ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Fox News Latino

By Bryan Llenas

Published March 07, 2013

Miguel Diaz, the former US Ambassador to the Vatican, is one of the few Americans who got to know Pope Benedict XVI on a personal level.

“He had a personal way of relating to my family, when we asked him to pray about the kids, he would always smile and in an affirmative way convey to us that he would do so,” Díaz told Fox News Latino.

The Cuban-American is the first Hispanic to ever represent the US at the Holy See and, as a result, has had a front row seat to Benedict’s pontificate – and therefore is more keenly aware of who needs to be the next pope.

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VATICAN CITY
CTV (Canada)

The Associated Press
Published Thursday, Mar. 7, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The last cardinal who will participate in the conclave to elect Benedict XVI’s successor as pope has arrived in Rome.

Vietnamese Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man attended the Thursday afternoon session of the pre-conclave meetings in a Vatican audience hall after his flight landed earlier in the day. He said nothing to reporters as he arrived.

He was the last of the 115 cardinal electors to arrive in Rome, and his presence now means that the cardinals can set a date for the conclave.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

By Samuel Burke & Juliet Fuisz, CNN

Pope Benedict XVI bears personal responsibility for not holding sexually abusive priests in the Catholic Church accountable, alleges the director of a new documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.”

“From 2001 to 2005, as cardinal, [Benedict] ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And in that office, he looked over every sex abuse case that there was all over the world. So he’s the most knowledgeable person in the world about this issue,” director Alex Gibney told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Then, as pope, he presided, as more and more information about this came out. And he was pretty much utterly ineffective in being able to stem the tide.”

Gibney, whose documentaries have taken on complicated characters from Jack Abramoff to Dick Cheney, says Benedict took some positive steps: “He did make some apologies. He did blame some bishops. But he took no responsibility for the Vatican itself. So, in a way, I think this whole sex abuse crisis engulfed Benedict.”

“Mea Maxima Culpa” focuses on the case of Father Lawrence Murphy, an American priest who is accused of molesting as many as 200 boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf. The film traces his case to the highest levels of Church power.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Solihull News

Mar 7 2013

A SOLIHULL priest and school governor has been arrested by police investigating historic child sex allegations.

Father Ted Simpson, based at Olton Friary in Solihull, was arrested on January 25 on suspicion of sexual activity with a minor.

West Midlands Police said he was currently on bail while inquiries continued.

Staff at the church seemed unaware of the police investigation. One said: “He has not retired yet, but he may do. I should leave things alone for the moment.”

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

(By Christopher Livesay) Rome, March 7 – As the last cardinals made their way to Rome this week ahead of the conclave to elect a new pope, fresh priest sex-abuse allegations surfaced on Thursday as advocates and victims called on the Church to make pedophilia a central focus when considering a successor to Benedict XVI. In Italy, a group campaigning against priest sex abuse on Thursday called for Cardinal Domenico Calcagno to be banned from electing a new pope. Francesco Zanardi, the head of L’Abuso, said he he will be in Rome Friday to “personally hand (Vatican Spokesman Federico) Lombardi and the Vatican administrative office” a petition signed by numerous people demanding that “Cardinal Calcagno stays out of the conclave”. Zanardi accuses Calcagno, a former bishop of the northern city of Savona, and two other recent bishops there of systematically covering up cases of pedophilia in the diocese. On Sunday, pedophilia victims appeared on Italian television with accusations that Benedict knew of several cases of priest sex abuse in Savona but never did anything about it. The accusers, who made their statements on Italian television program Le Iene, said that the Vatican failed to press charges against several priests in the city of Savona who victimized minors 10 years ago when then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was cardinal-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose role required investigating the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Presented as evidence on the program was a letter dated September 8, 2003 and addressed to Ratzinger in which Calcagno informed him of a priest who had been accused of pedophilia. The priest, who was later transferred to another parish, was sentenced to one year in jail last year. In an unrelated case, an Italian consumer association is pressing forward in its motion to investigate Cardinal Roger Mahony and his role in allegedly covering up instances of priest sex abuse in the United States.

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ROME
The Daily Beast

by Barbie Latza Nadeau
Mar 7, 2013

As Cardinals arrive in Rome to choose a new pontiff, victims of priest sex abuse have laid out their case against the top contenders, and say that even the best options are tainted by the global scandal.

“Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart…” says the Bible. But as the College of Cardinals gets closer to choosing a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who retired on February 28, it is becoming an

This week, as the cardinals descended on Rome for pre-conclave congregational meetings to share concerns for the global church and form a profile of what they want in a new pontiff, another group of concerned Catholics held court of their own to voice the concerns of victims of predator priests. SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), the 12,000-member strong priest abuse victims’ group, issued its “dirty dozen” of potential popes who they feel would be “the worst papal candidates for the safety of children” and gave their blessing to three others who they feel are “the least of the bad” who could lead their church out of its darkest hour. They also presented a wish list for what they believe the church should do going forward, which includes “to severely and clearly discipline, demote, denounce and defrock bishops caught concealing sex abuse crimes.” They would also like the church to order bishops in local diocese to “turn over every piece of paper relating to accusations of abuse” which they believe would stop predators in their tracks.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Birmingham Mail

Father Ted Simpson, of Olton Friary in Solihull, has been arrested and quizzed by police over child sex allegations

A Midland priest and school governor has been arrested by police investigating historic child sex allegations.

Father Ted Simpson, based at Olton Friary in Solihull, was arrested on January 25 on suspicion of sexual activity with a minor.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

An excommunicated female priest decked out in her liturgical robes was detained by Italian police for demonstrating at the Vatican on Thursday, where she called on the Catholic Church to rethink its policy on ordaining women.

Unfurling a red and white banner reading “Women Priests are Here”, Janice Sevre-Duszynska said she wanted to draw attention to the lack of a voice for women as cardinals gather at the Vatican to choose former pope Benedict XVI’s successor.

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ROME
CNN

By Richard Allen Greene and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN

updated 11:29 AM EST, Thu March 7, 2013

Rome (CNN) — A cardinal from the Philippines, another from Austria and an archbishop from Ireland would be the “least worst” choices to be the next pope, according to a group representing the victims of abuse by priests.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, released its list Thursday as cardinals held meetings at the Vatican in a prelude to the selection of the next pontiff.

The three are Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines; Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Austria; and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland.

Martin is not a cardinal, but SNAP noted that a man need not be a cardinal to be elected pope. Historically, the role has gone to cardinals, however.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Cardinals are calling for stronger communication between the Pope and his “ministers” and between the Church headquarters in Rome and the local Churches

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

After asking for more information on the Vatileaks affair, cardinals are calling for reforms in the Curia. There needs to be better communication between the Pope and his “ministers”, improved coordination between dicasteries and stronger links between the central Church in Rome and the local Churches. These were some of the issues discussed during the third General Congregation session yesterday morning. The Conclave start date is still to be decided and a number of cardinals have asked for the discussion phase to be extended to the beginning of next week. They are eager to get to know each other, to examine the state of the Church across the world and to find out what the state of affairs within the Roman Curia is, given the various scandals it has recently been at the centre of.

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts gave a speech on the last of these issues. The Milanese cardinal spoke of the need for better communication between the Pope and dicastery leaders: there needs to be constant contact and exchanges with the Pope. Once upon a time, the Pope used to hold pre-scheduled audiences throughout the year, not just with prefects of Congregations, but also with secretaries; so even deputies had contact with the Pope and could get a first hand idea of the problems the Church was facing, helping them in their decision-making.

In recent decades, the number of pre-scheduled audiences has been reduced and were only attended by some heads of dicasteries such as prefects of bishops and of the former Holy Office. The Secretariat of State has increasingly acted as a buffer: recently one dicastery leader/cardinal had to wait several months before he was able to meet with the Pope.

Cardinal Cocopalmerio therefore spoke of the need for an improved coordination and exchange of information within the Curia itself, between the various “ministries”. The cardinal also touched on the subject of relations between the Holy See in Rome and the Episcopal Conferences across the world: he emphasised that it is important for more consideration to be given to the needs of local Churches. Finally, Coccopalmerio said it was high time the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus was updated. This was the document with which John Paul II reformed the Curia in 1988.The cardinal did not go into the details but many now agree that streamlining and rationalisation are crucial.

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NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue addresses New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s Child Victims Act:

Over the past several years, Markey has introduced legislation addressing the sexual abuse of minors. One problem: her bills focus unfairly on private institutions, leaving public institutions virtually untouched. This year’s version of her bill offers no change; it would open up a one-year window for alleged victims who were abused in a private institution regardless of when it took place. But it changes nothing for a victim who was abused in a public school even as recently as Thanksgiving (he only has ninety days to report the abuse).

On Friday, Markey will hold a rally outside City Hall in Manhattan in an attempt to persuade the public. It is interesting to note that the roster of speakers at the press conference does not include anyone from the Department of Education. Doing so would open Markey up to questions that she does not want to answer. One being, why a private school student who had his crotch grabbed by a janitor a quarter century ago has greater rights than a public school student who was abused by a teacher a few months ago.

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ROMA
Fatti di Cronaca

La chiesa attende l’elezione del nuovo Papa, ma il caso Vatileaks irrompe sulle pagine della stampa nazionale mentre il Conclave non è ancora ufficialmente aperto. “I corvi sono tanti, più di 20 persone“. È quanto emerge da un’intervista fatta da Marco Ansaldo per Repubblica proprio a un “ex corvo” come si definisce l’intervistato. Con le dimissioni di Benedetto XVI il caso torna a spaventare il Vaticano e per i corvi “è venuto il momento di parlare“. I motivi sono vari, ma c’è un unico scopo: i documenti trafugati dall’Appartamento del Papa fanno parte di “un’operazione di trasparenza nella Chiesa“, necessaria per riformare i vertici vaticani.

Il maggiordomo del Papa, Paolo Gabriele, non è il solo corvo in Vaticano. Più di venti, donne e uomini, laici e prelati: lo spiega “l’ex corvo” che si definisce così perché “non ci sono più Papi da difendere o verità da far emergere. È tutto nel rapporto segreto compilato dai tre cardinali anziani“. È un credente, molto fedele alla Chiesa, che conosce il Vaticano e i suoi ingranaggi così come i protagonisti dei retroscena, quelli che tirano i fili da dietro le quinte, ed è esperto di finanza.

Sarebbe proprio l’aspetto finanziario la vera causa scatenante del caso Vatileaks, tenendo conto che i documenti in possesso del giornalista Gianluigi Nuzzi. Circa due anni fa il Papa chiese a monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò di iniziare “un’operazione di razionalizzazione nelle attività economiche dalla Santa Sede, unite all’opera di trasparenza affidata a Gotti allo Ior“.

Tutto però venne ostacolato perché si temeva che venissero lesi gli equilibri degli enti che si andavano a controllare. “Così nacque una lobby in Vaticano, composta da persone che lavoravano fra Governatorato, Apsa, Segreteria di Stato, Biblioteca, Archivio, Musei, Cei, Osservatore Romano, che ha cominciato a dialogare“.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican is still annoyed at the leaks of confidential proceedings to the media by U.S. cardinals. All cardinal electors are now in Rome: the Conclave nears

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

All 114 cardinal electors have now arrived in Rome so the College of Cardinals can finally decide on a date for their entry to the Sistine Chapel. During the Congregations, cardinals discussed thepossibility of beginning the election process Sunday or Monday. This morning the remaining few cardinal electors swore an oath of secrecy and in the afternoon the Conclave start-date could be announced. The arrival of cardinals Nycz (Poland), Lehmann (Germany), Naguib (Egypt) and Tong Hin (China), has marked the beginning of the X-Hour. “The decision can now legitimately be made,” said the jurist, Archbishop Sciacca who is assisting Bertone during the sede vacante period.

There is still no decision on the date but the Curia has imposed a media blackout so cardinals are not allowed to give information tot he press. Tensions have been rising in the past few days, leading to yesterday morning’s clash between “Romans” and “foreigners”.

The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano and the Camerlengo, Bertone (who have formed an alliance against cardinals outside the Curia after eight years of mutual hostility) did everything in their power to contain the solid group of U.S. cardinals. In the name of transparency, U.S. cardinals had held a series of parallel news briefings with the press on the issues relating to the Conclave. The briefings were held at the Pontifical North American College where the cardinals are currently staying. For this reason on Monday Rigali, the U.S. cardinal who is closest to the Curia, was given the task, through Re, of letting his group know that these news briefings were inappropriate. On Tuesday, Sodano supporter Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo also had a go at urging them to stop: “Americans talk tot he press more because it’s their style, they are expansive.” A glasnost which violates a century-old tradition of discretion and stealthy caution. The American cardinals finally gave in to growing pressure from the Vatican, cancelling their umpteenth press briefing. The Vatican’s irritation came like a slap in the face in the midst of the Synod Hall. “Concern was expressed in the general congregation about leaks of confidential proceedings,” the U.S. cardinals’ spokesman Mary Ann Walsh later explained. Dolan’s 14:30 press conference was cancelled an hour before it was due to start.

