By Mark Armstrong
It’s all over the place. Even the Fake News outlets haven’t been able to white-wash a scandal so huge, so horrific. So, for the most part, they report it briefly before returning to their mission of destroying the Trump presidency. Of course the pope knew! He knew what was up when he visited Chile in January 2018 where he faced unprecedented hostility, and issued “a somber apology” for the unspeakable abuse Catholic priests had visited upon the children of their congregations. It was somewhat difficult to ignore when three Catholic churches were firebombed coincidental with his arrival.
“Clerics” have been elevated to high office by the Vatican even while involved in the cover-up of crimes committed by their colleagues. From the LA Times, January 16th, “Francis in particular has been heavily criticized for his 2015 appointment of a bishop, Juan Barros Madrid, to head the Diocese of Osorno in Southern Chile.
“Some abuse victims have accused Barros of protecting a mentor, Father [sic] Fernando Karadima, who was investigated by the Vatican and found to have abused teenage boys and adults for years from his parish post in Santiago. He was never prosecuted criminally, but in 2011 the Vatican sentenced him to a life of prayer and penance.” Cruel and unusual, isn’t it?
Recently he was scolding an audience of nuns about the evils of GOSSIP! It was supposedly a light-hearted comment when he compared convent gossip to terrorism. Is there some doubt as to what that was about? The nuns must have known too! The bishops, the cardinals, they’ve all known all along. The excuse heard over and over is that every profession has a bad apple now and again. But the vast majority of Catholic priests are wonderful teachers and mentors to the children in their care. Really?
What percentage of priests is 300 in one state, pray tell? And why did this information only leak out in an Attorney General’s report out of Pennsylvania? It made news around the world recently because it involves so many priests in a single state, having raped and abused at least a thousand, and probably many more children (predominantly young boys) over a long period of time, dating back decades.
This is an open secret that has been part and parcel with the Catholic Church across the United States and all over the world (many South American countries, Australia, Ireland, Italy…) It has been known and written for decades that Catholic “divinity schools” and seminaries are bastions of homosexuality. Apparently there’s no hope of success or elevation within this powerful organization for would-be priests without being a little light in the slippers, to put it mildly.
The current scandal involves the former ambassador from the Vatican to the United States, Carlo Maria Vigano, having written an eleven page letter saying he warned Francis, the beleaguered pope, about the heinous homosexual activities of the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick toward “young seminarians.” According to Vigano, he personally warned the “humble pontiff” of McCarrick’s history in 2013, telling him that there had been a litany of complaints and that the Vatican retained a thick dossier dating back to the year 2000 cataloging him as a serial abuser. His letter quotes his purported statement to Francis, “…I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation of Bishops, there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.” Where have we heard that before? There is apparently some dispute over whether “Benedict” in fact permanently de-frocked “Cardinal” McCarrick. Maybe someone should ask him.
Soon after the pope was personally informed and warned of McCarrick’s scandalous record, McCarrick was sent on a series of international missions representing “the church,” to include a trip to China, thus having been “rehabilitated” by the Vatican. Vigano’s letter says that two successive secretaries of State at the Vatican knew, and had plenty of evidence as to McCarrick’s well-documented predilections. But the corker was that he personally informed Francis (Bergoglio) only a short time before the Vatican sent him out as a representative, presumably in his priestly uniform. He also represented the Vatican during U. S. – Cuba talks during the Obama administration. Oops.
That little detail meant that the pope himself was involved in covering up the magnitude of the scandal by allowing McCarrick to travel in representation of the Vatican, presumably as a Cardinal. Vigano’s letter also identified the archbishops and cardinals who had been personally informed or seen evidence of McCarrick’s long history. To have named the names of these lofty prelates is considered by the mainstream media, an “unthinkable” breach for Vigano to have committed.
When the pope was asked upon his return to the Vatican from Ireland (where he also had to acknowledge the priest/pedophilia outrage, delicately) he appeared to be aggressive saying, “I won’t say one word about that.” That, being the letter accusing him of covering up McCarrick’s evil deeds by re-assigning him to official Catholic missions.
It is mighty convenient that the acts of these weird holy men are so unspeakably wicked that they can’t even be spelled out in the press or any polite company anywhere. The details are such that no one can even imagine. Who would even allow such depravity into their mind?
As recent news attests, from the police raids of “drug-fueled homosexual orgies” at the priestly Vatican residences, and the many “gay” scandals that have rocked Rome, this is a very queer outfit. We only hear about apologies and penance when children are involved. Francis is indeed the one who, soon after having been chosen, said the church owed an apology to homosexuals who’d been offended in some way by church teachings or policies. Now apologies are being proffered to the families of children who have been abused by their own high and mighty clergy.
There have been hundreds, undoubtedly thousands of these situations, and they shrug it off. “Is it fair to apologize?” Francis asked in Chile. Long before the advent of Francis, the “church” sold valuable properties and paid out enormous sums to buy the silence of victims who were but children when they were abused by the backward collars.
We’ll probably never know the full extent of evil committed by the vile priests in tall hats and flowing robes. Maybe it’s just as well.
