ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

In search for the next pope, self-aggrandizement is tantamount to sacrilege

By Jason Horowitz,

Published: March 3 | Updated: Monday, March 4

VATICAN CITY — At the conclusion of a news conference here late last year, reporters rushed the stage in the hopes of getting a word with Marc Ouellet, a Canadian cardinal who even then was topping many short lists to be the next pope. As the reporters called “your eminence” and waved business cards in the air, he politely smiled, stepped back and disappeared through a door, stage left.

Ouellet, who had come to talk about the church in the Americas, apparently had little interest in discussing anything else, especially himself. The resignation of Benedict XVI has only reinforced the reticence of the pope’s potential successors. In the Vatican, even a whiff of self-aggrandizement is tantamount to sacrilege, explicit politicking is a surefire way to leave the conclave as a cardinal. The non-campaign campaign is an institution in its own right and the antithesis of America’s extravagant electioneering.

“Campaigning?” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, said in an interview Sunday in Rome. “If it were to happen I think that it probably wouldn’t be all that well received. It’s sort of ‘Come on. Get with it, you are out of step. That isn’t the way we do this.’ ”

Monday marks the beginning of the unofficial race to choose the 266th pope, as cardinals hold a series of closed-door gatherings, eventually leading to the conclave from which the next pontiff will emerge. The talks will include much more than logistics. The cardinals will mull the major challenges facing the church but also get to know each other. The 115 electors in attendance will listen with a discerning ear to their colleagues’ ideas — and to their ability to inspire.

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ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)

Priest burns picture of pope in CHURCH in protest at resignation as ‘rock star’ cardinals gather to choose successor

By Hannah Roberts and Sara Malm

Burning effigy: An image of retired pope Benedict XVI was set alight in a church in northern Italy during Sunday mass

It ought to have been the most serene of days for the former Pope.

But Benedict XVI’s first Sunday in retirement has been sullied by a village priest who burnt a photograph of him during Sunday mass.

Father Andrea Maggi, 67, claims Benedict, now Pope Emeritus, was ‘like the Captain Calamity of the Concordia who had abandoned his ship.’

Appalled parishioners in Castel Vittorio, a medieval hilltop village of 350 inhabitants, in Liguria, near the Italian border with France, watched at the priest set showed them a picture of the ex-Pope and then set fire to it with a candle.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY – Cardinals from around the world gathered Monday inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI’s decision to retire.

The Vatican said 103 of the 115 electors had arrived, while the other dozen are en route. The dean of the College of Cardinals has said a date for the conclave won’t be set until all cardinals have arrived.

Among the first orders of business was the oath of secrecy each cardinal made, pledging to maintain “rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff.”

The college of cardinals also agreed to send Benedict XVI a message on behalf of the group — the text was being worked on.”

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VATICAN CITY
USA Today

In Rome, where 115 cardinals are gathering to elect a new pope, the conclave will include these luminaries:

•Cardinal Roger Mahony, former archbishop of Los Angeles, who in the 1980s plotted with an adviser to conceal child molesting priests from law enforcement.
•Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland’s church, who failed in the 1970s to follow up on incriminating evidence against a priest, who went on to become a notorious serial molester.
•Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the former head of the Belgian church, who once advised an adult victim of 13 years of childhood abuse against making “a lot of noise” about it because his molester, a bishop, was about to retire.
•Cardinal Justin Rigali, former head of the Philadelphia archdiocese, where it took two grand juries issuing scathing reports of abuse before the cardinal saw fit in 2011 to suspend 21 priests accused of molesting children.

The full list of cardinals who abetted the child abuse scandal that has dogged the church for more than a decade is longer. But for coverups and allowing abuse to flourish, these four are among the worst offenders.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

by Dennis Coday | Mar. 4, 2013

Rome —
The apology of Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who over the weekend admitted to improper sexual conduct with priests of his archdiocese, “is weak, vague, belated and thus hollow sounding,” David Clohessy, executive director of the U.S.-based abuse survivor’s group, SNAP said in a press statement released late March 3.

“Still, it’s encouraging and healthy any time any corrupt Catholic official is publicly exposed and experiences any consequences – however slight – for abusing trust, hurting others and hiding misdeeds,” the statement from Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Clohessy and Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director, are in Rome trying to ensure the cause of victims of clergy sexual abuse are not forgotten as church leaders gather ahead of the conclave that will choose the next pope.

Last week, after allegations of improper sexual contact surfaced from four men, O’Brien resigned as archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh in Scotland and announced that he would not attend the conclave electing the new pope.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Jane Graham– 04 March 2013

Fans of irony must have enjoyed the fast-tracking of Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s resignation this week, following so quickly on the heels of his actually saying something ground-breakingly sensible.

This is not what we expected from the man who recently described gay marriage as a “grotesque subversion” and same-sex partnerships as being “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved” – and who is now accused of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ towards a number of priests.

However last week, just before he was due to fly out to cast his vote in the papal election, O’Brien did make some significant and shrewd remarks. He pointed out that “Jesus didn’t say” priests should be celibate, and that “many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion”. …

Isn’t it also damned strange that an organisation which holds up heterosexual marriage as the ideal social union bans its leaders from experiencing it themselves? One can’t help wondering if this is about a general fear of the influence of wives. Did the Vatican start to notice 900 years ago that, regardless of how powerful a man might be, it was often the women who ran the house, influenced the children, and knocked their husbands into shape?

The Vatican has never been very keen on women. Its policy makes St Andrews golf club look like a bunch of woolly old feminists. Despite its veneration of Jesus’s mother, its fascistically hierarchical structure makes clear its belief that only men should have power, and indeed, only men should gather in dark rooms with other men to even discuss power. And they in turn should hand a wee bit less power down to more men.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with audio]

Cardinal Keith O’Brien is expected to face a Vatican inquiry after admitting his sexual conduct had at times, “fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor spoke of the “great sadness and shame” recent events had brought upon the church and said his “thoughts and prayers are with everyone concerned”.

“There have always been sinners in the church, but there has also always been saints.”

The inquiry into Cardinal O’Brien is not likely to begin until after a new Pope is chosen.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

THE ex-leader of the country’s Catholics will face a probe by Vatican officials into allegations dating back more than 30 years.

FORMER cardinal Keith O’Brien is set to face a Vatican inquiry after yesterday admitting to sexual misconduct.

Today, it was confirmed that complaints over O’Brien’s conduct had been made to the Vatican.

A Scottish Catholic Media Office spokesman said: “We expect that they will be investigated and a conclusion drawn.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Cardinal Keith O’Brien will face a Vatican inquiry after admitting that his sexual conduct “had fallen beneath the standards” expected of him during his almost 50-year career.

By Telegraph reporters
10:43AM GMT 04 Mar 2013

The cardinal shocked the Roman Catholic community yesterday when he indicated that he would not contest claims against him and intended to retire permanently from the public life of the church.

The admission came a week after three priests and a former priest accused Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric of inappropriate behaviour dating back to the 1980s.

The cardinal, who stepped down from his post as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in the wake of the scandal, has asked for forgiveness from those he had offended.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with audio]

Three priests and a former priest have said that they felt “vindicated” after Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien admitted sexual misconduct.

The group had accused the senior Roman Catholic clergyman of “inappropriate behaviour” towards them in the 1980s.

Catherine Deveney, the journalist who broke the story in The Observer, told the Today programme she had spoken to the four men, and they felt a “mixture of sadness and a bit of relief that they’ve been vindicated”.

Ms Deveney also said that the allegations “could not have been more specific. The cardinal and the church knew exactly what they were”, rejecting the Cardinal’s initial claims that the allegations were anonymous and non-specific.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Seattle Times

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON —
A Scottish cardinal who stepped down from church leadership after admitting sexual misconduct should apologize to gay people for his years of “vicious and cruel language” about them, Britain’s leading gay-rights group said Monday.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned last week as Britain’s top Roman Catholic cleric after being accused of inappropriate behavior by three priests and a former priest.

O’Brien did not address the allegations directly, but said Sunday that “my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

“To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness,” he said.

Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill said Monday that the group noted “with sadness that the cardinal didn’t find it in him to apologize to gay people, their families and friends for the harm his vicious and cruel language caused.”

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 March 2013

The Scottish Roman Catholic church is facing a series of questions about the conduct of its former leader and its attacks on gay rights, after Cardinal Keith O’Brien admitted to a secret sexual life dating back decades.

O’Brien is expected to face a more detailed investigation by the Vatican after admitting to incidents of sexual misconduct throughout his career, which started in 1965.

After a week of denials over allegations of sexual conduct and approaches by four men, the cardinal said on Sunday he was guilty of conduct that had “fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

In a statement that left questions unanswered about the nature of that misconduct, he added: “To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.”

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 March 2013

• Had any senior figures in the Scottish Catholic church been aware of allegations about Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s behaviour and private life before the papal nuncio to the UK was given sworn statements by four men, three serving priests and a former priest, in early February?

• Were any officials in O’Brien’s private office or staff aware of these allegations, or of the cardinal’s sexual relationships, while he was denouncing homosexuality as a “grotesque subversion”?

• If so, what action did they take?

• What led the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI to order the cardinal’s immediate resignation, suddenly last Monday, when it had known of the four men’s allegations since early February?

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sydney Morning Herald

March 5, 2013

John Bingham

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, formerly the most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, has signalled that he did make homosexual advances towards young priests.

He confessed that his ”sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected” and asked for forgiveness from those he had ”offended”, as well as the Catholic Church and people of Scotland.

The former Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh – who a week ago had been due to take part in the election of the next pope – said he would withdraw from public life.

