"A former pope was warned that paedophile priests should be removed from active ministry and repeat offenders expelled from the church, according to a clerical communique that has emerged following a US lawsuit.
The letter, written in August 1963 by the head of an order that specialised in the treatment of priests accused of abusing children, suggests that the Vatican and Pope Paul VI should have known about failings in procedures for dealing with such cases, according to the lawyer who produced it.
A senior church official swiftly dismissed the claim, suggesting it was unlikely the document would have been seen by the then pope nearly 50 years ago.
The letter has been released as plaintiffs in Kentucky attempt to sue the Vatican for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children, part of a series of abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic church and left the current pope, Benedict XVI, struggling to defend its reputation.
The document, produced by Anthony DeMarco, a lawyer who acted for plaintiffs in a separate US compensation claim settled in 2007, was written by the Rev Gerald MC Fitzgerald, the head of the Servants of the Holy Paraclete, an order based in New Mexico." ...more
"ROME — As hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse surface in the German church alone, a top Vatican official acknowledged Tuesday that, with only 10 people handling such cases, his office might not be adequate for the task."
But the official, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, who is effectively the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, said the church was working to bring more “transparency” to the delicate and emotional process of settling allegations of abuse by priests that have severely damaged the church’s moral standing.
“We have to get our act together and start working for more transparency in investigations and more adequate responses for the problem,” Monsignor Scicluna said, adding that this should happen “on every level of the church.”
His comments, rare for an official in the famously reticent Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, were part of a broader Vatican defense against a rising abuse scandal in Germany, including a case that happened on the watch of Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Over the weekend, Monsignor Scicluna told L’Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, that his office had examined 3,000 abuse cases in the past decade, most of them from the United States.
The ratio of 10 people handling 300 cases a year did not go over well in some quarters. “It seems like an extraordinarily paltry effort, given the scope of the crisis,” said David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
In a rare interview, by telephone on Tuesday, Monsignor Scicluna acknowledged the concern. Asked if he wanted reinforcements, he said with a laugh: “I would hope we have less work. That’s my hope. Not more people, less work.” ...more
Roman Catholic Blair courts controversial US pastor Rick Warren in bid to unite faiths
Former prime minister builds network of Christian allies as he prepares to launch a religious 'offensive' in North America
Tony Blair is preparing to launch a 'faith offensive' across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations.
With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair's focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star.
According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive – and, in at least one case, controversial – set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard.
The foundation's advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the '15 world leaders who matter most' and one of the '100 most influential people in the world'.
His influence was confirmed in December 2008 when Barack Obama chose him to give the invocation at his presidential inauguration. But the decision angered many liberals, who see Warren as an opponent of gay rights and abortion on demand; a prominent alliance with Warren is likely to attract similar attacks on the former British prime minister." ...more
"Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that 'the Devil is at work inside the Vatican', according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as 'cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon'.
He added: 'When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.'
He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican 'cover-up' over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. 'They covered up everything immediately,' he said. 'Here one sees the rot'."
A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However Tornay's relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied. ...more
"A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.
Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger."
Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.
"In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities. A church spokesman called her criticisms "absurd".
A separate sex scandal has also enveloped the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after three people said they were abused at a boarding school run by priests in the 1960s. Since the allegations were published on Friday more than 200 people have come forward to a designated helpline claiming that they were also abused by monks and priests. ...more
"VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Pius XII wanted to speak out against Nazi atrocities, but was advised not to for fear of worsening the wartime situation, said the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
'If the pope was silent, it was not out of fright or self-interest, but concern for worsening the situation of those oppressed' by the Nazi regime, it said.
With continuing criticism of Pope Pius' wartime activities, especially given the advancement of his sainthood cause, the newspaper Feb. 2 republished an article that had first appeared in a special June 28, 1964, edition of the Vatican's weekly periodical, L'Osservatore della Domenica.
The article, written by the late Jesuit Cardinal Paolo Dezza, gave a firsthand account of the cardinal's conversations with Pope Pius during the war. Cardinal Dezza, who was rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome at the time, conducted spiritual exercises for Popes Pius XII and John Paul I.
During a lengthy audience with Pope Pius in December 1942, the cardinal said the pontiff was pained by the Nazi atrocities unfolding in Germany and was distressed by criticisms that he was not speaking out publicly against them."...more
"Pope Benedict XVI's appearance at Rome's Great Synagogue on Sunday did nothing to quell the controversy over plans to confer sainthood on Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who has been called Hitler's pope. In fact, he may have made matters worse when just two days earlier he took a further step in the process by declaring Pius's 'heroic virtues.'
One prominent Italian rabbi and a number of Holocaust survivors boycotted the pope's visit in protest the beatification of Pius. Riccardo Pacifici, the president of Rome's Jewish community, did attend and declared, 'The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done.'
