An immigrant is sexually assaulted by a work supervisor. He goes to a higher authority to complain, but is told to shut up or he can expect to be deported.
A tale from a sleazy slaughterhouse? The underbelly of existence for undocumented restaurant workers in any big American city?
No, it happened in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York, if Fr. Ryszard Biernat’s story is to be believed.
The abused.
Considering the cascade of tales that are bewildering and disgusting Catholics from the Niagara Falls region, Biernat’s story retains at least some credibility, considering the woeful succession of reports of coverups, including incomplete lists of clerical wrongdoers issued by Bishop Richard Malone.
In the ugliness coming out of Buffalo, Biernat’s story calls for a special dose of outrage, unless Catholics have become so numb that this will be just another story in an ugly catalogue.
“If you don’t stop talking about this, you will not become a priest,” Biernat said he was told by Buffalo Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz in 2004, after he told the bishop he was assaulted by Fr. Arthur Smith in a parish rectory.
The abuser
The quote is from the Buffalo News, part of a local media that has been all over this story. Grosz has denied any blackmail threat. Biernat said the threat of forbidding ordination was also a threat to deport him.
Questions remain: Much of the anger has focused on Malone, but Biernat’s account points to a deeper rot in the diocese that precedes Malone, the current bishop who was appointed to Buffalo in 2012.
Church law mandates that such blatant corruption should be investigated by the metropolitan of the region, in this case Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. At their last national meeting, bishops agreed that that they should be the ones ultimately placed in charge of disciplining their fellow church leaders who go astray.
We lack confidence in the model. First, the right questions need to be asked. Can they be asked by investigators beholden to church authority (that would include priests and lay employees)? Is Biernat’s charge evidence of a criminal matter? Is there something corrupt in the current system of bringing seminarians from overseas, spiking enrollment numbers for institutions in desperate need of students? Is Buffalo part of a wider pattern, or is there something peculiar about it that brings forth this sordid tale?
Questions need to be raised about the circumstances of seminarians from overseas. The Buffalo case suggests the worst — vulnerable new arrivals subjected to threats and intimidation. But it also raises concerns about numbers: How many are there? Where do they come from? Why are they planning to minister here instead of in their home countries? Do they expect to be incardinated into a diocese or are their stays temporary? What do bishops in their home countries have to say?
Biernat’s case argues that at least some bishops have abdicated their authority by looking the other way and engaging in aggressive coverups. This Buffalo case cries out for an independent authority to investigate alleged crimes of sexual assault against adults, particularly the vulnerable. Seminarians, so dependent upon the good will of their bishop leaders, are particularly endangered by clerical corruption, even more so if their very existence in the country is dependent on maintaining their vocation status.
Biernat, who served as priest secretary to Malone, said he felt finally free to talk about his ordeal after becoming a U.S. citizen in July. “I feel so liberated. Now I can speak,” he told the Buffalo News. American Catholics are not so encumbered. May their outrage be heard, as we watch if the processes the bishops have embraced are up to the realities of dealing with this continuing crisis.
PAT SAYS
When you read stories like this you realise that all Pope Francis’ and catholic bishops about welcoming and caring for immigrants is all hot air!
This young seminarian and priest went to his bishop and told him he had been sexually abused by a priest.
The priest responds by threatening the abused seminarian with deportation!
The priest who abused him had already abused his own nephew below.
The abused nephew
The young priest could only talk publicly about his abuse after he achieved US citizenship.
This young man has been done a grave injustice by the bishop and clerical club in his diocese.
That’s right! Deport a young seminarian for telling the truth about his abuse!
Father Mychal Judge is considered Victim One of the attacks on Sept. 11th. He was the chaplain of the FDNY and responded to the scene to pray with victims and administer last rites. He ran directly into the second building to be with other victims moments before it fell. His body was the first one officially removed from the scene that day by his friends and fellow first responders. Father Mychal was a kind man and loved by all who knew him. He is a saint. However, Father was also an outspoken advocate for LGBT equality and was gay. He has never been considered for canonization in the fourteen years since the attack. He loved his fellow man and was often quoted as saying, “Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?” It is time for Father Mychal to be recognized officially as the saint he is. I am calling on all those within authority to consider this man’s ultimate and Christlike sacrifice and elevate with words on earth what must certainly be already true in heaven. Saint Mychal, Friar of the Fireman, pray for us.
PAT SAYS,
In my mind Fr Judge was much more a saint that the likes of Mother Teresa or John Pole 11.
He was so very human and did not think twice about putting his life on the line for his fireman colleagues.
What did Jesus say?
“No greater love has any man than he lays down his life for his brothers”
He was also gay and stood up for the gay community.
Two sayings come to mind:
“A saint is a sinner who kept trying”.
“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future”.
Ian Paisley supplied money to UVF for bombings in 1969, documentary claims
Programme shows clips of Martin McGuinness preparing bomb used in Derry attack
Gerry Moriarty Irish Times.
A new BBC TV series on the Troubles claims former DUP leader Ian Paisley supplied money to the Ulster Volunteer Force to carry out a number of bombings in 1969.
