The stupid fucking asshole pope belongs in prison. "The pope was later made aware of the abuse at Provolo, but victims and lawyers for the children said he was slow to start an investigation. Argentine prosecutors said when the Vatican sent representatives to Lujan de Cuyo, they didn’t cooperate with the investigations."

The Rev. Nicola Corradi, in wheelchair, was taken from a courtroom in Mendoza, Argentina, on Monday after being found guilty of sexual abuse of deaf children at a Catholic-run school.

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Wall Street Journal - Argentine Court Convicts Two Catholic Priests of Sexually Abusing Deaf Students

Verdict in a case that horrified the country raised questions about how Pope Francis responded to the crimes.

By Ryan Dube

November 25, 2019

An Argentine court found two Catholic priests guilty of sexually abusing children at a school for the deaf, in a case that horrified the country and raised questions about how Pope Francis, an Argentine native, responded to the crimes.

The two clerics—the Rev. Nicola Corradi and the Rev. Horacio Corbacho —and a third man, a gardener, on Monday were found to have sexually abused 11 boys and girls as young as 5 years of age at the Provolo Institute in the town of Lujan de Cuyo from 2005 to 2016.

Father Corradi, an 83-year-old Italian citizen, was sentenced to 42 years in prison, while Father Corbacho, a 59-year-old from Buenos Aires province, received a 45-year-sentence for abusing and, in some cases, raping children. The court gave an 18-year sentence for sexual abuse to the gardener at the school in the western Mendoza province, Armando Gomez. Another man who worked at the now-closed Provolo Institute was convicted of sexual abuse and corruption of minors last year and given a 10-year sentence.

“This is a one-of-a-kind sentence, we’ve never received one so high,” said Sergio Salinas, a lawyer for the Argentine human-rights group Xumek, which represented Provolo victims. “This will be a reference for so many other cases.”

The Vatican’s role in dealing with the complaints of parents and victims has been questioned here and in Rome, where the first public denunciations were made in 2009 against a Provolo school in Verona, Italy. Father Corradi had been reassigned to Argentina in 1984 even though he had been accused of abusing children at the Verona school.

It is unclear when Francis—who has been dogged by charges of insufficient zeal in disciplining clerical abusers—learned of the abuse, though no public assertion has been made that he was aware while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, a post he held until becoming pope in 2013.

The pope was later made aware of the abuse at Provolo, but victims and lawyers for the children said he was slow to start an investigation. Argentine prosecutors said when the Vatican sent representatives to Lujan de Cuyo, they didn’t cooperate with the investigations.

In 2017, the Vatican sent investigators to Argentina who later recommended that the pope defrock Father Corradi and Father Corbacho. It is still unknown, however, if any action had been taken against the two men. The Vatican didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“We have to keep fighting because the church continues to not collaborate and provide information,” Mr. Salinas said. He said two nuns and several other school employees will go on trial in December for their role in the scandal, which involves at least 24 children.

The Argentine Catholic Bishops Conference directed questions to the Archbishop’s office in Mendoza, which didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. After Monday’s verdicts, Mendoza’s archbishop’s office said it expressed solidarity with the Provolo victims and would work on preventing similar crimes.

The Provolo Institute, on the outskirts of the picturesque city of Mendoza, was once seen a model school where poor, rural families sent their hearing-impaired children, hoping they would receive a good education.

Instead, children were subjected to horrific abuse that rights organizations said amounted to torture. They documented cases of students being locked up in an attic for days, where they were chained, beaten and deprived of food. The priests and school employees targeted the most vulnerable children, who were sexually abused in bathrooms, dorm rooms and in the school’s chapel. The children’s screams couldn’t be heard by the other boys and girls.

The details of the abuse shocked and angered Argentines, including a prosecutor on the case who said in 2018 that he began visiting a psychologist to cope with the impact the investigation was having on him.

Family members of victims and their lawyers said there were signs of abuse for years.

Cintia Martinez, whose son studied at the school, said she became alarmed in 2008 when she found a drawing in her son’s backpack of a man appearing to give another man oral sex. She said her then-12-year-old son, who previously enjoyed school, stopped wanting to go to the institute and had trouble sleeping in the dark. Ms. Martinez said she told school officials and authorities of her concerns, but nothing was done.

“No one ever helped me,” said Ms. Martinez, who attended Monday’s court session. “If they would have done their job, they could have avoided the damage to all of these children for so many years.”

Abuse victims at the school’s branch in Italy publicly denounced their abuse in 2009, leading the Vatican to discipline several of the priests involved.

In 2014, the year after Pope Francis’ election, the Italian victims wrote to the Vatican and the bishop of Verona about Father Corradi and other Provolo priests they said had abused them.

That was followed by the Vatican investigators’ 2017 recommendation that they be defrocked.

The apparent inaction by the pope has angered abuse victims and their advocates in Argentina. Something similar happened in Chile, when victims and rights advocates criticized the pope after he defended a bishop who was accused of covering up abuse by another priest. Last year, Pope Francis said the bishop, who denied wrongdoing, was the victim of “calumny” by abuse victims. That outraged the victims and many others in Chile. The pope later said he had made “grave errors” because he had been misinformed. He accepted the bishop’s resignation.

Last year, a former Vatican envoy to the U.S. accused Pope Francis of ignoring a history of sexual misconduct by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and making him a powerful adviser. The pope declined to answer the accusations but, this year, a Vatican court found the former cardinal guilty of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with adults. Pope Francis dismissed him from the priesthood. Mr. McCarrick has denied wrongdoing.

—Francis X. Rocca contributed to this article.

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Another post on this blog has more evidence for the idea that the pope belongs in prison:

Pope Francis is from Argentina where victims are accusing him of chilly indifference to clerical sex abuse.