Priests in the Closet

Nov 25, 2019 | Frédéric Martel is dragging them out—and calling out hypocrisy. | Frédéric Martel is being interviewed by David Marr.

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Pope Accepts Resignation of Polish Bishop after Gay Orgy Scandal in Diocese

GUARDIAN EUROPE: Vatican did not say why Grzegorz Kaszak was resigning, but priest from his diocese faced criminal investigation

The pope has accepted the resignation of Polish bishop Grzegorz Kaszak as head of the diocese of Sosnowiec, which has been under the spotlight following reports of a gay orgy. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP
The pope has accepted the resignation of a Polish bishop whose diocese has been rocked by reports of a gay orgy involving a male sex worker in a priest’s apartment, as well as previous violent incidents involving his clergy.

The Vatican did not give a reason why Grzegorz Kaszak was resigning as head of the diocese of Sosnowiec, in south-western Poland. At 59, he is several years shy of the normal retirement age of 75.

But his diocese has been in the spotlight after one of his priests was placed under criminal investigation for having allegedly organised an orgy at his apartment in Dąbrowa Górnicza involving a male sex worker. Polish media reported that one of the participants of the sex party collapsed after overdosing on erectile dysfunction pills.

A prosecutor said the priest was suspected of “failing to provide assistance to a person whose life is at risk” for having allegedly tried to bar paramedics from entering the apartment. » | Associated Press in Rome | Tuesday, October 24, 2023

On the Extraordinary Idea of Purgatory

Stephen Fry talks about the bullshit many people believe.

Young Poles Leave the Church | ARTE.tv Documentary

Oct 11, 2023 | The Catholic church in Poland is losing ground. Although over 80% of Poles identify as Catholics, young people are increasingly turning away from the institution. Only 23% of 18-24 year olds still claim to be regular churchgoers, whereas 30 years ago there were three times as many. This trend is also visible in seminaries with a significant fall in Poles training to be priests.

Abuse Scandals in the Catholic Church | DW Documentary

May 10, 2023 | All over the world, an increasing number of nuns are coming forward with reports that they have been sexually abused by male clerics. The documentary film provides insights into a deeply disturbing - and barely addressed -- problem within the Catholic church.

The Catholic church has been blighted by sexual abuse scandals for decades. Initially, public awareness was focused on the abuse of children and young people. But a few years ago, reports of another scandal began to emerge, one that the church tried to cover up for a long time: In many parts of the world, nuns claimed they had been raped by senior clerics. Some of the revelations also concerned high-ranking Vatican dignitaries.

Nuns who become pregnant were either threatened with expulsion from their communities or forced into abortions. These offenses, some committed in systematic fashion, were mostly ignored. In the cases that went public and therefore demanded investigation, the accused priests were acquitted by Vatican courts. But over the past two decades, the wall of silence began to crumble. In spite of explicit reports, also directed at the Holy See, for a long time the Vatican did nothing to stop the abuse and sometimes systematic sexual enslavement of nuns.

In February 2019, Pope Francis broke the taboo, admitting for the first time that the abuse of nuns and sisters had taken place within the Catholic Church - and that the problem was ongoing. Work on this documentary film had already begun three years before. In numerous countries in Europe, North America and West Africa, filmmakers Eric Quintin and Marie-Pierre Raimbault spoke to nuns who suffered sexual violence at the hands of priests. The film hears from nuns, mother superiors, priests and people who worked closely with Pope Francis. Their accounts shine a disturbing light on a Catholic Church scandal that’s been shrouded in secrecy for far too long.


WARNING: This disturbing documentary is definitely NOT suitable for children. – Mark

The World This Week: Myanmar’s Ethnic Cleansing; Duterte Takes On the Church

Muslim Mob Burns Catholic Church in Sudan Capital
THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE: KHARTOUM, Sudan — A Muslim mob has set ablaze a Catholic church frequented by Southern Sudanese in the capital Khartoum, witnesses and media reports said on Sunday.

The church in Khartoum's Al-Jiraif district was built on a disputed plot of land but the Saturday night incident appeared to be part of the fallout from ongoing hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan over control of an oil town on their ill-defined border.

