s Cathedral choir and another choir that he created.

Mr Hutchinson has pleaded guilty to some of the charges, but has denied the more serious charges, including allegations of rape, and the alleged incidents occurred on school camps and at Mr Hutchinson’s then home.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Anthony and Chrissie Foster
From:Herald Sun
February 14, 2013

ON the 28th of February, Pope Benedict XVI will step down from his Roman throne mired in a shame that runs deep.

On clergy abuse, he has been an impotent Pope, who like his predecessors, fellow cardinals, bishops and priests, has done precious little to protect children, provide justice to victims, or banish criminals from the ranks of an organisation that places itself as a moral leader yet doesn’t seem to recognise that raping a child is a crime.

As Pope Benedict, he has spent the past seven years obfuscating the clergy child sexual assault issue within the church, just as he did to us when we attempted to advise him as to how his church could better treat its child victims.

That was in Sydney at World Youth Day in July 2008. At that time our daughter Katie, a clergy abuse victim, had been receiving 24-hour care for the previous nine years after running in front of a car while binge drinking to forget her torment.

Emma, another of our daughters and also a victim, had committed suicide only six months earlier.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

The special commission of inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has been formally opened.

The inquiry is separate to the national royal commission into institutional abuse and was announced by the NSW Government last year.

The State Government made the move after Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox went on the ABC’s Lateline program to say the Catholic Church and police were guilty of a cover up of sexual abuse by priests in the Maitland diocese.

Opening the inquiry, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC spoke of the devastating effect sexual abuse has on a child by exploiting their vulnerability.

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CALIFORNIA
New Tang Dynasty

Pope Benedict stunned the Roman Catholic Church on Monday when he announced he would stand down, saying he no longer had the mental and physical strength to carry on.

Church officials tried to relay a climate of calm confidence in the running of a 2,000-year-old institution. But the decision could lead to uncertainty in a Church already besieged by scandal for covering up sexual abuse of children by priests.

The announcement came less than two weeks after 12,000 pages of church files unsealed under court order showed former Los Angeles Diocese archbishop Roger Mahony worked to send priests accused of abuse out of state to shield known abusers from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

In Los Angeles Monday, Catholic archbishop Jose Gomez led a noontime mass and addressed the resignation as “the act of a saint.”

[Jose Gomez, Catholic Archbishop]:

“His decision to resign is a beautiful, Christ-like act of humility and love for the Church. This is the act of a saint, who thinks not about himself but only about the will of God and the good of God’s people. I personally have a great affection for Pope Benedict. In my opinion, he is one of the wisest persons in our world today.”

Mahony, who was stripped of all public duties by Gomez after being linked to efforts to conceal child sex abuse by priests said that he planned to participate in the process to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

Gomez removed Mahony last month from all public and administrative duties following the release of the documents.

Mahony, who was archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011, has apologized for “mistakes” he made as archbishop.

Outside the mass, churchgoer Fernando Montanez said that he himself was a victim of child abuse, but learned to forgive Mahony and Benedict for their lack of action on abuse.

[Fernando Montanez, Victim of Abuse]:

“I was one of those abused people at my parish. I went through a number of … a range of stages: anger, hate, frustration. Through the patience of Cardinal Mahony, our bishop, back then John Paul and then Pope Benedict XVI, I was able to heal. I think I’m a better person now, stronger, more faithful and I pray for the priest that molested me. I also pray for Cardinal Mahony.”

Not all victims of church abuse are as forgiving, however. Joelle Casteix, who heads the Los Angeles regional chapter of SNAP, an abuse survivors’ network, says that the church will most likely elect a new pope that will continue to protect cardinals who might be implicated in abuse coverups.

[Joelle Casteix, Head of Abuse Survivor’s Network]:

“The College of Cardinals, the voting membership of the College of Cardinals, especially those who are eligible to become pope, were all chosen by Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict – these are men who toe the company line. Many of them have been implicated in recent sex abuse scandals. It is to their utmost need and desire to elect someone who will protect their best interests, and someone who is going to clean out the church is going to cause a lot of problems for many sitting cardinals.”

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AUSTRALIA
Boorowa News

By Paul Bibby
Feb. 13, 2013

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is among a number of senior church figures who have been ordered to appear at the NSW Commission of Inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the Maitland-Newcastle region.