“As a precaution, the cardinals have agreed not to do interviews,” Sister Walsh added, saying that complaints were mainly in relation to the cardinals’ interviews with the Italian media (in particular one report published by Italian daily La Stampa)who use some cardinals as sources. If U.S. cardinals came to Rome with the conviction that Benedict XVI’s butler was not the only one to blame for the leak of confidential Holy See documents but that poor Curia governance was also to blame, this has only strengthened everyone is mutually responsible for the their belief. The term “leaks” (like Wikileaks and Vatileaks), used twice by Mary Ann Walsh is not coincidental. Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi clarified that “everyone” in the College of Cardinals “has a shared responsibility in the process that is under way and each cardinal needs to be able to balance their duty of confidentiality with other duties.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Things turned sour towards yesterday’s General Congregation, the third in the series of pre-Conclave meetings: “Discussions are still too general”

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

In a speech given during yesterday’s General Congregation, a foreign cardinal asked for some information on two individuals who are allegedly mentioned in the Vatileaks scandal dossier prepared by the three-man investigation commission . But the Camerlengo, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, sent an internal communiqué urging those present not to “name names” if they are not “certain”, as they could risk fomenting a climate of suspicion and resentment.

Italian newspaper La Stampa has learnt that the two individuals referred to yesterday were not members of the clergy but laymen. One of them does not work in the Holy See but has had frequent contact and collaborated to a high level with Holy See institutions. The other is a Vatican employee. The foreign cardinal’s frank request indicated that although the Vatileaks case is not the focal point of discussions ahead of the Conclave, many are keen to learn more about the contents of the dossier that will end up in the hands of the new Pope.

“The Church in today’s world and the requirements of the new Evangelisation,” the reform of the Curia and “relations between the Holy See, the dicasteries and the Episcopates” and the profile of the new Pope are the big topics discussed during the fourth General Congregation yesterday. The meeting was attended by 153 cardinals, 113 of whom will be entering the Sistine Chapel to elect Ratzinger’s successor. The Prefect of Propaganda Fide, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, gave a presentation of his dicastery, illustrating figures and other data about missionary lands. The Prefect of the Clergy, Mauro Piacenza also gave a speech about the priesthood and vocations. Meanwhile, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who is over 80 and therefore not eligible to vote in the Conclave, traced an outline of the future Pope’s profile. In tune with what other cardinals said in their speeches over the past few days, the former Vicar of Rome suggested electing a “dynamic” Pope who is young enough to adequately deal with the challenges currently faced by the Church.

Two influential members of the Curia gave speeches, in which they gave different perspectives on the unprecedented question of the “Pope Emeritus” title. Never in the history of the Catholic Church did a Pope resign due to old age so no one ever had to ask the question of what title he should be given. The issue was also addressed by the Prefect of the Congregation Marc Ouellet, a papabile and the American Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Raymond Leo Burke

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PENNSYLVANIA
Catholics4Change

March 7, 2013 by Susan Matthews

We are asking supporters of child sex abuse statute of limitations reform to email your state representative today (Find your state rep and contact info here) with this message.

Support McGeehan, Rozzi Amendments – Protect Kids, Not Predators!

Dear Representative:

Although the Task Force for Child Protection made recommendations for new laws dealing with child sexual abuse, it failed to take up the most powerful tool designed to expose predators and to afford victims the justice they deserve.

HB 342, a bill on the voting calendar for next week, may give us the opportunity to create a one time, two year window that suspends the civil statute of limitations to allow past victims of child sex abuse to be heard. It would allow access to the justice system so that suspects could be subpoenaed and deposed. The victim would still have to prove “gross negligence” and the current sovereign immunity defense for public employees would be suspended.

Rep. McGeehan and Rep. Rozzi will be offering child sex abuse statute of limitation amendments to HB 342.

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ROM
n-tv

Papst Benedikt XVI. ist zurückgetreten. In den kommenden Tagen treffen sich die Kardinäle, um einen Nachfolger zu suchen. Vor der Entscheidung über einen neuen Papst taucht nun eine

Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch durch katholische Geistliche haben eine Schwarze Liste möglicher Kandidaten für das Amt des Papstes veröffentlicht. Die Liste enthält die Namen von zwölf Kandidaten für die Nachfolge von Benedikt XVI., denen verharmlosende Äußerungen zum Thema Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche oder das Inschutznehmen pädophiler Geistlicher vorgeworfen wird.

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ROM
OTZ

Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch durch katholische Geistliche haben eine Schwarze Liste möglicher Kandidaten für das Amt des Papstes veröffentlicht. Die Liste enthält zwölf Kirchenmänner, denen verharmlosende Äußerungen zu dem Thema vorgeworfen werden.

Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch durch katholische Geistliche haben eine Schwarze Liste möglicher Kandidaten für das Amt des Papstes veröffentlicht. Die Liste enthält die Namen von zwölf Kandidaten für die Nachfolge von Benedikt XVI., denen verharmlosende Äußerungen zum Thema Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche oder das Inschutznehmen pädophiler Geistlicher vorgeworfen wird.

Zudem sprach sich die US-Organisation Netzwerk der Überlebenden von Missbrauch durch Priester (SNAP) gegen die Wahl eines Mitglieds der römischen Kurie zum neuen Papst aus. “Nach unserer Überzeugung hat kein derzeitiger Vatikan-‘Insider’ den Willen, wirklich reinen Tisch im Vatikan oder anderswo zu machen”, sagte SNAP-Vorstand David Clohessy.

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DEUTSCHLAND
OTZ

Mit dem sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern an katholischen Schulen in Irland hat sich am Mittwoch der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte befasst.

Mit dem sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern an katholischen Schulen in Irland hat sich am Mittwoch der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte befasst. Die 17 Richter der Großen Kammer des Straßburger Gerichts prüften die Klage eines der Opfer. Das damals neun Jahre alte Mädchen war im Jahre 1973 mehrere Monate lang wiederholt vom Leiter ihrer Schule in der südirischen Ortschaft Dunderrow missbraucht worden. Sie wirft den irischen Behörden vor,

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Es war eine Institution, aus der es kein Entrinnen gab. Im Internat des Benediktinerklosters Ettal herrschte bis in die achtziger Jahre hinein “ein System der Unterdrückung”. Das geht aus einem Untersuchungsbericht hervor, der der SZ vorliegt. Auch sexuelle Übergriffe seien Teil dieses Gewaltsystems gewesen.

Im Internat des Benediktinerklosters Ettal herrschte bis in die achtziger Jahre hinein “ein System der Unterdrückung”. Gewalt sei “gezielt als pädagogisches Mittel eingesetzt” worden. Auch sexuelle Übergriffe seien Teil dieses Gewaltsystems gewesen. Das geht aus einem Untersuchungsbericht hervor, der der SZ vorliegt und der an diesem Donnerstag vorgestellt wird.

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ROMA
La Repubblica

di MARCO ANSALDO

ROMA – “Il maggiordomo del Papa, Paolo Gabriele, non è l’unico corvo del Vaticano. I corvi sono tanti. Più di venti persone, tutte legate alla Santa Sede. Siamo donne e uomini, laici e prelati. Se abbiamo fatto uscire i documenti dall’appartamento del Papa, con l’aiuto di Paolo Gabriele, è stato per compiere un’operazione di trasparenza nella Chiesa. Ora, dopo la rinuncia di Benedetto XVI al pontificato, e alla vigilia del Conclave, il caso Vatileaks continua a tenere banco”. “E per noi è venuto il momento di tornare a parlare”.

Il tavolino della veranda di un bar ai Parioli, a Roma, lontano dal Vaticano e da occhi indiscreti. Una mano che tormenta un anello dorato con lo stemma del Papa. La persona che parla è credente, fedelissima alla Chiesa, ha una perfetta conoscenza della macchina vaticana, dei suoi protagonisti, e spiccate competenze in materia finanziaria. Nessun nome, com’è ovvio. Anche il maggiordomo del Papa è rimasto a lungo ignoto. Ma la “fonte Maria” che in passato aveva fornito ai media carte e documenti è del resto un nome collettivo.

In epoca di Conclave i corvi tornano a volare?
“Io sono un ex corvo”.

Cioè?
“Non ci sono più Papi da difendere o verità da far emergere. È tutto nel rapporto segreto compilato dai tre cardinali anziani”.

Che cosa c’è dentro?
“So qual è stata la metodologia, e soprattutto lo scopo di questa relazione”.

Quale?
“I documenti fuoriusciti avevano portato a un’atmosfera di tutti contro tutti in Curia. E il Papa voleva capire cosa stesse succedendo, e se il malumore che aveva spinto quelle persone a utilizzare il suo maggiordomo fosse stata la molla di un disagio più grande”.

“Verissima. Altroché. Potrei fare nomi e cognomi di cardinali e monsignori, di vescovi e funzionari. Dai piani alti della Segreteria di Stato a dicasteri di prima fila”.

Che altro c’è?
“Questioni finanziarie legate allo Ior. Benedetto confidava moltissimo nell’operazione di trasparenza che poteva fare Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. E nel momento in cui questi fu sfiduciato, ne chiese le ragioni. Le risposte furono insoddisfacenti, e la sua reazione fu di aprire una commissione di inchiesta che facesse piena luce”.

Si è parlato di molte persone che stessero dietro al corvo: cardinali, laici, donne e uomini a contatto quasi quotidiano con Benedetto. Chi sono i mandanti dell’operazione Vatileaks?
“Noi abbiamo parlato, come ha fatto il maggiordomo, con la stampa. Ma se di mandanti si può parlare sono altre le sfere che vanno cercate. Ben più alte. Molto più vicine al pontefice di quello che siamo noi”.

Ci sono altri documenti oltre a quelli già emersi?
“Sì”.

Potrebbe uscire un altro libro di Gianluigi Nuzzi basato sulle carte?
“Sì”.

Con documenti consegnati da Paolo Gabriele oppure con altre carte?
“So solo che il libro “Sua Santità” non contiene tutti i documenti in possesso di Nuzzi, ma che ce ne sono altri”.

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ROME
Gazetta del Sud

Rome, March 7 – An Italian consumer association is pressing forward in its motion to investigate Cardinal Roger Mahony and his role in allegedly covering up instances of priest sex abuse in the United States. On Thursday, Codacons filed a motion with Rome prosecutors to convene with the leaders of US-based SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) as expert witnesses. Named in the motion were SNAP directors David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris, who are in Rome advocating for issues related to sex abuse in the Church to be a priority in electing a new pope at the upcoming conclave.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Tim Lennon on March 06, 2013

Thankfully the American people now understand that top ranking Vatican officials have not addressed the problem of sexual violence within the church. Americans should remain vigilant in demanding zero tolerance from US bishops, especially since a grand jury found three dozen predators working in one diocese just over a year ago, (Philadelphia.)

The new Pope needs to make the protection of children his top priority. He will be judged by his actions, not merely by his words. We hope to see his first act be to demand that all credibly accused predators be removed from ministry and reported to police immediately. He should follow that with a demand that all bishops who knowingly transferred a predator resign immediately. These actions will help protect children immediately.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on March 07, 2013

In a new interview with the Chicago Tribune, Cardinal George says that Cardinals are ‘vetting’ one another on abuse and cover up. If he is correct about this – and we hope he is – we are encouraged. But such vetting should go beyond just likely papal candidates. It should be vigorously expanded to include all church officials.

If any cardinal is willing, and to the degree we are able, we’d be glad to help in any way.

George is wrong, however, when he claims that church officials must continue dealing with abuse because of victims. They must take prompt, effective action because of children. They are still being sexually violated, right now, across the globe. Even if George thinks victims are being treated well (and many are not), surely he knows that kids still need and deserve real protection from predatory priests.

In fact, we’re stunned that he said this week that “the incidence of abuse is practically zero right now.”

In all but a handful of western nations, little is known about clergy sex crimes. It’s sadly quite easy, in most countries, to guilt-trip and intimidate victims in to staying silent and prevent them from taking legal action. In many cultures and countries, it’s very hard to talk publicly of painful personal subjects. So it’s a struggle to find solid information on how church officials across the globe mishandle clergy sex abuse cases.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Catholic Insider

In our last post we talked about Cardinal O’Malley’s Vatican PR campaign, and how his communications secretary was looking for stories so he could feed the press. Cardinal O’Malley also said he was reading the National Catholic Reporter as an “interesting” source of information in preparation for the upcoming conclave. Today we update you with several new developments.

First, we ask the question, why is there a big international media campaign around Cardinal O’Malley? Cardinal O’Malley has apparently brought a few members of his media and communications team to Rome.We know the editor of the Pilot was on the plane to Rome with the Cardinal, and Communications Secretary, Terry Donilon, is in Rome to coordinate the campaign. We called his office to volunteer BCI to brief reporters looking for Boston-related stories on our ministry and got his voicemail saying he is in Rome. No return date is indicated on the voicemail. Why the big international media campaign, with no apparent bound on how long Donilon will stay? Beyond that, why are thousands of dollars in Catholic Appeal donor funds being squandered to pay travel and expenses for the Boston media guys to be in Rome?

Secondly, couldn’t the Cardinal’s time be used better to prepare for the critical vote than in press briefings? In an interview with the Boston Globe, published Wednesday, we heard the following:

O’Malley also seemed to ache for a little down time. He had just finished a long press conference and had more report­ers to speak with before a dinner with cardinals. He said he had not been able to spend much time going out to dinner or otherwise enjoying the city. “If I didn’t have all these interviews,” he said with a laugh, “I could be in a bookstore right now.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

March 7, 2013 by Susan Matthews

The last Cardinal has arrived in Rome. Soon the most important business of the Church will be in the hands of several Cardinals involved in clergy sex abuse cover ups. Apparently, we aren’t supposed to notice.

We can’t pry open the doors of the secret archives, but we can certainly understand the facts in front of us. Thousands of pages of documents, depositions, and testimonies have revealed a tainted hierarchy. Will Mahony vote for a Pope who will be tough on clergy sex abuse? Seems counterproductive to his interests.