The seven-part series, which starts on Tuesday, also contains rare footage of former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, allegedly preparing a car bomb for an IRA attack on Derry’s Guildhall in 1972.
The series, Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History, also reveals a “top secret” memorandum from 1972 in which British army commander Gen Michael Carver proposed as a “lasting solution” to the conflict that the British government gradually escape from the “commitment to the Border”.
The allegations against Paisley in the first programme of the series relate to a number of bombings of water and electricity installations that the UVF and a group called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers carried out in early 1969.
At the time, the unionist prime minister Terence O’Neill was trying to bring in reforms to meet some of the demands of the civil rights movement.
The UVF hoped the bombings against targets such as the Silent Valley reservoir in the Mourne mountains and the water pipeline at Annalong, Co Down, would be blamed on the IRA. The plan was that it would generate further unionist hostility to an already beleaguered O’Neill and force him to resign.
At the time, Paisley had been mounting a campaign of protest against O’Neill, who resigned at the end of April 1969 under claims he had lost control in Northern Ireland.
The programme cites a police intelligence report of the period that said the UVF was linked to Paisley, a connection the cleric denied.
Viaduct explosion
Former British army officer David Hancock, who served as a major in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1970, told the programme an RUC district inspector in Kilkeel, Co Down, informed him Paisley had supplied money for the bombings.
Mr Hancock, who was stationed nearby, actually heard the Annalong viaduct explosion and said he felt at the time it did “not have the footprint of the IRA”.
Mr Hancock recalled: “I was good friends with the district inspector down in Kilkeel. He showed me the evidence that they had of the involvement of money from Paisley into what was then called the UVF, where they got the explosives from, how it was carried out, who did it, and why.”
The programme also reports that Samuel Stevenson, Paisley’s bodyguard in 1969, told former SDLP and Fine Gael politician Austin Currie the UVF was planning to bomb the hydroelectric power station at Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. In that attack in October 1969, Thomas McDowell was killed when his bomb exploded prematurely.
Mr Currie told the programme Mr Stevenson warned him of the planned attack and also told him he was supposed to be part of the UVF bomb team, but that he would try to avoid being involved.
McGuinness footage
The programme also features footage of Mr McGuinness in Derry in 1972 that shows him sitting in a car while children crane in the window to look at bullets. It shows him handling a pistol while talking to them. A rifle lies beside McGuinness in the car.
There is also film of IRA members assembling a car bomb in Derry, with Mr McGuinness clearly appearing to be part of the unit. The bomb was then used to damage the Guildhall in March 1972, as was evident from the car’s registration.
The day after the attack, in which no one was killed, Stormont prime minister Brian Faulkner was brought to London by UK prime minister Edward Heath to be told the unionist government was being stripped of security powers. Mr Faulkner’s government resigned and direct rule was introduced from Britain shortly afterwards.
The McGuinness footage came from an American documentary that was never shown in Britain or Ireland. Mr McGuinness admitted he was in the IRA, although he claimed to have left the organisation in 1974.
The first programme in the series also covers Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972, and reports how an officer from another regiment described the First Parachute Regiment responsible for 14 deaths in Derry as “hooligans in uniform”.
This comment was made shortly before Bloody Sunday and after members of the regiment were accused of brutally dealing with an anti-internment march on Magilligan Strand in Co Derry on January 22nd.
Top secret briefing
The programme features part of a “top secret” briefing to British government defence secretary Peter Carrington in May 1972 from Gen Michael Carver headed “Army Aims in Northern Ireland”. In it Gen Carver said the IRA had strengthened its military position since the collapse of Stormont, while the British army was losing the military initiative.
Gen Carver appeared to be proposing the British government should facilitate the creation of a united Ireland. “If I am right, and we want a lasting solution, it must be in finding a way in which HMG can gradually escape from the commitment to the border,” he wrote, adding that the “answer appears to lie with the plebiscite”.
The series is edited by Jeremy Adams and produced by Chris Thornton, one of the authors of the Lost Lives book of those killed during the Troubles. The reporters for the series, which took two years to make, are Darragh MacIntyre, Mandy McAuley and Jennifer O’Leary.
The first programme will broadcast on Tuesday, September 10th, at 8.30pm on BBC1 Northern Ireland and BBC4.
Future episodes will deal with issues such as how the IRA sustained its campaign, the intelligence war against the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries, the loyalist Glenanne Gang and how the Troubles were brought to an end.
PAT SAYS
Today we go from one controversial and troublesome issue – religion – to another, politics.
And of course the very Troublesome Northern Ireland Troubles.
Its comes as no surprise to me that Big Ian was involved with paramilitaries. It was bound to be so.
Sure it was him led the loyalist mobs up the Falls Road to remove a tricolour from a shop window.
I arrived on the Falls Road in summer of 1978 and The Troubles were in their full swing.
I saw many bad things happen on the Falls Road – some perpetuated by my own parishionets and some perpetuated by the RUC and British Army.
When I first came to the North I had very few political beliefs.