The summonsing of the archbishop, along with the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Father Brian Lucas, came during the formal opening of the inquiry by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC on Wednesday.

The inquiry will examine allegations that members of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese covered up the abuse of young children by the now-deceased priests Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.

It will also examine allegations by a child abuse investigator, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, that he was ordered by senior police to stop investigating such matters and had been directed to hand over his files in the Fletcher and McAlinden matters.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

By Annette Blackwell
From: AAP
February 13, 2013

THREE senior Catholic Church officials – including the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson – will testify at an inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse in a NSW diocese.

The inquiry, headed by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, will look at whether the church protected predatory priests in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, and in what circumstances Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox was ordered to stop investigating abuse allegations.

Separate public hearings will be held on both issues, starting in Newcastle in May.

On the formal opening of the inquiry in Sydney on Wednesday, an application was heard for leave to appear from Archbishop Wilson’s legal counsel.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Feb. 12, 2013

TWENTY years ago a Hunter woman’s attempts to stop a paedophile priest from within the church allegedly ended with a one-way ticket to England for him, and defeated silence for his victim.

On Wednesday, as the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry opens an investigation of church and police responses to allegations about Denis McAlinden, the woman – a key witness – had a message for other victims.

‘‘Now is the time,’’ she said on Tuesday, about breaking the public silence that allowed McAlinden to commit crimes against children for more than 40 years.

Pope Benedict’s surprise retirement showed we were living in historic times, she said, but it was her experience of speaking to the Newcastle Herald in 2010, and then police, that led her to encourage victims to make a submission to the NSW inquiry.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
February 13, 2013

The special commission of inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has been formally opened.

The inquiry is separate to the national Royal Commission, and was announced by the New South Wales Government last year.

The State Government made the move after Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox went on the ABC’s Lateline program to say the Catholic Church and police were guilty of a cover up of sexual abuse by priests in the Maitland diocese.

Opening the inquiry, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC spoke of the devastating effect sexual abuse has on a child by exploiting their vulnerability.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

THE NSW inquiry into child sex abuse in the Catholic church and an alleged cover up that included members of the NSW Police force, had its formal opening today.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen opened the special commission of inquiry into child sex abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, noting that the diocese has a “very troubled” history relating to child protection.

“Children are inherently vulnerable and innocent. The sexual abuse of children is abhorrent. It exploits their vulnerability, irreparably damages their innocence and casts a shadow over their whole lives,’’ Commissioner Cunneen said in her opening.

She said that if matters relating to the federal royal commission into child sex abuse and the church are raised in the NSW inquiry, the information would be passed on.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

A COMMISSION of inquiry into alleged Catholic Church cover-ups of child sex abuse in a NSW diocese will formally open in Sydney on Wednesday.

The special commission of inquiry was announced by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell in November, following explosive allegations made to the media by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox.

The senior investigator asserted the church had covered up evidence in relation to pedophile priests and hindered – and in some cases silenced – police investigations in relation to child abuse in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the Hunter region of NSW.

Inspector Fox also said he was asked to stop investigating certain matters relating to sex abuse in the diocese, and in January the terms of the special inquiry were amended to examine the circumstances of this.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY — Just days after Pope Benedict XVI returned from a 2010 trip to Britain where he met the queen and mended fences with the Anglicans, prosecutors in Rome impounded $30 million from the Vatican Bank in an investigation linked to money laundering.

In May, soon after the pope made an address on the priesthood, chastising those who sought to stretch the church’s rules and calling for “radical obedience,” Vatican gendarmes arrested Benedict’s butler on charges of theft after a tell-all book appeared, based on stolen confidential documents detailing profound mismanagement and corruption inside the Vatican.

Benedict had hoped that his papacy would rekindle the Catholic faith in Europe and compel Catholics to forge bonds between faith and reason, as he so loved to do.

But after a seemingly endless series of scandals, the 85-year-old who so ably enforced doctrine for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, seemingly came to understand that only a new pope, one with far greater energies than he, could lead a global church and clean house inside the hierarchy at its helm. In the end, Vatican experts said, he decided he could best serve the church by resigning, a momentous decision with far-reaching implications that are still not fully understood. …

It was another scandal-marred trip, this one to Mexico and Cuba in March, that seems to have finally persuaded Benedict to consider the idea of stepping aside, Vatican officials said.