Fresh details have emerged of the allegations of ”inappropriate” behaviour against him by four men – three priests and one former priest. The accusations included attempting to touch, kiss or have sex with them. One of the accusers also claimed he had been warned not to let the allegations become public or risk ”immense damage” to the church.

”This is not about a gay culture or a straight culture,” the The Observer quoted the man as saying. ”It’s about an open culture. I would be happy to see an openly gay bishop, cardinal or pope. But the church acts as if sexual identity has to be kept secret.”

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

Editorial

Ever since the Forward began publishing stories in December detailing allegations by former students that they were abused by rabbis at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, a certain trope has been voiced by Y.U.’s defenders. It goes something like this: The alleged incidents occurred as long as three decades ago. They are, if not ancient history, then certainly from another time when behaviorial mores were different, when religious authority was more absolute, when acts that are deemed offensive now were more acceptable.

As Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the New York Jewish Week, asked in a recent column, “is it fair to apply many current standards of behavior, at a time when a teacher touching a student can be grounds for disciplinary action, to an era when it was not unusual for European-born yeshiva high school rebbes to slap or even hit boys, who tended to take such actions in stride?”

But the Y.U. rabbis weren’t accused of Jewish-style corporal punishment, loathsome though that might be. George Finkelstein was accused of repeatedly wrestling with students in his home and office, pinning them down so tightly that many reported feeling his erect penis on their bodies. Macy Gordon was accused of sodomizing two students in their dorm rooms. This doesn’t amount to a slap to the cheek; it’s an assault to the body. To minimize these allegations is both inaccurate and hugely unfair to those who say they were victimized.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

Published: March 3

What do the Roman Catholic Church and the American political system have in common? Both are divided into factions that neither trust nor understand each other, and both confront a crisis of governance.

Divisions in the church are usually seen as mimicking those of secular politics. Conservatives or traditionalists are pitted against liberals or progressives. But Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican friar and the former head of his order, suggests a more fruitful way to understand the Catholic split.

The conflict goes back to competing reactions to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council inaugurated in the 1960s by Pope John XXIII. The relevant camps — Radcliffe describes them in his 2005 book, “What Is the Point of Being a Christian?” — are the “Kingdom Catholics” and the “Communion Catholics.”

The Kingdom Catholics, corresponding to those we usually call progressive, were “exhilarated by the council’s embrace of modernity” and “see our church as primarily the People of God on pilgrimage towards the Kingdom.”

“The Christ whom they cherished,” he writes, “was the one who overthrew the boundaries between human beings, who touched lepers, reached out to foreigners and gathered us into the People of God.” Theirs was “an outward-looking theology” that was “rooted in experience” and emphasized “liberation.” The Kingdom Catholics look back to the council era as a time when “everything seemed possible.”

The Communion Catholics view the same period quite differently — as the equivalent of “ecclesiastical urban planning, tearing up our neighborhood.” This group, in which Pope Benedict XVI is the leading figure, insists that the church “stand firm in the proclamation of our faith.”

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

The cardinals are meeting in Rome this morning to prepare for the conclave that elects the successor to Pope Benedict XVI. Of the 24 cardinals being talked about as papabili or potential popes, 10 have held senior positions in the curia and seven are Italian. Already, the odds appear stacked against any cardinal who does not offer more of the same. But is it too much to hope that the next pope will offer a challenging vision for a compassionate church?

In his final public audience last week, Pope Benedict thanked members of the Curia for their support but also hinted at dysfunction at the heart of the Vatican. His acknowledgement that, at 85, he is no longer able to carry the burden of office has caused some to question whether anyone can successfully lead a global church with a monarchical structure so apparently unmatched to today’s world. But the man chosen to lead the world’s more than one billion Catholics must be more than an energetic administrator capable of reforming the church’s leadership. He must be a visionary who can draw on the essential message of the Gospels to make the church more welcoming and dynamic.

Few expected Cardinal Angelo Roncalli to be an agent for change when he became Pope John XXIII and called the second Vatican Council. Half a century after the council closed, many now hope that the new pope will recover the conciliar or collaborative vision of the church ushered in by Pope John and Vatican II. The age, background and ethnicity of the next pope may be less important than having what one theologian has described as the ability to read the signs of the times.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

More than 150 cardinals meet this morning in the Vatican’s Synod Hall for arguably the most important Congregation of Cardinals since Vatican Council II in the 1960s.

With the shock waves prompted by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI still crashing right across the 1.1 billion strong, universal Catholic Church, the cardinals begin the difficult task of identifying a successor.

While the conclave in the Sistine Chapel represents that spiritual moment when, with the intervention of the Holy Spirit, the cardinals elect the next pope, the business of identifying the church’s needs and consequently indicating suitable candidates starts in deadly earnest this morning. Put it another way: in the Sistine the cardinals vote, while at these “general congregations” they jaw-jaw.

By last Wednesday, there were already 144 cardinals in Rome, half of whom are from abroad so we know that the caucuses of “jaw-jaw” and exchange of ideas have already begun, particularly among the North Americans and Latin Americans. In a febrile Rome atmosphere where media interviews with cardinal electors outnumber interviews with AS Roma or Lazio footballers by two to one, many of the men who will elect the next pope have already indicated their thinking about this dramatic state of the union church moment.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

More than 150 cardinals are meeting this morning in the Vatican’s Synod Hall for arguably the most important Congregation of Cardinals since Vatican Council II in the 1960s.

With the shock waves prompted by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI still crashing right across the 1.1 billion strong, universal Catholic Church, the cardinals begin the difficult task of identifying a successor.

While the conclave in the Sistine Chapel represents that spiritual moment when, with the intervention of the Holy Spirit, the cardinals elect the next pope, the business of identifying the church’s needs and consequently indicating suitable candidates starts in deadly earnest this morning. Put it another way: in the Sistine the cardinals vote, while at these “general congregations” they jaw-jaw.

By last Wednesday, there were already 144 cardinals in Rome, half of whom are from abroad so we know that the caucuses of “jaw-jaw” and exchange of ideas have already begun, particularly among the North Americans and Latin Americans. In a febrile Rome atmosphere where media interviews with cardinal electors outnumber interviews with AS Roma or Lazio footballers by two to one, many of the men who will elect the next pope have already indicated their thinking about this dramatic state of the union church moment.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

As Roman Catholic cardinals set about electing a pope in a secret conclave, we look at how other religions choose their leaders — heredity, signs and omens, and choosing lots. Just don’t call it luck.

By:Leslie Scrivener
Feature writer, Published on Sun Mar 03 2013

Roman Catholic cardinals will soon gather beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope to succeed Benedict XVI, who retired in February.

Before entering the conclave, the cardinals will have taken a vow of “inviolable secrecy” to never discuss the election. They will wear scarlet satin, symbolic of their willingness to die for the faith, and remain sequestered until they reach a two-thirds-plus-one majority. Ballots are burned after each vote. White smoke from a Vatican chimney indicates they’ve made their choice and the newly elected pope retires to the Room of Tears to don the white silk vestments symbolic of his new rank.

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VATIKAN
religion@ORF

Charles Scicluna – von 2002 bis 2012 Missbrauchsbeauftragter des Vatikans – sieht Probleme in der Priesterausbildung und dankt der kritischen Öffentlichkeit für ihren Druck im Hinblick auf Missbrauchsfälle.

Der langjährige Missbrauchsbeauftragte des Vatikans, Charles Scicluna, sieht angesichts der Skandale um sexuelle Übergriffe in der katholischen Kirche Defizite in der Priesterausbildung. Es gebe zwar keinen direkten Zusammenhang zwischen dem Zölibat und sexueller Gewalt, sagte Scicluna der „Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung“.

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GROSSBRITANNIEN
Spiegel

Vorwürfe der sexuellen Belästigung zwangen Kardinal Keith O’Brien zum Rücktritt. In einer Erklärung entschuldigte sich der einst hochrangige katholische Geistliche für sein Verhalten, dieses habe zeitweilig nicht “den Standards” entsprochen. Nun zieht er sich aus Kirche und Öffentlichkeit zurück.

Hamburg – Die Nachricht kam zum ungünstigsten Zeitpunkt: Kurz vor dem Konklave beschwerten sich ein ehemaliger und drei aktive Priester beim Apostolischen Nuntius in Großbritannien über den Erzbischof von Edinburgh und forderten dessen Entlassung. Kardinal Keith O’Brien, der ranghöchste Vertreter der Katholiken in Großbritannien, trat zurück. Nun bittet er um Vergebung.

In einer schriftlichen Erklärung räumte er Fehlverhalten ein. Bezeichnete er bei seinem Rücktrittsgesuch sein Verhalten gegenüber den Priestern als “unangemessen”, so schrieb er nun, sein sexuelles Verhalten habe zeitweilig nicht “den Standards” entsprochen, die von einem Priester, Erzbischof und Kardinal erwartet werden.

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GROSSBRITANNIEN
Zeit

Der zurückgetretene schottische Kardinal Keith O’Brien hat Fehler in seinem Umgang mit Priestern eingeräumt. In einer schriftlichen Erklärung gab der bislang ranghöchste Vertreter der Katholiken in Großbritannien zu, dass es Zeiten gegeben hat, “in denen mein sexuelles Verhalten unter den Standard gefallen ist, der von mir als Priester, Erzbischof und Kardinal erwartet wurde”.

O’Brien bat bei der gesamten Kirche um Vergebung und entschuldigte sich bei allen, die er mit seinem Verhalten verletzt habe. Zudem kündigte er an, dem Kirchenleben komplett den Rücken zu kehren. “Ich werde den Rest meines Lebens zurückgezogen verbringen”, schrieb der zurückgetretene Erzbischof von Edinburgh. “Am öffentlichen Leben der katholischen Kirche von Schottland werde ich nicht mehr teilnehmen.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Tom Chivers

All right, a few slightly more considered thoughts on Cardinal Keith O’Brien, after having got my cheap-shot Christopher Hitchens quote out of the way a little while ago.

