THE NEW YORK TIMES: As an investigative reporter, Jason Berry
exposed the church’s systematic cover-up of sexual
abuse. Somehow, it wasn’t enough
Nearly 20 years ago, an investigation by The Boston Globe into sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests ignited a firestorm of scandal that has traveled around the world. For many Americans, these shocking revelations — especially of the related cover-ups by the church — came out of nowhere, almost like a bolt of lightning. But the sobering reality is that this bolt of lightning had been striking for at least 15 years. Read the short article and watch the disturbing video here » | Ben Proudfoot | Mr. Proudfoot is an Emmy-winning filmmaker. | Tuesday, August 14, 2021
So much for organised religion! This is disgusting! Truly disgusting! It begs many questions: Why is there so much perversion in the Roman Catholic Church? Why does the RCC attract so many perverts? Who wants or needs to be preached to by these perverts on issues of morality anyway? And where do they get the audacity from to lecture people on being gay when they engage in truly disgusting sexual abuse like this?
We’ve all known about the goings on in the Roman Catholic Church (and other churches, too), but when you watch a video such as this one, it is a sad reminder that much of religion is a sick joke! This is far removed from the teachings of Jesus Christ. – @ Mark
Showing posts with label pedophilia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pedophilia. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Friday, April 15, 2011
20 MINUTES ONLINE: Elle est accusée de protéger un ancien évêque pédophile.
L'Eglise catholique belge protégerait un ancien évêque pédophile qui a choqué le pays lors d'une interview télévisée où il fait de nouvelles révélations et ne montre aucun signe de remords.
Roger Vangheluwe, ex-évêque de Bruges, avait déclenché un déluge de plaintes contre l'Eglise quand il avait démissionné en avril 2010, après avoir reconnu des abus sexuels sur un neveu mineur entre 1973 et 1986. Il a provoqué un nouveau tollé en détaillant jeudi soir sur la chaîne de télévision néerlandophone VT4 des abus sur non pas un, mais deux neveux, tout en minimisant ses actes.
«Je n'ai pas du tout l'impression d'être un pédophile», a-t-il déclaré depuis un monastère français où il vit depuis peu, banni par son Eglise. «Je n'étais pas conscient que cela avait un tel impact sur mon neveu. Je croyais qu'il s'agissait de choses superficielles».
«Naturellement, je savais que ce n'était pas bien, je l'ai confessé plusieurs fois», a-t-il concédé. Mais il a aussi reconnu s'être entendu avec la famille pour ne pas ébruiter l'affaire et avoir versé de l'argent à sa victime. » | ats | Vendredi 15 Avril 2011
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Survivors of clerical child sexual abuse called on Irish Roman Catholics to make their voices heard today after Cardinal Sean Brady ended months of speculation about his future by saying he would not resign.
The cardinal, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, is under pressure to stand down after it emerged that he took part in a secret canonical tribunal in 1975 at which two minors were made to swear oaths of silence about their allegations against the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.
Smyth went on to rape hundreds more children across Ireland, the UK and the United States before he died in prison in 1997.
In March the cardinal asked for forgiveness, telling a congregation at Armagh cathedral that he would spend the rest of Lent reflecting on his future. >>> David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent | Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The child sex abuse scandal is the greatest threat to the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI said on Tuesday.
The pontiff said the crisis over paedophile priests was "born from sins within the church" not outside, and called for penance.
In some of his strongest comments to date, Pope Benedict said the Catholic church had always suffered from internal problems, but that "today we see it in a truly terrifying way".
"The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice," he said.
The Pope was speaking aboard the papal plane while en route to Portugal, where he began a four-day visit on Tuesday. >>> | Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
NEW YORK TIMES: VATICAN CITY — As the sexual abuse crisis continues to unfold in the Roman Catholic Church, with more victims coming forward worldwide and three bishops resigning last week alone, it is clear the issue is more than a passing storm or a problem of papal communications.
Instead, the church is undergoing nothing less than an epochal shift: It pits those who hold fast to a more traditional idea of protecting bishops and priests above all against those who call for more openness and accountability. The battle lines are drawn between the church and society at large, which clearly clamors for accountability, and also inside the church itself.
