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Next week the Vatican’s top two investigators will arrive in Peru to conduct an in-depth inquiry into the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a scandal-ridden lay group whose founder has been sanctioned for various abuses, including the sexual abuse of minors.

According to sources with knowledge of the visit, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu will begin their work on Tuesday, July 25, speaking with both victims and the leadership and top members of the SCV.

Scicluna is the Archbishop of Malta and also serves as adjunct secretary to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, where Bertomeu is also an official, and which, among other things, is tasked with handling allegations of clerical abuse. Scicluna also serves president of a board of review for abuse cases within the dicastery.

Among the primary motives for the investigation, according to sources, is the ongoing legal harassment of journalists who…

My wife took Christ off our living room wall earlier this year. It was a postcard image of a mosaic created by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik. She couldn’t bear to have it up.

Father Rupnik is a remarkably gifted artist. His mosaics adorn chapels and buildings from the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Lourdes, France. And until now, our living room wall.

Father Rupnik stands “accused of spiritual, psychological or sexual abuse by multiple adult women over the course of almost 40 years,” according to a report by Paulina Guzik at OSV News. Many of the cases involved women under his spiritual direction. Three years ago, he was even briefly excommunicated for granting absolution to a consecrated woman with whom he had sex, though the excommunication was lifted when he confessed and repented. This week, we learned…

Demonstrations in Bolivia in recent weeks have been directed at a seemingly unusual target: the Catholic Church.

More than three-fourths of the people in this Andean nation are Catholic, and Catholicism remained the religion of the state until 2009. Protests erupted, however, after the publication of diary entries from a deceased Spanish Jesuit priest, which detailed his sexual abuse of dozens of boys while teaching in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba during the 1970s and 1980s.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Brazil, a new book by two award-winning journalists has made the magnitude of the clerical sexual abuse crisis more visible.

Over the past two decades, sexual abuse scandals have rocked the Catholic Church nearly everywhere it has a presence. Latin America, where 4 in 10 of the world’s Catholics live, is no exception. Yet the church’s role in the region is distinct, as are the stakes.

Owing to centuries of Spanish and Portuguese colonization,…

Jorge Ordoñez es un padre que por tres años ha estado en busca de justicia para su hija, quien fue víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Sin embargo, a lo largo de este tiempo, se ha encontrado con obstáculos, negación y presunto encubrimiento por parte de la Iglesia.

Ciudad de México, 31 de mayo (SinEmbargo). – Jorge Ordoñez emprende desde hace tres años una de las batallas más complicadas: buscar justicia para su hija, quien cuando tenía 10 años fue víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Jorge Ordoñez, el padre de la menor, denunció en entrevista con SinEmbargo, que luego de acusar formalmente a un sacerdote que abusó de la pequeña en una reunión a la que acudió con su madre en el año 2020, hasta la fecha no solo ha encontrado falta de justicia, sino obstáculos, negación por parte de…

A comprehensive investigation into the L’Arche movement demonstrates that Jean Vanier fostered a psychologically crippling and spiritually depraved environment

A little over three years ago, L’Arche International published its preliminary findings on allegations of sexual abuse and other transgressions against Thomas Philippe, OP, and Jean Vanier, the principal figures in the L’Arche movement. The organization noted at the time that “the stakes are high for L’Arche, following the death of its founder and revelations which mark a break in its history, there is a need to reread the past…. An in-depth study is to be carried out to gain a better understanding of the personality and input of Jean Vanier and the relationship dynamics at work between the founder and those who knew him”.

That in-depth study, “Abuse and Hold: An Investigation of Thomas Philippe, Jean Vanier and L’Arche”, was released in January. It’s a nine-hundred-page document comprehensive in scope,…

The Legionaries of Christ have published for the third consecutive year the “Annual Report: Truth, Justice, and Healing,” which gives an account of the commitments made regarding victims of abuse by the congregation and the creation of safe spaces.

According to data provided by the Legionaries of Christ, over the years 1941–2022 at least 27 priests sexually abused minors, which represents 1.9% of their priests.

Since the publication of the historical “Report 1941-2019,” 11 complaints involving new cases have been received. In three of them “it has not been possible to verify the sexual abuse of a minor.”

Of the rest, one priest was laicized, two priests are waiting for their civil and canonical trials to conclude, and another one awaits the conclusion of his ecclesiastical trial. Another four are under canonical investigation prior to an eventual canonical trial.

Care for the victims

Regarding care for the victims, 42 are…

A mounting debate in Catholicism over whether to remove artwork by sexual abusers from sacred spaces seems destined to be especially difficult to resolve, pitting the weight of tradition against changing cultural sensitivities, not to mention practicalities against new moral imperatives.

The most likely outcome seems that no universal solution will be found, with answers deemed appropriate in one context not working in others.

The question is presented above all by the case of Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, a celebrated Slovenian artist whose Eastern-themed work adorns churches all over the world, and who now stands accused of spiritual, psychological or sexual abuse of multiple adult women stretching over almost 40 years.

The Diocese of Rome quietly has launched an Apostolic Visit of the Centro Aletti in Rome which served as Rupnik’s base of operations, but it’s unclear if that probe will address the question of what to do about Rupnik’s…

A TV documentary and book allege Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was aware of clerical sexual abuse cases before he became pope in 1978

Huge crowds waving Polish and papal flags marched through Warsaw, Kraków and other cities on Sunday to defend the memory of St John Paul II, 18 years after his death, amid reports he was aware of clerical sexual abuse cases before he became pope in 1978.

Early on Sunday morning in the central city of Lodz, a statue of the Polish pope was smeared with yellow paint on its face and red paint on its hands.

Sprayed on the plinth: “Maxima Culpa”, the title of a controversial book by journalist Ekke Overbeek.

Similar to a separate television documentary, the book argues that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, as archbishop of Krákow until he became pope in 1978, was aware of at least four cases of abusing priests and reinstated them…

Liberal politicians have demanded that St John Paul II’s name be removed from streets and schools across his homeland.

Polish Church leaders have reacted angrily to new claims that St John Paul II covered up sexual abuse by clergy while serving as Archbishop of Krakow before his papal election, and vowed to “defend his good name”.  

“We owe Poland’s freedom and the freedom of our consciences to St John Paul II – he was like our compass in the midst of a historical storm, and he would want the truth from us today, established by in-depth research, not unreliable media reports,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, president of the bishops’ conference, declared in a statement on Sunday.

“I can testify that no one felt the suffering and dignity of human beings with such sensitivity, and I declare once again that the Church in Poland will continue to help wounded people with…

A documentary hit the airwaves this week in Poland alleging the former pope, Saint John Paul II, protected pedophile priests when he was Archbishop of Krakow in his native country. It has reignited a long-standing debate over whether John Paul II was made a saint too quickly. 