Some commentators have pointed out that doing something, repenting, and then criticising it in future does not necessarily make one a hypocrite: people can change their minds, and everyone struggles to live up to their own standards, of course. Lots of people might, for instance, warn us of the dangers of smoking or drugs, but struggle every day with their own addiction, and sometimes lapse. You could even suggest that their experience of the matter makes their voice more powerful, their story more real.

And as one commenter underneath my post put it, sarcastically: “Let’s all condemn those parents who try to teach their children that swearing, lying, cheating, bullying etc are wrong – and have some time in the last 30 years failed to maintain the standard themselves.” It’s true, we wouldn’t necessarily condemn such a parent. But there are important differences.

For a start, the “sinner that repenteth” defence falls down if you’ve kept your “sins” a secret. An ex-smoker warning us of the dangers of smoking is fine – but an ex-smoker who told us that smokers were nasty black-lunged cancer-spreaders but had led us to believe, through commission or omission, that he had never touched a cigarette, would get a few raised eyebrows. A Lefty education minister who sent her kids to private school might be OK, but if she told us that sending your kids to private school is terrible while not telling us where she’d sent her own (even if they are now grown up) would be rightly castigated. A mum who told her kids not to swear and pretended she’d never so much as said “damn” would lose credibility if a child found her effing and blinding at a cold-caller.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTLA

[with video]

LOS ANGELES — Responding to protests over his attendance at the conclave in Rome to elect a new pope, Cardinal Roger Mahony told Catholic News Service this week that the Vatican told him to come to Rome and participate.

“Without my even having to inquire, the nuncio in Washington phoned me a week or so ago and said, ‘I have had word from the highest folks in the Vatican: You are to come to Rome and you are to participate in the conclave,’” Mahony told the news service.

The retired cardinal has been under fire for his handling of sexual abuse cases, particularly his role in hiding molestations by priests from authorities. The cover-ups were revealed with the recent release of thousands of pages of detailed court documents about the cases.

Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony’s successor as head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, removed Mahony from all public duties once the court documents became public.

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VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)

Lizzy Davies in Rome
The Guardian, Sunday 3 March 2013

Italians fatigued by politics may have switched on the television on Sunday night for a spot of escapism. Showing in all its licentious glory was the first episode of historical drama The Borgias, in which Jeremy Irons stars as dastardly Pope Alexander VI and the Roman Catholic church is depicted as a hotbed of rivalry and intrigue.

If it had been up to Aiart, an association of Catholic TV viewers, however, the programme would not have been shown. “It would be fitting for the broadcast … to be postponed. This is in fact a delicate period for the church, for the papacy,” said Luca Borgomeo, Aiart’s chairman. “Believers are able to make the appropriate distinctions [between the show] and the current situation, but can non-believers … do the same?”

Borgomeo’s question was puzzling in many respects, not least because, until then, not even the most critical of observers had thought to compare the admittedly troubled Vatican of today to its almost implausibly corrupt Renaissance equivalent.

But the sensitivity was telling. In the wake of Benedict XVI’s abdication and in the runup to conclave, the church is indeed going through a delicate period with the spotlight turned on its own scandals and conspiracies. On Monday, as the previous pope settles into retirement 15 miles away, cardinals from all over the world will meet in Rome to begin the process of choosing his successor. Top of the list for many will be a leader who will clean up the mess left by Benedict’s crisis-hit papacy.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

[with live news conference]

Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world have gathered in Rome to begin the process of electing the next Pope.

The College of Cardinals will hold daily talks leading up to a conclave in which a new Pope will be chosen.

The election process comes after Pope Benedict XVI stepped down after nearly eight years in office leading the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

He was the first pontiff to resign in 600 years.

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VATICAN CITY
euronews

[with video]

Preparations for electing Roman Catholicism’s new leader have begun in earnest with the College of Cardinals gathering at the Vatican.

It will be meeting daily for talks over the next few days to determine the candidates and qualities necessary.

The goal is to have the new pope elected during the next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies, starting with Palm Sunday.

Argentinian Cardinal Leonardo Sandri said the next pope should be saintly and of vigorous health but also able to choose a good team to help him run the Church: “A Pope has to have a certain vigour, a certain physical resistance, a certain capacity to be able to stand up to the many appointments that a Pope must undertake. He must also be a great communicator; someone who has a gift of being able to express himself well to others,” said Cardinal Sandri.

The list of challenges facing the crisis-hit Catholic church could take weeks to debate but for now those issues must take a back seat.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Vigils have been held in Galway city and in Glasnevin Cemetery in remembrance and in support of women who were retained in Magdalene Laundries.

Those who attended were asked to bring candles and flowers to be placed on graves and at memorials.

The recently-published McAleese report into the Mandalene Laundries found significant State involvement in the institutions.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Louise Hogan– 04 March 2013

MAGDALENE Laundry campaigners warned there were still more questions to be answered, as flowers were laid at graves to mark the long-awaited apology from the State.

Tears were shed as dozens of bunches of flowers were placed at the Magdalene burial plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Claire McGettrick, spokeswoman for Justice for Magdalenes, said they staged the flower-laying event to mark the apology from Taoiseach Ends Kenny and to show the women are “wholly blameless”.

“It is just to convey the apology to them and make them part of that somehow.”

The apology came after the publication of a report that revealed the State was responsible for almost one-quarter of all admissions to the laundries.

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IRELAND
The Irish Sun

MOVING remembrance vigils in both Galway and Dublin for the women of the Magdalene laundries leave many of their participants teary-eyed yesterday.

There were emotional moments in Galway as a solemn group gathered at the memorial statue on Forster Street.

And young Cillian Urroz, five, leans in with a tribute candle.

Meanwhile in Dublin, the Justice for Magdalenes hosted the second annual ‘Flowers for Magdalenes’ — laying flowers on each grave at Glasnevin Cemetery, where many Magdalene women are buried.

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VATICAN CITY
Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs LA

Looking over the calendar for the rest of March, I am struck by the fact that the Feast of St. Joseph, the Patron of the Church, occurs on Tuesday, March 19.

What a great day for the Inaugural Mass of our next Pope!!

Obviously, I will have no say in when that Mass will take place. But I can’t help but note the significance of having that Inaugural Mass on the Feast of the Patron of the Universal Church. St. Joseph was also given the title “Guardian of the Redeemer” by Blessed John Paul II.

Since I was a seminarian, I have had a very personal devotion to St. Joseph. In God’s providence I was ordained a priest on May 1, 1962 the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Then, on March 19, 1975, the Feast of St. Joseph I was ordained a Bishop. Although all of this is just imaginary, it would be wonderful to celebrate the 38th anniversary of my episcopal ordination during the Inaugural Mass for our new Pope!

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Cardinal Roger M. Mahony expressed “amazement” at calls that he withdraw from the upcoming papal conclave because of his record on clergy sex abuse, and said that the Vatican, acting through its ambassador to the United States, had instructed him to take part in the election of the next pope.

“I’m here because the Holy Father appointed me a cardinal in 1991, and the primary job of a cardinal, the number one job, is actually the election of a new pope should a vacancy occur,” the cardinal told Catholic News Service Feb. 28, two days after arriving in Rome.

“Without my even having to inquire, the nuncio in Washington phoned me a week or so ago and said, ‘I have had word from the highest folks in the Vatican: you are to come to Rome and you are to participate in the conclave’,” the cardinal said.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Catholic Culture

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, has again defended his response to abuse allegations.

“People say, ‘Well, why didn’t you call the police?’ In those days no one reported these things to the police, usually at the request of families,” Cardinal Mahony said in an interview. “What I did in those years was consistent with what everybody did, in the Boy Scouts, in public schools, private schools, across the country.”

Cardinal Mahony said that he was “amazed” at the controversy over recently-released abuse files, the release of which led his successor, Archbishop José Gomez, to declare that the cardinal “will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

“I’m here because the Holy Father appointed me a cardinal in 1991, and the primary job of a cardinal, the number one job, is actually the election of a new pope should a vacancy occur,” he added. “Without my even having to inquire, the nuncio in Washington phoned me a week or so ago and said, ‘I have had word from the highest folks in the Vatican: you are to come to Rome and you are to participate in the conclave.’”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

The chortling Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor should never be allowed to give interviews about sex abuse

By Damian Thompson

Just whose idea was it to allow Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor to appear on the Today programme this morning to defend the Church following the O’Brien revelations? In syntax worthy of John Prescott, the former Archbishop of Westminster basically argued that there have always been saints and sinners in the Catholic Church and, er, that’s it. You can hear the whole embarrassing episode here, at 2 hours 10 mins in. Worse, he accompanied his comments with his trademark nervous chortle – as he has done before when discussing priestly crimes. Cardinal Cormac isn’t up to this sort of grilling; he never was. Archbishop Vincent Nichols would have done a better job, as his policy of never saying anything memorable on any subject would at least have provided some sort of safeguard. But perhaps he’s too cross at being excluded from the conclave to give interviews. I despair.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff

Posted March 03, 2013

PORTLAND, Maine — John Brennan spent much of the past decade as a deacon in the Catholic Church doing what he did for 25 years as Portland police officer — investigating reports that one person had done something wrong to another.

Brennan, 65, retired Thursday as director of the Office of Professional Responsibility for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. It was not a position he sought but it was job for which now-retired Bishop Joseph Gerry felt Brennan was immensely qualified in 2002 as the sex abuse scandal engulfed the Catholic Church. Brennan continued the job under Bishop Richard J. Malone.