Does Archbishop Chaput think the participation of Cardinals Mahony and Rigali in the conclave hurts the rebuilding of trust with Catholics in Philadelphia and Los Angeles? Can they be removed? And if so, by what process?

I posed these questions and Kenneth Gavin, Associate Director of Communications answered on behalf of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. “Neither the Archbishop nor the Archdiocese has any authority over the conclave so we wouldn’t be able to comment further than that.”

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VATICAN CITY
NBC Chicago

By Mary Ann Ahern

Thursday, Mar 7, 2013

While there is strong speculation the conclave to pick the next pope will begin Monday, the cardinals have not yet officially set a date. The Vatican spokesmen say the “mood” is that their discussions are not done and they aren’t ready to vote.

The Roman Catholic cardinals held their fifth discussion Thursday morning but are still waiting for the cardinal from Vietnam, arriving in Rome today. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said they realize the “huge responsibility placed on the shoulders of the cardinals” and do not want to rush their decision of who will succeed Benedict XVI.

The cardinals meet again Thursday afternoon, but a Vatican spokesman does not necessarily believe the conclave date will be set then either. While they have not yet scheduled a Saturday session, it is a possibility.

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CANADA
The Province

By L. Ian MacDonald, The Province
March 7, 2013

There is a saying, one of many in Rome, that he who enters a conclave as pope leaves as a cardinal.

By that standard, Cardinal Marc Ouellet needn’t worry about the outcome. As one of the early favourites he doesn’t stand a chance of becoming the first non-European pope in nearly 1,500 years, and the first in history from the Americas. And a Canadian one at that.

Still, it’s not hard to see why the oddsmakers, media and papal pundits fancy his chances to succeed Benedict XVI, who resigned in February. One doesn’t campaign for the office — that’s considered unseemly — but there are lots of opportunities for meeting and greeting in a papal interregnum. And Ouellet has a lot going for him.

First, he’s a reliable theological conservative, and that’s what this College of Cardinals wants. The last two popes, Benedict and John Paul II, have packed the college with doctrinal conservatives over the last 35 years, reversing the liberal appointments of John XXIII and Paul VI.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The very first issue on Fr. Federico Lombardi’s agenda Thursday during his daily briefing with international press was to reiterate once again that no date has yet been set for Conclave. He noted that news reports of St Peter’s Basilica having been booked Monday afternoon next at 5pm, for a Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff are unfounded. Fr. Lomabrdi pointed out to press that the Missa pro eligendo pontifice can be celebrated by any priest during the interregnum, or Vacant See, as part of the Universal Church’s call to prayer during this period.

152 Cardinals were present for the 5th general congregation that began at 9:30 with prayer. There were two new arrivals overnight: Cardinal Nycz from Warsaw, Poland, who is an elector; and Italian Cardinal Coppa, who is not. The Vietnamese Cardinal Pham of Hồ Chí Minh City is due to arrive in time for Thursday afternoon’s session. His arrival will bring the number of Cardinal Electors present in Rome to the total 115 men who can vote in Conclave for the Pope.

On Thursday morning, the particular congregation, or executive that aids the camerlegno, Cardinal Bertone, and is chosen by lot every three days, was renewed: The names extracted were Cardinal Rai for the order of bishops, Cardinal Monsengwo for the order of priests and Cardinal De Paolis for the order of deacons.

Also Thursday morning the Cardinal-Dean, Angelo Sodano, read the text of a telegram that the College of Cardinals will send to Venezuela marking death of President Chavez.

There were 16 interventions, the first three by Cardinals in charge of the economic affairs of the Holy See; Cardinal Versaldi who is in charge of economic affairs, Cardinal Calcagno in charge of APSA (administration of the Holy See’s patrimony) and Cardinal Bertello from the Governatorate of Vatican City State. Paragraph 171 of the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia Pastor Bonus demands the College of Cardinals receive a report on the patrimonial and economic status of the Holy See during the Vacant See.

The remaining 13 interventions were wide ranging: touching on topics from the Church’s commitment to evangelization, relations with local bishops, ecumenical dialogue and the Church’s charitable commitment to the poor. Further discussion concerned the talents, qualities and characteristics required of the next Pope.

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CANADA
CJAD

Posted By: Trudie Mason
tmason@astral.com·3/7/2013

People who suffered abuse at the hands of Catholic priests are split on whether Quebec’s Marc Cardinal Ouellet should be a candidate to replace Pope Benedict.

One victims group based here in Quebec is siding with the American group SNAP. It has put Ouellet on a list of a dozen Cardinals it feels are unfit to be Pope because of their handling of clergy abuse cases.

But another Quebec based group, the Association of Victims of Priests, ardently hopes that Ouellet does become Pope – so it can unmask him as contemptuous of abuse victims. The association says the Cardinal never met with victims, leaving them feeling detested.

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SPAIN
National Catholic Reporter

by Michael Sean Winters | Mar. 7, 2013

A reader, Oswald Sobrino, generously took me up on my request that someone translate the essay I linked to yesterday by Mario Vargas Llosa on Pope Benedict. My views of the now Pope-Emeritus are less sullen than the great poet’s, but I think he captures the essence of Benedict in a way few Catholics have, and why Benedict’s writings pose a challenge not just to Catholics but to the entire culture of the West. Thank you Mr. Sobrino for so generously translating the article and sending it on so I can publish it here.

“ The Man Who Disturbs”

by Mario Vargas Llosa

I do not know why the abdication of Benedict XVI has been such a surprise; although exceptional, it was not unforeseen. It was enough to look at him, fragile and as if lost in the midst of those crowds in which he was obligated to submerge himself, making superhuman efforts in order to play the protagonist in those spectacles obviously foreign to his temperament and calling. So different from his predecessor, John Paul II, who navigated like a fish in the water among the masses of believers and onlookers that the Pope attracts in all his appearances, Benedict XVI would appear completely alien to those extroverted events that today make up the required duties of a pontiff. In this way, we can understand better his reluctance to accept the chair of St. Peter that was imposed on him eight years ago and to which, as we know now, he never aspired. The only ones who abandon absolute power with the ease with which he has just done it are those rarities who, instead of coveting power, disdain power.

He was not a charismatic man nor a man of the stage, as Karol Wojtyla, the Polish Pope. He was a man of the library and of the lecture hall, of reflection and study, surely one of the most intelligent and cultured popes that the Catholic Church has had in all her history. In an age when ideas and reasons matter much less than images and gestures, Joseph Ratzinger was already an anachronism, since he belonged to what is an especially conspicuous species on the way to extinction: the intellectual. He thought with depth and originality, based on his enormous theological, philosophical, historical, and literary knowledge, gained in the many classical and modern languages that he had mastered, among them Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

Although his books were always conceived within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy—but with a very broad horizon, his books and encyclicals often went beyond the strictly dogmatic and contained novel and bold insights concerning moral, cultural, and existential problems of our time that non-believing readers could read fruitfully and often—this has happened to me—with some discomfort. His three volumes dedicated to Jesus of Nazareth, his small autobiography and his three encyclicals—especially the second one, Spe Salvi, of 2007, devoted to the twofold nature of a science that can extraordinarily enrich human life but can also destroy and degrade it—contain a dialectical vigor and an expositive elegance that stand out sharply among conventional and redundant texts, written by the convinced, that the Vatican has customarily produced, for a long time now.

To Benedict XVI has fallen one of the most difficult periods that Christianity has ever faced in its more than two thousand year history. The secularization of society advances with great speed, especially in the West., the citadel of the Church until relatively recently. This process has been aggravated by the great scandals of pedophilia in which hundreds of Catholic priests have been enmeshed and whom part of the hierarchy protected or tried to ignore, scandals which continue to be exposed everywhere, just as the accusations of money laundering and of corruption that affect the Vatican bank.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 7, 2013

Rome —
Impose silence, and it seems a press secretary gets more questions he’d rather not have been asked.

The Vatican’s daily press briefing Thursday about the cardinals’ meeting covered financial and governance matters and even the role women play in conclave preparations, but questions kept coming back to one topic: Why a series of popular briefings given by the U.S. cardinals were canceled.

The cardinals met Thursday for the fifth time since Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. They are meeting daily before entering the conclave, the secret meeting where they will elect the next pope.

While a spokesperson for the U.S. bishop’ conference said Wednesday the Americans canceled their briefings because of concerns of leaks of confidential information in the Italian media, those leaks continued Thursday.

Several Italian papers Thursday carried detailed reports, attributed to confidential sources, of what had happened in Wednesday’s meeting, including which cardinals had spoken, what they had said, and whether they broke a five-minute limit on talks.

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VATICAN CITY
York Dispatch

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
Updated: 03/07/2013

VATICAN CITY—Cardinals in Rome for the conclave to elect the next pope received a briefing on the Holy See’s finances Thursday amid questions about the Vatican bureaucracy and continued suspicions about its bank.

The heads of the Vatican’s three main financial offices briefed the cardinals as required by rules covering the transition period between papacies, during which cardinals meet daily to discuss the problems of the church and the qualities needed in a new pope.

The cardinals didn’t set a date for the start of the conclave, and the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he didn’t expect a decision to be taken in Thursday’s afternoon session. The last of the 115 voting-age cardinals, Vietnamese Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, was arriving later Thursday and the date can’t be set until he does.

But a decision on the start also depends on a determination by the cardinals that they have had sufficient time to gather all the information they need about the state of the church and who should be pope.

Once the conclave starts, there is very little time for discussion. There are two votes in the morning and two votes in the afternoon—all of them conducted in silent prayer, not chatter. As a result, setting the date for the conclave is akin to setting the deadline for when deliberations effectively finish.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Yes, many Catholic priests are hypocrites. But so are the Lefty media. Most people are hypocrites; get over it

Ed West

I’m sure many of you listening to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor on Radio 4 the other day shared my disgust at how such a large and powerful organisation – one always lecturing the rest of us on morals – could be so full of sexual wrongdoers.

But that shouldn’t negate all the good work that the BBC does, nor its central moral message. It’s just that, like the Catholic Church, its members are bound to fall short of the moral demands made of them.

Dr Tom Wright has written an interesting piece for the Guardian about our attitude to hypocrisy, and why there is such an obsession with the Catholic variety. He writes:

The joke here is that it is usually the media that tell people how to behave. Yes, the church sometimes “speaks out”. But if it’s moralising you want, turn on the radio. Or pick up a newspaper. And the institution the media especially love to attack is of course the church. There is a logic to this. The media want to be the guardians of public morality, but some people still see the church that way. Very well, it must be pulled down from its perch to make way for its secular successor.

Don’t be fooled when “religious affairs correspondents” look prim and solemn and shake their heads at the latest clerical scandal. They are enjoying every minute of it. It keeps them in a job (did anyone imagine that the real “religious affairs” of this country, the prayerful and self-sacrificial work that goes on under the radar every day of every year, would ever make headlines?). More: it makes it easier to sustain the fiction that the journalists have taken over as the nation’s moral police.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, March 7 – A group representing American survivors of sexual abuse by priests on Thursday named three cardinals they said were ‘promising’ candidates for pope because of their record on child sex-abuse claims. The three lauded by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) were Cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines and Christoph Schoenborn of Austria, and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. Martin is a longshot candidate since he is not a cardinal, while the other two have been named as ‘papabili’, or papal contenders.

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UNITED STATES
ABA Journal

Posted Mar 6, 2013
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Will Pope Benedict XVI lose legal protections because of his retirement in actions seeking to hold the Vatican accountable for failing to stop clergy abuse?

The answer is no, according to Jeffrey Lena, a U.S. attorney for the Vatican. He maintains that Benedict would have the same legal immunity as other high-ranking officials, the Associated Press reports. The Vatican has legal treaties that govern relations with several countries that could provide additional legal protections.

But Minnesota lawyer Jeff Anderson, who has filed several clergy abuse lawsuits, says the pope’s decision to retire could create legal problems if he travels outside the Vatican and a government decides to take action against him.

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UNITED STATES
NPR

[with audio]

by Caitlin Kenney

March 06, 2013

Now that Pope Benedict XVI has officially gone into retirement, the next leader of the Catholic Church has a lot to consider, including finances.
Oli Scarff/Getty Images

The next pope will be the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics. He will also be leading a multibillion-dollar financial empire. And from a business perspective, the Catholic Church is struggling.

We talked to several people who study the business of the church. Here are a few of the issues they pointed out.

1. Globally, the church’s employees are in the wrong place.

Most Catholics live in Latin America, Asia and Africa, and that’s also where growth in church membership is higher. But only about half of all priests are in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

If the church were a business, the CEO would just transfer existing workers to other parts of the world. But the church just isn’t organized to make that kind of thing happen.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 March 2013 (VIS) – The Santa Martha House (Domus Sanctae Marthae) is a modern residence building located near St. Peter’s Basilica on the site of a former hospice for pilgrims. Since its construction in 1996 it has provided housing for prelates and others having business with the Holy See. The five-story building has 106 suites, 22 single rooms, and one apartment. Its management is entrusted to a director, whose appointment is reserved to the Secretariat of State, and its tasks are defined by statute.

In this period of the Sede Vacante, those persons residing in the “Domus” have been moved in order to make the necessary preparations for housing the Cardinal electors. When the Conclave begins, besides the Cardinal electors, the “Domus” will also house those persons resident within the Vatican who also form part of the Conclave, as established in No. 46 of “Universi Dominici Gregis”.