Sudan and South Sudan have been drawing closer to a full scale war in recent months over the unresolved issues of sharing oil revenues and a disputed border. » | Mohamed Saeed | Associated Press | Sunday, April 22, 2012

This Meddlesome Woman: Harriet Harman’s Direct Assault on the Roman Catholic Church
THE TELEGRAPH: The Roman Catholic ban on women entering the priesthood will become illegal under Harriet Harman's controversial Equality Bill, according to Christian charity, CARE.

A new report by the leading charity – backed by a legal opinion from a leading QC – says the Bill will make it impossible for all churches and faith-based charities to insist that their senior staff lead private lives in accordance with their religious beliefs.

CARE said that, under the Bill, which will be considered by the House of Lords on Monday, it would be illegal for a Christian charity to sack a senior manager for adultery or living an openly gay lifestyle.

The same rules would, it added, apply to Muslim and Jewish churches and charities.

However, the biggest potential showdown is likely to be between the government and Britain's 4.3 million Catholics over the church's tradition of an all-male, celibate priesthood.

Previous legislation in 2007, also backed by Ms Harman, the Commons Leader and equality minister, forced the closure of two Catholic adoption agencies for refusing to comply with new laws requiring them to place children with gay couples.

CARE's report – A Little Bit Against Discrimination? – warns that the proposals contained in the Bill are a serious threat to religious liberty in Britain.

John Bowers QC said in a legal opinion for CARE that the Bill could make it unlawful for a church to require a priest or minister to be male, celibate and unmarried, or not in a civil partnership. Catholic ban on women priests 'illegal under Harriet Harman equality bill' >>> Patrick Hennessy, Political editor | Sunday, January 10, 2010

Labour's Equality Bill Should Not Be Tolerated
THE TELEGRAPH: Telegraph View: ambiguities in the wording may penalise the Catholic Church and institutions linked to it

Toleration is one of the most fundamental values of a liberal society. It is also appears to be the one that some Labour ministers find hardest to understand. It requires accepting that other people are entitled to arrange their lives and institutions around their religious beliefs – even when those beliefs appear, to those who do not adhere to the religion in question, to be wrong-headed, or even discriminatory.

As we report today, there are serious concerns that Labour's new Equality Bill is incompatible with the value of toleration. According to one QC, it will make it illegal for a religion to insist on celibacy from some of its members, or to prevent women from becoming priests or holding other offices. There is enough ambiguity in the wording of the new law to make that intolerant result a real possibility. It would not be the first time that Labour's quest to achieve "fairness" has led to the imposition of prohibitions on religious organisations. A law passed in 2007 forced the closure of two Catholic adoption agencies for their refusal to place children with gay couples. >>> Telegraph View | Sunday, January 10, 2010

New Dark Age Alert! Cardinal Says Christian Europe Is to Blame for Islamisation
THE TELEGRAPH: A leading Catholic cardinal has said Europeans only have themselves to blame for allowing Islam to "conquer" the continent.

Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague. Photograph: The Telegraph
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void "created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".

"Europe will pay dear for having left its spiritual foundations and that this is the last period that will not continue for decades when it may still have a chance to do something about it," he said.

"The Muslims definitely have many reasons to be heading here. They also have a religious one – to bring the spiritual values of faith in God to the pagan environment of Europe, to its atheistic style of life.

"Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society."

The 77-year-old cardinal made his remarks in an interview to mark his retirement after spending 19 years as the leader of the Czech Church.

He said he did not blame Muslims for the crisis as Europeans had brought it upon themselves by exchanging their Christian culture for an aggressive secularism that embraced atheism.

"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," he said. >>> Simon Caldwell | Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Buy Mark Alexander’s book: The Dawning of a New Dark Age >>>

Punished for Being Yourself
THE AGE: Urgent action is needed to fight a rise in homophobia and hold governments accountable for human rights violations.

THE current president of the United Nations General Assembly, Libya's Ali Abdussalam Treki, has proclaimed that being gay ''is not acceptable''. Leave aside the bad joke that allows the representative of a nasty dictatorial regime to chair the assembly, Treki's comments echo a wave of homophobia that appears to be a strengthening theme in global politics.