Brennan, who was the first person to hold the position, investigated complaints of sexual abuse and other possible crimes by priests, former priests and other diocesan employees. It was not what he had expected to do when he was ordained in 1998 as one of the first deacons in Maine.

“It was quite similar to police work,” he said of his work as an investigator for the diocese. “Every complaint had the potential be a criminal investigation and in every case where there was any suggestion child sex abuse, I sent a letter to the local district attorney to determine if it was within statute of limitations.”

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UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

Lupica: Don’t bet on it, but Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation presents a chance for a narrow-minded Catholic Church to get it right

The last pope’s record on sex abuse an abject failure, the church needs someone who can overcome long-standing hypocrisy and inaction and bring the church into modern times on issues like homosexuality and female priests. Frankly, the church would be wise to choose someone younger, who will have more vigor and be likelier to look forward. It probably won’t, though.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, March 3, 2013

Mike Lupica

It is the Saturday Vigil Mass this past weekend at a small church outside the city, and there is a young priest standing in the back of the church wearing a black vest and his collar, handing out straw baskets to the various parishioners who will help with the collection on this day.

After the money is collected, because the Catholic Church is always pretty great at that, the priest will put on his vestments and help with Communion.

Before he does, I walk over and ask him a question.

“Do you think there’s any chance the cardinals will get it right this time?”

Meaning, when the College of Cardinals officially begins to decide who will succeed Benedict XVI — another who became the face of the Catholic Church with his chin on his chest — as Pope.

The priest just smiled and shrugged, maybe because there is no good answer for a young man to give in a church too often run by old men. It was illness that made Benedict XVI’s predecessor, John Paul II, look as frail as he did at the end. It was just age with the former Joseph Ratzinger, who at 78 was the oldest man to become Pope in nearly 300 years and retires more than seven years later, and not a day too soon.

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INDIANA
Indianapolis Star

Written by
Dan McFeely

When Bishop Timothy Doherty stood before 300-plus parishioners Sunday morning to defend their pastor from 40-year-old sexual abuse allegations, he was also sending a message that the old ways of covering up such scandals are over.

During an often tense, hour-long meeting at St. Louis de Montfort Catholic Church, the leader of the Lafayette Diocese said this was “an old accusation” against an innocent pastor who is suffering from having to reopen old wounds.

Rather than handling the matter quietly, Doherty applauded the parish for asking him to come to Fishers, saying it is important to treat such allegations with swift action and in a transparent manner, something he admitted did not happen decades ago as the church scandal began to unfold across America.

“The tragedy is in some places it wasn’t taken seriously enough,” Doherty said. “If I didn’t show up today, people would say the bishop is hiding.

“We are doing a lot now (to follow tougher procedures) . . . much more than what we were doing as a church more than 10 years ago.”

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VATICAN CITY
Journal (Ireland)

CATHOLIC CARDINALS HAVE BEGUN talks today ahead of a conclave to elect the next pope, following Benedict XVI’s historic resignation.

A string of new scandals and allegations have emerged since Benedict became only the second pope in the Church’s 2,000-year history to step down of his own free will.

The Vatican meetings starting today, known as “general congregations”, set the date for the start of the conclave and help identify candidates to be leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

The Vatican is now expecting 115 “cardinal electors” – cardinals aged under 80 – to attend the conclave after the former head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien opted out and an Indonesian cardinal said he was too sick to attend.

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VATICAN CITY
New York Post

By GERRY SHIELDS
Last Updated: 3:10 AM, March 4, 2013

Cardinals from around the world have gathered in Rome to elect a new pope from among their ranks — but don’t expect them to campaign for themselves, Timothy Cardinal Dolan said yesterday from the Vatican.

“This isn’t the New Hampshire primary. Nobody will campaign,” Dolan told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We’re just getting to know each other better.”

The College of Cardinals, with 115 voting-age members, will meet for four hours a day for about a week before starting the official conclave to select the pope, said Dolan, president of the US Conference of Bishops.

Christian religious persecution, traditional marriage and Catholics moving away from the church will be key issues to be addressed during the meetings, Dolan said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Peter Walker and Severin Carrell
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 March 2013

The former head of the Catholic church in England and Wales has rejected the idea of significant reforms in the wake of Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s confession of sexual misconduct – actions for which O’Brien is expected to face a Vatican inquiry despite his resignation.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, who stepped down as Archbishop of Westminster in 2009, insisted that issues such as O’Brien’s behaviour and the abuse of children by other Catholic clergy was due to the weakness of individuals rather than any structural or institutional failings by the church.

Asked in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today’s programme if O’Brien’s apparent hypocrisy – he was a strong opponent of gay rights before being accused of by three serving priests and a former priest of “inappropriate acts” towards them – showed the need for significant changes in the church, involving women as well as men, O’Connor replied: “That’s very strong words. The church is composed of saints and sinners and every time things have gone wrong in the church … there’s always been a reform, and that’s been carried out by men and by women.”

He added: “To say there’s always been corruption in the church – there’s always been sinners in the church but there’s always been saints.”

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Pravda

by John Stanton

“Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that ye might believe him.”

If Jesus Christ showed up today he would be appalled at many things in this world none more so than the Catholic Church. The Rock upon which Catholicism is built is crumbling more each day, the foundations are becoming unhinged. It is not the anti-Christ or some demon raising havoc; it is the Catholic leadership in the Vatican and its senior leaders around the globe who have lost touch with the rapid changes in the 21st Century world. Catholic Church membership is dwindling, its financial stability is at stake, it has lost its moral compass making a mockery of Christ’s teachings, and in the age of austerity that sees millions out of work and home, Church leaders lead lavish lifestyles.

And what the hell is the deal with the Pope Mobile and for that matter all the security that surrounds religious leaders who claim to have a channel to God? What has become of faith and belief? Would not God take care to protect the favored from a bullet?

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BRAZIL
Telegraph Herald

Associated Press

SAO PAULO — Faithful attending Sunday Mass on five continents for the first time since Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement had different ideas about who should next lead the Roman Catholic Church, with people suggesting everything from a Latin American pope to one more like the conservative, Polish-born John Paul II. What most agreed on, however, was the church is in dire need of a comeback.

Clergy sex abuse scandals and falling numbers of faithful have taken their toll on the church, and many parishioners said the next pope should be open about the problems rather than ignore them.

Worshippers in the developing world prayed for a pope from a poorer, non-European nation, while churchgoers in Europe said what was more important was picking a powerful figure.

Some South African Catholics called for what they said was a more pragmatic approach to contraception given the AIDS epidemic devastating that continent. They also suggested ending the celibacy requirement for priests, insisting on the traditional importance of a family.

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VATICAN CITY
NEWS.com.au

CATHOLIC cardinals have begun talks ahead of a conclave to elect a new pope after Benedict XVI’s resignation, as an absent British cardinal admits to sexual misconduct with priests.

Monday’s Vatican meetings will set the date for the start of the conclave this month and help identify candidates among the cardinals to be the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

“We’re going to take as much time as we need to think about what sort of pope the Church needs now,” French cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois told reporters as he arrived for Monday’s meetings.

“I’d be keen to have a polyglot, a man of faith, a man of dialogue … The new pope will certainly have to confront problems within the Curia,” the government of the Catholic Church, he said.

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MARYLAND
Baltimore Sun

BY BRYNA ZUMER, bzumer@theaegis.com
6:00 a.m. EST, March 4, 2013

Parishioners spoke their minds on Catholic church issues, including some people’s dissatisfaction with the direction of the papacy, during a frank, emotional discussion held at Bel Air’s St. Margaret Church on Sunday afternoon.

Organized by Msgr. Michael Schleupner of St. Margaret’s in light of Pope Benedict’s resignation, the event drew more than 100 people to one of the largest parishes in the Baltimore Archdiocese to talk about everything from sex abuse in the church to the challenge of attracting young people.

Some parishioners who attended said they are angry about the direction the church has taken in recent decades, including the handling of sex abuse cases involving priests, while others were equally passionate in defending it.

At one point, Schleupner, the parish leader, said he could support allowing priests to marry.

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VATICAN CITY
RTE News

Informal talks on the process of electing the next pope have begun in Rome but the starting date of the closed-door conclave to choose Benedict’s successor is not expected.

The idea is to have the new pope elected during next week and officially installed so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on 24 March and culminating in Easter.

The general congregations, closed-door meetings in the interregnum between a papacy and the conclave to choose the next one, will hold morning and afternoon sessions in an apparent effort to discuss as much as possible in a short time.

The Vatican seems keen to have only a week of talks so the 115 cardinal electors – those under 80 – can enter the Sistine Chapel for the conclave next week.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Mon Mar 4, 2013

(Reuters) – Roman Catholic cardinals filed into the Vatican on Monday for preliminary meetings to sketch an identikit for the next pope and ponder who among them might be best to lead a church beset by crises.

They arrived by private car, taxi and minibus at the gates of the Vatican for gatherings known as general congregations, closed-door meetings in which they will get to know each other and decide when to start a conclave to choose a man to lead the 1.2 billion member Church.

The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new pope elected next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on March 24 and culminating in Easter the following Sunday.

Pope Benedict left the Church in a state of shock when he announced last month that he would be the first pontiff in 600 years to resign instead of ruling for life. He formally stepped down on Thursday, leaving the papacy vacant.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Wall Street Journal

By JEANNE WHALEN

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien apologized on Sunday for “sexual conduct” unbefitting a priest and said he would play no further role in the public life of the Catholic Church.

The apology followed his abrupt resignation last week as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh after allegations surfaced that he had inappropriate relations with seminarians stretching back to the 1980s.