Juridically speaking, the current manifestation of the Domus Sanctae Marthae is a foundation. It was established in 1996 by a chirograph, that is, a hand-written charter, which was penned by Pope John Paul II himself. Today’s building replaces the St. Martha Hospice that was ordered built by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 during the fifth cholera pandemic to care for the sick from the areas around the Vatican. During World War II, the building was used to house refugees, Jews, and ambassadors from countries that had broken diplomatic relations with Italy.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 March 2013 (VIS) – In the course of the daily press briefing held by the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., the news reported by a press agency that some of the Masters of Ceremony had reserved St. Peter’s Basilica this coming Monday to celebrate a “pro eligendo Summo Pontefice” Mass, thus giving an indication that the Conclave date had been set, was summarily dismissed.

“I spoke with the Master of Ceremonies Marini [Msgr. Guido Marini, master of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff] personally,” Fr. Lombardi said, “and that is definitely not the case. Moreover, reserving St. Peter’s Basilica is not the task of the Master of Ceremonies but of the College of Cardinals. That news, therefore, is completely false. Also, all priests can celebrate a “pro eligendo Summo Pontefice” Mass asking God to enlighten the pontifical College in these days so such a Mass would not indicate the beginning of the Conclave.”

There were 152 cardinals present at this morning’s fifth General Congregation, which was held from 9:30am until 21:30am. This includes two newly arrived cardinals who took the oath of secrecy: Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, who is a Cardinal elector and Cardinal Giovanni Coppa, apostolic nuncio emeritus to Czech Republic. The final Cardinal elector expected, Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, archbishop of Thanh-Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, is in the process of arriving.

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VATICAN CITY
News 24

Vatican City – There are still scandals to be uncovered in the Vatican, an anonymous source who claims to have been part of a network of moles that prompted the VatiLeaks scandal said on Thursday, as cardinals continued to hold preliminary talks to elect a pope.

The VatiLeaks affair concerns the leaking of confidential papal papers that purported to shed light on alleged power struggles and corruption within the Vatican hierarchy. The butler of retired pope Benedict XVI, Paolo Gabriele, was tried and pardoned over the case.

“The pope’s butler is not the only mole in the Vatican. There are lots of moles, more than 20, all connected to the Holy See,” the source told the La Repubblica newspaper.

Before his cover was blown, Gabriele had told investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi that “around 20” people had helped him leak the documents. During the trial he retracted this, insisting he had acted alone.

“After Benedict XVI renounced his pontificate, and on the eve of the conclave, the VatiLeaks case is still relevant. And for us it is time to speak again,” the source said.

The outgoing pope tasked three cardinals to look into the affair. Their report has remained secret – although La Repubblica claims to have been informed about it and has written that its contents were so explosive that they convinced Benedict to leave his post.

Underground homosexual network

Several cardinals have said that it is important for them to question the authors of the secret report before entering the conclave.

One of their most sensational findings, according to La Repubblica, was the presence of an underground Vatican homosexual network, whose members were prone to blackmail. The cardinals allegedly also documented cases of graft and financial impropriety.

“It is all true: I could list the names of cardinals and monsignors, bishops and officials,” the source said about the gay allegations. He claimed that Nuzzi was in possession of VatiLeaks documents that have not yet been published.

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Press TV (Iran)

[with video]

An international lawyer says that the Roman Catholic Church and Pope can be sued in the International Court of Justice over hundreds of filed sexual abuses cases.

The comments come as the leader of Catholic church Pope Benedict XVI has officially resigned, ending an eight-year pontificate shaped by struggles to move the church past sex abuse scandals. Meanwhile international lawyers are looking into former Pope Benedict XVI’s legal status to see whether the former pontiff is liable to a legal action over failing to stop child sex abuse by church priests.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Edward Corrigan, international lawyer from What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Corrigan your perspective on this? How likely will this even be allowed that a lawsuit will be able to file against him and that it would actually go to court?

Corrigan: Well, there already are lawsuits that are filed against the pope and naming him as party to the action.

In particular there is a very egregious case of sexual abuse where a priest, Father Murphy, I guess actually he has admitted to this, sexually abused over 200 deaf boys and that there has been a lawsuit initiated there which names former Cardinal Ratzinger as a party and Cardinal Ratzinger was the person in charge of the…, I guess, the Vatican’s special department that looked after keeping, sort of, religious order within the church and also dealt with issues like the sexual abuse and all this. He hold that position for 20 years.

So he clearly had knowledge, in some cases the priests were defrocked, in other cases nothing happened, they were moved, they were transferred. people have criticized this sort of covering up and trying to protect the Roman Catholic Church from scandal.

Press TV: But Mr. Corrigan filing a lawsuit is very different than actually being able to take it into a court of law.

My question is, how likely is that aspect to happen? Do you think that it will actually reach that level?

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PHILIPPINES
ABC News

By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press
IMUS, Philippines March 7, 2013 (AP)

Asia’s most prominent Roman Catholic leader knows how to reach the masses: He sings on stage, preaches on TV, brings churchgoers to laughter and tears with his homilies. And he’s on Facebook.

But Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s best response against the tide of secularism, clergy sex abuse scandals and rival-faith competition could be his reputation for humility. His compassion for the poor and unassuming ways have impressed followers in his homeland, Asia’s largest Catholic nation, and church leaders in the Vatican.

Tagle’s rising star has opened a previously unimaginable possibility: An Asian pope.

The Filipino prelate’s chances are considered remote, as many believe that Latin America or Africa — with their faster growing Catholic flocks — would be more logical choices if the papal electors look beyond Europe. But even the hint of papal consideration has electrified many in the heavily Catholic Philippines, where past pontiffs had been welcomed by millions with rock-star intensity.

———

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Roman Catholic Church prepares to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, The Associated Press is profiling key cardinals seen as “papabili” — contenders to the throne. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. But these are the names that have come up time and again in speculation. Today: Luis Antonio Tagle.
______

“It’ll bring such immense glory to us and our country,” said Leo Matias, one of several waiters at a Chinese restaurant in Manila’s suburban Quezon city who served dinner to Pope John Paul II when he visited in 1995.

The restaurant has displayed the set of spoon, fork, table napkin, water goblet and knives — still unwashed after the pope’s meal of grilled fish and fried shrimp.

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VATICAN CITY
Wausau Daily Herald

John Thavis

Let’s hope the Roman Catholic cardinals were listening closely to Pope Benedict when he addressed them a few hours before resigning Feb. 28, because he sent an important signal about change in the church.

By describing the church as a “living reality” able to transform itself and adapt to the times, the pope was inviting cardinals to pick up on the spirit of his historic decision to retire at age 85.

Many in Rome believe that as the cardinals meet this week in their run-up to the conclave, they should — like the pope has done — consider some bold changes in the way Benedict’s successor carries out his ministry.

In effect, the cardinals have an opportunity to revise the pope’s job description. And there’s an appetite for change even inside the Vatican, particularly when it comes to the way the pope manages his bureaucratic apparatus, the Roman Curia.

Based on ideas Vatican officials have floated in conversations during the last two weeks, here are seven relatively simple steps the next pope could take to streamline and improve governance at the heart of the church:

• 1. Bring in his own team. Newly elected popes habitually leave the Roman Curia heads in place for years, in part because they don’t want to be seen as “rocking the boat.” But this only makes it more difficult to change policies and challenge entrenched attitudes. The next pope should thank the existing team of Vatican officials for their service, and then send them home.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Jaweed Kaleem

While the College of Cardinals meets to discuss the priorities of the Roman Catholic Church and select a new pope, a new survey shows that American Catholics see sex abuse by clergy as the church’s biggest problem.

A survey from the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life asked U.S. Catholics to describe the problems facing the church and found that 34 percent thought the most important was sexual abuse. No other issue, including lower church attendance and loss of faithful youth, got more than 10 percent of responses in the survey.

Conducted between Feb. 28 and March 3 among 184 Catholics, the poll also asked about the church’s positive role in society. Twenty-seven percent of U.S. Catholics surveyed said the church’s role in helping the poor, sick and needy was the most important, helpful work it does.

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ROME
Chicago Tribune

By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter
March 6, 2013

ROME — Days before Pope Benedict XVI resigned and Roman Catholic cardinals descended on Rome to select his successor, Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien was, for all intents and purposes, fired.

As one of the cardinal electors for the next pope, O’Brien, who later apologized for sexual misconduct with other clergy, could have had a say in the next pope. Technically, he could have become the next pontiff.

But in an exclusive interview with the Tribune before the American cardinals’ moratorium, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said there are attempts to vet candidates to avoid surprises. He also said ties to anyone guilty of sexual misconduct — whether intended or unintended — could put a man’s candidacy in question if it could distract from his spiritual mission.

David Clohessy, executive director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP, said that kind of vetting should have been taking place for decades. On Wednesday, Clohessy’s group issued a list of a dozen cardinals whose selection as pope would cause further offense to victims of sex abuse by priests.

“If it’s starting now, it’s progress,” said Clohessy, who is also in Rome during the papal transition. “Realistically, if someone will deceive his staff and his flock, he’s likely to try to deceive his colleagues as well.”

George said that given the troubling circumstances surrounding the issue of priest sex abuse, cardinals aren’t just asking about leadership and communication style. They are asking about each man’s moral character, he said.

“Does he have a past?” George gave as an example. “(O’Brien) has been in people’s minds and hearts. They’ll talk about the feeble witness of the church today because of the sins of churchmen. That would be one of them. So without mentioning him in particular, there are enough others that certainly contribute to that conviction.”

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MINNESOTA
Brainerd Dispatch

The sexual abuse of children is a public health epidemic, increasing the risk of alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, post traumatic stress and suicide in adulthood. It sometimes takes decades for victims to confront the abuse but our current laws only give victims a narrow window in which to come to terms with that abuse and seek justice against their abusers, treating it essentially the same as fraud and product liability.

Recent surveys show that one out of every two Minnesotans knows someone who has been sexually abused, and that 10 percent of Minnesotans were sexually abused themselves as a child. As a network of advocacy centers across Minnesota which provide support services to victims of sexual abuse, we see the effects of sexual abuse every day.

A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced the Minnesota Child Victims Act (SF 534/ HF 681) that would finally lift the veil of protection that many abusers and the institutions that ignore the abuse hide behind by eliminating the civil statute of limitations.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Edited By Larry Cohler-Esses

Published March 07, 2013, issue of March 15, 2013.

Adults abused as children decades ago in New York could file civil lawsuits against their abusers and the institutions that employed them, if a national surge of legislative reform reaches Albany.

Advocates for child sex abuse victims say that this year, the prospects look good for a bill that sank four times previously following strong opposition from Catholic and ultra-Orthodox groups. If passed, the legislation could ease the way for a slew of lawsuits against Jewish and Catholic institutions accused of failing to report accounts of child sex abuse to law enforcement authorities.

“I’ve never been more optimistic we can succeed in 2013,” the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, said.

Yeshiva University may also be casting a wary eye toward Albany as it continues to investigate a scandal involving abuse allegations first reported by the Forward and dating back four decades.

The bill, known as the Child Victims Act, still faces a real test in the state senate where a key Democrat, Jeffrey Klein, indicated he would not support it.

But, Markey said, the success of similar legislation in other states as well as a wave of similar bills being considered across the country this year gave her hope.

The statute of limitations sets a time limit within which victims of abuse must file civil claims against their alleged abusers or within which prosecutors must seek indictments against alleged perpetrators. The statute for civil and criminal charges varies state by state. In New York, those who claim they were abused as children must file a civil claim before their 23rd birthday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP
March 07, 2013

THE South Australian government has cleared the way for the federal government’s royal commission into child sexual abuse to conduct its investigations in the state.

Premier Jay Weatherill told state parliament on Thursday the appointment of the commissioners under state law ensured the commission had all the powers it needed to perform its functions.

The wide-ranging inquiry will look into institutional response to child sex abuse, investigating where systems failed to protect children and make recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 07, 2013

The following three papal candidates are the ones we feel are the most “promising candidates”. These three were chosen based on their words and actions in regards to the clergy sex abuse crisis. Sources include mainstream media accounts, legal filings and victims’ experiences. The names are in no particular order.

1. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle — Manilla, Philippians

[National Catholic Reporter]

Cardinal Tagle is one of very few prelates who have spoken clearly about the “culture of shame” that surrounds victims of sex abuse. He has said that the church has contributed to this culture, and says that in order to move on, the church must find ways to help victims heal.

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NEDERLAND
Friesch Dagblad

Den Haag | Drs. Wim Deetman presenteert maandag het eindrapport van het vervolgonderzoek naar seksueel misbruik van en (excessief) fysiek en psychisch geweld tegen minderjarige vrouwen in de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk.

Het is het vervolgonderzoek op het rapport van de commissie-Deetman uit december 2011. Daarin was volgens sommigen misbruik onder vrouwen onderbelicht. Van mei tot 1 juli vorig jaar konden mensen zich melden. Het gaat om de periode 1945 tot heden. De onderzoeksorganisatie heeft de bisdommen, congregaties en ordes verzocht om bij hen bekende meldingen voor zover de voormalige Onderzoekscommissie Deetman deze destijds niet heeft ontvangen, ook te melden. Daarnaast zijn het Meldpunt Seksueel Misbruik RKK, de koepelorganistatie van slachtoffers KLOKK en de commissie-Samson verzocht om bij hen bekende meldingen door te geven, na goedkeuring van de melder.

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ROM
Sueddeutsche

Sie beschuldigen aussichtsreiche Papst-Kandidaten, sexuellen Missbrauch innerhalb der katholischen Kirche vertuscht und verharmlost zu haben: Eine Gruppe von Missbrauchsopfern veröffentlich eine Liste, mit der sie zwölf Teilnehmern des Konklaves schwere Vorwürfe macht.