The report aired this week by Polish broadcaster TVN24 accuses John Paul of allowing three priests to continue working in the church in the 1970s despite knowing they had been accused of abusing minors. Two of the priests eventually served prison terms for their crimes.

Calls for John Paul II to be made a saint began at his funeral, on April 2, 2005, when cries of “Santo Subito” (or “sainthood immediately”) erupted from the half million pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Many held up banners calling for his sainthood.

The cries didn’t fall on deaf ears. Just days after his…

Addressing the scandal of abuse has been Pope Francis’ greatest challenge, a titanic struggle marked by resistance, failure, and conversion.

 The rainfall stopped minutes before he appeared at the balcony that night 10 years ago, his first time in papal white, the choice of the name “Francesco” another first, cheering Italians for his honouring of their popular saint. On a screen above the crowd at St Peter’s, Francesco purred “Buona sera” and gave a humble bow. 

The deft pastoral symbolism was soon followed by a descent into the snake pit. “The Roman Curia has always been a viper’s nest,” Church chronicler Vittorio Messori told La Stampa the previous spring. What he described as “the most efficient state organisation in the world” was rife with “rivalry, greed, maliciousness and infidelity”. Messori saw the so-called Vatileaks scandal breaking the support structure for “Number One”, as Church diplomats call the Pope. Benedict XVI’s…

An American journalist who was one of the first reporters in the world to expose the clerical child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church says Pope Francis “has gone far beyond his two predecessors in confronting” the issue.

Jason Berry (73), an author and documentary-maker who has a film showing at a Dublin venue on Saturday, said the current pope “has made his share of mistakes, not heeding Ireland’s survivor leader Marie Collins on genuine reform, and his failure initially to believe news reports about the scandals in Chile. But he did change, sacking a third of the Chilean hierarchy and getting to know survivors like Juan Carlos Cruz [a prominent international campaigner on the issue].”

Francis “is still on a learning curve, though he’s light years ahead of John Paul II’s scandalous denial and Benedicts’ failure to oust culpable bishops. After so much suffering caused by the church,…

The global Jesuit order issued a notice in early December that it had placed restrictions on the ministry of Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik, an internationally known religious artist, after accusations he had abused several adult women. While remaining deliberately vague about the reasons for the move, the Jesuits seemed keen to stress that “no minors were involved.”

While the Jesuits and the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith avoided further comments on the case, some Italian blogs reported that Rupnik, a charismatic star in certain circles, had been accused of spiritually and sexually abusing consecrated women of the Loyola Community, a religious community he had co-founded in Slovenia in the early 1980s.

Only at a press conference with journalists later in mid-December did the Jesuit superior general, Fr. Arturo Sosa, confirm rumors that Rupnik had been excommunicated in 2019 as a result…

The news that the French priest and psychiatrist Tony Anatrella has been barred from public life, but not reduced to the lay state, after his final conviction for abuse, has arrived for Pope Francis while the echoes of the Rupnik case have not yet quiet down. The decision in the Anatrella case demonstrates once again that, despite the great attention of the media, Pope Francis has not deviated much from his predecessors in his decisions in the fight against abuse.

Pope Francis has established a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and the Pope indeed convened a summit of the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences from all over the world in February 2019 to discuss how to deal with the issue. Also, after the meeting, the Pope took some measures to help better address the clergy abuse scandal.

All of this, however, must be read in a broader context. Probably, the decisions of Pope…

Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who has been a key figure in the Church’s fight against abuse, defends Benedict XVI’s efforts.

Benedict XVI’s passing has reignited talk about how adequately he addressed sexual abuse in the Church. From being the first Pontiff to meet with abuse victims, to taking action against powerful and guilty priests, to being accused of mismanaging cases in his diocese when he was a bishop in Germany, the Pope Emeritus left a mixed record, according to many observers. 

However, the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, has instead strongly defended the Pope Emeritus’ efforts in various statements published by multiple media outlets. The Maltese prelate worked alongside Benedict XVI from 2002 to 2012 as the promoter of justice, like a prosecutor in charge of dealing with serious abuse crimes, for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). 

Cardinal Ratzinger was “instrumental in the lengthy process that updated…

While debate continues about whether he should have done even more as pope to address this scourge, knowledgeable observers agree he initiated a decisive change in how the Church deals with the issue.

Even though nearly a decade has passed since Pope Benedict XVI resigned, his death has unleashed yet another scrutiny of his handling of the Church’s sexual-abuse crisis. 

The latest assessments echo those of 2013 when some reports said his legacy had been marred by the abuse scandal and even that he had been complicit in it. At the same time, other observers credited him with aggressively dealing with a problem that had clearly predated his election to the papacy.

Msgr. Robert Oliver, a canon-law expert with 20 years of experience in working with victims and dealing with abuse cases, sees this latest rehashing as a sign.

“More time is clearly needed for us to gain true perspective and…

As he was preparing to depart for Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley spoke to The Pilot Jan. 2 about his experiences with the late pope and his impact on the Church. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Q. You had many personal interactions, first with Cardinal Ratzinger and then with Pope Benedict XVI. How would you describe him — his character and demeanor?

He was certainly a very gentle and kind person. He was extremely brilliant intellectually but very respectful of other people. He didn’t use his brilliance as a way of overwhelming or putting people down. He was always searching for the truth and always searching to be faithful to the traditions of the Church. But he was always kind and respectful, even to those who did not share his convictions.

Q. Some coverage of his passing describes him as a fundamentalist…

As an academic, Benedict XVI could not lead the clean-up but admitted that ‘mistakes have been made’ and apologized

Pope Benedict XVI has gone to his eternal rest after a life of service, teaching and ruling the Catholic Church. He was pope from April 19, 2005, until his resignation on Feb. 28, 2013. Many remember him as a much revered and greatly respected priest, bishop and pope. He has been lauded by many on the conservative side of the Catholic Church.

Before becoming pope he was known as Joseph Ratzinger. Of German nationality, he became a priest in 1951 and later made a bishop in 1977 and pope in 2005. As priest, bishop and cardinal he was a renowned academic and theologian and author of 66 books, three encyclical letters on love (2005), hope (2007), and “charity in truth” (2009).

He was a conservative traditional pope and reinstated the pre-Vatican…

Joseph Ratzinger was accused of mishandling cases when he was bishop of Munich, but as pope he was credited with forcing the Catholic Church to face a scourge long ignored. 

Jason Horowitz reported and wrote this article from Rome, where he is bureau chief. Erika Solomon, based in Berlin, spoke with abuse victims and mourners in Munich and Garching an der Alz, Germany.