The visit to Mexico was haunted by the specter of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful and deeply conservative religious order with close ties to John Paul’s papacy. Before he died in 2008, Father Maciel was found to have raped seminarians, fathered several children and engaged in drug abuse.

Throughout the visit, victims’ groups and other advocates organized news conferences and other events to call attention to what they saw as the church’s dismal record on sexual abuse, even though Benedict, as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal officer, had reopened an investigation into Father Maciel that ultimately disclosed his double life. But he failed to address the issue in Mexico, upsetting victims’ groups there and around the world. When he became pope, Benedict knew of what he spoke, but he struggled to make the mighty wheels of a 1,000-year-old bureaucracy turn smoothly.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By GARRY WILLS

Published: February 12, 2013

THERE is a poignant air, almost wistful, to electing a pope in the modern world. In a time of discredited monarchies, can this monarchy survive and be relevant? There is nostalgia for the assurances of the past, quaint in their charm, but trepidation over their survivability. In monarchies, change is supposed to come from the top, if it is to come at all. So people who want to alter things in Catholic life are told to wait for a new pope. Only he has the authority to make the changeless church change, but it is his authority that stands in the way of change.

Of course, the pope is no longer a worldly monarch. For centuries he was such a ruler, with all the resources of a medieval or Renaissance prince — realms, armies, prisons, spies, torturers. But in the 19th century, when his worldly territories were wrested away by Italy, Pope Pius IX lunged toward a compensatory moral monarchy.

In 1870, he elicited — from a Vatican council he called and controlled — the first formal declaration that a pope is infallible. From that point on, even when he was not making technically infallible statements, the pope was thought to be dealing in eternal truths. A gift for eternal truths is as dangerous as the gift of Midas’s touch. The pope cannot undo the eternal truths he has proclaimed.

When Pope Paul VI’s commission of learned and loyal Catholics, lay and clerical, reconsidered the “natural law” teaching against birth control, and concluded that it could not, using natural reason, find any grounds for it, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the secretary of the Holy Office, told Paul that people had for years, on papal warrant, believed that using a contraceptive was a mortal sin, for which they would go to hell if they died unrepentant. On the other hand, those who followed “church teaching” were obliged to have many children unless they abstained from sex. How could Paul VI say that Pius XI, in his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, had misled the people in such a serious way? If he admitted it, what happen to his own authority as moral arbiter in matters of heaven and hell? So Paul VI doubled down, adding another encyclical in 1968, Humanae Vitae, to the unrenounceable eternal truths that pile up around a moral monarch.

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AUSTRALIA
Fairfield City Champion

By Paul Bibby
Feb. 13, 2013

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is among a number of senior church figures who have been ordered to appear at the NSW Commission of Inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the Maitland-Newcastle region.

The summonsing of the archbishop, along with the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Father Brian Lucas, came during the formal opening of the inquiry by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC on Wednesday.

The inquiry will examine allegations that members of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese covered up the abuse of young children by the now-deceased priests Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.

It will also examine allegations by a child abuse investigator, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, that he was ordered by senior police to stop investigating such matters and had been directed to hand over his files in the Fletcher and McAlinden matters.

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VATICAN CITY
GQ

By Sean Flynn

February 2013

The whole thing began, as many cryptic scandals do, with an apparently innocuous phone call. In the spring of 2011, a friend that Gianluigi Nuzzi hadn’t heard from in quite some time asked to meet for coffee in Milan. Nuzzi’s friend didn’t work in journalism, which is Nuzzi’s business, and he didn’t mention that he might have the seeds of a story.

At the café they exchanged pleasantries, caught up. But then Nuzzi’s friend announced his true intention: He had another friend—he wouldn’t say who, exactly—who wanted to share some secrets from inside the notoriously leakproof walls of the Vatican. Nuzzi didn’t find this particularly surprising. People often want to tell him things: He’s on television, the host of an investigative news show called The Untouchables. But he didn’t find it particularly interesting, either. Though he’d written a well-received book in 2009 about the Vatican bank’s history of shady dealings, Nuzzi had no desire to become a specialist in the inner workings of the world’s smallest sovereign nation. And who knew what an anonymous source might be offering.