Peter Turkson, Tarcisio Bertone, Timothy Dolan: Mit einer schwarzen Liste erhebt eine Gruppe von Missbrauchsopfern schwere Vorwürfe gegen mehrere Kardinäle, die als aussichtsreiche Kandidaten für das Papst-Amt gelten. Die US-Organisation Snap (Netzwerk der Überlebenden von Missbrauch durch Priester) wirft zwölf Teilnehmern des Konklaves verharmlosende Äußerungen zum Thema Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche vor. Außerdem hätten sie pädophile Geistliche geschützt.

Die katholischen Prälaten müssten “aufhören zu behaupten, dass mit Blick auf sexuellen Missbrauch durch Kleriker das Schlimmste vorüber ist”, fordert Snap-Vorstand David Clohessy. Die ganze Wahrheit über den “weit verbreiteten, lang dauernden und tief verwurzelten” Missbrauch müsse in vielen Ländern erst noch aufgedeckt werden.

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CANADA
CBC

[with video]

An investigation by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michel Bastarache into sexual abuse has been delayed for the third time as more people have come forward with new allegations.

The process began last spring when several people in the southeastern village of Cap-Pelé came forward alleging abuse against Father Camille Léger, who has been dead for 23 years.

Those claims forced the church to address other allegations of sexual abuse by hiring Bastarache to lead the independent investigation.

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ROME
Prague Daily Monitor

ČTK | 7 March 2013

Prague/Vatican, March 6 (CTK) – The Prague Archbishopric Wednesday protested against the criticism of its head, Cardinal Dominik Duka, voiced by the American organisation Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

The SNAP listed Duka, primate of the Czech Catholic Church, among some dozen cardinals who did not adequately react to the accusations of priests of sexual abuse, and this is why they should not elect a new pope.

The Prague Archbishopric said the criticism of Duka was unsubstantiated.

“It was voiced as the moment when the media are strongly interested in the collegium of cardinals over the prepared election of the pope, while the cardinals, who are not at home and are pledged to secrecy, can hardly defend themselves,” the Prague Archbishopric said.

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TEXAS
The Battalion

By Jessica Smarr

Published: Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Sistine Chapel, graced by the fingers of Michelangelo and the footsteps of popes, will be the site of the upcoming papal conclave. The chapel has stood to hear the prayers of the faithful for centuries, but the world around it has not stood so still.

On Feb. 28, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in more than 600 years. Wednesday marked the third day of preliminary meetings for the cardinal electors to discuss the state of the church around the globe. Though some predicted the conclave — when the cardinals vote for the pope — will be set for early next week, the date hasn’t been announced.

As the world awaits the election of a new pope, the less flattering portraits of the Catholic Church are being painted. In the wake of the publication of stolen papal documents last year, which detailed infighting, financial scandals and sexual abuse. Immediate access to global news makes it difficult to forget the financial scandals and thousands of abuse lawsuits.

The process of selecting a new pope is built upon centuries of tradition, but the world is more connected than ever before. Christian Gonzalez, communications director for the diocese of Austin, said the increase of information and media communication has changed the way the church functions.

“The world is a certainly smaller place now,” Gonzalez said. “We’re not separated by the vast oceans anymore. We’re not even really separated by time anymore. The church has realized that. The Pope is on Twitter, the Vatican is on Facebook and on the Internet. The church realizes where it is, and where it is in terms of the world … and technology and the globalization of things.”

Yet even the way in which members of the church hierarchy communicate can differ based on background. On Monday and Tuesday, while most cardinals remained silent about pre-conclave meetings and discussions, American cardinals held press conferences. The Most Rev. Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, said it seemed “more American” to keep the media informed.

“We want to honor the confidentiality of the discussions, but at the same time let people — and letting our own folks know at home — that we are meeting day by day. There are interesting things happening and we are moving ahead,” DiNardo said in a Vatican City press conference on Tuesday.

Rev. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said Wednesday the College of Cardinals had decided to emphasize an “increasing degree of reserve,” after specific details of the proceedings were leaked to the Italian press, according to the Associated Press. The American cardinals cancelled their daily press conference, though Cardinal Timothy Dolan still proceeded with his radio broadcast that morning. This evolving relationship between the Catholic Church and the media has changed the way the average person interacts with the hierarchy.

“I think that because of social media and modern communication, we now have much more information about the cardinals themselves,” said Patrick Slattery, professor of teaching, learning and culture at Texas A&M. “So many of the struggles within the Catholic Church are becoming public in ways that they didn’t generations ago.”

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AUSTRALIA
Gadens

Independent Schools and the impact of NSW State and Federal Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Commissions

Wendy Blacker, Partner, Sydney
Amelia Williams, Paralegal, Sydney
7/03/2013

Overview

Two separate Commissions related to Child Sexual Abuse were announced in Australia in November 2012, one by the Federal Government which is wide-ranging in scope and one by the NSW Government which relates to a specific Catholic Diocese. Both however, relate to child sexual abuse in an institutional context.

Special Commission of Inquiry into matters relating to the Police investigation of certain child sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle (NSW)

The NSW Commission was formulated in response to allegations by NSW Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox that he was taken off the case (of investigating allegations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in the Hunter Region) after becoming aware that senior clergy had concealed abuse and established a close relationship with victims.

The NSW Commission may make findings and recommendations in relation to:

(a) the circumstances in which Detective Fox was asked to stop investigating the
abuse and whether it was appropriate to do so; and

(b) whether the Catholic Church (and any related organisation) assisted with
police investigations or whether any investigations were hindered or
obstructed, by such things as failure to report criminal conduct, the
discouraging of witnesses to come forward or destroying evidence.

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VATICAN CITY
KTLA

[with video]

VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles staunchly defended his record on dealing with sexual abuse in the church in an interview published by an Italian newspaper Tuesday.

Mahony, who has been criticized for moving predator priests from posting to posting, told Corriere della Sera that “after 20 years, people are talking about abuse as if we had not done anything. However, since 2002, we have had our program Protecting the Children, in which we illustrate procedures and the guidelines of our zero-tolerance policy that allows no possibility, for example, of anyone found guilty of abuse of minors working for the diocese.”

Mahony, who in recent months has refused requests for interviews with the Los Angeles Times, was publicly rebuked in February by current Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez in connection with his handling of sexual abuse cases.

The cardinal, who is in Rome ahead of the conclave to elect the successor to former Pope Benedict XVI, described to the Italian paper his approach to abuse in earlier years, saying: “I had not understood the real nature of the problem, that people who commit abuse — not only in the church — continue to commit their crimes. These things were not so well understood then as they are now.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ordained a priest of the Tehuacan diocese in Mexico in 1970, Rev. Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera was sent to the U.S. archdiocese of Los Angeles in March 1987, after he was severely attacked at the Cuacnopalan parish where he was pastor. An investigator in the case, who also lived in the parish neighborhood, said Aguilar-Rivera often had young men and teenagers spend the night with him. The investigator suspected the priest was attacked by one or more of them. Aguilar-Rivera was assigned to an East Los Angeles parish, and was transferred from there to a South Central Los Angeles parish after just a few months. In December 1987 the young sons of two of the many Spanish-speaking families whose trust Aguilar-Rivera had gained told their parents, who told the archdiocese, that the priest had sexually abused them. Aguilar-Rivera was confronted with the allegations by archdiocesan officials. The officials did not inform police, and Aguilar-Rivera fled to Mexico. California police estimated that Aguilar-Rivera sexually abused at least 26 children from both Los Angeles parishes during his nine months in the archdiocese. He is said to have abused at least 60 Mexican children, both before and after his stay in California. Aguilar-Rivera was charged with abuse in Mexico in 1997, was convicted of the charges in 2003, but was not sentenced because the judge determined that the charges were too old. He was allowed to remain in ministry. In July 2009 Aguilar-Rivera’s laicization was announced. In March 2013 Aguilar-Rivera remains at large and is on Mexico’s federal Most Wanted list on charges of rape and indecent assault.

Ordained: 1970
Laicized: 2009

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 06, 2013

SNAP calls three papal candidates “promising”
Clergy sex abuse victims cautiously release new list
And they call for 3 types of training in dioceses across globe
Two kinds – with kids & employees – are already done in US
SNAP: “But no prelate shows flock how to act when accusations surface”
So backers of alleged predators end up “intimidating” victims & witnesses
Victims have prepared 21 point brochure offering guidance for parishioners

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos, at a news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will discuss and give out a list of three “promising” prelates (based on their records in dealing with clergy sex crime and cover ups). They will also urge Catholic officials to provide training in dioceses across the world to

–teach children how to prevent and stop abuse and employees how to detect and report abuse, and

–teach parishioners and staff how to respond appropriately when abuse allegations surface, so as to not scare or intimidate others with information or suspicions about abuse into keeping quiet

WHEN
TODAY, THURSDAY, 10:45 a.m. on March 6

WHO
Two leaders of an international support group for clergy sex abuse victims called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including the organization’s long-time executive director

WHERE
The Orange Hotel at 86 Via Crescenzio in Rome (+39 06 686 8969)

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

By Maria-Pia Negro Catholic News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CNS) — Students from St. Louis Catholic School in Alexandria erupted in cheers as Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson was elected the “new pope” during a mock conclave held at a gym-turned-“Sistine Chapel” March 4.

The “conclave” explained the pope selection process in a tangible way. Middle schoolers acted as cardinals, Swiss Guards, priests, sisters, nurses, reporters and security personnel to re-enact a conclave for the whole school.

“It was a lot of fun for them just to dress the part but they really got into it. Some even picked this or that cardinal they knew (of),” said Father Matthew H. Zuberbueler, pastor of St. Louis, which is in the Arlington Diocese. “During the selection, they were very solemn. Every word mattered.”

The 34 “cardinals” of St. Louis School included well-known members of the College of Cardinals, along with representatives of all the continents. The “cardinals” spent two weeks learning about their specific role in the church and following media speculation about who was likely to replace Pope Benedict XVI.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 3, 2013

Rome —
John Allen is offering a profile each day of one of the most frequently touted papabili, or men who could be pope. The old saying in Rome is that he who enters a conclave as pope exits as a cardinal, meaning there’s no guarantee one of these men actually will be chosen. They are, however, the leading names drawing buzz in Rome these days, ensuring they will be in the spotlight as the conclave draws near. The profiles of these men also suggest the issues and the qualities other cardinals see as desirable heading into the election.

While there are still no tracking polls to establish who’s got legs as a papal candidate, the 2013 conclave at least has one objective measure not available in 2005: past performance. Many of the cardinals seen as candidates now were also on offer the last time around, and someone who had traction eight years ago could be a contender again.

By that measure alone, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, at least merits a look.

After the dust settled from the election of Benedict XVI, various reports identified the Argentine Jesuit as the main challenger to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. One cardinal later said the conclave had been “something of a horse race” between Ratzinger and Bergoglio, and an anonymous conclave diary splashed across the Italian media in September 2005 claimed that Bergoglio received 40 votes on the third ballot, just before Ratzinger crossed the two-thirds threshold and became pope.

Though it’s hard to say how seriously one should take the specifics, the general consensus is that Bergoglio was indeed the “runner-up” last time around. He appealed to conservatives in the College of Cardinals as a man who had held the line against liberalizing currents among the Jesuits, and to moderates as a symbol of the church’s commitment to the developing world.

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ROME
Chiesa

Perhaps the archbishop of New York. Or that of Boston. In the footsteps of Benedict XVI, moreover with the lash against mismanagement in hand. But the curia is resisting and counterattacking, bringing forward a Brazilian cardinal in its trust

by Sandro Magister

ROME, March 7, 2013 – The easiest bet is that the next pope will not be Italian. But not European, African, or Asian ether. For the first time in the bimillennial history of the Church, the successor of Peter could come from the Americas. Or to hazard a more targeted prediction: from the Big Apple.

Timothy Michael Dolan, archbishop of New York, 63, is a larger-than-life man from the Midwest with a radiant smile and overflowing vigor, precisely that “vigor of both body and mind” which Joseph Ratzinger recognized he had lost and defined as necessary for his successor, for the sake of properly “governing the barque of Peter and proclaiming the Gospel.”

In Benedict XVI’s act of resignation there was found already the title of the program of the future pope. And many cardinals were quickly reminded of the visionary vivacity with which Dolan developed precisely this theme, with his “primordial” Italian, his words, but scintillating, at the consistory one year ago, when he himself, the archbishop of New York, was preparing to receive the scarlet:

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ROME
Ottawa Citizen

By Nick Squires, The Daily Telegraph
March 6, 2013

The Vatican was accused of censorship Wednesday after cardinals were told to stop talking to the media about the process of electing a new pope.

In the past week American cardinals have given several briefings in Rome to discuss the challenges facing the Roman Catholic Church.

The Americans have called for the reform of the Roman Curia, the governing body of the Church, which has earned a reputation as a hotbed of turf wars and corruption.

But the briefings were stopped and the Americans gagged after other cardinals expressed fears of negative publicity relating to the conclave, the secretive election in the Sistine Chapel by which a new pontiff will be chosen.

The American cardinals, through the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that concern had been expressed “about leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers”. The Vatican denied ordering the American cardinals to cancel the briefings.

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ROME
Bloomberg

By Jeffrey Donovan – Mar 6, 2013

Roman Catholic cardinals are going silent as divisions open up in their debate about when to start the secret Vatican conclave to pick a successor to retired Pope Benedict XVI.

