Day: Apr 7, 2019

I believe that the facts and evidence presented demonstrated my total innocence’

Emeritus Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Agaña said Thursday that despite the failure of his appeal and the confirmation of a conviction against him, he is innocent of sexual abuse against minors.
“I am deeply saddened by the decision of the Holy Father to confirm the decision of the court of first instance,” Apuron said in an April 4 statement on the announcement of his sentencing.
“I believe that the fact and evidence presented demonstrated my total innocence,” he said, noting that he had expected his appeal to be successful.
The Apostolic Tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found Apuron, 73, guilty of some of several abuse-related charges in March 2018. He immediately appealed the decision. The Vatican court upheld the original decision on February 7, and the final sentencing was announced on April 4 by the CDF.
Apuron was sentenced to privation of the office of Archbishop of Agaña; forbidden from using the insignia attached to the rank of bishop, such as the mitre and ring; and forbidden from living within the jurisdiction of the archdiocese.
He was not removed from ministry or from the clerical state, nor has he been assigned to live in prayer and penance.
Speaking to CNA last year, a source close to the case noted a contradiction between the penalty and the sentence of sexual abuse against minors – a grave delict which usually carries the penalty of removal from the clerical state.
Apuron called the sentence, which prevents him from living in Guam, a penalty “analogous to a death sentence,” adding: “I lose my homeland, my family, my church, my people, even my language, and I remain alone in complete humiliation, old and in failing health.”
Pope Francis personally oversaw the archbishop’s appeal. Apuron wrote that the pope’s decision concludes his own “search for justice in the canonical forum.”
“I owe His Holiness my obedience as a bishop, priest and son of the Church. I totally submit to the judgment of the Holy Father as I thank him for allowing me to continue serving as a priest and archbishop without insignia,” he stated.
“Child sexual abuse is an abhorrent crime that cries to heaven for vengeance. The desperate need for justice and compassion for the survivors is fundamental,” he said. “So too is the urgent need to fight this evil always and everywhere through a transparent and courageous search for the truth.”
According to the archbishop, the pontifical secret prevents him from “litigating my good name in public,” but “many individuals” have come forward privately and publicly in his defense “despite threats and the climate of fear in my beloved home of Guam.”
The archbishop claimed that this climate of fear and its publicity in the local media hampered the work of the Vatican court in its conviction and “testifies to the presence of a pressure group that plotted to destroy me, and which has made itself clearly known even to authorities in Rome.”
He also said there are people who have revealed to him they were asked to make false allegations against him in return for money.
Apuron said, despite this, he still hopes to one day clear his name through new witnesses, and that he is praying for his accusers and those who have worked against him. He said: “We will each meet before that final tribunal where the full truth will be laid bare before the Supreme Judge.”
“I offer this suffering for the Holy Father,” he stated. “May the Lord guide him at this difficult time at the helm of the Church; I offer my suffering to my accusers and to those who have plotted for my removal: may the Lord fill them with everything they want and pray – Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”

PAT SAYS

This man has been found guilty.

He has not been able to refute the evidence against him

He has been found guilty of abusing minors.

He should have been dismissed from the clerical state by Francis. But Francis is totally inconsistent on these matters.

That’s why we have to work more and more for all these to be dealt with by the civil authorities.

The RC CHURCH has proven time after time that they are not capable of the administration of justice.

Claire Giangravè CRUX NOW

Italian clerical abuse victim Arturo Borelli stands before St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican after a Feb. 15 meeting with Church authorities. (Credit: Claire Giangravè/Crux.)

ROME – Only two months ago Arturo Borelli, a clerical sex abuse victim from Italy, was beaming while walking down the avenue that leads to St. Peter’s Square. After 20 years knocking on the Vatican doors, they had finally opened.
On Feb. 15, during a meeting with members of the Roman curia, he was told that his case would be reopened, that he would be informed every step of the way, that things had changed in

In the wake of the February summit of bishops on the protection of minors.
More importantly for Borelli, a devout Catholic, he was told that Pope Francis knew about his case and cared about him.