Still, his friend was insistent. Nuzzi told him to pass along Nuzzi’s cell-phone number.

Sometime later, Nuzzi got another call, this time from a man he did not know. He doesn’t know his real name, so he refers to him as The Contact. The Contact told Nuzzi that, if he was interested, he should take a train from Milan, where he lives and broadcasts his show, to Rome and then go to a bar near Piazza Mazzini. Nuzzi still didn’t know if he was interested, but this was the sort of thing—shadowy encounters with strangers—that Nuzzi enjoys. He has been a journalist for almost twenty years, mostly in print before moving to television a few years ago, and prefers working with confidential sources and documents. He likens himself to a submarine, prowling beneath the waves and surfacing only when he has something to report. Think of how many fish have yet to be discovered, he says, how many trenches still are unexplored!

Two men, both Italians in their forties dressed in conservative suits, met Nuzzi at the bar. They asked him many questions— about his professional interests, his tactics, how he keeps anonymous sources anonymous. They were affable and polite, but Nuzzi guessed they weren’t clerics. “They let slip a few words,” he later wrote, “that recalled the barracks more than the sacristy.” They offered no secrets. Rather, Nuzzi realized, they were assessing him, gauging whether he could be trusted.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Rumours are rife that the Pope’s resignation is not all it seems, despite the Vatican’s official statements.

Benedict XVI’s papacy has been dogged by controversies, including paedophile scandals and claims of money-laundering links to the Mafia.

So perhaps it is no surprise that his decision to quit has sparked a flood of conspiracy theories – especially after lightning struck St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican just hours after the announcement.
Five wild Pope rumours

1 A plot was hatched to force the Pope to stand down under threat of “shocking” new revelations from the money-laundering scandal. A full report, compiled by three cardinals, has never been revealed.

2 He has Parkinson’s disease like predecessor Pope John Paul II. The Vatican has denied the claim.

3 A new paedophile scandal is about to erupt. According to one blog, a document will emerge linking the Pope to a priest accused of molesting boys. The cleric was given therapy in 1980 and allowed to resume pastoral duties, only to commit further abuses and be ­prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who then headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, allegedly approved the priest’s transfer for therapy.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Feb. 13, 2013

AUSTRALIA’S first formal commission of inquiry into child sexual abuse will hold all hearings in Newcastle, it was announced today.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, heading the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, today confirmed that the first hearing will be held in Newcastle for two weeks from May 6.

The commission will open with evidence about police handling of allegations relating to a Catholic church cover-up of crimes committed by pedophile priest Denis McAlinden.

A three-week hearing into the church’s handling of allegations against McAlinden, spanning four decades, will also be held in Newcastle from June 24.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARY MINIHAN

Taoiseach Enda Kenny plans to travel to Britain shortly to meet women who spent time in Magdalene laundries and subsequently left Ireland.

After meeting members of the Magdalene Survivors Together group in Dublin on Monday, Mr Kenny yesterday indicated further meetings with other groups were planned. “I hope before the weekend to carry out a couple of other engagements both here and abroad,” he told the Dáil.

Mr Kenny’s spokesman last night said details of the meetings were being finalised but they would take place within six days.

The Taoiseach is widely expected to deliver an apology on behalf of the State next week when a debate on former senator Martin McAleese’s report on the Magdalene laundries begins in the Dáil.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN and MICHAEL O’REGAN

The Government will make a “considered and appropriate response” to the McAleese report on the Magdalene laundries, Minister of State Kathleen Lynch has told the Dáil.

Ms Lynch, who has long campaigned on the issue, said, “We will try to do this in a way that recognises the full complexities of the issues arising and meets the needs, insofar as we can, of the women who worked there.”

Her party colleague Dominic Hannigan called for “an official State apology to every woman who was sent to the laundries. Anything less is not good enough.” He read testimony from Maisy Kay, a woman who spent time in a laundry and on one occasion “got a fist to the face” from a nun.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By Ephraim Hardcastle

Human rights QC Geoffrey Robertson thinks Pope Benedict XVI will spend the rest of his days in litigation over worldwide child abuse cases brought against the Roman Catholic church. He says: ‘I think he’ll go down in history as the ostrich Pope, the one who stuck his head in the sand while the storm was brewing.’ Benedict is portrayed in a poor light in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, an award-winning US documentary released on Friday. Rather than being ignorant of clerical abuse scandals – as he has claimed – they say he was in charge of Vatican information-gathering on the subject. Deep waters.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg

By Margaret Carlson Feb 12, 2013

Nothing distinguished the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI so much as the way in which he is leaving.