American cardinals taking part in the pre-conclave talks at the Vatican canceled a scheduled press briefing yesterday in Rome following “leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers,” Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the U.S. bishops’ conference, said in an e-mailed statement.

While “the U.S. cardinals are committed to transparency and have been pleased” to engage the media in Rome this week, the church’s 207-strong College of Cardinals “agreed not to give interviews” after the leaks, she said. The Vatican denied exerting any pressure on the cardinals, who vow to keep secret all details of the talks known as the general congregations.

Cardinals from around the world are gathering for a fourth day to discuss challenges facing the church, size up possible papal candidates and set a date for the conclave. While the Vatican has said a pope should be in place by Easter on March 31, cardinals from more than 50 countries and six continents have yet to hold a vote on when to enter the Sistine Chapel to pick a new pontiff.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

March 6, 2013 By TheMediaReport.com

It may have been a first.

In what may have been the first time ever on a major television outlet, two popular TV personalities finally revealed that the media’s never-ending obsession with decades-old episodes in the Church actually has nothing to do with the abuse of children and everything to do with the Catholic Church standing in firm opposition to the media’s radical, secularist worldview.

A discussion starts with two

Radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham joined host Bill O’Reilly last Thursday on The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel to talk about how the news of the Pope’s resignation has simply been used as an excuse by the media to once again rehash claims of sex abuse in the Church from 40 and 50 years ago.

O’Reilly, the highest rated host on cable news, opined that the media’s hammering of the Church about old abuse claims is, in reality, “all abortion-driven.” He added:

“The American media in general worships at the altar of ‘reproductive rights,’, and the primary driver against abortion is the Catholic Church, and that’s what this is all about.”

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ROME
Telegraph (UK)

Clergy sex abuse victims listed a “dirty dozen” potential papal candidates and urged the Roman Catholic Church to “get serious” about protecting children, helping victims and exposing corruption.

“We want to urge Catholic prelates to stop pretending that the worst is over regarding the clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis,” said David Clohessy, director of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

“Tragically, the worst is almost certainly ahead,” he said, adding that the truth of “widespread, longstanding and deeply-rooted” abuse and coverups has “yet to surface in most nations.”

The organisation cited a dozen cardinals from the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Italy, Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina and Ghana accused of protecting paedophile priests and making offensive public statements.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

American Cardinals and others want to keep the worldwide Catholic faithful, the guys who pay the bills, up to speed through media briefings. They also want to digest fully, if not read, the secret dossier on Vatican Cardinals’ scandals. The German Cardinals and others want a transparent and horizontal leadership structure (collegiality), regardless of the dossier’s revelations. The Vatican Cardinals want maximum secrecy and continued Curial domination with the present hierarchical structure. Who is right?

The Gospels have the answers. The Apostles talked freely and openly as equals to and with the first baptised Christians, the original People of God. The Truth made them free. No secrecy and no hierarchy. Case closed! The Gospels trump the Vatican clique’s orders every day of the week. Cardinals are under a clear evangelical mandate to disobey the corrupt Vatican clique’s gag order.

The Conclave must reject unnecessary secrecy and end the Conclave’s domination by the Vatican clique. How? On matters of truth telling, individual Cardinals’ consciences must be the last word. God demand’s no less. All Cardinals, Catholics are told, are successors to the Apostles. More Cardinals must now show some Christian fortitude as the original Apostles did when it mattered most. It matters most now.

On restoring the consensual and horizontal structure that Jesus and his early followers left behind, Cardinals must abide by the majority decision of voting Cardinals. This has usually been the traditional rule for 2,000 years for Church decisions at councils and synods that had been undermined and stymied by successive Vatican bureaucratic cliques for a half century since Vatican II. All voting Cardinals are now equal and the Pope has exited and has no further authority. All voting Cardinals wear red dresses. None are redder than the other. Pretty simple!

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Mark Abrams

ROME (CBS) – The Philadelphia woman who is behind a website open for Catholic dialogue on the clergy sex abuse scandal is hoping the Cardinals selecting the next Pope will elect someone who isn’t afraid to tackle the crisis.

Susan Matthews, founder and publisher of Catholics4Change.com, says the site grew out of frustration over the lack of places for Catholics to speak freely and honestly about the clergy abuse scandal here in Philadelphia.

However, she says it’s just an issue limited to the United States, but is clearly a problem for the church all over Europe as well.

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FLORIDA
News-Press

A Venice priest has been arrested, charged in the theft of more than $50,000 in church funds.

Robert Kondratick, 67, is believed to have written 28 checks for $53,950 over a 7-month period last year. Some of the checks were made out to “Cash” while the others were made out to himself, investigators say.

Holy Spirit Orthodox Church council members told investigators that Kondratick asked for blank checks to pay the church’s expenses. They state he was paid $3,673 a month, as well as reimbursed for medical insurance. He also received an automobile allowance. Those amounts paid to Kondratick are separate from the funds he allegedly misused, investigators say.

The probable cause affidavit states that a number of the checks Kondratick wrote were noted to have been intended for a “Good Samaritan Fund,” which is used to help parishioners. According to the check memo line, the amount of these checks was $18,000.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The director fo the Holy See Press Office expressed irritation today at U.S. cardinal’s on-the-side press briefings. In the afternoon, prayers were said in St. Peter’s Basilica and tomorrow cardinal electors are due to attend two General Congregation sessions

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

“Parallel” news briefings organised by U.S. cardinals at their headquarters – the Pontifical North American College of Cardinals, on Rome’s Janiculum Hill – are to stop. The news came out after American cardinal electors announced their decision this morning and just as the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, was holding his daily news conference on the pre-Conclave General Congregations, in the Holy See Press Office.

The news stunned the over 5 thousand accredited journalists who are covering the Conclave and the preparatory meetings. The American cardinals’ decision to hold daily briefings with the media seemed to signal a new willingness to open up to and show trust in the media, establishing a more transparent relationship with the press, without having to resort to the traditional anonymous source strategy which dominates Vatican news coverage.

“Concern was expressed in the general congregation about leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers. As a precaution, the cardinals have agreed not to do interviews,” the U.S. prelates’ spokesman, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said in a short statement.

During today’s press conference, Fr. Federico Lombardi answering questions about the cancellation of U.S. cardinals’ meetings with the press in an irritated tone. “Ask them,” he said bluntly. Before this, Lombardi had underlined that the Conclave and the preparatory discussions leading up to it, are not be confused with congresses of Synods of Bishops. In the pre-Conclave Congregations, “cardinals reflect in order to arrive at certain conscientious conclusions
that will help them in choosing the new Pope. Confidentiality is a Conclave tradition,” he recalled. Of course, he added, no one would dream of telling cardinals how to deal with the press. But Lombardi also reiterated that it is the College of Cardinals’ job to give guidance.

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VATICAN CITY
660 News

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press Mar 6, 2013

VATICAN CITY – In the end, American-style transparency was no match for the Vatican’s obsession with secrecy.

Cardinals attending closed-door discussions ahead of the conclave to elect the next pope imposed a media blackout Wednesday, forcing the cancellation of the popular daily press briefings by U.S. cardinals that had provided crucial insights into the deliberations.

The official reason for the blackout was that some details of the secret discussions about the problems in the church appeared in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

But speculation mounted that the underlying aim of the blackout was to silence the Americans, who have been vocal in their calls for disclosure about allegations of corruption and dysfunction in the Holy See’s governance before they enter the conclave to elect a successor to Benedict XVI.

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CANADA
Windsor Star

Sarah Sacheli

Charges against a Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing boys more than four decades ago were withdrawn and stayed in a Chatham court this week.

Piotr Sanczenko, 86, had faced three counts of indecent assault stemming from allegations that date from 1963 to 1973 when Sanczenko served at Our Lady of Victory Church in Chatham. The Crown Tuesday withdrew two of the counts and stayed one.

A stay means the Crown has one year to resurrect the charge.

“The Crown assessed the entire situation,” defence lawyer Andrew Bradie said Wednesday. “It won’t be a surprise to anyone. Everyone was consulted.”

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ROME
KSDK

[with video]

Brandie Piper

ROME (CNN) – A group representing survivors of sexual abuse by priests named a “Dirty Dozen” list of cardinals it said would be the worst candidates for pope based on their handling of child sex abuse claims.

Their presence on the list is based “on their actions and/or public comment about child sex abuse and cover up in the church,” the group said.

The list includes Roman Catholic cardinals from several countries.

SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, said as it released the list Wednesday that its accusations were based on media reports, legal filings and victims’ statements.

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ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Florence, March 6 – A new documentary about priest sex abuse is opening in Italy around the time that cardinals are convening in Rome to elect a new pope. Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s new film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God premieres in Florence March 18. The hard-hitting documentary about the Vatican’s record on managing child-abusing priests spans decades and continents, beginning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Father Lawrence Murphy is believed to have abused up to 200 schoolboys as head of the St John’s School for the Deaf.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Charles J. Reid Jr.

We are not moving gently or confidently toward the next conclave. We are staggering toward it. The worldwide Catholic Church, in just the last few weeks, has had to confront some truly ugly scandals.

Consider: In late January, the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, had to order his predecessor, Roger Cardinal Mahony, to cease public ministry following the release of thousands of pages of personnel files detailing the Cardinal’s role in the cover-up of priestly molestation cases going back to the 1980s. Over the vigorous objections of Los Angeles’ Catholics, Mahony insists on voting in the forthcoming conclave. Then, on Feb. 22, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and the only British cardinal of voting age, resigned from office and indicated that he had no plans to vote in the conclave. His decision followed complaints made by several priests that the Cardinal had made unwanted sexual advances towards them. Earlier in February, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, published the story that Pope Benedict’s resignation was finally forced by a report made by three trusted cardinals detailing acts of sexual misconduct by Vatican priests. The report, whose contents remain unknown even though its existence has been more or less confirmed, will be delivered to the new pope for, it is hoped, swift action.

Can any good come of this? It is too much to expect sweeping reforms. Women priests, for instance, are simply not in the cards. Still, the situation facing the Church is sufficiently grave that we are entitled to hope for some dramatic actions. The Church — by which I mean not Catholics alone but all Christians — can only pray that at least some of the following steps are taken:

1. The Church’s government must become less monarchical.

Such a move would be in keeping with the progress of Church history since the latter 19th century. Prior to 1870, the pope was both the spiritual head of the worldwide Catholic Church and the temporal ruler of a large swatch of central Italy (the papal states). With the reunification of Italy in 1870, the papacy’s temporal rule was reduced to Vatican City.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Diarmaid MacCulloch, a professor of the history of the church at the University of Oxford, argues that the job facing the next pope is too great for one man. He says the church should not fear decentralisation, nor the ending of the doctrine of clerical celibacy, nor the affording of equal rights to women – even at the expense of unity

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ROME
Rome Reports

[with video]

March 5, 2013. (Romereports.com) Nearly an hour after the end of the third general congregations, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley said he would likely wear his Capuchin cassock until his death.

When asked if he would trade it for the white cassock if elected Pope, O’Malley said no, but not as an act of defiance.

CARD. SEAN O’MALLEY
Archbishop of Boston
“I’ve worn this uniform for over 40 years, and I presume that I will wear it until I will die, because I don’t expect to be elected Pope, so I don’t expect to have a change in wardrobe.”

The archbishop of Boston, along with Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, answered questions about the pre-conclave deliberations taking place inside the Vatican.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 3, 2013

Rome

Seen through American eyes, perhaps the biggest surprise of the run-up to the 2013 conclave has been the emergence of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as a longshot candidate for the papacy, at least as these things are assessed by the global media.

Going in, many church-watchers believed Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was the great American hope, and he’s indeed still drawing mention.

Yet in the days since Benedict XVI’s Feb. 11 resignation announcement, a striking number of handicappers also have tossed O’Malley into the mix, partly because of his profile as a reformer on clerical abuse scandals, and partly because his plain brown Capuchin habit contrasts sharply with stereotypes of the Vatican as a bevy of power games and wealth.

Speaking today to NCR, O’Malley described the buzz around him as “surreal” and, if he thinks too much about it, “very scary.” At the same time, he described himself as a “very dark horse” in the race.

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ROME
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff
March 05, 2013

ROME — A reporter had a question for Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley that she said came from her daughter. Would the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston continue to wear his “cappuccino robe” if elected pope, the reporter asked at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

O’Malley, blushing, chuckled along with the reporters gathered at the Pontifical North American College, where the US cardinals are staying before the conclave to select a new leader of the church.

“I have worn this uniform for over 40 years, and I presume I will wear it until I die, because I don’t expect to be elected pope,” he said. He stammered slightly. “So — I don’t expect to have a change of wardrobe.”

O’Malley, a Capuchin friar whose order’s name derives from the brown hooded habits its members wear, has been deflecting a lot of questions lately about the possibility he could replace Benedict XVI, whose retirement last month triggered the meeting of cardinals. Most Vatican analysts consider the notion of an American pope a long shot, but some say that O’Malley’s chances could improve if no consensus emerges after a few days of voting.

O’Malley answered questions from the press for about 30 minutes with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston. O’Malley, who holds a doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese literature, answered two questions in Spanish during the session and then addressed a scrum of Spanish-language media afterward.

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ROME
Boston Globe

Strong policies on abusive priests vital for new pope, O’Malley says

By Lisa Wangsness
Globe Staff / March 5, 2013

ROME — Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said Tuesday that the next pope must make sure the Roman Catholic Church adopts measures to deal with bishops whose “malfeasance” allowed abusive priests to ­remain in ministry.

