Pope - resignation of archbishop

Pope accepts resignation of archbishop convicted of child abuse cover-up

An Australian archbishop convicted of concealing abuse by a notorious paedophile priest in the 1970s said Monday that he hoped his stepping down would be a "catalyst to heal pain and distress" after his resignation was accepted by Pope Francis.
The Vatican announced on Monday the departure of Philip Wilson, sentenced to a year in detention earlier this month after, in May, becoming one of the highest-ranking church officials to be convicted on the charge.
Wilson was found guilty in an Australian court of failing to report allegations against paedophile priest Jim Fletcher.
He submitted his resignation, which he says was not requested by the Vatican, on July 20, a day after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called on Francis to sack the 67-year-old.
In a statement released by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide on Monday, Wilson said:
"I made this decision because I have become increasingly worried at the growing level of hurt that my recent conviction has caused within the community.
"I had hoped to defer this decision until after the appeal process (against the conviction) had been completed. However, there is just too much pain and distress being caused by my maintaining the office of Archbishop of Adelaide, especially to the victims of Fletcher."
Turnbull welcomed the resignation in a statement to Fairfax Media on Monday, adding that "there is no more important responsibility for community and church leaders than the protection of children".
- 'No remorse' -
Wilson had long denied the charges and initially resisted calls to resign pending an appeal against his conviction.
His legal team made four attempts to have the case thrown out, arguing that their client suffered from Alzheimer's and should therefore avoid trial.
But a magistrate in Australia found Wilson guilty of concealing a serious indictable offence of another person, concluding that his primary motive was to protect the church.
He said when sentencing him that Wilson had showed "no remorse or contrition".
The court has adjourned the matter until August 14 to assess whether Wilson can serve his sentence under home detention.
Wilson's conviction comes amid a host of accusations that the Catholic Church ignored and covered up child abuse in Australia, charges that have also plagued other countries.
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s third highest ranking official, faces prosecution in Australia for historical child sexual offences.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A national inquiry into the issue was ordered in 2012 to investigate widespread allegations of institutional paedophilia in Australia.
Over five years of investigations, the royal commission spoke to thousands of victims and heard claims of abuse involving churches, orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools.
- Scandals -




http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/08/25/irish-sex-abuse-victim-urges-pope-to-remove-every-rotten-apple.html

Pope Francis should rid the Catholic Church of "every rotten apple" and announce concrete measures against sexual abuse by the clergy during his visit to Ireland, a prominent Irish victim told AFP.

Marie Collins, who resigned from a Vatican commission on child protection last year over its failure to take action, said in an interview that the pontiff had to tackle the issue "head on".

"Every rotten apple should be got rid of and it should happen now," Collins said on the sidelines of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, ahead of the pope's visit to Ireland which starts Saturday.

Collins was assaulted by a priest as a 13-year-old while she was in hospital -- one of thousands of victims in Ireland, where abuse scandals have badly dented the Catholic Church's standing.

"Coming to Ireland, where we have such a history of abuse and so many have had their lives destroyed, it is important that while he is here this issue is addressed, and addressed face on, and we get clear words as to what he's going to do," said Collins, now 71.

Many ordinary Irish Catholics were "waiting to see this whole issue dealt with properly" and if it is not, "more people are just going to give up in despair and walk away", she said.

Collins welcomed a letter from Pope Francis this week condemning the "atrocities" revealed by a far-reaching US report into child sex abuse by priests in the state of Pennsylvania.

But she said the words of the leader of the world's billion-plus Catholics did not go far enough.

"It didn't give any concrete statements about what he was actually going to do," she said, calling for some "real sanctions" against those who perpetrate and cover up abuse.

"The reluctance to look into things properly and to behave properly is the fear of how deep it goes, how far it goes and how wide it goes.

"There is this mistaken idea that if we don't look at it, it will go away," she said.

Collins had just celebrated her 13th birthday when she was assaulted by a priest, according to an account she gave at a Vatican symposium on abuse in 2012.

The priest -- "a skilled child molester" in her words -- began visiting her in the evenings while she lay in a hospital bed in Dublin.

"When he began to sexually interfere with me, pretending at first he was being playful, I was shocked and resisted, telling him to stop. He did not stop," she said.

"While assaulting me, he would respond to my resistance by telling me he was a priest, he could do no wrong," she recalled.

"He took photographs of the most private parts of my body and told me I was stupid if I thought it was wrong. He had power over me. I did not know how to tell anyone. I just prayed he would not do it again -- but he did.

"Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before were the next morning holding and offering me the sacred host.

"The hands that held the camera to photograph my exposed body, in the light of day were holding a prayer book when he came to hear my confession.

"When I left the hospital I was not the same child who had entered," she said.

After years of treatment for mental illness brought on by feelings of guilt, Collins finally told a doctor about the abuse when she was 47.

He persuaded her to tell the Church about it, but when Collins met with her parish priest, she says he refused to listen and blamed her.

"He said he saw no need to report the chaplain. He told me what happened was probably my fault. This response shattered me," she said.

A decade later while reading news about a serial paedophile priest Collins realised that other children might have been damaged by the same priest who hurt her and she again spoke up.

The priest was eventually prosecuted and jailed, and Collins has since become a leading voice in Ireland pushing for justice for victims.

Collins on Friday said only the pope could end Vatican "resistance", even if this meant removing people in high office.

"Every day children are being abused. So every day that goes by... more and more children are being harmed when they don't need to be harmed."