Today, Borelli says he feels “defeated” in a phone conversation with Crux April 2. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican department that handles matters of clerical sexual abuse, won’t answer his calls. His alleged abuser has been found innocent, but he was not informed of the sentence nor will he ever be able to know the details of the ecclesiastical trial.
“I cannot understand how they can speak of transparency!” Borelli said. “Is this Pope Francis’s transparency?”
Borelli’s case follows an unfortunate arc that Vatican observers have seen repeat itself over and over again, where initial efforts by the Catholic Church to bring forward welcoming, listening and closure for sexual abuse victims often results in sour disappointment and disenchantment.
Borelli, 40, claims to have been sexually abused about thirty years ago on the peripheries of Naples, Italy, by his religion teacher Father Silverio Mura. After the abuse was reported to the Archdiocese of Naples, Mura was moved from parish to parish, only to be found under a false name and teaching catechism to more than 40 children.

After chaining himself to the Porta Sant’Anna – the main entrance to Vatican City – on Feb. 4 in a desperate attempt to be heard by Church authorities, the Vatican agreed to meet with him and his lawyer to reopen the case against Mura. The priest who greeted Borelli promised that “everything has changed” in the Vatican and that the matter would be resolved quickly.
“Once the sentence came out no one answered me anymore,” Borelli said, adding that the sentence “doesn’t seem credible to me because it’s a ghost sentence.”
Borelli and his lawyer were never informed by the CDF about the sentence and learned the result from Mura’s lawyer, who told the local press that his client had been found innocent. No press release or official document was published by the Vatican.

A lawsuit is being brought against Mura in the Italian courts, but Borelli had an emotional investment in seeing the matter resolved within the Catholic Church.
“For me, the ecclesiastical trial is very important, very important,” he said. “Because the Church must begin a major cleanup.”
The “contradictory” and “secretive” nature of the Church’s legal proceedings have been a tough blow for the Italian abuse victim, who said that his “pain is doubled, because the Church should welcome me as a mother.”
According to Borelli’s lawyer, Carlo Grezio, there are several reasons why Mura may have been found innocent, which could range from insufficient evidence to exceeding the statute of limitations since the events took place more than 30 years ago.
“Borelli was considered a witness and not a part of the trial,” Grezio told Crux in an April 2 phone interview, which means that “we are cut off from knowing the content of this sentence by the ecclesiastical tribunal.”
Grezio met Feb. 15 with two officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – a disciplinary section head Father John Kennedy, and undersecretary Father Matteo Visioli, who he claims promised him transparency and that they would be informed of the sentence.
“I am a bit disappointed,” he said, “I find that the Vatican can never make facts follow words.”
The lawyer looks to the civil proceedings now instead of the Vatican’s “castle of words” and promised “to never again have contact with the Vatican due to its behavior, which offends victims.”
Borelli, a big fan of Francis and his reform, still insists that the Vatican take action on these matters and looks to the Church for closure, but on the other side of the fence victims of clerical abuse have lost all faith in ecclesiastical proceedings.
“The canonical trial is not conclusive,” said Francesco Zanardi, a clerical sexual abuse survivor and president of the only Italian clerical abuse victims’ network Rete L’abuso, “unless the victim is satisfied by something like this.”
“If the pope really wanted to put this thing to rest overnight, we would impose on the bishops to report sexual abuse to civil judicial authorities,” he told Crux April 2.

PAT SAYS

Two weeks ago I stood in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and thought about the 2000 years it has taken the Vatican become as evil as it is.

I could sense the evil standing there that day.

I wanted to have nothing to do with – and certainly not go inside it.

My priest friend begged me to go with him to the tomb of John XX111. I gave in and went in and Satan, who is lord of that place, saw to it that I was detained by the temple police.

I am sad, but realistic, when I think of the 60 year journey I have undertaken to see that what I was looking at all those years ago was a whited sepulchre – nice looking on the outside but inside full of putrid decay.

Thank God I have never lost my basic Christian faith – nor indeed my determination and joy to try and serve God and others.

But for so many Catholics, their faith is about Pope, bishop and priest worship.

These people are quite literally “papists” and not really Christians.

Reading the above case is another reminder of the corruption of the clergy and their secret trials.

It’s more like the Mafia or Mossad than it is like a Christian community.

I cannot understand why God did not wipe it out years ago.

Maybe he is giving Satan his way and time with men?

I love being a priest. But I thank God that I do not have to do it all over again.

“As you go through life dear brother,

Whatever be your goal;

Keep your eye upon the doughnut

And not upon the hole”.

For me, Jesus is the doughnut.

And that Vatican, with tentacles all over the globe is the big, dark, deep, dirty hole.

May God continue to deliver people who are captive in that hole.