Before he led the Roman Catholic Church as Benedict XVI, and before he loomed over the church as a powerhouse cardinal and the Vatican’s chief doctrinal watchdog, Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich, attended a 1980 meeting about a priest in northwestern Germany accused of abusing children.

What exactly transpired during the meeting is unclear — but afterward, the priest was transferred, and over the next dozen years moved around Bavaria to different parishes before he ended up in the tiny village of Garching an der Alz,…

Under intense national scrutiny after the groundbreaking reporting on clergy sexual abuse and cover-up in the Boston Archdiocese in 2002, the U.S. Catholic bishops created a new lay-run review board to advise their national conference on how to better protect children and vulnerable persons from abuse. 

One of the group’s first tasks was to thoroughly investigate the nature of the scandal, in view of an eventual first-of-its-kind report that would detail the enormous scope of abuse in the U.S. church across some five decades. And a key ally in the task? None other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. 

Anne Burke, a former chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court who served as interim chair of the bishops’ National Review Board from 2002-04, recalled the tale in a phone interview with me on Jan. 3, two days ahead of Benedict’s funeral on Jan. 5.

In…

Joseph Ratzinger was accused of mishandling cases when he was bishop of Munich, but as pope he was credited with forcing the Catholic Church to face a scourge long ignored.

Before he led the Roman Catholic Church as Benedict XVI, and before he loomed over the church as a powerhouse cardinal and the Vatican’s chief doctrinal watchdog, Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich, attended a 1980 meeting about a priest in northwestern Germany accused of abusing children.

What exactly transpired during the meeting is unclear — but afterward, the priest was transferred, and over the next dozen years moved around Bavaria to different parishes before he ended up in the tiny village of Garching an der Alz, where he sexually abused Andreas Perr, then 12.

“It feels so heavy,” Mr. Perr said on Tuesday, puffing cigarettes outside the house where he was molested, just a few steps from the white steeple…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, known most recently as the pontiff who renounced the papacy, but who was situated squarely at the centers of power during five decades of epochal change and unprecedented scandal in the global Catholic Church, died on Dec. 31 in the apartment he kept inside a Vatican monastery.

A man whose very name conjured images of a return to the theological repression of the 16th century for many, he first appeared on the church’s international stage as Joseph Ratzinger, a young German priest-theologian advocating for progressive reforms at the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.

He was a bishop and cardinal who exalted the position of Catholic clergy, considering them privileged and apart from lay faithful. But he would eventually, following decades of delay, act against sexually abusive priests, after spending hours each week reading through the briefs of the global scandal when he was head of the Vatican’s…

“He essentially continued the cover-up,” says victims advocate David Clohessy of SNAP.

The priest sex-abuse scandal was the albatross around the neck of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s brief eight-year reign as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, according to Vatican analysts.  

Long-suppressed allegations that priests had been preying on children — and that the bishops covered up the crimes — were already roiling the church when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in April 2005 and took Benedict as his papal name.

Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict also apologized to the victims and then took some steps to punish the predators. 

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” he said in February.

But critics say that the…

All across the world, political and religious leaders, as well as activists and former colleagues and friends, are remembering the life and legacy of the late Pope Benedict XVI, hailed as one of the greatest minds and most influential figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Though many continue to take issue with some of Benedict’s policies on issues of morality and doctrine, and critics still question his record on fighting clerical sexual abuse, by and large the world has remembered the late pontiff as someone deeply in love with God, whose writings will continue to be developed for years to come.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the world’s first German pope as a “special church leader for many, not just this country,” saying the world “has lost a formative figure of the Catholic Church, an argumentative personality, and a clever theologian.”

Speaking to Crux, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop…

The zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy.

For a member of the Catholic clergy, the election to the papacy represents the zenith of his influence — his pontificate, the period of most influential and consequential activity. This was not the case for Pope Benedict XVI, who died Saturday at age 95. It wasn’t because he was the first pope in modern Catholicism to renounce the papal office. It’s because the zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy. His pontificate was, paradoxically, not the peak but almost an interlude.

Joseph Ratzinger became a brand in the 1970s when his interpretation of Vatican II — which updated the Church’s traditions, including ending the requirement that Mass be said in Latin and opening up…

For Immediate Release, 12/31/2022

Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered for his failure to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests. When he resigned as Pope, he left hundreds of culpable bishops in power and a culture of secrecy intact.

The tragedy is that in refusing to enact needed reforms, he ended up hurting the faith he cherished. Had he punished cover-up and abuse as sternly as he did doctrinal violations, the Church’s abuse crisis might have ended under his watch.

Benedict’s public statements on the crisis sparked hope. When he traveled to the US in April 2008, he promised that the Church would do “whatever possible to help, to assist, to heal” victims. In February 2010, meeting with Irish bishops, he called child sexual abuse “heinous.” A month later,…

Almost ten years after making history for resigning from the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger—Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI—has died at the age of ninety-five, in the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where he had been living since May 2013.

Born in Bavaria, Germany, on April 16, 1927, Ratzinger had a remarkable impact on the life and intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church, not only as pope, but also as one of the most influential theologians at Vatican II. After publishing major works commenting positively on the documents of Vatican II during the council and in the late 1960s, his insights affected the reception of the council from the 1970s onward, as his anti-progressive views—often expressed with a contrarian spirit—became inseparable from his persona, even after his election to the papacy in 2005.

As a powerful doctrinal policy-maker in the era following Vatican II, Ratzinger was in many ways the alter-ego of Pope John…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose death at 95 was announced Saturday, was a powerful intellectual force who shaped the Catholic Church’s theology for more than a quarter century before shocking the world by resigning in 2013.

While not quite unprecedented, Benedict’s resignation was highly unusual. Popes typically hold office until death, and the last pope to step down was Gregory XII, who quit in 1415 to end a civil war within the church.  

Bookended by globally popular and charismatic popes – St. John Paul II and Pope Francis – Benedict cut a different figure. Friends and biographers described him as quiet and scholarly, more at home among theological tomes than adoring crowds.

In typical fashion, Benedict announced his unexpected resignation in Latin. He was 85 at the time and cited his advanced age as ill-suited for the demands…

As the world marks the death of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, his record on the clerical abuse scandals that have rocked Catholicism for the past three decades inevitably forms part of any evaluation of his legacy.

For many abuse survivors and their advocates, it’s axiomatic that Benedict was the public face of denial and cover-up. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, for instance, declared in a Dec. 31 statement that “any celebration that marks the life of abuse enablers like Benedict must end.”

