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To: LLCF who wrote (15730)	8/7/2011 3:37:19 AM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Respond to of 69300

one-evil.org

To: LLCF who wrote (15730)	8/7/2011 3:36:44 PM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Respond to of 69300

Pope allows US bishop caught up in abuse scandal to resign (AFP) – Jul 19, 2011 ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, who was caught up in a long-running paedophile priest scandal in the archdiocese. Rigali, 76, had submitted his resignation last year because of his age, the Vatican said in a brief bulletin, without mentioning the sex abuse scandal. All archbishops are required by church law to offer their notice to the pontiff on their 75th birthday. They must then await the decision of the pope. The Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, will take over the role, the bulletin said. In 2005, a grand jury report had found that Rigali had covered up complaints of abuse allegedly carried out by dozens of Philadelphia priests, and had kept them in active service despite the charges against them. Rigali suspended 21 suspected paedophile priests in March this year, and expressed his "sorrow for the sexual abuse of minors committed by members of the Church, and above all, the clergy." The archdiocese issued a statement saying that it had "made significant progress in protecting children and in enquiries into the alleged abuse and allegations of violence." "The suspensions are not convictions or final verdicts, but provisional measures taken while the enquiry is carried out," it said. The Church has come under intense pressure in recent years over the scandal of child-abuser priests, which peaked last year with a string of high-profile revelations in the US, Belgium, Germany and Ireland and Austria. The Holy See has been accused of being slow to react to thousands of complaints and of protecting abusers. Amnesty International said in April that it was still failing to meet international obligations to protect children. Just three weeks ago, the pontiff accepted the resignation of Californian bishop Daniel Walsh, accused of allowing an alleged paedophile priest from his diocese to flee to Mexico. Father Xavier Ochoa had admitted to the bishop in April 2006 that he had abused young boys but the police were only told three days later by a diocesan lawyer. By that time, Ochoa had fled to Mexico where he is still at large. Benedict called last year for a zero tolerance approach to child abuse by clergymen and asked bishops to work together with local law enforcement. National bishops conferences around the world are set to come up with common guidelines against paedophiles by May 2012. The Vatican also announced this month that it is turning to the Internet in its struggle against child abuse with a new website allowing clergy around the world to share information on eradicating the problem. But many in the Church are concerned that the cases uncovered so far may only be the tip of the iceberg since abuses in much of the developing world -- including in Africa and Latin America -- have so far received little attention. google.com

To: LLCF who wrote (15730)	8/7/2011 3:43:27 PM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Respond to of 69300

Last autumn, as Pope Benedict XVI celebrated an outdoor mass in Hyde Park, I joined a march through London to protest against his visit to the UK. It was boisterous and good-natured, but I was struck by the presence of a number of elderly women who seemed to be marching on their own. When we started up conversations, I discovered why they had come; speaking quietly, and often with Irish accents, they revealed that as children or young adults they had been victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The exposure of clerical abuse in the worldwide Catholic church has been going on for decades. Last week, another official report was published, exposing the church's failure to tell the authorities about allegations of sexual abuse in the Irish diocese of Cloyne, but the result was unexpected. Suddenly and without precedent, the Irish prime minister attacked the Vatican in terms that raised the prospect of his country one day becoming a secular republic. Speaking in the Irish parliament, Enda Kenny talked about "the rape and torture of children" and said the report exposed in Ireland "an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic". This is jaw-dropping stuff: Ireland is one of the most Catholic countries in the world. The Irish church has long behaved as though it's immune from the criminal law, and that has exposed thousands of vulnerable people – not only children but the young women who were used as slave labour in church-run Magdalene laundries – to horrific abuse. The Cloyne report describes the Vatican as "entirely unhelpful" and says it effectively gave Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the church's own guidelines on reporting abuse. Abusers continued to officiate as priests and were held in high regard by victims' families; in one case, the abuser officiated at a victim's wedding. It isn't only in Ireland that such accusations have been levelled at the church. A Catholic priest was arrested this month in Germany, where he's accused of sexually abusing three boys as recently as 2007, while the church in Australia is paying millions of pounds in compensation after failing to stop paedophile priests for decades. The Vatican has repeatedly failed to protect children, involving itself in a series of shameful cover-ups which have allowed paedophile priests to escape the law. Last year's huge PR exercise during the Pope's visit to the UK was a reminder that two irreconcilable views of the pontiff exist side by side: the pious, white-haired, avuncular theologian versus the leader of an institution that continues to shield child-abusers and rapists. No wonder the events of the last few days have the appearance of a seismic shift, with Kenny echoing the Vatican's sternest secular critics as he talked about "the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism – the narcissism – that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day". Ireland's political class has been left reeling after Kenny issued a direct challenge to the pontiff, warning him that "the standards of conduct which the church deems appropriate to itself cannot, and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic". Even in Catholic Ireland, it seems, the Vatican's behaviour has reached a tipping point. Let's hope that the result is a long-overdue debate about separation between Church and State. independent.co.uk