Topics :

Wilson's departure comes just two days after the pope accepted the resignation of US cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, accused of sexually abusing a teenager while working as a priest in New York in the early 1970s.
McCarrick is just the second cardinal ever to lose his status. He remains a priest pending the Vatican investigative process.
Last month Francis accepted the resignation of five Chilean bishops amid accusations of abuse and related cover-ups.
Abuse within the Chilean Catholic Church has proved to be a thorny issue for the pope.
He vowed to "restore justice" after admitting the Church failed "to listen and react" to abuse allegations in the country spanning decades.
Currently 158 members of the country's Catholic Church are being investigated for carrying out or concealing incidents of sexual abuse of both children and adults that go as far back as 1960.
Last week the Archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, was summoned by Chilean prosecutors to respond on August 21 to accusations of covering up systematic sexual abuse of minors by Chilean priests, 14 of whom were defrocked in May.
Less than two week prior prominent priest Oscar Munoz was arrested over allegations of sexual abuse and rape of at least seven children.














 http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/08/02/chile-prosecutors-seek-vatican-files-of-priests-in-sex-scandal.html

Chile prosecutors seek Vatican files of priests in sex scandal

Prosecutors in Chile on Wednesday said they have requested the Vatican files of nine Chilean priests being investigated for sexual abuses.
"The National Prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, today signed an official letter addressed to the Vatican (..), requesting canonical records involving accused persons investigated by the Public Prosecutor's Office," the National Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.
The petition includes three requests for help in criminal cases of nine members of the church.
In July, prosecutors said Chile was investigating 158 members of the country's embattled Catholic Church -- both clergymen and lay people -- for perpetrating or concealing the sexual abuse of children and adults.
The cases relate to incidents dating back as far as 1960 and involving 266 victims, including 178 children and adolescents.
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of five Chilean bishops amid accusations of abuse and related cover-ups.
The developments have been welcomed by campaigners who have accused the church of being involved in a cover-up stretching back decades.
Since 2000, about 80 Catholic priests have been reported to authorities in Chile for alleged sexual abuse.
Pope Francis has repeatedly apologized to parishioners over the scandal, admitting the Church failed "to listen and react" to allegations spanning decades, but vowed to "restore justice."

Pennsylvania report lists more than 300 'predator' priests

• Jennie Matthew Agence France-Presse

More than 300 "predator" priests in Pennsylvania are accused of abusing over 1,000 children across seven decades, a grand jury said Tuesday in a devastating report that decried a systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church.
It is thought to be the single most comprehensive report to date into abuse in the US church, since The Boston Globe first exposed pedophile priests in Massachusetts in 2002.
But while Tuesday's report led to charges against two priests, one of whom has pleaded guilty, the majority of those responsible are dead and the vast majority of crimes happened too long ago to prosecute, officials said.
The two-year investigation by a grand jury into all but two Pennsylvania dioceses turned up dozens of witnesses and half a million pages of church records containing "credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests."
More than 1,000 child victims were identifiable, but the "real number" was "in the thousands," the grand jury estimated, given those children whose records were lost or who were afraid to ever come forward.
Victims were often traumatized for life, driven to drugs, alcohol and suicide, the grand jury said. The only recourse was to recommend changes to the law and expose what had happened to make sure such widespread abuse was never repeated.
One cleric raped a seven-year-old girl in hospital after she had her tonsils out, the report said. Another child drank juice, only to wake up the next morning bleeding from his rectum and unable to remember what had happened.
- 'Abuse, deny, cover up' -
A priest forced a nine-year-old boy to give him oral sex, then rinsed out his mouth with holy water to "purify him." Another priest abused five sisters from the same family, including one from the age of 18 months to 12 years.
When the youngest victim of the family told her parents in 1992, a police search of the priest's home found panties, plastic containers of pubic hairs, vials of urine and sexually suggestive photographs of young girls.
The church ignored credible allegations against him for years, and the priest died awaiting trial, Pennsylvania's Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.
"The pattern was abuse, deny and cover up," Shapiro said. "As a direct consequence of the systematic cover-up by senior church officials almost every instance of child sexual abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted."
So far only two new priests are being charged with crimes that fall within the statute of limitations. One, accused of ejaculating in the mouth of a seven-year-old, pleaded guilty earlier this month, prosecutors said.
The other allegedly assaulted two boys, one of them for eight years starting from the age of eight. His alleged crimes continued until 2010.
The grand jury called for changes in the law that would scrap the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, give victims more time to file civil lawsuits and tighten legislation compelling people to report abuse they find out about.
"Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability," the report said.
- 'Hid it all' -
"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades."
Church elders were instead promoted and predator priests allowed to remain in ministries for 10, 20 even 40 years after leaders learned of their crimes as the list of victims got longer and longer, Shapiro said.
Between 5,700 and 10,000 Catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse in the United States, but only a few hundred have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for their crimes, according to the watchdog Bishop Accountability.
Since the abuse crisis became public in the 2000s, the US church has spent more than $3 billion in settlements, according to Bishop Accountability.
The group has documented settlements for 5,679 alleged victims of Catholic clergy -- only a third of 15,235 allegations that bishops say they have received through 2009. One estimate suggests up there were 100,000 US victims.
The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for work by its investigative team exposing sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. That story was turned into Oscar-winning Hollywood movie, "Spotlight," starring Michael Keaton.
Faced with a growing number of cases worldwide and repeated criticism over the Church's response, Pope Francis in 2013 brought in new legislation covering child sex abuse and pornography and sentences of up to 12 years for priests.
The church in Chile has most recently been rocked by accusations of a wide-scale cover-up of child abuse during the 1980s and 1990s.