In the past week there have been scary reports of mass rapes of suspected lesbians in South Africa, and systematic persecution and killings of suspected homosexuals in Iraq. The week before, a planned gay rights march in Belgrade was cancelled because the Serbian police claimed they could not protect the marchers from attacks from right-wing protesters.

The South African cases, which have resulted in several women being killed, remind us that even in countries with legal protection against discrimination - and South Africa was the first country to include sexual rights within its constitution - traditional assumptions about sex and gender are used to justify appalling brutality.

In Iraq the justifications for killings are religious, and globally there is a tacit alliance between organised Islam and the Catholic Church to prevent what is feared as the legitimisation of homosexuality. Ironically, Islamic countries such as Iran, which have a long tradition of homoerotic literature, now lead the world in criminalising, and in some cases executing, people for homosexual behaviour.

The world has never been as divided in attitudes towards homosexuality. In all Western countries legal prohibitions have been removed, and in some same-sex marriage has become legal. Openly homosexual politicians are increasingly evident, and no mainstream television series seems to be without its gay and lesbian characters.

For many political and religious leaders who dislike what they see as the unnecessary freedoms and hedonism of the West, homosexuality has become a crucial touchstone.

We should not be surprised that regimes such as those of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi rail against homosexuality, which they invoke as a symbol of Westernisation, unlike, for example, shopping malls or DVDs, which they embrace. >>> Dennis Altman* | Wednesday, September 30, 2009

*Dennis Altman is director of the Institute for Human Security, LaTrobe University.

Malay Court Hearing 'Allah' Case

A Catholic church in Malaysia which prays to Allah has prompted a court case over who can use the word.

Muslim leaders say Islam should be the only faith to use it, saying its use in other faiths could lead to confusion and conversions.

Robin Brant reports from Kuala Lumpur.

'The Catholic Church Failed Me. I Despised Myself and Lost All Confidence'
THE TELEGRAPH: An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O'Gorman.

In his autobiography, Colm O'Gorman courageously describes being abused by a Catholic priest . Photo credit: The Telegraph
Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles, Colm O'Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.

Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the Pope claimed diplomatic immunity but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.

Today, nearly 30 years since he was abused, Colm's hour has finally come with the publication of a long-awaited inquiry into child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. The investigation has taken nine years, during which time it has heard the testimony of thousands of former residents of state schools and orphanages over more than 60 years in the Irish Republic.

A second report, due to be published in the summer, is expected to criticise the handling of sex-abuse complaints in cases involving up to 500 priests. Colm believes the result of the inquiry will be "seismic."

"It will show that the state has an obligation of care to those who live in the country and can no longer declare that religion and politics don't mix, or that the abuse of children by Catholic priests was not a matter for the state."

The report coincides to the day with the publication of his extraordinary autobiography, in which Colm courageously describes the lows and highs of his remarkable life – a life that has included founding a charity for victims of sexual abuse, becoming a Senator, making a documentary for the BBC called Suing the Pope, and being appointed Ireland's director of Amnesty International. >>> By Angela Levin | Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Why Should Italy Be a Multi-ethnic Society? Tell the Lefties and the Catholic Church to Go Sit on It!
TIMESONLINE: Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, today came under fire from the Catholic Church as well as the Left after declaring that Italy was not and should not be a multi-ethnic society.

Mr Berlusconi's centre Right coalition won power a year ago partly by vowing to crack down on crime and illegal immigration. This weekend he praised Libya for taking back 500 would be migrants who have been intercepted by Italian naval vessels over the past five days, under a new Italian-Libyan accord.

"The Left's idea is of a multi-ethnic Italy," Mr Berlusconi told a news conference. "That is not our idea, ours is to welcome only those who meet the conditions for political asylum."

Italy was once itself a country of emigrants, but now sees itself as in the front line of an assault by poor and often desperate African, Asian and other migrants trying to get into Europe. The centre Left opposition however condemned Mr Berlusconi's remarks as racist. Silvio Berlusconi under Fire over Anti-immigration Remarks >>> Richard Owen | Sunday, May 19, 2009