We should be grateful that he realizes his body is failing him — most people in power do not — and is abdicating. But let’s not forget that it was Benedict who stood mostly mute as the sexual abuse of children by priests continued.

Benedict had a chance to be a great pope in one way and one way only: by recognizing the evil and dealing with it even when it meant punishing powerful prelates. He did not.

He had an opportunity to do so when he was appointed in 1981 to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was charged with dealing with the cascading number of sexual abuse cases. That appointment was odd given that when he was archbishop of Munich, Benedict — then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — had approved the transfer of priest and child molester Peter Hullermann. Even as he learned of the hundreds of Hullermanns and became the most knowledgeable high- ranking church official on the subject, Ratzinger chose to protect priests, bishops and cardinals at the cost of ignoring legions of abused children.

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ROME
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

On the day after one of the most dramatic moments in all church history, Curia cardinals and the Catholic faithful alike were still trying to absorb the full implications of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.

In a year, 2012, when the Vatican made international headlines because of a series of embarrassing leaks, most of them straight from the pope’s own study in the Apostolic Palace, Benedict’s resignation appears to have been one secret that was brilliantly well kept.

Different media sources, including most authoritatively the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, remain convinced that Benedict made his original decision that he would resign shortly after his visit to Mexico and Cuba in March of last year.

Apart from the obvious issue of simply getting older and thus finding it ever more difficult to travel, Benedict seems to have been influenced by a hitherto, unpublicised night-time fall experienced during the trip.

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VATICAN CITY
Tribune-Review

By The Associated Press

Published: Tuesday, February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The papal ring will be destroyed, along with other powerful emblems of authority, just as they are after a pope’s death. The retiring Pope Benedict XVI will live in a monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens and will likely even give up his beloved theological writing.

The Vatican went out of its way on Tuesday to declare that for Benedict, retirement means just that: retirement.

With speculation swirling about his future role, the Vatican’s chief spokesman explicitly stated that Benedict will not influence the election of his successor. …

As for the pope’s new name, Burke said Benedict would most likely be referred to as “Bishop of Rome, emeritus” as opposed to “Pope Emeritus.” Lombardi also said Benedict would take some kind of “emeritus” title.

Other Vatican officials said it would probably be up to the next pope to decide Benedict’s new title and wouldn’t exclude that he might still be called “Your Holiness” as a courtesy, much as retired presidents are often referred to as “President.” It was not even clear whether the retired pope will retain the name Benedict or revert to being called Joseph Ratzinger again.

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VATICAN CITY
Knox News

NICOLE WINFIELD – Associated Press (AP)
Posted February 12, 2013

VATICAN CITY (AP) — It’s a political campaign like no other, with no declared candidates or front-runners and a well-adhered to taboo against openly gunning for the job. But the maneuvering to select the next pope is already under way a day after Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and announced he would retire on Feb. 28.

One African contender declared Tuesday it was time for a Third World pope — and said he was free if God wanted him.

Berlin’s archbishop urged mercy for the victor, given the terrible weight of the office, while Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera asked for prayers so that the best man might win.

It’s all part of the ritual of picking a pope, the mysterious process that takes place behind closed doors at the Sistine Chapel, where the “princes” of the church, the 117 or so cardinals under age 80, vote in next month’s conclave.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By JASON BERRY

Published: February 11, 2013

DURING his eight years as pope, Benedict XVI sought rebirth for the Roman Catholic Church by meeting with victims of predator priests and making several apologies for the church’s aching abuse crisis.

But he failed to buck the logic of apostolic succession, a position that sees cardinals and bishops following in a direct spiritual line from Jesus’ original apostles but has been warped into a de facto immunity given to men of the hierarchy.

Still, Benedict has one last chance to right some of the wrongs of the recent past by forcing out Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals and the man who, more than any other, embodies the misuse of power that has corrupted the church hierarchy.

