Ongoing religious scandals

Sydney Morning Herald wrote:

Cardinal George Pell has strongly defended the so-called Melbourne Response as Australia's first comprehensive redress scheme for victims of clerical sexual abuse at the royal commission. Appearing at the commission via video link from the Vatican in Rome on Thursday night, Cardinal Pell likened the Catholic Church's responsibility for child abuse to that of a ''trucking company''. If a driver sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way, he said, ''I don't think it appropriate for the … leadership of that company be held responsible.''

Cardinal Pell, who established the Melbourne Response when he was Archbishop of the Melbourne Archdiocese in 1996, denied suggestions that any of its three arms - the Independent Commissioner, compensation panel and counselling arm Carelink - had stopped operating independently of the other. Sean Cash, a lawyer for abuse victim Paul Hersbach, challenged the trucking company analogy, saying that because the Catholic Church was an organisation of the ''highest integrity'' it owed victims a far greater legal and moral responsibility. He said it should not impede victims' ability to receive full and fair compensation.

''We were among the front-runners in Melbourne in addressing these scandals and I would suggest to you that that is entirely consistent with Catholic tradition and the teachings of Christ,'' Cardinal Pell replied. He also apologised to parents of abuse victims Emma and Katie, Christine and Anthony Foster, who won a $750,000 settlement from the Melbourne archdiocese after two of their three daughters were sexually abused by notorious abuser Father Kevin O'Donnell. Mr Foster said Cardinal Pell showed a ''sociopathic lack of empathy'' when they met to discuss the case in the 1990s.

In his statement to the child abuse royal commission, Cardinal Pell said he had not tried to insult the Fosters. ''It was certainly not my intention to upset them. I wanted to help them. I regret deeply that I have been unable to bring them even a small amount of healing,'' he said. Earlier on Thursday, church lawyer Richard Leder told the commission that Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart had ''strongly held views that every effort should be made to settle'' the Fosters' case. He said the church could have argued it could not be legally sued, but Archbishop Hart did not want to go down that route.

''While that would be a legal victory, that would not be a victory that the Archbishop would have enjoyed,'' Mr Leder said. His answer drew jeers from the public gallery. Mr Leder also apologised before the Royal Commission over incorrect statements made in correspondence between himself and senior figures from the archdiocese and the Melbourne Response. The comments were made regarding an application for church funding by the Foster family, who requested the church pay for special accommodation for Emma. She suffered from depression, anorexia and drug addiction.

But Mr Leder accused the Fosters of kicking their eldest daughter out of home, and the church rejected the funding request. Royal commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan asked for an explanation. Mr Leder could not recall why he had made the comment and apologised to the Fosters, who have attended all of the commission hearings in Melbourne.

Cabaal wrote: »

His comparison is deeply flawed[...]

The Guardian wrote:

A former Vatican ambassador has been placed under house arrest and will face a criminal trial on child sex charges, the Holy See said on Tuesday night. The action against Józef Wesołowski, 66, is the first time that the Vatican has charged a high-ranking official with paedophilia. If found guilty he could face up to 12 years in prison.

The Polish-born cleric was recalled from the Dominican Republic in August 2013 after the archbishop of Santo Domingo told Pope Francis about rumours that Wesołowski had sexually abused teenage boys in the Caribbean country. Prosecutors there say he allegedly paid boys as young as 13 to masturbate.

In June a Vatican tribunal found Wesołowski guilty of abuse and imposed its toughest penalty under church law: laicisation, or returning to life as a layman. Being defrocked meant that he lost his diplomatic immunity and the Dominican Republic has opened an investigation into accusations that he paid boys to perform sexual acts.

The Vatican had been criticised for protecting Wesołowski from legal action by the Dominican authorities by recalling him last year. The case has also been a test of whether Francis is willing to prosecute a crime that the Vatican has long sought to blame on priests, rather than direct representatives of the pope himself.

The Vatican said the arrest reflected the wishes of the Pope that “such a grave and delicate case be handled without delay, with the just and necessary rigour”. Francis has said that no Catholic clerics who sexually abused children would escape punishment and has described paedophilia as an “ugly crime” and likened it to a “satanic mass”.

Wesołowski is the most prominent church figure to be arrested since Paolo Gabriele, a former papal butler convicted in 2012 of stealing and leaking private papers of the former pope Benedict XVI. The Pole was granted house arrest in a Vatican apartment on medical grounds rather than being detained in its prison - a small number of rooms attached to a courthouse.

It is unclear whether Wesołowski would be jailed inside the Vatican, or in an Italian prison, if convicted.

TheJournal wrote:

POPE FRANCIS HAS forcibly removed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who had clashed with his fellow bishops on ideological grounds and promoted a priest accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour.

The removal of Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, marks the second time Francis has kicked out a conservative bishop for the sake of keeping peace among the faithful and unity among bishops. In March, he ousted the “bling bishop” of Limburg, Germany, whose €31 million ($43-million) new residence complex caused an uproar among the faithful.

Livieres was named bishop of Paraguay’s second city, Ciudad del Este, in 2004 and immediately disturbed other more progressive Paraguayan bishops by opening his own seminary that followed a much more orthodox line than the main seminary in the capital, Asuncion. Paraguay’s bishops are known for their progressive bent in a poor country where liberation theology found fertile ground.

Relations between Livieres and the rest of Paraguay’s bishops worsened when he got into a public spat with the then-archbishop of Asuncion, whom he accused of being gay. Livieres also infuriated advocates for victims of sexual abuse by taking in and promoting an Argentine priest, the Rev. Carlos Urrutigoity, whose former superior in the U.S. had said was a “serious threat to young people.”

Urrutigoity has denied allegations of sexual impropriety, has never been charged and hasn’t been accused of sexually abusing minors. In 2004, though, the diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, settled a lawsuit against him, another priest and the diocese for $400,000. The suit had alleged the two men engaged in a pattern of sexual misconduct, the Global Post has reported. Earlier this year, the Vatican sent a cardinal to investigate problems in Livieres’ diocese, particularly concerning the seminary. The investigator reported back to Francis, and Livieres was summoned to Rome this week to discuss his future.