“Honoring Pope Benedict XVI now is not only wrong. It is shameful,” the group said. “Pope Benedict XVI is taking decades of the church’s darkest secrets to his grave with him.”

Arguably the one person on the planet best positioned to assess the late pontiff’s performance, however, has a very different take.

According to Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, it was Benedict XVI who first began to…

[Via NDTV]

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

Benedict XVI was the first pope to confront the scourge of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic church, but only after a career in which he himself was accused of covering it up.

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

His actions were a marked change from his predecessor John Paul II, who took decades to respond to what became an avalanche of allegations about paedophile priests around the world, from Australia to Chile, France and the United States.

But his successor Pope Francis has gone much further, raising…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is rightly credited with having been one of the 20th century’s most prolific Catholic theologians, a teacher-pope who preached the faith via volumes of books, sermons and speeches. But he rarely got credit for another important aspect of his legacy: having done more than anyone before him to turn the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse.

As cardinal and pope, Benedict pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests, and he sacked hundreds of them. He was the first pontiff to meet with abuse survivors. And he reversed his revered predecessor on the most egregious case of the 20th century Catholic Church, finally taking action against a serial pedophile who was adored by St. John Paul II’s inner circle.

But much more needed to be done, and following his death Saturday, abuse survivors and their advocates made clear they…

The 265th pope of the Catholic Church was a hard-line conservative who tried to root out corruption and abuse—but retreated from the battle when it mattered most.

With 1.3 billion followers, the Roman Catholic Church is the world’s largest organization. Islam has 1.97 billion adherents but no comparable infrastructure. Google has greater reach—in cyberspace.

The Church of Rome has a vast network of parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals, and missions. The governing of this global operation in the 107-acre Vatican City has become a narrative of lengthening scandals in recent decades. Pope Benedict XVI, a pivotal figure in this story, wanted national churches in lockstep obedience to Rome on moral teaching.

In 2013, after eight years in the Apostolic Palace, the German-born Joseph Ratzinger became the first Supreme Pontiff in 600 years to retire. The most powerful and controversial theologian of his era became emeritus pope for nine years, until his death at…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the shy German theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularized Europe but will forever be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday. He was 95.

Pope Francis will celebrate his funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, an unprecedented event in which a current pope will celebrate the funeral of a former one.

Benedict stunned the world on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.

His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Francis as his successor. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.

A…

With Pope Emeritus’ death, the Catholic Church loses one of the greatest minds in its 2,000-year history.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95.

The Vatican made the announcement of his death at 10.30 am Rome time on Dec. 31 in a short statement translated into several languages.

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican press office director Matteo Bruni said. “Further information will be provided as soon as possible.” 

The Vatican added that from Jan. 2, the body of the Pope Emeritus will rest in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican “for the faithful to bid farewell.” 

Bruni later told reporters in a short press briefing that Benedict XVI’s funeral will be celebrated by Pope Francis at 9.30am on Thursday, Jan. 5, in St Peter’s Square. He also disclosed…

He defined a conservative course for the Roman Catholic Church, but his papacy was noted for his struggle with the clergy sexual abuse scandal and for his unexpected resignation.

Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, a quiet scholar of diamond-hard intellect who spent much of his life enforcing church doctrine and defending tradition before shocking the Roman Catholic world by becoming the first pope in six centuries to resign, died on Saturday. He was 95.

Benedict’s death was announced by the Vatican. No cause was given. This past week, the Vatican said that Benedict’s health had taken a turn for the worse “due to advancing age.”

On Wednesday, Pope Francis asked those present at his weekly audience at the Vatican to pray for Benedict, who he said was “very ill.” He later visited him at the monastery on the Vatican City grounds where Benedict had lived since announcing his resignation in February…

When a Dutch journalist claimed to have found documents indicating that Pope John Paul II covered up clergy sexual abuse while serving as the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, in the 1960s and ’70s, it sparked a predictable media frenzy in Europe’s most Catholic country.

With some urging a consideration of the evidence, and others dismissing the claims out of hand, the incident appears to highlight a continuing gulf between the Polish church and its Western neighbors.

“We face serious problems here whenever issues like this arise, since it’s impossible to have any serious debate about the pope,” Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, a senior Catholic presenter with Polish Radio, told NCR.

“Some people, partly for political reasons, attack him, hoping to discredit his claims to sanctity, while others insist any criticism is inherently satanic,” she said. “It’s a situation St. John Paul himself would not have appreciated.”

Claims about diabolical motives were made…

The year 2022 in the Catholic world was dominated by significant shifts in the intellectual and ecclesial landscape, accompanied by shockingly few shifts among key personnel in the Vatican Curia and at the headquarters of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Pope Francis continues to invite the church to try new approaches with the goal of retrieving our tradition more fruitfully, even while here in the United States he encounters a great deal of opposition.

Synodality was the biggest story of 2022 — or it might be. The process has begun and no one is sure how it will end, but already we are seeing signs of its effect.

As NCR board member Jim Purcell, who was heavily involved in the synodal process in his parish and diocese, noted, “I have witnessed again and again the animating power of the Holy Spirit that is at the…

Every time we learn something new about the case, the mishandling of it at every level appears more appalling.

What if I told you that a man with power of his own and access to more of it serially abused unsuspecting women who had turned to him for various reasons, both professional and personal, for help and guidance?

What if I told you that he followed a playbook to warp their minds, exploit their vulnerabilities – including their desires to be loved and appreciated – in order to get them to do the sorts of things for which Lulu White would charge her clients extra and women like Cora Pearl would not countenance for all the petites Tuileries in the world?

What if I told you that lots of people knew what he got up to, most of them very powerful…

COMMENTARY: The response of the Society of Jesus to this distressing issue seems inadequate and dishonest; the conduct of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith curious; and the role of the Pope perplexing.

The sexual misconduct case of Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik is complex and distressing, and invites further questions on a number of aspects. The celebrated Jesuit artist, given many of the most important mosaic commissions over the last 30 years — including the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Apostolic Palace — has been accused of serial abuse of adults under his pastoral direction.

The response of the Jesuit order seems inadequate and dishonest; the conduct of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) curious; and the role of the Holy Father himself perplexing.

Another Founder Has Fallen

The allegations against Father Rupnik arise from the “Loyola Community” he founded in the 1980s in his native…

A Vatican-appointed investigator who helped bring to light decades-old allegations of sexual and spiritual abuse against a famous Jesuit priest is calling for the hierarchs who hid his crimes to “humbly ask the world to forgive the scandal.”

In correspondence obtained Monday, Bishop Daniele Libanori also said the claims of the women about the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik were true and that they had “seen their lives ruined by the evil suffered and by the complicit silence” of the church.