Cardinal Sodano is hardly alone: a long list of leaders betrayed Catholics everywhere with their pathological evasions, sending known sex offenders into treatment centers to avoid the law, then planting them in parishes or hospitals where they found new victims.

But Cardinal Sodano ranks with the Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony as an egregious practitioner of the cover up. As John Paul II’s secretary of state, he pressured Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, in two notorious cases.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
TheMediaReport

In an episode that recalls something out of the 19th-century, anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement, a political cartoon in the Los Angeles Times by David Horsey portrays a Catholic priest as Satan.

Horsey’s bigoted work is sure to put smiles on the faces of those at the New York Times, SNAP, and other anti-Catholics.

Disinformation and a double standard

Horsey’s attack plays into the oft-heard falsehood that somehow there is still an abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In truth, there is not. Almost all of the stories we have read in recent years about cases in Los Angeles and elsewhere are about episodes from many decades ago.

Meanwhile, around the same time that Horsey’s cartoon aired, readers of London’s Sunday Times charged that another cartoon, a brutal assessment of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was “grotesque,” “offensive,” and “anti-Semitic.” The criticism was enough that News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the paper, immediately issued an apology.

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VATICAN CITY
The Fiscal Times

By DAVID FRANCIS, The Fiscal Times
February 11, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the globe’s 1.2 billion Catholics, shocked the world this morning when he announced he is resigning.

The resignation of a pope is an extremely rare thing: a sitting pope hasn’t abdicated for 598 years. Benedict, who recently joined Twitter in an effort to connect with youth, said he was resigning due to poor health and old age. But this pope has also been hounded by scandals since he ascended to the papacy in 2005.

The scandals that rightly receive the most attention involve the cover-up of sexual abuses by priests around the globe, including in Benedict’s native Germany. But financial scandals have also plagued Benedict’s short time as the Holy See.

The Vatican, an independent country, has its own bank known as the Institute for Work on Religion. Little is known about the bank – like the rest of the Vatican’s inner workings, the bank is hidden under a cloak of secrecy – but it’s suspected to have $4 billion in assets.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek

By Carol Matlack and Bernhard Warner on February 11, 2013

Memo to the College of Cardinals: You didn’t ask our advice, so we won’t give it, on the person you should choose as the next spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. But whoever it is, could you please ask him to get the ATMs in the Vatican Museum working again?

The Bank of Italy last month shut down all ATMs in the Vatican and blocked its museum’s ticket windows and shops from accepting debit and credit-card payments from visitors. It was the latest chapter in a messy scandal involving the Vatican Bank, which regulators say has failed to comply with international banking standards and money-laundering regulations.

True, the $120 million or so in annual revenue from Vatican visitors is peanuts compared with the tens of billions raised and spent annually by Catholic dioceses and institutions worldwide. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for the next pope to have a good head for business.

Pope Benedict XVI, who announced today he will resign on Feb. 28 for health reasons, “has had a very difficult papacy” from a financial standpoint, says Chester Gillis, dean of Georgetown College and professor of theology at Georgetown University. Settlements and judgments in sexual-abuse cases have cost billions of dollars already and forced some dioceses into bankruptcy. More such lawsuits are still pending.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, February 12 – A credit-card and ATM block that has plagued visitors to the Vatican since January is over, a spokesman said Tuesday. “The system of electronic payments with ATMs and credit cards has been reactivated,” spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. He said the new service was “guaranteed” by a deal with Swiss company Aduno Sa. On January 1 the Bank of Italy froze all credit-card and ATM transactions inside the Vatican City over its failure to fully implement international anti-money-laundering standards. In late December, the central bank denied Deutsche Bank Italy, the Vatican’s former provider of electronic-payment services, a permit because of the Vatican’s shortcomings in financial controls and oversight.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Wayne K. Spear

Jamie Doward’s April 24, 2005 Guardian column, “The Pope, the letter and the child sex claim,” closes with the assertion that the reign of Benedict XVI may well be judged in relation to the sexual crimes and criminals long cloistered by the Vatican, and indeed Joseph Ratzinger himself. As the current Pope departs, the time is full for a summation of these crimes as well as these criminals.

As consequence of the courage and tenacity of the victims — of which there are as many as ten thousand, according to the hJohn Jay College report— an indictment of the church’s top-most offices may now be assembled.