Cardinal O’Brien initially contested those allegations and had said he was seeking legal advice. But in a statement Sunday he said: “In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and nonspecific nature led me to contest them. However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

He added: “To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness…I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Digital Journal

By Eko Armunanto
Mar 3, 2013

The disgraced U.K. cardinal finally admits his bad sexual conduct. O’Brien initially rejected the claims, saying he was resigning because he did not want to distract from the upcoming conclave that will pick a successor to the resigned Pope Benedict XVI.

Following the accusation of inappropriate behaviour and his resignation as reported here in Digital Journal by Robert Myles and Greta McClain, a CNN report Sunday said Cardinal Keith O’Brien acknowledged having engaged in unspecified sexual misbehavior and promised to play no further part in the public life of the church.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned Monday from his position as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh after a newspaper published unnamed priests’ accounts of unspecified inappropriate behavior.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien who was, in fact, forced to resign by the pope last week, made a dramatic admission that he was guilty of sexual misconduct throughout his career in the Roman Catholic church.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

Published on Monday 4 March 2013

TO THE original shock of allegations of “inappropriate” conduct against Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, came the sudden resignation from office.

Now, after a weak denial, comes an apology to the Catholic Church and the people of Scotland and an admission that his sexual conduct had at times “fallen below the standards expected of me”. In the short statement, he also asked for forgiveness from those he had “offended”.

First denial, then resignation, now admission: there is no text or form of words that can lighten the blow this admission has delivered, both to the Church and to Cardinal O’Brien personally. The allegations were not of one isolated incident, but a sequence of them, said to involve four priests on separate occasions.

Despite this, there will be many inside the Church who will seek to find it in them to understand and to forgive. For contrition, atonement and forgiveness are central tenets of the Christian faith. And a pledge of celibacy is the hardest to maintain, more especially in a liberal age when forms of sexual expression deemed unacceptable until recently have now been embraced as a sign of our respect for diversity and inclusiveness. The response of many will be caught between these conflicting cross-currents of expectations of the highest standards of behaviour on the one hand and understanding of human weakness on the other.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
The Guardian, Sunday 3 March 2013

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was forced to resign by the pope last week, has made a dramatic admission that he was guilty of sexual misconduct throughout his career in the Roman Catholic church.

In a short but far-reaching statement issued late on Sunday, the 74-year-old stated that “there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”.

The former archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and until recently the most senior Catholic in Britain, apologised and asked for forgiveness from those he had “offended” and from the entire church.

O’Brien was forced to resign last week by Pope Benedict XVI, barely 36 hours after the Observer disclosed that three serving priests and a former priest were accusing him of “inappropriate acts” against them nearly 30 years ago, in a formal complaint to the pope’s ambassador to the UK.

The cardinal had “contested” those allegations, while his officials said he was taking legal advice.

But now O’Brien has effectively admitted he had been breaching the church’s strict rules on celibacy and its bar on homosexuality since he became a priest – and during his 10 years as a cardinal.

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ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 03, 2013

■“No one from Curia should be made pope,” victims say
■Group also wants some older cardinals out of Monday meeting
■SNAP worries Vatican insiders are tied to corruption & last 2 popes
■“That makes ‘cleaning house’ & exposing cover ups tougher,” it says
■Victims urge top church staff to try to persuade some peers to “go home”
■SNAP: Sodano & 5 other “complicit” cardinals should be sent away or stay away

WHAT
At a news conference, holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims will urge the College of Cardinals to
–elect a non-Curia member as the next pope, and
–try to persuade several elderly “complicit colleagues” – who can’t vote in the conclave but may attend Monday’s General Congregation meeting – to stay home this week because of their involvement in hiding clergy sex crimes.

WHEN
Monday, March 4 at 3:15 pm

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)

WHY
Roughly 90 prelates – too old to vote in the conclave – will take part in the General Congregation of Cardinals meetings, which start Monday at 9:30 a.m. SNAP believes that a number of them (Sodano, Connell, Egan, Castrillón Hoyos, Law, McCarrick, and others) are guilty of – or credibly accused of – protecting child molesting clerics. Their peers should push them to stay home, or they should do so voluntarily, the group feels, for the sake of the church and to avoid heaping more pain on wounded victims and betrayed Catholics. (SNAP will hand out copies of a list of them with explanations and links.)

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UNITED KINGDOM
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on March 03, 2013

Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s apology is weak, vague, belated and thus hollow sounding. We simply do not believe he denied the accusations because his victims were anonymous.

Still, it’s encouraging and healthy any time any corrupt Catholic official is publicly exposed and experiences any consequences – however slight – for abusing trust, hurting others and hiding misdeeds. It would have been far better had church figures in Rome and in the UK publicly condemned or disciplined O’Brien. It’s only a tiny step forward when wrongdoers essentially get to pick their own punishment.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

By NATALIE WALKER
Published on Sunday 3 March 2013

MOST of the seats at the 7:30pm Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh last night – the first after Cardinal O’Brien’s shock confession was announced – were empty.

The service began with a reading of the cardinal’s statement. It was evident that some of the congregation had heard the news and shuffled nervously and uneasily in their seats.

Those who had clearly not heard what had happened could be seen turning to friends in shocked disbelief. Some of them looked utterly stunned. One woman sat open-mouthed with tears in her eyes as news of the former archbishop of the diocese was revealed.

It was a very different feeling from the Mass just seven days ago when the allegations first came to light. Unlike last Sunday, the media were told they were not welcome – with members of the press asked by a number of people to leave the neo-Gothic cathedral.

Seven days ago most people were standing by the cardinal, believing the allegations to be untrue. Most went out of their way to speak to the press, calling the claims “lies” and “rubbish”. But that loyalty had been replaced with anger – much of it aimed at the media.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

By STEPHEN MCGINTY
Published on Sunday 3 March 2013

THE zenith of the ecclesiastical career of Keith O’Brien took place amid the sunshine of St Peter’s Square when, in the autumn of 2003, he was presented with the red beretta of a cardinal, so coloured to reflect his new vow to shed his blood for the good of the Catholic Church.

In a public display which other cardinals were said to have considered unbecoming he brandished a saltire with the enthusiasm of a football fan at Hampden to the delight of photographers whose pictures ran on the front page of newspapers around the world.

In the nadir of the ecclesiastical career of Keith O’Brien he returns once again to the front pages, not as a vision of joyous Catholic scotia, but of an old man crushed by cardinal sins.

How can Catholics come to terms with the janus faced leader of the Catholic Church: the cardinal who described gay marriage as a “grotesque subversion” in the knowledge that his own sexual conduct had “fallen below the standards” expected of a priest.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

His admission came after more details of allegations against him emerged, with accounts of long parties known as “ragers”.

The man who quit as Britain’s top Catholic cleric has admitted sexual misconduct – after previously threatening legal action over the claims.

In an astonishing about-turn Cardinal Keith O’Brien said his “sexual conduct has fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

His admission came after more details of allegations against him emerged, with accounts of long parties known as “ragers”.

He had earlier said he “contested” allegations made against him by three priests and a former priest and was taking legal advice.

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VATICAN CITY
Baltimore Sun

Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Reuters
6:31 p.m. EST, March 3, 2013

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Preparations for electing Roman Catholicism’s new leader begin in earnest on Monday as the College of Cardinals opens daily talks to sketch an identikit for the next pope and ponder who among them might fit it.

The idea is to have the new pope elected during next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on March 24 and culminating in Easter the following Sunday.

The general congregations, closed-door meetings in the interregnum between a papacy and the conclave to choose the next one, will hold morning and afternoon sessions in an apparent effort to discuss as much as possible in a short time.

The list of challenges facing the crisis-hit Church could take weeks to debate, but the Vatican seems keen to have only a week of talks so the 115 cardinal electors — those under 80 — can enter the Sistine Chapel for the conclave next week.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The Shadow Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, appears to have presented Cardinals with a very serious dilemma. The Vatican’s financial misdeeds had recently led Italian banking regulators to seize millions of dollars of Vatican cash, reportedly due to Mafia related money laundering. The regulators on January 1 closed down the Vatican’s credit card facility, reportedly related to financial irregularities. A major multinational bank recently refused to do business with the Vatican in Milan. The head of the Vatican Bank was recently abruptly fired. A senior Vatican financial cleric was just shipped to South America.

Reportedly, three senior Cardinals investigated these matters thoroughly and gave the Shadow Pope a secret 300 page dossier about these matters, yet Ratzinger will not let voting Cardinals read it. Reportedly, the dossier was a major factor in Ratzinger’s sudden resignation.

Some Cardinals have reportedly promoted the use of the Vatican Bank. For example, last April Cardinal Wuerl gave wealthy American donors from the Papal Foundation a tour of the Bank, apparently to show how how sound and safe it was. Has Wuerl read the report? Cardinal George by his recent reported remarks seems comfortable with being denied access to the report. He may have forgotten how aggressive and determined U.S. Federal prosecutors nailed Chicagoan, Al Capone, on financial and tax crimes. Given the current adverse legal environment for some Cardinals, can they be too careful?

Cardinals hopefully have consulted their respective criminal lawyers to make sure they are acting legally with respect to this major dossier on “Cardinal Sins”. They do not want to be legally exposed to RICO-type charges they were part of a conspiracy to cover up illegal financial transactions with racketeers and/or other illegal groups. Some Cardinals evidentally have enough to do just trying to avoid criminal endangerment charges for their alleged cover-ups of priest rapes of children, and ought to avoid any prospect of racketeering charges on top of that. If the new Pope they now elect fails to curtail any potentially illegal conduct referred to in the dossier, will any Cardinals be held responsible as well for such failures? If htey do not know fully what id in the report, how can Cardinals be sure?

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UNITED STATES
OpEd News

By Mary Shaw

So now Pope Benedict XVI has retired, and the cardinals will be choosing a new leader.

