The evil pope is dead

Not Francis.  Bennie.  Francis is not evil.  Bennie covered up all the child abuse for years.  Not to mention, he was a Hitler Youth and an anti-homosexuality and anti-contraception fanatic.  And he resigned.  Pretty sure there was something he wanted to kept hidden by doing so.  

But the former pope remained a powerful conservative influence and a focus for opponents of Francis’s efforts to reform the church and redirect it to serving the poor. He repeatedly made his views known through letters, articles and interviews. In April 2019, two months after Francis convened a groundbreaking Vatican conference on sexual abuse, Benedict published a 6,000-word letter saying abuse was a product of a culture of sexual freedom dating from the 1960s.

  Guardian

Good riddance to old rubbish.

It's Sunday

Didn't we already know this? And isn't this at least partly why he resigned?

The former pope Benedict XVI failed to stop four clergymen accused of child sexual abuse in the Catholic church in Munich, a law firm that carried out a key investigation has said.

The ex-pontiff, who was the archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, has “strictly” denied any responsibility, said the lawyer Martin Pusch.

[...]

Two of the cases involved clergymen who had committed several proven acts of abuse but were allowed to continue with pastoral duties, Pusch said.

[...]

In one case, a now notorious paedophile priest named Peter Hullermann was transferred to Munich from Essen in western Germany where he had been accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy.

[...]

In 1986, by which time Benedict had been transferred to the Vatican, [Hullermann] was convicted of molesting more children and given a suspended prison sentence.

Even after the conviction, he continued to work with children for many years and his case is regarded as a pertinent example of the mishandling of abuse by the church.

The ex-pope has denied knowing about the priest’s history.

  Guardian

Bullshit.

Benedict was accused years ago, but apparently not sued. Why wait until the man is almost 95 (in April) years old?

Remembering a favorite Benedict article.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

Pope Francis has said he wants "a poor Church, for the poor", giving his clearest indication yet that he wants a more austere Catholic Church.

The pope made his comments in an audience with journalists on Saturday, explaining why he chose to take the name Francis, after St Francis of Assisi, a symbol of peace, austerity and poverty.

  alJazeera

Suddenly, it all becomes clearer.

Needing to rid themselves of the intense scrutiny over the child abuse scandals in which they are awash, the “Clan of the Red Beanie” (Charlie Pierce trademark) had Pope Ratzo, who was intricately tied to the scandal, step down. In his place, they positioned the image of St. Francis of Assisi to create a portrait of the church as benevolent protector of the poor, for some good press. But the important part of that deal was (is) that the new Pope Good Press be so old that his time will be long enough to garner good press, but short enough to go back to business as usual without having invested much church treasure in payment therefor.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And, in case you're wondering, the fact that St. Francis is also from Argentina is a big part of that same great deal of wasting only a few years appearing to be what lay people think the Catholic Church ought to be.

Oct 21 2004 (IPS) - For the Catholic church hierarchy in the Vatican, Latin America has changed from the “Continent of Hope” to the continent of concern, as followers are leaving the church in such large numbers that it could lead to the collapse of Catholicism within a decade and a half.

Although Latin America is still home to almost half of the 1.07 billion Catholics in the world today, numerous studies indicate that their numbers are declining throughout the region.

[...]

In Brazil, where there are more Catholics than in any other country in the world – roughly 100 million, out of a total population of close to 180 million – close to half a million followers are leaving the Catholic church every year.

Something similar is happening in Mexico, the country with the second largest number of Catholics. Roughly 88 percent of its 102 million inhabitants today identify themselves as Catholics, revealing a decline of almost 10 percent compared to the mid-20th century.

In Colombia, only two out of every three people profess themselves Catholics today, when almost the entire population was Catholic in the 1950s.

The phenomenon is particularly marked in Guatemala, where almost one-third of the country’s 12 million inhabitants have left the Catholic church.

[...]

“People feel alienated by a church that condemns divorce and is not willing to listen, an authoritarian church that opposes the use of condoms, and isn’t willing to adapt to the times and the real needs of people,” said [Elio Masferrer, chairman of the Latin American Religious Studies Association].

  IPS News

Also, Latin America is particularly notable for people cherishing children.

And There's Not a Damned Thing You Can Do About It

In another development on Monday, the Vatican said a report into papal documents leaked by the pope's butler in the so-called "Vatileaks scandal" last year will remain confidential and only be shown to his successor.

"The Holy Father has decided that the facts of this investigation, the contents of which are known only to Himself, will be made available exclusively to the new Pontiff," the Vatican said in a statement. Some Italian media had called for the report to be made public ahead of the conclave that will choose the next pope.

  alJazeera

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

The Panorama weekly and The Repubblica daily newspapers reported that Benedict's decision to resign was triggered by [a] secret report compiled by three retired cardinals […] last year over a series of damaging leaks of confidential papal documents.

