"Pope Francis Says Church Was Slow to Respond to Sex Abuse"
No shirt Sherlock.
Fortunately I was not an altar boy so there were no problems when I went to a moronic Catholic school where the ugly nuns didn't know anything about science so they never taught it.
Typical nun: "Duh, duh, Jeebus died for your sins, duh. You must have faith, duh."
One asshole nun spent an entire hour explaining why all the young children in the classroom were going to hell. Catholics are terrorists.
Anyone who is still a Catholic has no moral values at all.
From the Wall Street Journal at Pope Francis Says Church Was Slow to Respond to Sex Abuse. Remarks to advisory panel don’t address case of priest recalled from U.S. under suspicion of child pornography law violations.
VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis criticized the Catholic Church’s record on child sex abuse and its history of protecting abuser priests, even as the Vatican faced scrutiny over its handling of a priest suspected of violating U.S. laws against child pornography.
In remarks to his advisory panel on child protection Thursday, the pope said the church woke up to “these crimes in a delayed manner.”
“Maybe the old practice of moving people around, of not facing the problem, put our consciousness asleep,” he added.
The pope did not address the case of an Italian priest whom the Vatican recalled after the U.S. State Department notified it on Aug. 21 about a “possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images.”
The Vatican’s statement last Friday announcing the recall didn’t name the priest, identifying him only as a Holy See diplomat accredited to Washington. But a person familiar with the situation said he is Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, a longtime diplomat.
An attempt to reach Msgr. Capella through the Vatican wasn’t successful.
The case has raised concerns among U.S. bishops that it could undermine a decade and a half of efforts to regain public trust on clerical sex abuse.
The Vatican statement said the priest was in Vatican City and under investigation by the Vatican prosecutor, who had “already commenced international collaboration to obtain elements relative to the case.”
According to a person familiar with the matter, Msgr. Capella has submitted to house arrest and has surrendered all his electronic devices to Vatican officials who will examine them for evidence.
Shortly after the Vatican announcement, the head of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy openly pressed the Vatican to handle the matter with transparency and rigor. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement Friday that Msgr. Capella’s recall and investigation were a “serious issue,” and urged the Holy See to be “forthcoming with more details.”
The cardinal cited the U.S. bishops’ procedures for dealing with sex abuse allegations—adopted in 2002 amid a nationwide scandal over clerical sex abuse of children—and said that, as in all such cases, an “immediate, thorough, and transparent investigation should begin in cooperation with law enforcement.”
The U.S. bishops’ leadership was frustrated by the Vatican’s failure to consult them before recalling Msgr. Capella, according to a person familiar with their thinking. Depending on the strength of evidence, the bishops might have supported waiving his diplomatic immunity, allowing him to be investigated and tried in the U.S., the person said.
The U.S. State Department did not provide the Vatican with any evidence against Msgr. Capella prior to his leaving the country, according to people familiar with the matter. A State Department official didn’t comment on the evidence question, but outlined procedures for charging diplomats and said the Vatican didn’t waive immunity.
The U.S. bishops hope the Vatican deals with the case more quickly and transparently than it did that of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, Holy See envoy to the Dominican Republic, who was recalled in August 2013 following reports that he had sexually abused boys in the Caribbean country. After being defrocked, the former archbishop was still awaiting a criminal trial in the Vatican when he died of a heart attack in August 2015.
Pope Francis has spoken strongly against sex abuse by priests—likening the practice to a “black Mass”—but his pontificate has been marked by criticism, even from his own advisers, of the Vatican’s performance.
One of the two abuse survivors on the child protection commission, which Pope Francis established in 2014, was forced to take a leave of absence last year after criticizing the pope’s record on clerical sex abuse. The other survivor on the panel resigned in March, complaining that Vatican officials—though not the pope himself—were hindering the body’s work.
On Thursday, the pope told the commission that he regretted extending leniency to one Italian priest who was later convicted by a civil court. “That was the only time I did it, never again,” the pope said. “I learned my lesson.”
The highest Vatican official to be criminally charged with sex abuse is Australian Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis ’ finance chief, who was charged in June on multiple counts by prosecutors in his native country. He has taken a leave of absence from the Vatican and returned to Australia to face the charges.
Msgr. Capella, a priest from the diocese of Milan, has been an official at the Holy See’s mission to the U.S. since last year. He earlier served in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State with special responsibility for dealings with Italy.