Meanwhile, sentimental Catholics and others have been praising the now-former pontiff. They call him a holy man. However, in looking back through his record, I see much that is downright unholy.

Perhaps most obvious is his role in the cover-up of clergy sex abuse.

Back in 2001, when we still knew him as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the British press leaked a confidential letter from Ratzinger to all Catholic bishops ordering that “the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret,” and asserting “the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.” In other words, keep it all under wraps until the statutes of limitations expire. How “holy” is that?

In 2002, he discounted the whole issue, referring to the media coverage of clergy sex abuse as a plot to discredit the Church. How “holy” is that?

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UNITED KINGDOM
Raw Story

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, March 3, 2013

AFP – Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric on Sunday admitted sexual misconduct and offered his apologies to the Church and the people of Scotland.

A statement released by Cardinal Keith O’Brien read: “I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Deutsche Welle

Britain’s former top Catholic Church official has admitted that his sexual conduct had fallen short of the required standard. Keith O’Brien had been due to vote in the conclave for a new pope before his resignation.

In a statement released on Sunday, O’Brien – who stood down as head of the church in Scotland last week – apologized “to those I have offended.”

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” O’Brien said in a statement posted on the Scottish Catholic media website.

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ROME
Sydney Morning Herald

BARNEY ZWARTZ
March 04, 2013

As cardinals gather in Rome to elect a new pope, the Catholic Church faces either a Vatican Spring or a new ice age, says its most senior theologian, the dissident Hans Kung.

The most urgent need, Dr Kung wrote in The New York Times last week, was a pope ”not living intellectually in the Middle Ages”. Otherwise the ossified institution risked shrinking into an increasingly irrelevant sect, he wrote.

Many Catholics, unsettled amid the ”turbulent waters and rough winds” to which Pope Emeritus Benedict referred in his final public speech last week, share Dr Kung’s trepidation.

Part of the problem is that there are at least a dozen plausible candidates, amid an ocean of imponderables. The church, US surveys show, is ready for the first non-European pope in 1500 years, but there is a strong counterargument for returning to an Italian – after all, the pope is the bishop of Rome.

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CANADA
Times Colonist

They found the bodies in the slush and ice of Fraser Lake. Four children, aged eight and nine, lying according to Canadian Press reports huddled in each others arms “capless and lightly clad,” frozen in the final dark embrace of a January night. The temperature was -30 C.

Maurice Justice and Allen Willie were eight years old. Johnny Michael and Andrew Paul were nine. All four were runaways from the harsh confines of the church-run Lejac Residential School. It was Jan. 2, 1937, when their bodies were found roughly six miles from the school and less than one from the Nautley Reserve, which was their believed destination. They had just wanted to go home.

On Feb. 19, the Times Colonist published another CP story, this one bearing the headline “Residential-school deaths topped 3,000: study.” The “study” is being conducted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with research manager Alex Maass making public preliminary residential-school-death lists. To date, the count stands at 3,000, but Maass told CP it would undoubtedly rise as she and fellow workers continue their search through thousands of archived documents. The true count will never be known, because annual reports on school deaths ceased in 1917. Maass says it had obviously become policy to no longer report them.

While the preliminary report is careful to name disease the largest single killer of residential school children, Maass notes: “The schools were a breeding ground for TB. Dormitories were incubation wards.” And never more so than when the great influenza epidemic swept the world in 1918-19, and infected children were left in school dormitories to become innocent carriers of death.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Washington Post

By Anthony Faiola

Sunday, March 3

LONDON – Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who stepped down as Britain’s highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric last week amid allegations of inappropriate behavior with priests, backed away from earlier denials and admitted Sunday to committing acts of sexual misconduct.

The admission was a blow to the church’s hierarchy even as cardinals prepare to meet in Rome on Monday to select a date for the conclave to pick a new pope. In Britain, the admission was considered a confirmation of what observers here have called a prime example of church hypocrisy, given that O’Brien, 74, emerged as leading voice against gay rights and had launched a campaign to block the legalization of same-sex marriages here.

Last Monday, outgoing Pope Benedict XVI effectively forced O’Brien’s early retirement a day after a British newspaper published accounts by four men – including one former and three current priests – who alleged the cardinal had initiated intimate contact with them. When the reports first surfaced, O’Brien, who was the head of the church in Scotland since 2003, had denied the charges through a spokesman.

However, on Sunday, O’Brien conceded in a statement on an official church Web site that his conduct had “fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.” He vowed to “spend the rest of my life in retirement,” adding that “I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

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SCOTLAND
Aljazeera

The cardinal who until recently served as Britain’s highest-ranking Catholic leader acknowledged unspecified sexual misbehaviour and promised to play “no further part” in the public life of the church.

The statement of Cardinal Keith O’Brien on Sunday came few days after his resignation from his position as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh following a newspaper article that included unnamed priests’ accounts of unspecified inappropriate behaviour.

O’Brien initially rejected the claims, saying he was resigning because he did not want to distract from the upcoming conclave which is due to pick a new pope.

But on Sunday, the Church of Scotland issued a statement quoting O’Brien as saying that there had been times “that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”.

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UNITED STATES
Consortium News

March 3, 2013

A half century ago, the Catholic Church had a chance for reform in the Second Vatican Council, with a young advocate in Joseph Ratzinger. But reactionary popes shunted reform aside, with Ratzinger later joining them as Pope Benedict XVI. That lost hope has put the Church in today’s crisis, says the Rev. Paul Surlis.

By the Rev. Paul Surlis

A Church with a “disfigured” face. That is Pope Benedict XVI’s description of how the Catholic Church sometimes is seen because “of sins against the unity of the church.” He said this in his last public Mass, but he offered no reflections on the role he himself played in this disfigurement, especially by his consistent refusal since around 1968 to embrace the structural changes and progressive teachings endorsed for the Church by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Benedict, as Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the council, explained and enthusiastically endorsed the reforming trends of the council. After each of the council’s four sessions, Dr. Ratzinger wrote a pamphlet-length account of what had transpired during the preceding session and these reflections were subsequently collected in a book, Theological Highlights of Vatican II.

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VATICAN CITY
PolicyMic

Areej Elahi-Siddiqui

The Vatican admitted to secretly carrying out wiretaps on the clergy within the Holy See on Thursday, stating they were part of the investigations into the Vatileaks scandal that rocked Rome last year.

Although the church holds that the surveillance, which was done to find if any other Vatican insiders were involved in helping Paolo Gabriele, the then-Pope’s butler who had stolen and leaked compromising papal documents to the media, was done on a very small scale, an Italian news magazine says otherwise.

According to Panorama magazine, Vatican authorities – with Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 at the Vatican in the lead – had not only tapped the phones but also read emails of Church emails to find more information about the Vatileaks scandal. Panorama’s journalist Ignazio Ingrao, said that “everyone was spied on in the Vatican” in efforts that seemed eerily like a “Vatican Big Brother.”

Panorama also added that this was “the biggest and most detailed wiretapping operation ever conducted in the sacred palaces was conducted.”

Panorama added that the wiretapping is ongoing now.

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CASTEL GANDOLFO, ITALY
Huffington Post

Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or does it?

Various Italian news sources reported Sunday that a mild earthquake had struck Rome and surrounding areas, including Castel Gandolfo, the former pope’s temporary home.

According to the Agence France-Presse, the earthquake had a local magnitude of 2.5 and was felt in Rome, Ciapino, Marino and Castel Gandolfo. So far, no reports of injury or serious damage have been relayed to the Italian Department of Civil Protection.

Italian news blog Blogo reported that, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, the quake originated at a depth of 10.5 kilometers.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Spectator

Some wag has gone around Rome putting up spoof ‘Vota Turkson’ posters. This is a reference to the Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson, who has been much-tipped to be the first black Pope. Turkson has a lot of support, it seems, and not all of it sardonic. Many Catholics say now is the time for an African Pope. And there’s a sense that it might take someone from the developing world to knock the Roman Curia — widely thought to be an arcane and corrupt body – into shape.

But as I’ve written in this week’s magazine, a number of Vatican insiders think that, far from being an outsider, the next Pope must be an Italian. Only an Italian, it’s said, can understand and fix the complex problems within the Curia. The name I heard most often last week was Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Ravasi is said to have the right mix of intelligence, media appeal and personal holiness to be Pope. But there are strong arguments against him, too. He lacks administrative experience, his deputy at the Pontifical Council for Culture has just been accused of sex abuse), and there are questions over his language skills.

A safer bet would be that the next Pope will be called Angelo – either Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Archbishop of Milan or Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the Archbishop of Genoa and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference. Scola is a theologian of immense ability and standing in the Church; while Bagnasco, the son of a baker, is a devoutly orthodox, genial fellow who’s also an adept politician.

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UNITED STATES
WBIR

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who stepped down as archbishop last week amid accusations of sexual impropriety, on Sunday apologized for past sexual conduct.

O’Brien issued a statement Sunday saying he had contested early allegations made against him because of their “anonymous and non-specific nature.” He offered no specifics Sunday, but did apologize for his behaviour. …

Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, lauded O’Brien’s recusal as an important precedent for a church where priests have been disciplined for abuse but church leaders who failed to halt the abuse have been largely unscathed.

“Cardinals who are tainted by the crisis cannot choose the person who will solve it,,” .McKiernan said in a statement. “…If they are involved in the deliberations and the votes, they will taint the outcome, damaging the legitimacy of whoever is ultimately chosen.”

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SCOTLAND
USA Today

Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
3:07p.m. EST March 3, 2013

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who stepped down as archbishop last week amid accusations of sexual impropriety, on Sunday apologized for his past sexual conduct.

O’Brien issued a statement saying he had contested early allegations made against him because of their “anonymous and non-specific nature.” He offered no specifics Sunday, but did apologize for his behavior.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” his statement said. “To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologize.