To this day, the Vatican has produced no hard evidence that Pius uttered a word or lifted a finger to help when, on October 16, 1943, the Germans rounded up 1,021 Roman Jews and held them for two days just across the Tiber from the Vatican before sending them to Auschwitz; only 17 returned after the war.
'The cries of the victims were met by Pius with silence,' said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
Benedict told his audience on Sunday that the Church had aided Jews in a 'hidden and discreet way' during the Holocaust, but he offered no specifics about Pius's own involvement.
IF THERE is evidence it lies buried deep in the Vatican vaults. For a decade the Church has been promising to open its wartime records to scholars 'soon,' but the latest word is it will be at least another five years. When some prewar archives were opened to a handpicked Catholic scholar, John Cornwell, to write a Vatican-sanctioned biography of Pius, he was shocked by what he found" ...more
"Glenn Beck recently said that he was inundated with messages from people concerned about an Obama executive order giving special rights to the international police organization known as Interpol. But what about the global campaign by the Vatican to establish a “World Political Authority” with “teeth.” Don’t look for Beck, O’Reilly or anybody else in the media to take on Pope Benedict XVI. It is just too controversial. Commentators who question the Vatican run the risk of being labeled anti-Catholic bigots.
Many Catholics, especially of a conservative persuasion, are embarrassed and troubled by what is happening inside their church. But they are mostly reluctant to say anything publicly. The facts, however, speak for themselves, and they are available on the Vatican’s own website in the actual words and statements being uttered by the Pope.
Consider, for example, Pope Benedict’s passionate embrace of the radical environmental movement. The Washington Times on Tuesday ran a front-page photo of the Pope greeting ambassadors to the Vatican during his new year’s address to the diplomatic corps. “The Pope denounced the failure of world leaders to agree on a climate change treaty last month,” the caption said. It’s true. Despite the Climategate scandal that has thrown the man-made global warming theory into disrepute, the Pope is still a believer in the discredited claims being made about the role of man in creating a hotter planet and he is trying to force world leaders to embrace and act on them" ...more
"Muslims are conquering Europe because Christians have become too selfish and pagan to defend the spiritual heritage of the continent, a Vatican cardinal said this week.
Miloslav Vlk, who has served as archbishop of Prague since 1991 and was considered as a successor to John Paul II, launched an outspoken attack on Christians living in Europe and accused them of allowing Muslims to 'Islamise' the continent.
He warned that Europe would 'fall' to Islam if people continued to deny their Christian roots.
In an interview published on his website, Vlk blamed immigration and high birth rates among Muslims for filling 'the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives'.
The 77-year-old said: 'Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims – which is actually happening gradually. If Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamised." ...more
"Ten years ago, on a cold winter morning in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian among the six scholars (three Catholics and three Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations to study this hotly contested issue.
A little under two years later, the project was abandoned as a result of the Holy See’s unwillingness to release materials from its own archives that could help clarify issues that our team of scholars raised in our provisional report. Already at that time, in the last years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate, there were moves afoot to place Pius XII on the fast track to sainthood, but they were probably slowed down by Israeli and Jewish protests and a desire by church authorities to prevent a serious rupture in Catholic-Jewish relations.
At issue was the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust and his indirect complicity in the Nazi mass murder of Jews. These allegations, which first emerged around 1964, had prompted the Vatican to publish 11 volumes of its own documents (edited by four trusted Jesuit scholars), most of them appearing in the 1970s. It was these documents in Italian, German, French, Latin and English that we were originally asked to review. The million or so unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958) according to the Vatican’s most recent estimate, will only be available in about four years’ time.
It is in this context that we need to see the recent decree on the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, just signed by Pope Benedict XVI. Most Jews have interpreted this act as yet another signal that the Vatican is determined to beatify the controversial wartime pope — whom some even consider to have been anti-Semitic — regardless of what the historical evidence may indicate." ...more
"DUBLIN — A shocking new report has identified hundreds of victims of child sex abuse by Irish Catholic priests, officials said Tuesday, two months after a landmark study found 'endemic' mistreatment.
A government-appointed commission of investigation headed by a judge has been probing allegations of abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin -- the country's biggest -- since March 2006.
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has warned that the report -- presented to Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on Tuesday -- would 'shock us all.'
It is the first time the state has investigated how the once-powerful Church in mainly Catholic Ireland has run its affairs.
It probed whether the Church reported abuse allegations or attempted to 'obstruct, prevent or interfere with the proper investigation' of complaints.
A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said the Church authorities had identified between 400 and 450 people that allege they were abused by one of 152 Dublin priests since 1940.
'I would like to stress that that is a very conservative estimate and is likely to rise,' she told AFP.
Ahern said he was anxious to make the findings public 'as quickly as possible.'
He added: 'Equally, I am concerned that nothing should be done which would harm the prospects of the perpetrators of these horrific acts of depravity against children being brought to the justice they deserve.'