Libanori penned the letter Sunday to fellow priests after a remarkable week in which the Jesuit religious order of Pope Francis admitted that Rupnik, an artist whose mosaics grace churches and chapels around the world, had been excommunicated for having committed one of the most serious crimes in the church: using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine…

The canonical trial of Father Ivan Rupnik can be represented with the image of a bottle. The consecrated women of the Loyola Community, where the Slovenian Jesuit was confessor and spiritual director, found themselves victims of a man who was abusive and, at the same time, aware of his power. Indeed, one cannot count the friendships that Rupnik cultivated over the years. Too big to fail, whispers someone, here in the Vatican.

The canonical process

The first courageous women who chose to denounce Mark Ivan Rupnik’s abuse of power were confronted by people who said: ‘No, it cannot be possible‘. This often happens when the perpetrator is powerful and enjoys an aura of sanctity. The human mind cannot accept this being questioned. Yet, psychology teaches us, it is in this very fabric that the worst violence is born.

The complaints, however, became more and more numerous and the canonical investigation became a duty. H.E.R. Msgr. Daniele Libanori, Auxiliary Bishop…

When a religious community raises red flags, where should Catholics go for transparent answers?

When Natalie Schuldt heard this spring that her bishop had invited members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) to establish a presence in their Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska, she was concerned.

“Just a little bit of investigation into their order drew a lot of red flags for me and for others,” she told The Pillar.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in San Rafael, Argentina in 1984 by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela.

In 2016, the Vatican confirmed that Buela had been found guilty of sexual misconduct with IVE seminarians.

The priest was banned from being in contact with members of the institute he founded, from making statements or appearing in public, and from participating in the organization’s activities.

The IVE was also close to Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced former cardinal who sexually abused…

Reports emerged this week that Slovenian Jesuit Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, a world-famous artist whose murals adorn the walls of churches and chapels throughout the Vatican and beyond, has been accused of sexual misconduct with nuns and has been barred by his order from public ministry.

This makes Rupnik, 68, the latest in a series of high-profile Catholic individuals in recent years to face such allegations, including famed French layman Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche community that assists intellectually disabled adults, and the late Father Werenfried van Straaten, a Dutch priest who founded the papally-sponsored Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need” in 1952 to aid persecuted Christians.

In a statement dated Dec. 2, the Society of Jesus to which Rupnik belongs said that a complaint was made against him in 2021 and sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which deals with…

The US bishops chose new leadership this week at their annual plenary session in Baltimore, Maryland. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, of the archdiocese of the military, was elected as president of the conference and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore was chosen as vice president. Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley was elected as conference secretary. 

Broglio worked as chief of cabinet to Cardinal Angelo Sodano from 1990 until 2001. When asked about Sodano’s role in protecting serial pedophile Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Broglio said: “I had actually left the office by the time the great accusations [against Maciel] came up.” In fact, the Hartford Courant newspaper published extensive, detailed accounts of accusations against Maciel in 1997. Broglio told reporters, “Hindsight is always 20/20.” 

The 1990s was also the period of time when Sodano and Broglio sought to appoint more conservative bishops in Argentina, recommended by the government, against the wishes…

Archbishop Timothy Broglio was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last Tuesday, during the bishops’ fall plenary assembly. Immediately after his election, the archbishop faced questions about his time working in Rome as priest secretary to former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Sodano, who was secretary of state for nearly 15 years, shielded senior churchmen from accusations of sexual abuse and stymied investigations into their conduct. Broglio addressed those questions in his first post-election press conference, but he is likely to face more questions as his term gets underway.

But Broglio is not the only bishop elected last week in Baltimore who spent time working for a controversial cardinal, nor is he the most senior serving American prelate to have done so.

And while there is legitimate interest in what the archbishop knew or saw during his time working for Sodano, Broglio seems to…

At their fall plenary meeting, the bishops spent less time on the Gospel than on internal church matters.

At the recent U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops fall meeting in Baltimore (Nov. 14–17), pro-Francis bishops lost for the most part to anti-Francis bishops in elections to the conference’s top offices, sending a loud message to Rome and the rest of the English-speaking world. 

The church’s right wing is celebrating the new USCCB president, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, a career Vatican diplomat who has headed the Archdiocese for the Military Services since 2007. From 1990 to 2001, Broglio was an influential aide to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano. It was during Broglio’s time in Rome that the cardinal blocked investigations of notorious sexual abuser Father Marcial Maciel.   

Broglio blames homosexuality for the abuse crisis and has supported religious objections to COVID-19 vaccines. While transparency is a hallmark of the Synod…

The Legionaries of Christ announced Monday the conclusion of a judicial process in the Ordinary Court of Milan involving three priests and two other persons in Italy.

In a statement posted on their website Oct. 3, the Legionaries reported that the ruling says, “All the defendants have been fully acquitted of the crime of attempted extortion because such an attempt did not exist,” and that “the judge will announce the reasons for her decision within 90 days.”

The statement explains that the accusations were made in 2013, “in the context of the relationship with a family that had reported abuse by Vladimir Reséndiz Gutiérrez.”

Reséndiz is a Mexican national and former Legionary of Christ priest. In 2011 he was accused of committing sexual abuse between 2006 and 2008 in the congregation’s minor seminary in Gozzano, in Italy’s Novara Province.

In March 2011, while working in Venezuela, he was removed from…

JUDGEMENT DAY

One of the most controversial cardinals in the history of the Catholic church’s clerical sex abuse saga has died. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who served as secretary of state under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, died after battling COVID-related pneumonia, according to the Holy See Press office. He was 94. Sodano famously angered abuse survivors when he called widespread claims of sex abuse by priests “petty gossip.” In 2005, he asked then U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to intervene in an investigation of a priest accused of pedophilia in Kentucky (which she declined). He also blocked the investigation into Father Marcial Maciel, the pedophile, womanizing, drug addict founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ order who died in 2008, and whose crimes were exposed by Daily Beast contributor Jason Berry. After John Paul II died, his successor Pope Benedict removed Sodano after he tried to…

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a once-powerful Italian prelate who long served as the Vatican’s No. 2 official but whose legacy was tarnished by his support for the pedophile founder of an influential religious order, has died. He was 94.

The Vatican in its Saturday announcement of his death said Sodano had died on Friday. Italian state radio said that Sodano recently had contracted COVID-19, complicating his already frail health. Corriere della Sera said he died in a Rome clinic where he had been admitted a few weeks ago.

Pope Francis in a condolence telegram Saturday to Maria Sodano, the retired prelate’s sister, noted that Sodano had held many roles in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, culminating in his being named secretary of state on June 28, 1991, by the then-pontiff, John Paul II. A day later, John Paul, who later was made a saint, elevated Sodano to the rank of cardinal.