“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
ABC News (Australia)

By Europe correspondent Philip Williams, wires

The former head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has admitted his sexual conduct had “fallen below the standards expected of him”.

In a statement issued by the church on Sunday, Cardinal O’Brien apologised and asked for forgiveness after appearing to admit to sexual misconduct.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” he said in the statement posted on the Scottish Catholic media office website.

“To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, formerly the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the UK, signalled that he did make homosexual advances towards young men.

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor
8:14PM GMT 03 Mar 2013

He confessed that his “sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected” and asked for forgiveness from those he had “offended”, as well as the entire Catholic Church and the people of Scotland.

The former Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh – who only a week ago was on course to take part in the election of the next Pope – said he would now withdraw completely from public life.

His admission came as fresh details emerged of the allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour against him by four men – three priests and one former priest.

For the first time, it emerged that the accusations included attempting to touch, kiss, or have sex with them.

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SCOTLAND
Huffington Post

By RAPHAEL SATTER 03/03/13

LONDON — The cardinal who until recently served as Britain’s highest-ranking Catholic leader on Sunday acknowledged having engaged in unspecified sexual misbehavior and promised to play “no further part” in the public life of the church, a statement that comes at an awkward time for the Vatican.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned Monday from his position as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh after a newspaper published unnamed priests’ accounts of unspecified inappropriate behavior.

O’Brien initially rejected the claims, saying he was resigning because he did not want to distract from the upcoming conclave of cardinals that is due to pick a successor to Benedict XVI, who resigned the papacy Thursday. O’Brien also said he would not attend the conclave.

But on Sunday, the Catholic church in Scotland issued a statement quoting O’Brien as saying that there had been times “that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph

Hypocrite Cardinal O’Brien admits sex acts – in a vague apology that will make things worse

By Damian Thompson

I’m deeply unimpressed by Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s vague and guarded admission that “there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”. Does he really think he can leave it at that? After raging against gay marriage with a ferocity that was – I suspect – intended to make the English bishops look wimpish and therefore butter up the Vatican?

Scottish Catholics in particular have the right to ask: What the hell do you mean by “sexual conduct”?

And what are we supposed to make of this? “In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.”

Sorry, I don’t follow the logic. The Cardinal must have had a good idea who was making the claims, and what behaviour was involved. You can’t contest allegations, as he did, just because public ignorance of the charges leaves you a certain amount of breathing space.

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 March 2013

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, forced to resign by the pope last week, has admitted to sexual misconduct and issued a sweeping apology to individuals he has “offended” as well as to the Catholic church and Scottish people.

In a short statement issued soon after 5pm on Sunday, O’Brien admitted “there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”.

The former archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh made no detailed admissions but apologised and asked for the forgiveness of all those he had offended, and for the forgiveness of the entire Catholic church.

Barely a week after O’Brien insisted he was contesting allegations published in the Observer of misconduct against fellow priests, he effectively admitted he had been guilty of sexual misbehaviour since he was a priest and during his 10 years as a cardinal.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Telegraph

A BRITISH cardinal has admitted his behavior fell “below the standards expected of me” after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Keith O’Brien resigned last week after claims of sexual impropriety. In a statement, Cardinal O’Brien has also apologised “to those I have offended … to the Catholic Church and people of Scotland”.

Cardinal O’Brien resigned as head of the Catholic Church in Scotland on Monday in the wake of claims that he made sexual advances towards priests.

“In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public,” said the cleric. “Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

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SCOTLAND
CNN

(CNN) — A cardinal at the center of an international scandal over alleged sexual abuse reversed course Sunday, acknowledging wrongdoing.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” Cardinal Keith O’Brien said in a statement.

Until days ago, O’Brien was the archbishop of Scotland.

O’Brien has been dogged by allegations he abused four men studying to be priests in the 1980s.

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SCOTLAND
Sky News

Cardinal Keith O’Brien has admitted that there have been times when his sexual conduct “fell beneath expected standards”.

The 74-year resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh last week over allegations of improper behaviour up to 30 years ago.

In a statement issued by the Catholic Church in Scotland, he said: “In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

“However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Mail

Britain’s top Catholic Cardinal O’Brien admits his ‘sexual conduct fell well below the standards expected of a priest and archbishop’ as he sends himself into retreat

By Sam Webb and Alex Gore

Britain’s most senior Catholic admitted today his ‘sexual conduct’ fell well below the ‘standards expected of a priest’.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien made the statement in response to allegations of ‘inappropriate’ behaviour levelled against him by three priests and a former priest.

He apologised, asked for forgiveness and said he will play no further part in the Catholic Church.

The cleric resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh a day after the allegations stretching back 30 years were published last Sunday.

He said today: ‘In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

‘However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.
retreat.

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SCOTLAND
Paisley Daily Express

Cardinal Keith O’Brien has admitted that his sexual conduct had at times “fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”.

The cardinal, who was Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, stepped down from his post as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh last week, a day after three priests and a former priest made allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour against him.

In a statement issued by the Catholic Church in Scotland, he apologised and asked forgiveness from those he had “offended”.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” the statement said.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Media Office

3 March 2013

Statement from Cardinal O’Brien

“In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.

To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.

I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

ENDS

Peter Kearney
Director
Catholic Media Office
5 St. Vincent Place
Glasgow
G1 2DH
0141 221 1168
07968 122291
pk@scmo.org
www.scmo.org

Notes to editors:

1. This is the only statement, which Cardinal O’Brien will be issuing.
2. Cardinal O’Brien will not attend the Conclave to elect the new Pope.
3. Cardinal O’Brien is now out of the country and will not be available for interview.

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SCOTLAND
Portage Daily Graphic

ESTELLE SHIRBON, Retuers

Sunday, March 3, 2013

LONDON – A Roman Catholic cardinal who resigned as head of the church in Scotland apologised on Sunday for sexual conduct which he said had “fallen below the standards expected of me”.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien was Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric until he resigned as archbishop on Feb. 25 and said he would not take part in the conclave to elect a new pope. The announcement followed newspaper allegations of inappropriate behaviour with priests.

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” he said in a statement posted on the Scottish Catholic media office website on Sunday.

“To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise. I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

Cardinal Keith O’Brien has admitted that his sexual conduct has at times “fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

In a statement, he apologised and asked forgiveness from those he had “offended”.

He also apologised to the Catholic Church, and to the people of Scotland.

The cardinal resigned last Monday after three priests and a former priest made allegations of improper behaviour against him.

Cardinal O’Brien had been Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric when he stood down as the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

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BRAZIL
PolicyMic

Jake Horowitz

1) He is from Brazil.

Scherer leads the archdiocese in Brazil, the world’s largest Catholic country with a total population of 6 million Catholics. Being from Sao Paulo, Scherer is accustomed to dealing with social problems, as this city has 11 million people and faces high poverty rates, crime, and youth unemployment. Pope Benedict XVI named Scherer as the seventh Archbishop of Sao Paulo on March 21, 2007. In October 2007, the Pope announced he would make Scherer a Cardinal.

2) He is considered to be a moderate.

Scherer is considered to be theologically moderate. He is considered to be conservative within Brazil, but holds more centrist political views than Pope Benedict XVI, who opposed “liberation theology” in the Church in Latin America in the 1980s. Liberation theology is a leftwing movement which believe the Church should ally itself with the poor politically. Benedict called this theology “a singular heresy” but Scherer has been more moderate. He backed its focus on social injustice and poverty, even though he criticized it for using “Marxism as a tool of analysis.”

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BRAZIL
Huffington Post

By Roque Planas Posted: 02/11/2013

With Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, it may be Latin America’s turn to take control of the papacy, and some point to Brazilian Archbishop Odilo Scherer as the leading candidate.

Though the Vatican has been led by an unbroken chain of Europeans, demographics make a compelling case to look to Latin America to fill the vacancy. Some 42 percent of the world’s Catholics now live in Latin America, making the region home to the largest group of Catholics on the planet, according to Reuters. Europe is home to just 25 percent of the world’s Catholics.

Darci Nicioli, Auxiliary Bishop of Aparecida, told Brazil’s G1 that Scherer is one of five Brazilian cardinals in the running for the Papacy.

“All Cardinals less than 80 years old are candidates and can vote to choose the new Pope, but we know that depends on the Holy Spirit,” Nicioli told Brazil’s G1. “So we’re going to prey hard so that the best Cardinal is selected.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Brazil’s Cardinal Odilo Scherer is being proposed as a candidate to be next Pope by some Italian cardinals from the Roman Curia, including Sodano and Re, but they also want an Italian as Secretary of State

Gerard O’Connell – Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

In 2005, some influential cardinals from the Roman Curia worked for the election of Joseph Ratzinger. Today, eight years later, informed sources both within and outside the Vatican confirm that a new group in the Vatican are seeking to bring for the first time in history a Latin American to the See of Peter, accompanied by a Secretary of State who is Italian, or an Argentinian of Italian-origins. Among the proponents of this initiative are two leading cardinals – Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and Giovanni Battista Re. Other important Italian curial cardinals could join this initiative.

The candidate to be pope of this group is the Archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil, Odilo Pedro Scherer, 63, who worked in the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops from 1994 to 2001. He worked for some time with Cardinal Re, who became head of that Congregation, and later ensured that he became a bishop. Scherer is a well-respected Latin American prelate, of German extraction. A man of measured and less Latin style , he speaks Italian well.