O’Malley said in an interview that the successor to Pope Benedict XVI will need to continue Benedict’s campaign to get bishops across the world to adopt policies for dealing with accused abusers. That should include procedures for disciplining bishops who protect abusive priests, said O’Malley, among dozens of cardinals gathered at the Vatican.

The US bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy on clergy sexual abuse a decade ago, requir­ing removal from ministry of any priest credibly ­accused of abusing a minor, but some church leaders have not followed it. The bishop of Kansas City was convicted last fall of failing to report child abuse by a priest, but the church has not sanctioned him.

“There needs to be a path” for disciplining bishops, O’Malley said. “Right now, it’s not terribly clear, but it’s something the next pope will have to deal with.”

Without a protocol in place, he said, it falls to the Vatican to decide what to do with each ­errant bishop on a case-by-case basis. “My point is always that if you don’t have policies, you’ll be improvising, and when you improvise, you make a lot of mistakes,” he said.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston discussed some of the issues at stake in the papal election in a brief inter­view Tuesday in a corridor of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, a peaceful hilltop seminary about 10 minutes by foot from the Vatican.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

The process to select a successor to Pope Benedict XVI is beginning amid yet another clergy sex scandal, this one involving the cardinal who, until last month, headed the Catholic Church in Scotland. The precise dimensions of the allegations directed at Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who has acknowledged engaging in inappropriate behavior, aren’t fully known. But the case underscores that the next pope will inherit a church leadership that is suffering from a crisis of confidence, has become alienated from many followers in Europe and the United States, and is looking for a deeper connection with the predominantly Catholic societies of Latin America.

In recent weeks, some prominent Catholics have mentioned the name of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as a possible successor to Benedict. O’Malley is assumed to be a long-shot candidate. Nevertheless, the speculation is a tribute to O’Malley’s work in restoring order to the Archdiocese of Boston after the revelation, a decade ago, of its efforts to cover up clergy sex abuse. O’Malley, a Capuchin friar, has a calm, pastoral manner that helped soothe the bitter feelings left by his more forceful predecessor, Bernard Law. O’Malley’s work in re-examining the archdiocese’s procedures for handling allegations against the clergy was recognized by Benedict when he chose the Boston cardinal for the politically sensitive task of examining the Archdiocese of Dublin in the wake of similar allegations there.

Moreover, O’Malley is fluent in Spanish and has long performed outreach to Hispanic Catholics in the United States and Latin America. He even holds a doctorate from the Catholic University of America in Spanish and Portuguese literature.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on four recent surveys of Catholics:

The larger the sample size of any population, the more costly the survey, but the more accurate the findings. Catholics make up anywhere between 70 and 78 million Americans, but even a sample of 1,500 can yield relatively accurate results (the margin of error in such a survey would generally be 3 percentage points). Two surveys of Catholics published today did not come close to this baseline sample.

The New York Times poll sampled 580 Catholics; it had a 4 percentage point margin of error. The Pew Research Center sampled 184 Catholics, allowing a margin of error of 8.2 percentage points.

Such samples are inadequate. By contrast, a Rasmussen poll of Catholics published last month had a sample size of 1,000; the margin of error was 3 percentage points. Ten days ago, Gallup did a survey of just one subset of Catholics, Hispanics, and had a sample size of 28,607; its margin of error was only 1 percentage point.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN

Published: March 5, 2013

Roman Catholics in the United States say that their church and bishops are out of touch, and that the next pope should lead the church in a more modern direction on issues like birth control and ordaining women and married men as priests, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Seven out of 10 say Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican have done a poor job of handling sexual abuse, a significant rise from three years ago. A majority said that the issue had led them to question the Vatican’s authority. The sexual abuse of children by priests is the largest problem facing the church, Catholics in the poll said.

Three-fourths of those polled said they thought it was a good idea for Benedict to resign. Most wanted the next pope to be “someone younger, with new ideas.” A majority said they wanted the next pope to make the church’s teachings more liberal.

With cardinals now in Rome preparing to elect Benedict’s successor, the poll indicated that the church’s hierarchy had lost the confidence and allegiance of many American Catholics, an intensification of a long-term trend. They like their priests and nuns, but many feel that the bishops and cardinals do not understand their lives.

“I don’t think they are in the trenches with people,” said Therese Spender, 51, a homemaker in Fort Wayne, Ind., who said she attended Mass once a week and agreed to answer further questions after the poll. “They go to a lot of meetings, but they are not out in the street.”

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

[U.S. Catholics Welcome a Papal Change – video from The New York Times]

By DALIA SUSSMAN

Published: March 5, 2013

Just ahead of the conclave that will choose his successor, a quarter of American Catholics said Benedict’s leadership had helped the Church, just over 10 percent said it hurt the Church, while most, 52 percent, said it had been mixed.

Those results are similar to a 2010 poll, but are less positive than views of Pope John Paul II’s leadership in polls taken during his papacy by The New York Times and CBS News. In polls conducted in 2002 and 2004, more than 4 in 10 Catholics said his leadership helped the Church. Following his death in 2005, more than 6 in 10 said so.

“He just seemed kind of bland,” Dorothy Lascuola, 66, a frequent churchgoer from Butler, Pa., said of Pope Benedict XVI in a follow-up interview. “I guess I try to draw a parallel with John Paul II and I really admired him and his stance on a lot of different issues. I didn’t see Pope Benedict as a leader per se. I hope we have a stronger leader coming forth this time. And a younger one. I think he carried a lot of baggage.”

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Mar. 6, 2013

Rome

In the wake of today’s news that the Americans will no longer be doing daily press briefings in the run-up to the conclave, apparently after cardinals in the General Congregation meeting this morning expressed concern about leaks in the Italian papers, there are all sorts of good questions one might ask. Three, however, seem the most immediately intriguing.

• First, why did it happen?
• Second, what’s the PR fallout?
• Third, does this help or hurt the chances for an American pope?

The first two are easier to answer, at least without veering into the realm of the speculative.

In terms of the reason for the gag order, a statement from the U.S. bishops indicated that concerns had been expressed in the General Congregation meetings about details of their supposedly confidential discussions showing up in Italian newspapers, and as a precautionary measure, the Americans have decided not to give interviews.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas C. Fox | Mar. 4, 2013

As the cardinals gather in discussions this week to determine the road ahead, I hope they stay focused on church governance as the key to moving forward.

It is widely understood that Vatican dysfunction has placed a heavy burden on the church and led to the burdens of which Emeritus Pope Benedict spoke before his retirement.

The Vatican is incapable of running the global church. But let’s keep in mind it did not have to be this way – and that our emeritus pope brought much of it on himself.

“My strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” he told the world upon announcing his surprise resignation.

Few will find fault the honest recognition by the 85-year-old prelate that he was no longer up to the task of running the church.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Longtime Vatican reporter John Thavis’s new book is full of revelations about the last papal conclave, on the pope’s jet, and the sex scandals under Benedict’s reign. By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Vatican insider John Thavis always had a hunch Pope Benedict XVI would retire. But he had no idea it would coincide with the release of his book Vatican Diaries which was published on February 21. “I’d like to say I had planned it that way,” he told The Daily Beast in the Vatican’s press office days after the papal resignation. “But it was just a happy coincidence.” …

Thavis wastes no words on his condemnation of the Vatican’s handling of the various sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church in the 30 years he has been covering the Vatican beat. He dedicates several chapters to the unsavory sex abuse cases the Catholic Church has been involved in, and manages to explain in laymen’s terms the very complicated Legions of Christ scandal by walking through a series of investigations and interviews by high-ranking church officials including the Vatican’s promoter of justice. He focuses on the lurid life of Legions founder Father Marcial Ma­ciel Degollado and paints as vivid a character profile of the disturbingly strange man as has been written to date. Father Marcial, as he is referred to, was a favorite of Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II, despite a myriad of allegations of sexual improprieties and financial corruption. Benedict, as pope, finally put an end to Marcial’s reign amid his apologies to seminarians he sexually abused and his admission that he had fathered several children with different women. “Nowhere was there any hint that the order itself bore any responsibility for a cover-up; on the contrary, the Legion’s highest officials were portraying themselves as victims of Maciel’s duplicity,” Thavis writes. “And while the Legion was admitting to the founder’s extramural heterosexual affair— he was human, after all— it re­fused to touch the more serious allegations that Maciel had turned his own seminary into a pedophilia camp.”

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ROME
Perth Now

AAP
March 07, 2013

CLERGY sex abuse victims have released a “dirty dozen” list of potential papal candidates – including Australia’s George Pell – and are urging the Catholic Church to “get serious” about protecting children, helping victims and exposing corruption.

“We want to urge Catholic prelates to stop pretending that the worst is over regarding the clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis,” said David Clohessy, director of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

“Tragically, the worst is almost certainly ahead.”

The organisation cited a dozen cardinals from the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Italy, Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina and Ghana accused of protecting pedophile priests and making offensive public statements.

They are all considered to be contenders to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who was criticised for his handling of the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church in the United States and Europe.

SNAP also opposes electing any member of the Roman Curia, the administrative branch of the Holy See.

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ROME
Sky News

US cardinals in Rome have abruptly cancelled media briefings in a victory for pre-conclave secrecy as workers readied the Sistine Chapel for a historic ceremony to elect the next Pope after Benedict XVI’s resignation.

‘Concern was expressed about leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers. As a precaution, the cardinals have agreed not to do interviews,’ Sister Mary Ann Walsh, US Conference of Catholic Bishops spokeswoman, said in a statement.

US cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, had been due to address journalists at the Pontifical North American College in Rome as part of a series of congenial briefings which have drawn crowds of journalists.

Italian media earlier on Wednesday reported there were ‘sparks’ flying at pre-conclave meetings between US and German cardinals, keen to have longer discussions ahead of the conclave, and Italian ones pushing for a papal election as quickly as possible.

The Vatican denied it had intervened directly to censor the electors, with spokesman Federico Lombardi saying: ‘It seems natural that the path towards the conclave lead progressively to greater reflection and discretion.’

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VATICAN CITY
Moneycontrol

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Vatican officials on Wednesday told cardinals gathered for the election of the next pope to stop speaking to the media, as further indications emerged that a conclave would not start early next week as had been expected.

American cardinals who had been scheduled to hold their third media briefing in as many days cancelled it less than an hour before it was to have started at Rome’s North American College, where they are residing.

A spokeswoman for the American cardinals said “concern” was expressed at Wednesday’s closed-door meeting “about leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers”.

More than 150 cardinals attended the third day of the preliminary meetings to sketch a profile for the next pope following the shock abdication of Pope Benedict last month. All but two of the 115 “cardinal electors” aged under 80 have arrived for the meetings, the Vatican said.

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ROME
Christian Post

By Stoyan Zaimov, Christian Post Reporter

March 6, 2013

A group of survivors of sexual abuse by clergy have identified 12 cardinals who are currently a candidate for pope in the Roman Catholic Church that have the worst history when it comes to responding to child sex abuse claims.

SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, told media on Wednesday that it was basing its list on news reports, legal filings and victims’ statements.

“The single quickest and most effective step would be for the next pope to clearly discipline, demote, denounce and even defrock cardinals and bishops who are concealing child sex crimes. We think that’s the missing piece,” said SNAP Executive Director David Clohessy.

The top Catholic cardinals of the church are currently in Rome getting ready to vote on a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI, who became the first pope in close to 600 years to retire from his position. They know that the world is watching and expecting that they start taking steps to tackle the child abuse reports that have gripped the church over the past couple of decades.

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UNITED STATES/ROME
KTVA

By Joshua Norman / CBS News
Story Created: Mar 6, 2013

To call the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church the elephant in the room ahead of the conclave to choose the next pope is to not do justice to the enormity of the problem the institution still faces, and will likely face for years to come.

Addressing the problem directly, abuse victims and their advocates in four countries so far have begun naming various cardinals they believe should either be removed from papal consideration, or even from the very process to name the next pontiff, due to their actions around the scandal. Some of the names they have singled out are considered front-runners by Vatican observers.

“It is difficult. Who would be a good pope? I don’t know,” said Becky Ianni, Washington, D.C. and Virginia director for the advocacy group SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abuse by Priests. “It’s really hard to say.”

SNAP has singled out a “Dirty Dozen” cardinals who are contenders for pope that they consider “to be the worst choices in terms of protecting kids, healing victims, and exposing corruption.”

The members of the “Dirty Dozen” cardinals, according to SNAP, are: Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras), Norberto Rivera (Mexico), Marc Ouellet (Canada), Peter Turkson (Ghana), George Pell (Australia), Tarcisio Bertone (Italy), Angelo Scola (Italy), Leonardo Sandri (Argentina), Dominik Duka (Czech Republic), Sean O’Malley (United States), Timothy Dolan (United States), and Donald Wuerl (United States).

Of those, Vatican magazine senior editor and CBS News contributor Delia Gallagher identified Dolan, Maradiga, O’Malley, Ouellet, Sandri, Scola, Turkson, and Carrera as legitimate contenders to be the next pope.

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IRELAND
The Economist

Mar 6th 2013, 17:21 by B.C. | MOYGOWNAGH, IRELAND

FATHER Brendan Hoban is a priest in a remote Irish village who is also active in the national and international Catholic scene. In the midst of this busy life, he told me, he often reflects on something he heard from a professor when he was in seminary 40 years ago. “Irish people,” the professor remarked, “have a great sense of the usefulness of things. When things are not seen as useful any more, they are discarded. In the era when the Irish language was seen as not useful for people’s lives and careers, they stopped speaking it. And that may eventually happen to the structures of the Catholic church.”