For years, rarely a month has passed without some new and lurid disclosure thickening the already rotten stench of a closed-rank institution obsessed with its self-preservation. In January we were informed of the Cardinal Roger Mahony’s removal from duties and the release of priest files which contain the “terribly sad and evil” acts (as Archbishop Gomez termed them) committed throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

This latest revisiting of a decade-long, international outrage recalls what is perhaps the most notorious case of Boston’s then Archbishop, Bernard Law, whose cover-ups of child rape led to disgrace and resignation late in 2002. Since that time many thousands of allegations have issued, and a disgusting pattern of institutional obfuscation and evasion, guided from the very top, has emerged.

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IRELAND
Sinead O’Connor

I would like to congratulate Pope Benedict on his wise decision to retire before the very worst of what has been going on is discovered. I appreciate his alluding to some of it in his statement and assure him The Most High forgives those who can faithfully say they did wrong.

I also note with with interest the choice of a day so close to St Bernadette’s feast day to make the announcement. Perhaps her body could now be given a respectful burial and cease to be exploited in the macabre way it has been for decades.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 12, 2013

Analysis
Until the moment of his resignation at 8 p.m. Rome time Feb. 28, the Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is fully on the job as supreme pastor of the Roman Catholic church.

But as the first pontifex maximus to effectively give two weeks’ notice, what exactly will he be doing?

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said in a press bulletin Tuesday the pope intends to at least maintain his current public schedule, which includes a public service to mark the beginning of Lent Wednesday and a number of visits over coming days with pastors in Rome and bishops throughout Italy.

What Lombardi didn’t answer is whether the pope intends to use his remaining time to direct the functioning of the various Vatican offices, over which he has final governance and alone can give explicit orders.

Until Feb. 28, those offices essentially face a ticking clock. Once Benedict formally steps aside, their leaders must resign and all their work, except that considered most essential for the basic functioning of the church, must come to a halt.

Among offices facing the clock are the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, responsible for recommending priests for appointments as bishops in places throughout the world, and the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, known for acting as the church’s doctrinal watchdog.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Sara Malm

A 105-year-old Zen Buddhist master has been accused of sexually assaulting his female students during private teaching sessions.

Joshu Sasaki, best known for being the teacher of artist Leonard Cohen, has allegedly groped and sexually harassed women across the U.S. for over 50 years.

An independent council of Buddhist leaders recently admitted to ignoring years of accusations against the famously charismatic ‘roshi’.

Last month, a ‘witnessing council’ of senior teachers of Mr Sasaki’s Zen Buddhist community published a statement, admitting that the have ‘struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States’.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MARK OPPENHEIMER and IAN LOVETT

Published: February 11, 2013

Since arriving in Los Angeles from Japan in 1962, the Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki, who is 105 years old, has taught thousands of Americans at his two Zen centers in the area and one in New Mexico. He has influenced thousands more enlightenment seekers through a chain of some 30 affiliated Zen centers from the Puget Sound to Princeton to Berlin. And he is known as a Buddhist teacher of Leonard Cohen, the poet and songwriter.

Mr. Sasaki has also, according to an investigation by an independent council of Buddhist leaders, released in January, groped and sexually harassed female students for decades, taking advantage of their loyalty to a famously charismatic roshi, or master.

The allegations against Mr. Sasaki have upset and obsessed Zen Buddhists across the country, who are part of a close-knit world in which many participants seem to know, or at least know of, the principal teachers.

Mr. Sasaki did not respond to requests for interviews made through Paul Karsten, a member of the board of Rinzai-ji, his main center in Los Angeles. Mr. Karsten said that Mr. Sasaki’s senior priests are conducting their own inquiry. And he cautioned that the independent council took the accounts it heard from dozens of students at face value and did not investigate any “for veracity.”

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CANADA
CP24

The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013

MONTREAL — Word that a Canadian cardinal is a presumed contender to succeed Pope Benedict has been met with a mixed response in his own Quebec backyard.

Advocates for victims of sexual abuse by priests and even a member of the clergy aren’t quite in Marc Cardinal Ouellet’s cheering section.

The idea of a global icon emerging from here has stirred the local imagination.

But that excitement is tempered by the fact that Ouellet’s home province has become intensely secular and even anti-clerical over the years.

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