Ahern is required to apply to the High Court for directions if he considers the report's publication might prejudice any criminal prosecution of clerics.
He is to seek the advice of Attorney General Paul Gallagher.
In May Ireland was rocked by a landmark report that concluded sexual, physical and emotional abuse was 'endemic' in Church-run industrial and reformatory schools, orphanages and other childcare institutions dating back to the 1930s.
Prime Minister Brian Cowen said it contained a 'shattering litany of abuse of children in care in this country over many decades.'
He told parliament the report was the gravest in the history of the country and contained 'such horrific stories that it is difficult to know where to begin in talking about it.'" ...source
"Some in the media are calling it just a statement about 'economic justice.' But Pope Benedict XVI's 'Charity in Truth' statement, also known as an encyclical, is a radical document that puts the Roman Catholic Church firmly on the side of an emerging world government.
In explicit and direct language, the Pope calls for a 'true world political authority' to manage the affairs of the world. At the same time, however, the Pope also warns that such an international order could 'produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature' and must be guarded against somehow.
The New York Times got it right this time, noting the Pope's call for a world political authority amounted to endorsement of a New World Economic Order, a long-time goal of the old Soviet-sponsored international communist movement. Bloomberg.com highlighted the Pope's call for a new world order with 'teeth.'
The Pope's shocking endorsement of a 'World Political Authority,' which has prophetic implications for some Christians who fear that a global dictatorship will take power in the 'last days' of man's reign on earth, comes shortly after the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis issued a call for global taxes and more powerful global institutions. U.N. General Assembly President, Miguel D'Escoto, a Communist Catholic Priest, gave a speech at the event calling on the nations of the world to revere 'Mother Earth' but concluded with words from the Pope blessing the conference participants.
The controversial Papal statement comes just before a meeting of the G-8 nations and a scheduled meeting between the Pope and President Obama at the Vatican on July 10.
Sounding like Obama himself, Pope Benedict says this new international order can be accomplished through 'reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.'
The 'teeth' may come in adopting the global environmental agenda, which the Pope warmly embraces." ...more
"Rape and sexual molestation were 'endemic' in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages, a report revealed today.
The nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls in the Irish Republic, while government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation.
The high court judge Sean Ryan today unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's commission into child abuse, which drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. Police were called to the news conference amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending.
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families – a category that often included unmarried mothers – were sent to Ireland's austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last facilities shut in the 1990s." ...more
"The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.
A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.
Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.
The conference is seen as a landmark in relations between faith and science. Three years ago advocates of Intelligent Design seized on the Pope’s reference to an “intelligent project” as proof that he favoured their views."
Conceding that the Church had been hostile to Darwin because his theory appeared to conflict with the account of creation in Genesis, Archbishop Ravasi argued yesterday that biological evolution and the Christian view of Creation were complementary.
Marc Leclerc, who teaches natural philosophy at the Gregorian University, said that no scholar could “remain indifferent” to the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth tomorrow. There was, however, “no question of celebrating” it.
The Vatican would “take the measure of an event, which has left its mark for ever on the history of science and has influenced the way we understand our humanity”. The “time has come for a rigorous and objective valuation” of Darwin by the Church, he said.
Professor Leclerc said that too many opponents of Darwin – above all Creationists – had mistakenly claimed that his theories were “totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality”, as did proponents of Intelligent Design.
Darwin’s theories had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, Monsignor Ravasi insisted. His rehabilitation had begun as long ago as 1950, when Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans. In 1996 John Paul II said that it was “more than a hypothesis”.
Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Santa Croce University in Rome, said that Darwin had been anticipated by St Augustine of Hippo. The 4th-century theologian had “never heard the term evolution, but knew that big fish eat smaller fish” and that forms of life had been transformed “slowly over time”. Aquinas had made similar observations in the Middle Ages, he added.
He said it was time that theologians as well as scientists grappled with the mysteries of genetic codes and “whether the diversification of life forms is the result of competition or cooperation between species”. As for the origins of Man, although we shared 97 per cent of our “genetic inheritance” with apes, the remaining 3 per cent “is what makes us unique”, including religion.
“I maintain that the idea of evolution has a place in Christian theology,” Professor Tanzella-Nitti added.
Creationism remains powerful in the US, however, notably among Protestants, and its followers object to evolution being taught in state schools.
The Church of England is seeking to bring Darwin back into the fold with a page on its website paying tribute to his “forgotten” work in his local parish, to illustrate how science and Church need not be at odds. Several pages celebrate Darwin’s “significant scientific progress” to mark his bicentenary and also the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species.
The Church wants to correct the impression that Darwin’s relationship with Anglicanism was contentious. The Anglican Church as a whole did not condemn Darwin or his beliefs. It says that although he lost his faith, he did not become antiChurch or antireligious. ...Source