The report allegedly contained details of corruption and of blackmail attempts against gay Vatican clergymen, as well as favouritism based on gay relationships.

Both publications quoted a source with knowledge of the investigation as saying that the cardinals' conclusions "revolve around the sixth and seventh commandments," namely "Thou shall not commit adultery" and "Thou shall not steal."

  alJazeera

Yeah, there's something somewhere. Ratso didn't resign out of beneficence.

Last year, Benedict appointed the three retired cardinals to investigate, in parallel with a police inquiry, a scandal known as "Vatileaks", which led to the conviction and later pardoning of the pope's former butler Paolo Gabriele.

The secret report was to be for the pope's eyes only, but Italian media reported they will also share their conclusions with the cardinals who will elect the next pope, ahead of the pontiff's resignation next week.

And the Vatican goes into high damage control mode. Paolo Gabriele – did he have a conscience or did he have a grudge? Or just a desire for better pay? Anyway, here's to Paolo and a rare crack in the death star fortress.

There was a twist on Friday when Benedict replaced Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, a powerful behind-the-scenes figure in the Secretariat of State with a highly influential role in Vatican diplomacy and the Vatican bank's foreign relations.

The 47-year-old is being sent as Vatican envoy to Colombia - which could be seen as a demotion.

Lombardi said the suggestion that the pope had made the appointment to get Balestrero out of the Vatican was "absurd, totally without foundation".

Sure, sure.

...but hey, say what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

The Pope's resignation [...] is bizarre.[...]The putative reason that the Vatican has put out is the advanced infirmity of the Pope himself. This does not make any sense. One assumes, given the history of Popes being old and not resigning for the past 600 years, that the Vatican has figured out a system of ensuring the survival of the church while being led by people who are close to death.[...]A Pope abandoning his position has serious spiritual consequences. In Dante, the last Pope who gave up his job, basically because he was too good to stomach the politics, ended up spending all eternity upside down in a hole of fire. Given those stakes, it's safe to say that the Pope would need a serious reason for quitting other than the one he's given.

[...]

What is so tantalizing about this story is that we'll probably never know the actual reason, not for decades, anyway.

[...]

The Vatican is so opaque that only recently did they release secret files about Pius XII, otherwise known as Hitler's Pope, that showed him saving the lives of Jewish refugees. Even that bit of magnificently good news for the Church was hidden in the vaults.

[...]

Today the speculations will swirl, but it'll eventually peter out when the race for the next Pope takes over the news.

  Esquire

I'm hoping for a leaker.

It is not unreasonable [...] to speculate that the renewed call for the Church to open its books on the worldwide extent of the child-abuse scandal among its clergy, something that was Ratzinger's brief under John Paul II and, as Alex Gibney's new HBO documentary argues, something that may be behind the fast-tracking of the move to get the late pope onto the calendar of saints as swiftly as possible, may be a bit of dark matter operating under today's news.

[...]

There is nothing in the institutional church now but this scandal. That has been the case since it first broke worldwide almost 20 years ago. It has demolished the moral credibility of the hierarchy, most of whom, it should be pointed out, were appointed by either John Paul II or Benedict. It was that hierarchy that sustained [the] cover-up. It was that hierarchy that attacked the victims, and the journalists, and the many brave priests who stood up against an institution that had moved so far from the message of the gospels that it might as well have been worshipping Ba'al. And it was that hierarchy that did all those things because it was a perfect instrument of John Paul II's reactionary, top-down theology, a return to the authoritatian model of the Church, which was exactly what Benedict XVI was elected to maintain. The conclave that elected him was the conclave of the cover-up.

[...]

The resignation is another chance for the institutional Church to act with unambiguous justice toward the victims, and unambiguous penitence toward the rest of the world, which is pretty much the way it should have been acting for the past 20 years. Thus would the resignation of Benedict XVI be the only real lasting triumph of his papacy. The odds against it, alas, are extraordinarily long.

  Charlie Pierce (a Catholic)

Ratzo to Retire

Pope Benedict XVI [Joe Ratzinger] of the Roman Catholic Church has decided to resign from his post due to ill health, the Vatican has announced.

"The pope announced that he will leave his ministry at 8:00 pm (19:00 GMT) on February 28," said a Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, on Monday.

  al Jazeera

Really? I thought popes just reign until they die. Surely they weren't all fit as a fiddle right up to their deathbed.

The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants.

Yeah, that's a long time ago. And it had nothing to do with health.