Uncomfortably, the crisis also pits the moral legacies of two popes against each other: the towering and modernizing John Paul II, who nonetheless did little about sexual abuse; and his successor, Benedict XVI, who in recent years, at least, has taken the issue of pedophile priests more seriously.
He has had little choice, given the depth of the scandal and the anger it has unleashed. But when supporters defend Benedict, they are implicitly condemning John Paul and how an entire generation of bishops and the Vatican hierarchy acted in response to criminal behavior.
“The church realizes that it doesn’t have a way out, at least not until it confronts the entirety of its problems,” said Alberto Melloni, the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna, Italy. >>> Rachel Donadio | Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: A senior Catholic bishop has resigned after admitting to sexually abusing a child. He is the latest and most senior cleric to stand down in the crisis engulfing the church.
Roger Vangheluwe, Belgium’s longest-serving bishop, said that he was “enormously sorry” for the “wound” he had inflicted on a young boy about 25 years ago.
“When I was not a bishop, and some time later, I abused a boy,” he said in a statement. “This has marked the victim forever. The wound does not heal. Neither in me nor the victim,” he said.
Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the bishop’s resignation, which is the first among senior clerics since the crisis over paedophile priests began. >>> Joanna Sugden | Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, has issued a statement expressing "deep shame" over the child abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church.
The Archbishop of Westminster referred to the "inadequate response by some church leaders" to the "terrible crimes" committed.
He said: "The criminal offences committed by some priests and religious are a profound scandal. They bring deep shame to the whole church."
"We express our heartfelt apology and deep sorrow to those who have suffered abuse, those who have felt ignored, disbelieved or betrayed.
"We ask their pardon, and the pardon of God for these terrible deeds done in our midst. There can be no excuses.
The statement made at the Bishops' Conference in England and Wales said the church would do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to justice.
"We recognise the failings of some Bishops and religious leaders in handling these matters. These, too, are aspects of this tragedy which we deeply regret and for which we apologise. >>> Peter Hutchison | Thursday, April 22, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The Pope has pledged that the Catholic Church will take action to confront the clerical sex abuse scandal, in his first public remarks calling for change since the crisis erupted.
During his weekly public audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square, the pontiff recounted his tearful weekend encounter in Malta with eight men who say they were abused as children by priests in a church-run orphanage. Benedict met with the men in the Vatican's embassy for more than 30 minutes, praying with them and listening to their stories.
"I shared with them their suffering, and emotionally prayed with them, assuring them of church action," Benedict told the audience.
He said he told the victims in the tearful meeting "not to be afraid of life's storms or even shipwrecks, because the love of God is greater than storms or shipwrecks." >>> | Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: The damage done by the child abuse scandal has been compounded by a lack of coherent response from those at the top
A papal trip to Malta would not normally attract world attention, but these are not normal times in the Vatican. The Pope’s first overseas engagement since the sex abuse scandal embroiled the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy will take place in the full glare of the media — the same media that some of his supporters accuse of waging a campaign against him and their religion.
The blame game — the Vatican has also attributed its woes to homosexuals, the Holocaust, the Irish, and even the Devil — speaks to a wider problem in the Church’s handling of accusations that it conspired to cover up paedophilia committed by its clergy. Only in the past few days have Vatican officials scrambled to find a coherent strategy to try to control a scandal that has inflicted immeasurable damage on the institution.
“The problem is not that the Vatican line over the crisis has had unfortunate consequences,” said Andrea Tornielli, the biographer of Pope Benedict XVI and other modern pontiffs. “The problem is that there is no line.”
Even as the Pope faced accusations that he had covered up instances of clerical abuse while Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, and later as head of doctrine at the Vatican for 24 years, there was no co-ordinated rebuttal. In the corporate world, the response to such a public relations disaster would be crisis management, but the Vatican’s ancient bureaucracy, and a centuries-old culture of secrecy is ill equipped to meet the demands of communications strategies.
“We are not a multinational,” Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope’s spokesman, said recently. The Holy See, he said, “does not believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context”.