In…

Given the death late Friday of Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was 94, what’s often described as the Vatican’s “old guard” has taken a significant blow. Sodano had been the Secretary of State to two popes and the former Dean of the College of Cardinals, and he remained massively influential in shaping the Vatican’s internal culture.

With Sodano’s passing, the new de facto captain of the old guard arguably becomes 88-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Sodano’s successor as Dean of the College of Cardinals and, like Sodano, a product of the Secretariat of State, having served as an aide to the legendary Cardinal Giovanni Benelli when Benelli was the sostituto, or chief of staff, to Pope Paul VI.

What do we mean by the “old guard”?

The phrase refers to an informal network of longtime personnel, both clerical and lay, and primarily (though not exclusively) associated with the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s…

The death of Cardinal Sodano marks the end of an era.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who died on 27 May at the age of 94, was a Holy See diplomat who wielded enormous power inside the Vatican but whose time in office was tainted by his perceived failure to tackle high-profile cases of sexual abuse. 

The Italian prelate served as Secretary of State from 1990 to 2006 and during the years when John Paul II’s health was failing he effectively ran the Church’s central administration alongside the Polish Pope’s personal secretary, then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz. A highly skilled diplomat, in 1984 Sodano helped John Paul II to mediate a resolution to the decades-long conflict between Chile and Argentina over the islands in the Beagle channel, forcefully articulated the Vatican’s opposition to the 2003 Iraq war, and was closely involved in steering the Church’s diplomatic relations with eastern Europe, Russia and China. 

His…

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a controversial Vatican power broker for more than a quarter of a century who was accused of covering up one of the Catholic Church’s most notorious sex abusers, has died at the age of 94.

Sodano, who had been ill for some time and died on Friday night, was secretary of state under two popes — John Paul II and Benedict XVI — holding the number two post in the Vatican hierarchy for 16 years between 1990 and 2006.

It was widely believed that Sodano, together with John Paul’s secretary, then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, ran the Church in the final years of the late pope’s life as his health deteriorated from Parkinson’s and other illnesses. John Paul died in 2005.

In a series of exposes in the National Catholic Reporter in 2010, author Jason Berry, a leading expert on the Church’s sex abuse crisis, wrote how Sodano blocked…

Three years ago, as the Catholic Church faced an unprecedented reckoning with clergy sexual abuse, Pope Francis introduced a church law that promised to hold bishops and religious superiors accountable for abuse that they commit or cover up.

Entitled Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You Are the Light of the World”), the law was touted by papal spokesmen as a turning point in the fight to end child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

It’s “revolutionary,” said Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich.

“The silence, omertà and cover-ups can now become a thing of the past,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the pope’s trusted abuse investigator.

Vos Estis, a motu proprio that was signed on May 9, 2019, was originally enacted for a three-year trial period that ends this June 1. As we wait to see if Francis will now make the law permanent, it is a good time to assess…

Almost 50 years ago, Pope Paul VI said that “the split between Gospel and culture is, without a doubt, the drama of our times.” In large measure, he was referring to the breach between religious faith and secular culture, which is especially pronounced in the West, and, above all, in Western Europe.

Across most of Western Europe, Mass attendance rates stand at all-time lows, vocations to the priesthood and religious life have bottomed out, and states long ago legalized virtually all of the behaviors the Catholic Church vigorously opposes, including divorce, birth control, abortion and same-sex marriage. The residue of the church’s ferocious resistance to all of that has fueled an equal-and-opposite anti-clericalism, which is a defining feature of many European societies.

However, there’s one corner of Western Europe where the divorce between faith and culture is still playing out in real time: The tiny island nation of Malta, with…

The Legionaries of Christ received four new allegations of sexual abuse against members of the congregation between March 2021 and March 2022, and new allegations also have been made against priests already undergoing canonical procedures after being named in previous reports.

The Legionaries’ 2021 “Annual Report: Truth, Justice and Healing” was released April 6 with updates to their ongoing effort to “give an account of their commitments to the victims of sexual abuse since the publication three years ago (December 2019) of all cases from their history.”

Since releasing its previous annual report in March 2021, the congregation received four new allegations, it said.

“One is awaiting the conclusion of civil and canonical proceedings. Three are under investigation prior to an eventual canonical trial,” the congregation said on its site, 0abuse.org, which provides updated data on cases and documents.

Concerning the status of allegations received between December 2019 and March…

There are growing hopes that, like many in Europe, Latin American nations will soon launch independent inquiries into historical cases of clerical sexual abuse.

Over the past few years, several countries in Europe have launched new inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

Most recently, following the release of new data by the El Pais newspaper, Spain’s parliament approved the creation of an investigative commission led by the country’s ombudsperson, marking an unprecedented move in a Catholic-majority country that had remained largely silent on the issue for years. In France, a national inquiry found last year that an estimated 330,000 children have been sexually abused in Catholic institutions since 1950. Germany held multiple inquiries on the subject in recent years, while Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom have investigations continuing. In Italy, too, abuse survivors are asking their government to launch a national…

Entering the season of Lent can seem like a blessed relief. The harsh mark of ash on the forehead, the stark words of truth, “you are dust,” the stripping away of the distractions and pleasures of our earthly life to stare our mortality square in the face — all these can be received with a bracing joy.

But as Ash Wednesday passes and the Sundays of Lent are one by one ticked off, we begin to feel the full weight and heft of our sin. We embark on Lent thinking it will act like a spiritual cold shower. Before long we are reminded that we are walking the Way of the Cross, and this isn’t some spa treatment we have signed up for.

This year marks 20 years since a group of journalists, part of an investigative team at The Boston Globe dubbed Spotlight, broke the story of the widespread and long-standing…

The Center Harbor school where several boys were reportedly molested by members of the disgraced Roman Catholic religious order, the Legionaires of Christ, is no longer a defendant in the federal lawsuits brought by the survivors.

Five men filed lawsuits against the order and the school last year in the United States District Court of Connecticut accusing the order of negligence for effectively facilitating and covering up the abuse.

Judge Kari Dooley dismissed the Immaculate Conception Apostolic School, or ICAS, from the lawsuit last month based on the argument that it is a separate entity based in New Hampshire. The Legionaries of Christ order is registered as a non-profit in Connecticut and it was headquartered in Connecticut for decades.

“ICAS’s principal place of business is in New Hampshire, where it operated, at the times relevant to the Complaint, a private, Roman Catholic boarding school,” Dooley wrote. “ICAS’s students attended class,…

The Church hierarchy has been signalling a new openness to change, but a plea from the Pope emeritus, following the release of a report on abuse, follows an old path.