At the time, it seemed an extraordinary thing to say; Ireland was still a pious country, and hundreds of new priests were being ordained every year. Proud of having kept the faith in the teeth of oppression, the whole Irish nation, so it seemed, turned out to welcome the newly elevated Pope John Paul II as a super-star when he visited in 1979. But since then, of course, the professor’s words have turned out to be prophetic. This is a land where the church’s institutional prestige has fallen more vertiginously than almost anywhere else in the Western world, thanks mainly to a series of reports that have documented horrific suffering in church-backed schools and institutions, and to an ever clearer picture of scandalous cover-ups. By rich-world standards Ireland is still quite a devout nation—nearly half the population attends church regularly—but its religious orders are in their death throes and the annual number of ordinations is now in single figures.

It was partly in the Irish spirit of tough-minded practicality and “usefulness” that Father Hobhan and several colleagues founded the Association of Catholic Priests a couple of years ago, with the open intention of revisiting thorny questions like priestly celibacy, the possibility of women priests, and church teaching on contraception. They say the response has been overwhelming. When they organize events, far more people attend than they expected. The aim is not, he stresses, to overturn any of the the core doctrines of the church; what he and his fellow clerics are calling for is a faithful implementation of the second Vatican council which raised hopes, in the mid-1960s, of a church that was more responsive to local bishops, priests and ordinary believers.

From the viewpoint of Father Hoban’s west-of-Ireland flock, mostly pretty faithful Catholics who expect the church to minister to their needs, mourn their dead and accompany them in life’s hardest moments, the present order of things simply seems to have outlived its usefulness. In one large nearby parish, the number of priests has fallen by natural attrition from four to two; but there are seven ex-priests in the locality who left the clerical state to get married. They would help out again if the rules allowed them. In Dublin, “permanent deacons” (many of them married) have been ordained, with the authority to peform most rites except the Eucharist. That looks like a significant step on the road to letting clergy marry.

I was struck by the huge differences (and one or two points of convergence) between Father Hoban’s liberal perspective and that of George Weigel, who is one of America’s most influential lay Catholics and a staunch conservative; I interviewed him recently for an Economist podcast. Both claim to be strong supporters of Vatican II but they interpret that council in very different ways. Mr Weigel hails the fact that Vatican II fully endorsed the liberal-democratic idea of religious freedom, renounced theocracy and made peace with the Jews; he sees the last two popes as faithful implementers of the council. Father Hoban, in line with liberal-minded Catholics across the world, feels that the ideals of the council were badly let down during the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on some of the findings from a survey of self-identified Catholics as reported in today’s New York Times:

Whether someone who “attends Mass a few times a year or never” can be considered Catholic is debatable, but at any rate those responses make for interesting reading when compared to those who “attend Mass weekly.”

The majority of weekly attendees have a favorable view of Pope Benedict XVI; only a quarter of those who rarely attend feel the same way. Regarding recent papal events, 72% of weekly attendees have been closely following the news stories, while only 35% of those who rarely attend have been doing so. The majority of weekly church-goers would like to see the new pope either continue Benedict’s teachings or adopt more conservative ones. Among the no-shows, only 20% agree with that position (66% want more liberal teachings).

Not surprisingly, weekly attendees see the healthcare insurance debate as a religious liberty issue, but nominal Catholics see it as a matter of women’s health. Regular church-goers want the next pope to be against abortion (70%) and the death penalty (67%), but the figures for lax Catholics are 45% and 50% respectively. In other words, those who rarely or never attend Mass are more inclined to oppose the death penalty for a convicted murderer than they are to oppose the killing of innocents!

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY Michael O’Keeffe

New York state lawmaker Margaret Markey will hold a rally and press conference outside City Hall on Friday before a Manhattan hearing on her Child Victims Act, which would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations in sex abuse cases.

The speakers will include Kevin Mulhearn, the attorney who represented 12 men in a sex abuse suit filed against Poly Prep Country Day School, and Phillip Culhane, one of the plaintiffs in the case. Markey, a Democratic assemblywoman from Queens, has said the bill was inspired in part by the Poly Prep, Syracuse and Penn State scandals.

Also on the roster: Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, Mia Fernandez of the National Crime Victims Center and Yeshiva Law School professor Marci Hamilton. Two men close to the Horace Mann sexual abuse allegations – Amos Kamil, the author of The New York Times Magazine article on abuse at Horace Mann and Robert Boynton of the Horace Mann Action Coalition – will also be present. So will Tina Weber, an attorney who persuaded authorities in Massachusetts to prosecute an Albany-area priest after her clients were shut out in New York because of the statute of limitations.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I highly recommend T.F. Charlton’s essay right now at Religion Dispatches, re: the culture of abuse being exposed by lawsuits filed against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM). Chariton grew up in an SGM church. He describes the group as “a U.S.-based church-planting network (they say ‘family’) of predominantly white, suburban, reformed evangelical congregations.” This church-planting network sprang from Covenant Life Church (CLC) of Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is named in the lawsuits filed against SGM.

As Charlton notes, Lou Engle, the influential dominionist pastor who founded The Call and who has been in the thick of the movement to export American-style homophobia to Africa, got his start with CLC. Chariton also maintains that it’s no accident that SGM and CLC have ended up facing lawsuits alleging that this movement has fostered a serious culture of abuse of women and children: as he maintains, that culture of abuse is “the result of the group’s toxic teachings on parenting, gender, and sexuality.”

Charlton notes that briefs filed by plaintiffs in the suits against SGM and CLC “describe a church culture where pastors’ sympathies routinely lay with male perpetrators of sexual abuse, particulary married fathers, who were allowed continued access to victims and other children in the church.” Women plaintiffs allege that they have been bullied and ostracized when they have tried to make their abuse known, and have been told that their obligation is not in any way to undermine the “leadership” position of their husbands in their families. One woman who discovered that her husband was sexually abusing their 10-year-old daughter was informed by church officials that this happened because she was not meeting her husband’s sexual needs, and she was encouraged to enhance their sexual relationship to prevent his molestation of their daughter.

All of this is rooted, Charlton maintains, in a “perfect storm of doctrine.” As he observes,

It’s no accident that so many allegations of serious abuse have arisen across SGM’s churches. The combination of patriarchal gender roles, purity culture, and authoritarian clergy that characterizes Sovereign Grace’s teachings on parenting, marriage, and sexuality creates an environment where women and children—especially girls—are uniquely vulnerable to abuse.

Charlton cites E.J. Graff, who maintains that purity cultures which envisage women’s bodies as primarily for procreation and male pleasure also generate rape cultures: rape culture is the obverse side of purity culture, which by its very nature sexualizes the female body in order to subject it to male control. The demand within SGM doctrine that children submit absolutely to parents and wives to husbands also issues in a culture of abuse, in which both women and children are enjoined to endure even violent expressions of male control as God’s will.

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VATICAN CITY
7 News

VATICAN CITY (AFP) – The Vatican on Wednesday urged “greater reserve” ahead of the conclave to elect a new pope, as US cardinals scrapped their daily press briefings saying that “concern was expressed about leaks”.

US cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, had been due to address journalists at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

“Concern was expressed about leaks of confidential proceedings reported in Italian newspapers,” the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

“As a precaution, the cardinals have agreed not to do interviews,” it added in a statement.

Italian media earlier on Wednesday reported there were “sparks” flying at pre-conclave meetings between US and German cardinals on one side and Italian ones on the other.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

SNAP’s “Dirty Dozen” list – the “papabile” who would be the worst choice for children

Posted by David Clohessy on March 06, 2013

First, we want to urge Catholic prelates to stop pretending that the worst is over regarding the clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis. Tragically, the worst is almost certainly ahead. This scandal, we believe, has yet to surface in most nations. It’s shameless spin and deliberate deception to claim otherwise. It’s tempting to reassure the public and the parishioners by making this claim. But it’s also irresponsible. (It leads to complacency, and complacency protects no one. Only vigilance protects the vulnerable.)

Clergy sex crimes and cover-ups remain deeply hidden in the vast majority of nations (where most Catholics live), and has really only become widely known – and barely addressed – in the US about a decade ago and in a few European countries even more recently.

History, psychology and common sense all suggest that since the vast majority of clergy sex crimes and cover ups in the developing world are yet to be exposed, the bulk of the scandal is yet to come. Further, we believe the worst is yet to come because it’s likely that thousands of predatory priests across the world are still molesting and still live and work among unsuspecting families and flocks. (Church officials admit that there are 6,100 accused predator priests in the US alone. And the US represents only about 6% percent of the planet’s population.)

We hear less about clergy sex crimes and cover ups in Africa, Asia, and South America because there tends to be less funding for law enforcement, less vigorous civil justice systems, less independent journalism, and an even greater power and wealth difference between church officials and their congregants (which makes abuse and cover ups harder to prevent and expose).

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

In advance of the cardinals gathering in Rome for the election of a new pope, The New York Times and CBS News conducted a poll of Roman Catholics in the United States. Related story.

From Feb. 23 to 27, 580 Catholics were polled. Margin of sampling error is ±4% pts. for all Catholics.

Show responses from ALL U.S. CATHOLICS▼

American Catholics say that their church and bishops are out of touch, but they feel far more warmly toward their local priests and nuns. Benedict apparently made little impression on Catholics in his eight years as pope, with half saying that they had no opinion of him. Three-fourths of those polled said that they thought it was a good idea for him to resign.

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UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Mar 6, 2013

Let’s say you’re an American Catholic bishop and you’re thinking about what your people would like to see in the new pope. You’re not really interested in the views of all those nominal Catholics who rarely darken your door. It’s the loyal parishioners, the leaven in the lump, whose opinions you want to know.

So you turn to the interactive graphic of the New York Times‘ new survey of American Catholics and click on the drop-down box in the upper right so it says, “Show responses from ATTEND MASS WEEKLY.”

Sure enough, these folks are more with the program than the other demographic cohorts. Seventy percent of them think the next pope should be against legalized abortion and 67 percent think he should oppose the death penalty.

On the other hand, 61 percent think he should be in favor of letting priests marry; 57 percent, that he should be in favor of letting women be priests. Sixty-two percent think he should support artificial methods of birth control; 82 percent, that he should favor the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV infection and other diseases.

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ROME
Wall Street Journal

By John D. Stoll

Cardinals from the United States have played an outsized role in steering public discourse in the days leading up to the conclave to elect a new pope. The American Church officials have used interviews, social media and daily press briefings to inform the world about the pre-conclave meetings currently going on in Rome.

But the party could be over…or at least a lot less lively.

The North American College of Cardinals — where seminarians from North America come to train in Rome for the priesthood — cancelled a press briefing Wednesday amid concern over potential leaks during a particularly sensitive time.

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ESPANA
El Pais

Mario Vargas Llosa 24 FEB 2013

No sé por qué ha sorprendido tanto la abdicación de Benedicto XVI; aunque excepcional, no era imprevisible. Bastaba verlo, frágil y como extraviado en medio de esas multitudes en las que su función lo obligaba a sumergirse, haciendo esfuerzos sobrehumanos para parecer el protagonista de esos espectáculos obviamente írritos a su temperamento y vocación. A diferencia de su predecesor, Juan Pablo II, que se movía como pez en el agua entre esas masas de creyentes y curiosos que congrega el Papa en todas sus apariciones, Benedicto XVI parecía totalmente ajeno a esos fastos gregarios que constituyen tareas imprescindibles del Pontífice en la actualidad. Así se comprende mejor su resistencia a aceptar la silla de San Pedro que le fue impuesta por el cónclave hace ocho años y a la que, como se sabe ahora, nunca aspiró. Sólo abandonan el poder absoluto, con la facilidad con que él acaba de hacerlo, aquellas rarezas que, en vez de codiciarlo, desprecian el poder.

No era un hombre carismático ni de tribuna, como Karol Wojtyla, el Papa polaco. Era un hombre de biblioteca y de cátedra, de reflexión y de estudio, seguramente uno de los Pontífices más inteligentes y cultos que ha tenido en toda su historia la Iglesia católica. En una época en que las ideas y las razones importan mucho menos que las imágenes y los gestos, Joseph Ratzinger era ya un anacronismo, pues pertenecía a lo más conspicuo de una especie en extinción: el intelectual. Reflexionaba con hondura y originalidad, apoyado en una enorme información teológica, filosófica, histórica y literaria, adquirida en la decena de lenguas clásicas y modernas que dominaba, entre ellas el latín, el griego y el hebreo.

Le ha tocado uno de los períodos más difíciles que ha enfrentado el cristianismo en sus más de dos mil años de historia.

Aunque concebidos siempre dentro de la ortodoxia cristiana pero con un criterio muy amplio, sus libros y encíclicas desbordaban a menudo lo estrictamente dogmático y contenían novedosas y audaces reflexiones sobre los problemas morales, culturales y existenciales de nuestro tiempo que lectores no creyentes podían leer con provecho y a menudo —a mí me ha ocurrido— turbación. Sus tres volúmenes dedicados a Jesús de Nazaret, su pequeña autobiografía y sus tres encíclicas —sobre todo la segunda, Spe Salvi, de 2007, dedicada a analizar la naturaleza bifronte de la ciencia que puede enriquecer de manera extraordinaria la vida humana pero también destruirla y degradarla—, tienen un vigor dialéctico y una elegancia expositiva que destacan nítidamente entre los textos convencionales y redundantes, escritos para convencidos, que suele producir el Vaticano desde hace mucho tiempo.

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