Asked during a rare briefing for reporters whether there had been urgent meetings in the Vatican over the abuse scandal, he looked baffled. Didn’t he feel that the Vatican was under siege? “No. We issue clarifications when necessary,” he replied, pointing to the publication on the Vatican website of church rules on abuse, making it clear for the first time that bishops must go to the police.
The reality, however, is that new abuse stories have appeared almost daily, and Father Lombardi, 68, a genial and mild-mannered Jesuit from Piedmont, northern Italy, has struggled without any apparent strategy or guidance from higher up in the Church.
Instead, stories involving abuse at the hands of priests have been dismissed as “petty gossip” or “idle chatter”. Contentious remarks by cardinals and bishops — blaming the stories on a Jewish conspiracy, for instance — have added to the furore. >>> Richard Owen in Rome | Saturday, April 17, 2010
Sunday, April 04, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Cardinal tells Pope Benedict XVI not to be distracted by 'petty gossip': A senior Vatican cardinal used the Easter Mass to say the Catholic Church should not be distracted by "petty gossip" about child sex-abuse allegations. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010
THE SUNDAY TIMES: When John Paul II died five years ago the crowd that packed St Peter’s Square for his funeral clamoured “Santo subito (Saint now)!” in a spontaneous tribute to the charisma of the Polish pontiff.
As the faithful marked the anniversary of John Paul’s death on Good Friday, however, he was being drawn into the scandal over child abuse in the Catholic church that has confronted his successor, Benedict XVI, with the worst crisis of his reign.
Allegations that the late pontiff blocked an inquiry into a paedophile cardinal, promoted senior church figures despite accusations that they had molested boys and covered up innumerable cases of abuse during his 26-year papacy have cast a cloud over his path to sainthood.
The most serious claims related to Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, an Austrian friend of John Paul’s who abused an estimated 2,000 boys over decades but never faced any sanction from Rome.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Groer’s successor, criticised the handling of that scandal and other abuse cases last week after holding a special service in St Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, entitled “Admitting our guilt”.
Schönborn condemned the “sinful structures” within the church and the patterns of “silencing” victims and “looking away”.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who became Pope Benedict — had tried to investigate the abuses as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, according to Schönborn. But his efforts had been blocked by “the Vatican”, an apparent reference to John Paul. >>> Bojan Pancevski in Vienna and John Follain in Rome | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has been forced into a humiliating apology after claiming the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland had lost all credibility over the child abuse scandal.
Following a torrent of criticism, Dr Williams admitted his "deep sorrow and regret" over his earlier comments in a telephone conversation with the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin.
A statement issued last night by the Dublin Archdioces said: "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, this afternoon telephoned Archbishop Diarmuid Martin to express his deep sorrow and regret for difficulties which may have been created by remarks in a BBC interview concerning the credibility of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
"Archbishop Williams affirmed that nothing could have been farther from his intention than to offend or criticise the Irish Church." >>> Robert Mendick | Saturday, April 03, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Rowan Williams's comments on Vatican handling of sex abuse scandal likely to further cloud pope's upcoming UK trip
The archbishop of Canterbury has said the Catholic church in Ireland has lost "all credibility" because of its poor handling of the scandal of paedophile priests.
Dr Rowan Williams said the scandal had been a "colossal trauma" for Ireland in particular.
In an interview to be broadcast on Monday, he said: "I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now.
"And an institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility – that's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland."
The archbishop's remarks are likely to fuel the controversy surrounding the pope's visit to Britain in September, when he is expected to talk about moral standards and renew his attack on Britain's equality laws.
A Protest the Pope petition on the Downing Street website against the £15m cost of the visit, which will be shared by the government and the Catholic church, has already attracted more than 10,000 signatories.
In his interview for BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, to be broadcast on Monday, Williams sounded less than enthused about the pope's visit.
"The pope will be coming here to Lambeth Palace. We'll have the bishops together to meet him. I'm concerned that he has the chance to say what he wants to say in and to British society, that we welcome him as a valued partner and, you know, that's ... that's about it."
He also predicted that few Anglicans would take up the pope's offer of conversion to Catholicism.
The reputation of the Catholic church in Ireland has been severley damaged by revelations that its leaders covered up widespread child sexual abuse by dozens of paedophile priests.