In Germany, lately, powerful bishops have been speaking of prospects for change in Catholic life with a frankness not seen from the Church hierarchy anywhere else in a long time. When some hundred and twenty-five priests and other Church employees collectively “came out” as gay last month—with a manifesto faulting the Church’s “defamatory” teachings on sexuality and gender—Jean-Claude Hollerich, a Jesuit who is the archbishop of Luxembourg, told the German news outlet KNA that the foundation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality “is no longer true,” and called for a “fundamental revision of the doctrine.” Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising—who last year spoke approvingly of the prospect of some form of Church blessings for same-sex-unions—

On Friday of last week, Irish blogger Pat Buckley reported that four men have come forward with allegations including boundary violations, spiritual abuse, and sexual harassment against Dom Mark Kirby of Silverstream Priory, the author and alleged visionary behind the popular devotional book In Sinu Jesu. These new allegations follow a lengthy August 2021 interview with Fr. Benedict Andersen in the Pillar.

Fr. Andersen is a Silverstream monk who is currently in canonical limbo, unable to minister as a priest after his complaints of inappropriate behavior and spiritual abuse by Fr. Kirby resulted in an apostolic visitation of the priory. Formerly the sub-prior of the community, Andersen was the first person to publicly bring forward allegations against Kirby, although stories about Kirby’s past and his allegedly abusive treatment of his subordinates had been circulating for years.

If these new allegations are true, it appears that Fr. Andersen…

Everyone with open eyes can now see that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church never underestimated the problem of priests as sexual predators. They weren’t taken by surprise. Church leaders have known for decades exactly how vast the issue was, how all-consuming, from the humble parish all the way to the top in Rome.

A church-authorized investigation in Germany has produced a multivolume report on sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Munich. In it, we see the archbishop himself at meetings more than 40 years ago, weighing the future of a criminally abusive priest — without a thought, it appears, of turning the man in to the police.

It is a sadly familiar story: secret conclaves of men in collars, flouting the laws of one nation after another to shuffle the abusers and launder their crimes. Only in this case, the archbishop of Munich was Joseph Ratzinger, who…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has denied, through his secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, having knowledge of cases of abuse committed in Chile by priests who are members of the Legionaries of Christ when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position Joseph Ratzinger held between 1982 and 2013. Gänswein made the statements to the German newspaper Die Zeit, the same one that had published the accusations, made by filmmaker Christoph Röhl, and which also published excerpts from a report on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising, before its official release.

Writing for the Catholic news agency Zenit, columnist and philosopher Jorge Enrique Mújica criticized some inconsistencies and sensationalism surrounding the report (read the full version here, in German), prepared by the law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl. The investigation covers a period from 1945 to 2019, during which the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising had six different…

[This is a Google translation of the Munich report’s Table of Contents. See also the full German text of the report, in which items in the Table of Contents are linked to the sections. For an indented version of the English Table of Contents, see the PDF.]

Sexual abuse of minors and adult wards by clerics and full-time employees in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising from 1945 to 2019

– Responsibilities, systemic causes, consequences and recommendations –

Attorney Dr. Marion Westpfahl, Munich

Attorney Dr. Ulrich Wastl, Munich

Attorney Dr. Martin Pusch, LL.M., Munich

Lawyer Nata Gladstein, Munich

Attorney Philipp Schenke, Munich

January 20, 2022

Table of Contents

A. PRINCIPLES …………………………………………….. …………………………………. 1

I. Mission and objective of the expert report ………………………….. 1

II. Summary of the main results …………………… 10

III. Terminological clarification ……………………… 21

1. Sexual abuse / sexualized violence ……………………… 21

2. Victims / Victims /…

[Google translation, followed by Spanish text.]

Benedict XVI was a “trending topic”. Fed by the headlines of a multitude of newspapers, Benedict XVI was once again linked – without nuances – to the reprehensible issue of abuse

Anyone familiar with Twitter was able to notice a fact that could have happened as an anecdote on the European night of Thursday, January 20, the American afternoon of the same day, if not for the events associated with the name of the viral character. Benedict XVI was a “trending topic” and many were talking about him.

Indeed, the hundreds of verified press profiles in different languages ​​were joined by the usual “amateur athletes” of the idle trade of opinionism. Fed by the headlines of a multitude of newspapers, Benedict XVI was once again linked – without nuances – to the reprehensible issue of abuse.

Facts: a report in the diocese where Benedict XVI was archbishop

…

Conservatives on Friday defended former Pope Benedict against charges of mishandling sexual abuse cases decades ago, but victim groups and experts said the findings of a German report had tarnished the legacy of one of Catholicism’s most renowned theologians.

The report, commissioned by the German Church and published on Thursday, said the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger failed to take action against clerics in four cases when he was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. read more

Benedict denied wrongdoing over the cases in an 82-page written statement sent to the investigators but Martin Pusch, one of the lawyers who presented the report, said that while the former pope claimed ignorance of some events “in our opinion, that is difficult to reconcile with the documentation.”

Benedict, 94, infirm and living in the Vatican, said through his secretary that he had not yet read the entire report, but would give…

[Via the Catholic Telegraph of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati]

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI served as pope from 2005 to 2013. He was born Joseph Ratzinger on April 16, 1927, at Marktl in the German state of Bavaria. He turns 95 soon.

There is lots to know about this man who became a priest, archbishop, a cardinal, and even a former pope.

He is fond of cats, pianos, and Mozart.

When he was a cardinal living in Rome, he would prepare plates of food for stray cats. If friendly cats near his Vatican offices were hurt, he would bandage their wounds.

As of 2005, the year he became pope, Benedict had a black-and-white short-haired cat named Chico living at his home in Bavaria.

When he moved to live in the Vatican apartments, he still had to follow the rules: no cats or dogs allowed.

His other…

Pope Francis reassigned the second ranking official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Monday, the first in an expected series of moves that would overhaul the leadership of the Church’s doctrinal office. 

The Holy See announced Jan. 10 that Archbishop Giacomo Morandi had been appointed by the pope to lead the Italian Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, replacing Bishop Massimo Camisasca, who turned 75 in November. 

While the appointment of a relatively unknown Vatican official to a small Italian diocese is unlikely to generate headlines, sources close to Morandi’s old department told The Pillar that it was the first in a series of personnel moves which have been expected since the end of last year.

“Ever since he went to see the pope in December, it has been understood [in the office] that he is leaving,” one senior Vatican source close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the…

Rosario, Argentina – Hours before boarding the plane towards his new post, the papal representative in Mexico called the land of Our Lady of Guadalupe a “faithful” place, but also “scourged by violence, by death.”