His name has circulated in these days as a possible successor to Benedict XVI. His sponsors aim to bring the first South American to the See of Peter, but bringing at the same time with him – almost as part of a ‘ticket’ – a Secretary of State who knows the Roman Curia well. Among the names being mentioned for this second post is that of Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy. Another name being suggested for the post of Secretary of State is that of Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. Sandri had the post of ‘Substitute’ – that is the third ranking position in the Vatican, in the last phase of the pontificate of John Paul II and the beginning of Benedict XVI’s reign.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

In eight days cardinals will enter the Sistine Chapel for the start of the Conclave. This is the Church’s first Sunday without a Pope and there is no Angelus prayer today

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

The window from which the Pope usually pronounces the Sunday Angelus prayer remained shut today. This is the Catholic Church’s first Sunday without a Pope. St. Peter’s Square is full of pilgrims but no one is looking up at the papal studio window because this Sunday no one will be appearing at it. The curtain has already come down on the great media circus surrounding the Conclave and the rosaries recited by faithful are the only thing that breaks the silence which fell after Benedict XVI’s departure. Now that the papacy is vacant, there is no longer any reference to Benedict XVI either as Pope or Bishop of Rome in the Eucharistic prayer during mass celebrations. Parish priests have prepared a new version of the prayer.

As the Church strides towards the Conclave which is due to start on 11 March, the complete picture of Benedict XVI’s resignation is gradually forming. Ratzinger showed no less courage in resigning because “of the limits of old age and (…) the discernment on the exercise of responsibility that God had entrusted to him, than John Paul II who stuck it out until the end, despite his illness. Ratzinger’s decision is above all a reminder of one’s responsibilities, especially for cardinals who have the task of electing the Pope’s successor.

On the Church’s second day without a Pope – day two of the sede vacante period – Fr. Federico Lombardi commented on the achievements of the outgoing pope, now Pope Emeritus, and their significance, also for those who will have to work with the choices that will shape the future of global Catholicism. To emphasise the spiritual nature of the papal election, the Vatican spokesman referred back to one of Wojtyla’s core texts with a preface signed by Joseph Ratzinger.

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VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Eric Linton | March 03 2013

Roman Catholic cardinals, fearing that Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation has weakened his office, will ask the next pope to pledge in his inaugural address that he will serve until his death, European media report.

According to the Sunday Times of London, an unnamed cardinal told the Corriere della Sera newspaper of Milan that the rule that a pope has the right to resign of his own free will can’t be changed, “but for the future we need to safeguard the freedom of the church from external influences.” The fear is that a future pope could be pressured into stepping down.

On Friday, Benedict said he was “not abandoning the Cross, I am staying in a new way,” the Times reported. This was seen as a response to Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a former personal secretary to his predecessor John Paul II, who said of his resignation: “One doesn’t step down from the Cross.”

Benedict has agreed that three cardinals who investigated the “Vatileaks” scandal would give their peers details of their secret report, which he received in December. Some have speculated that the report is so damaging it precipitated his resignation. The Vatican has denied allegations that it reveals a gay sex scandal in the Vatican that has left top clerics open to blackmail.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Non-European pope could pair up with Vatican official ‘in presidential-style ticket’

Cardinals gathering Rome are reportedly considering electing the first ever non-European pope, who could pair up with a Vatican official as his secretary of a state, in a scenario likened to a presidential ticket.

By Tom Kington, Rome
3:59PM GMT 03 Mar 2013

The idea would satisfy calls from non-Euoprean cardinals to give the papacy a global appeal, while convincing Vatican insiders that an experience hand would manage the Curia.

At 9.30am on Monday, most of the cardinal electors will assemble at the Vatican for the first day of consultations ahead of voting for Pope Benedict XVI’s successor in a conclave now expected to start around March 11.

Marco Tosatti, a Vatican expert, said that Brazil’s Odilo Scherer, 63, the archbishop of Sao Paulo, was now being supported by two key Vatican officials, former secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, who is taking on the role of Chamberlain during the conclave, and Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, who is overseeing the pre-conclave meetings.

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IRELAND/UNITED KINGDOM
Journal

A LONDON-BASED law firm is providing advice to a number of survivors of the Magdalene Laundry system who currently reside in the UK.

Hodge Jones & Allen worked with many of the claimants of the Irish Redress Board – set up for survivors of Ireland’s residential institutions – and is now representing those who were also held in Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996.

Senior Partner Patrick Allen said, “We are working closely with the victims of the Magdalene Laundries to ensure that as many of them as possible receive the fair, decent treatment and compensation that they deserve.

“We will work tenaciously for these women to fight for their justice and to right the wrongs that they have endured over the years.”

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IRELAND
Longford Leader

Published on Saturday 2 March 2013

The fact that Newtownforbes was an industrial school with a laundry attached makes it an entirely different situation to the Magdalene Laundries, according to one long-standing campaigner for the Magdalene women.

When speaking to the Longford Leader this week Sally Mulready, Council of State and leader of the Step by Step Project which has sought justice for the Magdalene women for the last 14 years refused to be drawn on whether those in Industial schools should be entitled to redress under the new package currently being formulated by Judge Quirke.

She did however state that a redress system had been put in place for those who had suffered, and it was her understanding that they had “been very well compensated for the time they spent in industrial schools”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

A recently published report into the Magdalene Laundries found direct State involvment in the institutions.

The Taoiseach has already apologised to survivors on behalf of the State, calling their treatment “a national shame”.

Efforts are now underway to secure adequate compensation payments for the survivors.

Spokesperson of the Justice for Magdalenes group Claire McGettrick said the group was “still in the process of digesting (the findings of) the McAleese report”.

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VATICAN CITY
The Australian

JOHN FOLLAIN, VATICAN CITY
From: The Sunday Times (UK)
March 04, 2013

CARDINALS plan to ask the next pope to pledge in his inaugural address that he will serve until his death, unlike Benedict XVI, whose resignation, they believe, has destabilised the Catholic Church.

Doubts have emerged about the impact of Benedict’s decision as the cardinals begin a series of meetings, known as general congregations, to discuss the church’s future.

Italian reports suggest some church leaders believe Benedict’s departure has undermined the sacredness of the office. An unnamed cardinal told the Corriere della Sera newspaper it was impossible to abolish the rule that a pope had the right to resign of his own freewill. “But for the future we need to safeguard the freedom of the church from external influences,” he said, amid fears that a pope could be pressured into stepping down.

Oon Friday, Benedict said he was “not abandoning the Cross, I am staying in a new way”. This was seen as a response to Polish cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a former personal secretary to Pope John Paul II, who said of his resignation: “One doesn’t step down from the Cross.”

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VATICAN CITY
Chicago Tribune

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, March 3 (Reuters) – The Roman Catholic Church must open itself up to women in the next pontificate, giving them more leadership positions in the Vatican and beyond, according to a senior cardinal who will be influential in electing the next pope.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 69, an Argentine, also said the next pope should not be chosen according to a geographic area but must be a “saintly man” qualified to lead the Church in a time of crisis.

He said one of the greatest challenges facing the Church was trying to win back those suffering from a “loss of faith” who had “turned their back on God” and the Church of their fathers.

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FIJI
Fiji Village

More charges are expected to be laid against a Catholic priest who is a prime suspect in a series of alleged rapes.

The priest appeared in Tavua court on Friday charged with one count of alleged rape and one count of alleged indecent assault.

Police confirm the priest is expected to be charged for three more offences.

Police had earlier confirmed that a complaint was lodged last week by a cleaner and since then other victims have come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Peter FitzSimons
Sports Columnist

The Fitz Files

Typical Vatican. For decades it has presided over a global system whereby numerous priestly paedophiles are endlessly moved on to continue their devastation in ever more dioceses, rarely calling them to account and even more rarely calling the cops. They even harbour some of the worst, and their enablers, in the Vatican itself! No calls for resignation there, nothing bar actively working to hide their institutional shame for the destruction of so many young lives.

But if just one priest may have possibly acted in a sexually harassing manner 30 years ago to other adult priests and – if it might generate some bad headlines for the pope himself – that priest is GONE!

So we have seen in Britain this week with Cardinal O’Brien, an outspoken anti-gay-marriage advocate who – and now there’s a surprise – is actually gay himself.

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SCOTLAND
Southern Reporter

Published on Sunday 3 March 2013

ROMAN Catholics in the Borders have been left shocked and saddened by the allegations of inappropriate behaviour levelled at Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

That was the view of senior figures from the local Roman Catholic community, speaking this week as Borders Catholics, readying themselves for the appointment of a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, now have to come to terms with the loss of their own cardinal after his sudden resignation on Monday.

Cardinal O’Brien, now ex-Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, is noticeable by his absence from this week’s events in Rome, where church’s leaders have gathered for the conclave to elect a new pope, as the 85-year-old Pope Benedict steps down today, becoming the first pontiff in more than 600 years to resign.

A frequent visitor to the Borders, the cardinal has been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards priests in the 1980s – allegations he contests.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

FATHER John Robinson, 71m has called for an open investigation into the claims against Cardinal Keith O’Brien and other historic allegations against churchmen.

A VETERAN priest has accused the Catholic Church of decades of cover-up and a conspiracy of silence.

Father John Robinson broke ranks yesterday to call for an open investigation into allegations made against Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

He spoke out after Church leaders sent a letter to Scotland’s priests telling them not to talk about the claims of inappropriate behaviour, which are denied by the cardinal but are being investigated by the Vatican.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

THE claims are centred on Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s time as spiritual director of St Andrew’s College in Drygrange, in the Borders.

A STATEMENT from Cardinal O’Brien is expected within days after more details of the allegations against him emerged last night.

The cleric – who was Britain’s most senior Catholic until his resignation last week – has remained silent since issuing a brief statement on Monday.

He said the allegations are “contested” and that he is taking legal advice. However, Monday’s statement did not refer to them.

He did apologise to anyone he had offended during his career.

But he is coming under growing pressure as more information about the claims emerges.

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