Its leader, the primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, came under pressure to stand down after he admitted being at a meeting where children abused by the convicted paedophile Father Brendan Smyth were forced to take a vow of silence.
The scandal has also damaged the pope, who has faced accusations that he failed to properly investigate a serial abuser in a children's home for the deaf in Wisconsin, US, in the late 1990s.
Yesterday, the Vatican provoked further controversy after the pope's personal preacher compared criticism of the Catholic hierarchy over cleric sex abuse with persecution of Jews. >>> David Batty | Saturday, April 03, 2010
Friday, April 02, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Child abuse committed by priests has led to “a great public humiliation” of the church, according to the most senior Roman Catholic in Britain.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, will also tell worshippers on Easter Sunday that the cover-up of “evil” paedophilia by senior clergy “brings shame on us all”.
However he insisted that the faithful must not turn away from the church, just as voters disillusioned by the state of politics should still cast their ballots.
His forthright comments on one of the most important days in the Christian calendar highlight the concern felt at the highest levels of the church about the effect of clergy sex abuse scandals unfolding around the world. >>> Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent | Good Friday, April 02, 2010
Thursday, April 01, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: It is Benedict XVI’s duty to implement worldwide the reforms already made by Catholic leaders in Britain
The paedophile abuse cases have become a big crisis for the Roman Catholic Church. A crisis for the laity, a crisis for the clergy, a crisis for the bishops and, increasingly, a crisis for the Pope himself.
It has caused great damage to the victims, who need to be considered first. In some cases the psychological damage will last a lifetime. The crisis has damaged the image that the Church has of itself; it has damaged the authority of the Pope.
Priests see themselves as men of spiritual values, disciplined in their personal lives and requiring considerable personal sacrifices, including the sacrifice involved in a life of celibacy. They usually have the respect of their own communities.
It is still the case that congregations usually trust their own priests; that is true of the Catholic Church and of the Church of England, but it is easy for the Catholic clergy to feel they may be suspected of criminal conduct with children, which they find as outrageous as does everyone else. Like MPs who have never abused their expenses, many priests must feel that they are suffering guilt by association.
Most clergy live relatively austere religious lives. The proportion who have ever had sexual allegations made against them is about one in 200. That proportion has been high enough to cast some degree of suspicion on the priesthood as a whole. The clergy are able to do their work because they are trusted, and that trust has been damaged.
The Catholic Church of previous eras had a policy that sexual offences should be hidden. This policy of “cover-up” has done the greatest possible harm, both to the victims, who were not believed, and to the spread of abuse. Until about ten years ago, most Catholic bishops thought it was their duty to protect the Church from scandal; they mistakenly believed that secrecy would act in the interest of the Church.
They protected paedophile priests from the police; they persuaded the unfortunate victims to sign secrecy agreements; they kept the stories out of the press; they moved the peccant priests from one parish or diocese to another. Families were persuaded that their children, who had suffered abuse, were fantasists or liars. The victims were made to feel that it was they who were guilty. >>> William Rees-Mogg | Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday, July 06, 2009
MAIL Online: A barber has been publicly executed in Yemen after he was found guilty of raping and killing an 11-year-old boy who came to his shop for a haircut.
Pictures of the execution Monday in the capital of San'a showed hundreds of people gathered around as Yehya Hussein was killed.
The images showed the barber lying face down on a large piece of red cloth, his hands bound behind him, as Yemeni police official stood over him with what appeared to be a machine gun.
According to the news agency, SAB'A, the barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a January trial to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him and cutting his body to pieces before dumping it outside San'a.
Elsewhere in the country, a court sentenced seven rebels from a Shia Muslim sect to be executed after convicting them of causing deaths in clashes with army in 2008.
Hundreds of people died in the conflict and thousands fled their homes in battles between government forces and the rebels in the north, which have raged on and off since 2004.
The state security court also jailed for terms of 12-15 years another five of the rebels accused of seeking to install Shi'ite Islamic rule in the country, which borders the world's biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia. Justice Yemen-style: Paedophile who raped boy, 11, shot in the head in front of hundreds of spectators >>> | Monday, July 06, 2009
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