Color me skeptical. But it smells like the typical politician's retiring to spend more time with his family. And when that happens, you can almost bet there's a scandal or uncomfortable situation to be avoided. And we all know that Ratzinger has a suspect past, Hitler youth and child abuse cover-up included. Something smells fishy. And it isn't Friday.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Catholicism Is All A-Twitter

The Pope is gonna tweet.

Pope Benedict XVI is not due to send out his first tweet until next week, but his official Twitter account has already broken the 90,000 follower mark.

The Vatican announced on Monday that the 85-year-old pontiff will send out his first 140-character message on December 12, the feast of Madonna of Guadalupe.

"The Twitter handle is @pontifex. It's a good name I think. It means 'pope' and it means 'bridge builder' at the same time. It suggests unity, the pope united not only with Catholics but also with all men and women of good will," said Greg Burke, senior media adviser to the Vatican.

[...]

"How often will the pope tweet? The answer to that is as often as the pope wants.”

  alJazeera

Ay! He's da pope.

Let's see if we can't think of a better, more appropriate name for Ratzinger's tweety identity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pre-empted Sunday

I thought this news was already out, but perhaps it was just the suspicion of such a document that has been reported previously...

Irish broadcaster RTE has uncovered a 1997 letter from the Vatican discouraging Ireland's Catholic bishops from reporting on all suspected child-abuse cases to police.

[...]

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter came a year after the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to assist police in identifying alleged pedophile priests with Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

[...]

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the disclosed document demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but also ordered by them. Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the disclosed document demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but also ordered by them.

[...]

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's US lawyer, said the letter did no such thing.

[...]

Al Jazeera's Tania Paige reporting from London, said: "For the Vatican's part, they say the letter was written a long time ago and that the document was not a policy but a study draft.

[...]

In a 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI faulted bishops for failing to follow canon law and offered no explicit endorsement of Irish child-protection efforts by the Irish church or state.

But in his January 1997 letter, Storero told bishops that a senior church panel in Rome, the Congregation for the Clergy, had decided that the Irish church's policy of "mandatory" reporting of abuse claims conflicted with canon law.

[...]

To this day, the Vatican has not endorsed any of the Irish church's three major policy documents since 1996 on safeguarding children from clerical abuse.

Irish taxpayers, rather than the church, have paid most of the $2 billion to more than 14,000 abuse claimants dating back to the 1940s.

[...]

Colm O'Gorman, the Ireland director of Amnesty International, said: "The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere."

  alJazeera

P.S.

The Vatican has revised its guidelines on how the Roman Catholic Church will handle sex abuse cases.

The rules include a significant lengthening of the time period a victim can lodge an abuse complaint.

  alJazeera

It's Sunday

Vatican police arrested Friday a man — reportedly the pope’s butler — on allegations of having leaked confidential documents and letters from the pontiff’s private study to newspapers.

[...]

[I]nformed sources said the man was Paolo Gabriele, 46, who had been working as a butler in the papal apartments since 2006. One source said the pope was “saddened and shocked” by this “painful case.”

[...]

The Italian daily [Il Foglio] said he is likely to be used by the Vatican as “a handy scapegoat” for several others suspected of being involved in leaking documents, some of which ended up in a new book on the tiny state published a week ago.

Gianluigi Nuzzi’s “His Holiness” reproduces dozens of top secret and private letters and faxes which were smuggled out by whistle-blowers tired of the corruption and unhealthy bitterness in the Vatican.

[...]

The arrest came a day after the head of the Vatican Bank was ousted for failing to clean up the image of an institution that has come to symbolise the opacity and scandal gripping the Holy See’s administration.

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was thrown out by the bank’s board for failing to do his job — but had also recently been suspected of being one of those behind the leaks.

[...]

Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s experts on anti-money laundering, is due to rule at the beginning of July on the whether the Holy See has managed to clean up its act and meet international monetary standards.

  

Times really are “a-changin'” if the Vatican's corruption and filth is finally being aired.

I expect we will be seeing some more of it from the book soon...perhaps dozens of “It's Sunday” posts will be writing themselves.

And, as a side note, the audacity with which corrupt elites have been operating in the past few decades is underscored in the election of a Nazi youth, child abuse-condoning/covering up (perhaps even participating - who knows?) slimeball to the very head of the organization.

Red Shoe Diaries

He is picky about his robes and his red shoes are tailor-made, but Pope Benedict has taken the meaning of bespoke to a whole new level by ordering a custom-blended eau de cologne just for him.

The fragrance, which mixes hints of lime tree, verbena and grass, was concocted by the Italian boutique perfume maker Silvana Casoli .

  Raw Story

I don't care what he bathes in, he won't be able to cover the stench.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.