Archbishop Franco Coppola, Apostolic Nuncio in Mexico, expressed his gratitude for having represented Pope Francis for a little more than five years as he celebrated Mass for the World Day of Peace, commemorated by the Catholic Church every January 1st, in Latin America’s most famous shrine, dedicated to La Morenita.

The Italian diplomat stressed that Mexico is a “rich country”, because it has “many material and human resources,” but warned that peace will not be achieved here as long as there is so much inequality.

“There is a part that lives with dignity, and there is a majority that lives poorly, that lives in poverty; unable to fulfill basic needs, lacking instruction (education), and lacking decent…

On October 30th, Fr. James Jackson, FSSP, a well-known traditional Catholic priest, was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography and erotica. Jackson, author of a popular book on the traditional Latin Mass titled Nothing Superfluous, was a pastor for years at a Colorado FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) parish before being transferred to Rhode Island this year, and has long been a well-regarded speaker among traditional Catholics.

On November 15th, Jackson entered “no plea”, which is neither a statement of guilt nor innocence, and is a procedural move to push his court date back to January. His lawyer said he would be making no public statement on Jackson’s behalf.

Sadly, lurid accusations of this nature against priests have been all too common over the past 20 years. And in many (most?) cases, the charges have proven to be true. Because of this, many Catholics, myself included, tend to take…

Twelve bishops in Mexico are being investigated for covering up the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults, although no conclusions have so far been reached, the Vatican ambassador to the South America nation has revealed.

Archbishop Franco Coppola, the Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico, said that some of the investigations, carried out on the basis of new norms established by Pope Francis, have been referred to the Vatican itself. 

With the Nuncio’s revelation that more than one-sixth of Mexico’s Bishops are under suspicion of concealing abuse, the image of the Church in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation is likely to be further tarnished.

In 2019 one bishop revealed that at least 103 Catholic priests in Mexico have been suspended in the past nine years for sexual abuse against minors, out of more than 271 priests have been accused of sexual abuse.

In 2020 the Pope sent the team of investigators he directed to…

When Pope Francis spoke about Chile’s Bishop Juan Barros in January 2018, the pope probably knew his remarks would be controversial. But he likely did not realize what kind of firestorm they would set off, or how long it would take to repair the damage.

The pope was on a pastoral visit to South America, with a stop in Santiago de Chile. A journalist asked him about Barros — a bishop the pope had appointed to the Chilean diocese of Osorno, despite allegations that he enabled, witnessed, and covered up sexual abuse by the notorious predator and Chilean priest Fernando Karadima.

Francis told the journalist that the accusations against Barros were “all calumny,” and lacking proof.

“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” the pope said. 

His insistence set off protests across Chile. They also prompted a rare rebuke from a cardinal: Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley…

Cincinnati residents will find out today if a controversial Roman Catholic order will be allowed to convert a grand historic home into a monastery.

A zoning official is set to determine the fate of the homein Cincinnati’s North Avondale neighborhood. 

The religious order, Legionaries of Christ, has applied for permission to use the “Lake Como on Rose Hill” mansion built in 1903. If approved, the property would house seven to 10 priests and change the single-family home into a group home. 

There has been a string of protests from residents who have cited the order’s past sexual abuse allegations. They’re also worried the rezoning may set a  precedent for other houses in the neighborhood.

City staff, in an updated zoning report, recommended a conditional use of the home for a monastery be granted, but with three conditions: 

• No more than 10 residents;
• No religious services at the residence;
• It can’t be…

CINCINNATI — An upscale Cincinnati neighborhood known for its inclusiveness is fighting against a Catholic religious order’s proposal to establish a monastery in North Avondale.

The Legionaries of Christ has requested a conditional use permit to establish a residence for seven to 10 “Catholic missionary priests” at 3980 Rose Hill Avenue.

The city’s zoning staff has recommended approval of the permit in advance of a hearing scheduled for July 7. More than three dozen neighbors have blanketed the city with letters of opposition, citing concerns about parking constraints, the zoning process, housing values and clergy sexual abuse.

“I implore you to simply Google this particular order of priests,” wrote Jason Rich, who lives six doors down from 3980 Rose Hill. “As a lifelong Catholic and father of a 6-year-old, there is simply no way this order should be allowed in a residential community of single-family homes.”

The Legionaries of Christ…

The Legionaries of Christ were supposed to be the great Catholic hope of Latin America, but their Mexican founder’s sexual crimes have permanently weakened the congregation

Father Marcial Maciel’s name no longer appears on any of its official documents.

But the Legion of Christ, the male religious congregation the late Mexican priest set up in 1941, is still deeply affected by the actions of its founder.

Maciel has been accused of some 60 rapes and other forms of corruption.

Most of his crimes came to light after his death in 2008. But they have plunged his congregation into a long crisis.

The Legion of Christ was once touted as the future of the Church in Mexico, the country with the world’s second-largest Catholic population.

But at the order’s most recent chapter, the Legionaries (as the group is more commonly known) spoke of a “vocational emergency, marked by a steady decline…

Words of regret and acts of penance are not enough to heal the wounds and right the church

The Catholic Church enjoyed a bit of a renewed honeymoon with the global media after the May 21st announcement of the “synodal process 2021–2023.” But the love fest lasted only about a week.

It was brought to an abrupt and ugly end when law enforcement officials in Canada discovered 215 unmarked graves of indigenous children at a former Catholic-run residential school in British Columbia.

International organizations quickly demanded that the Church in Canada and the Holy See admit responsibility for the tragedy.

Pope Francis expressed his “closeness with Canadians traumatized by the shocking news,” as he addressed pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square at last Sunday’s Angelus. But he stopped short of issuing a direct apology.

June 4th, that fateful day

Canada’s Catholic Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, insisted that the Church and the…

[Via Catholic Philly]

Mexican church officials previously “covered up” cases of clerical sexual abuse, a situation the Vatican ambassador to Mexico said has changed as Catholic leaders increasingly follow a zero-tolerance policy promoted by Pope Francis.

Archbishop Franco Coppola, apostolic nuncio, told the Spanish news agency EFE that 271 cases of alleged sexual abuse committed by clergy have been investigated over the past decade. Of those cases, 103 priests have been removed from their positions, 45 priests have been suspended and 123 cases are still open.

“I seriously think there were people who covered up (cases) with bad intentions,” Archbishop Coppola told EFE May 19. “I want to think there were also people who covered up (cases) without realizing the seriousness of it.”

An official with the apostolic nuncio’s office in Mexico City told Catholic News Service the comments published by EFE were correct.

The nuncio’s comments offered a candid…