My 5 years on the Falls radicalised me. It doe that when you see people you love suffering.
But I still maintained balance and was able to recognise and work with good police offices.
We know Martin McGuinness was up to his nneck in Republicanism. I imagine much of that came out of seeing his Derry people suffeing.
The other recent news is Mugabe has died.
I would not like to face God if I had even killed one human being.
Imagine having to meet God with the blood of thousands on your hands 😥
We can make all kinds of explanations and excuses like the just war theory. But God says:
POPE FRANCIS HAS CREATED 14 NEW CARDINALS TO BE INSTALLED IN ROME IN SEPTEMBER COMING.
OUR AMY IS NOT ON THE LIST!
He just has his little gold hat from his birthday.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) —
Pope Francis announced he will create 13 new cardinals Oct. 5, choosing prelates from 13 different nations as a sign of “the missionary vocation of the church that continues to proclaim the merciful love of God to all men and women of the earth.”
The only Canadian named was 73-year-old Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the Section for Migrants and Refugees at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human
Development. None of the new cardinals is from the United States.
Cardinal-designate Czerny, who Pope Francis had earlier named as a special secretary for the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, was in Guararema, Brazil, when the announcement was made. He told Catholic News Service in a text message that he had not known he was going to be made a cardinal.
Announcing the names of the new cardinals Sept. 1, the pope included 10 men who are under the age of 80 and therefore will be eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope. Three of the future cardinals are already over the age of 80, and the pope said he chose them because of their service to the church.
“Let us pray for the new cardinals so that, confirming their adhesion to Christ, they will help me in my ministry as bishop of Rome for the good of the entire faithful, holy people of God,” the pope told pilgrims who had gathered to pray the midday Angelus with him.
In addition to Cardinal-designate Czerny, two other members of the group are also Vatican officials: 67-year-old Bishop Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; and 53-year-old Archbishop Jose Tolentino Medonca, Vatican archivist and librarian.
One of the over-80 cardinals-designate is 82-year-old Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a Missionary of Africa born in England, who had served as president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and later as Vatican nuncio to Egypt.
The others, in the order they were named by the pope, were:
— Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta, Indonesia, 69. — Archbishop Juan Garcia Rodriguez of Havana, 71. — Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa, Congo, 59. — Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, 61. — Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, 72. — Archbishop Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Italy, 63. — Archbishop Cristobal Lopez Romero of Rabat, Morocco, 67. — Retired Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius of Kaunas, Lithuania, 80. — Retired Bishop Eugenio dal Corso of Benguela, Angola, 80.
PAT SAYS
It looks as if the pope has concentrated on officials of the Roman Curia and missionary bishops.
I don’t think that Ireland plays a big role in what the pope thinks about on a daily basis.
And of course, thanks to Bartlett, the pope was embarrassed by the low turn out for the World Meeting of Families.
Any way, Amy is useless or worse than useless.
Mincing around his diocese and further afield exuding an off putting piousity.
He also tweets like a teenage girl about holy days, rosaries, etc.
Not that that would bother Rome. Most senior clerics are more like Amy than is good for them.
I cannot think of a single Irish Roman bishop who comes across as masculine, in touch with reality, down to earth and with a healthy integrated spirituality.
They are all yes men for Rome and I doubt if any of them have a real personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Posted by Betty Clermont opentabernacle.woExpress.com
The Vatican City State is an independent country. The head of state is addressed as “Holy Father” and his government is called the Holy See. There is no complete and accurate account of the Vatican’s investments, commercial real estate, bank accounts, currencies and gold because, with few exceptions, the Holy Father wants his wealth to remain hidden.
Two recent reports provide some additional information as to why this is true. The first not only gives us a hint of the Vatican’s massive wealth, but also “money laundering and fraud” are possibly involved. The second informs us that the Vatican’s top financial policeman was accused of money laundering and collusion in the cover-up of a financial crime.
THE VATICAN HAS TWO SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS THAT HOLD “AS MUCH AS €7 BILLION,” as reported by Vatican expert, Edward Pentin, on July 22. These bank accounts are managed by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA) which handles the Vatican’s investment portfolio, some commercial real estate and “large amounts of unregistered cash in offshore accounts,” according to Pentin.
“There is a hub of corruption within APSA” related to these two Swiss banks. “Highly irregular transactions were transiting through these banks,” a reliable source told Pentin.
According to the Tax Justice Network, “Switzerland is the global capital of bank secrecy …. Financial secrecy is a key facilitator of financial crime, and illicit financial flows including money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.” Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, had “identified money laundering and fraud risks related to the APSA’s use of foreign bank accounts and questioned particular asset and real estate transactions,” reported Pentin. (Pell was later convicted by an Australian court on five criminal charges of sexually assaulting two boys.)
“Sources say only few officials within APSA know the true extent of the Vatican’s foreign real estate portfolio, which is held largely ‘off the books’ [and] estimated to be worth at least €800 million,” Pentin wrote. APSA’s investments are “hidden behind layer after layer of false fronts and holding companies,” noted John F. Pollard in his book, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy (p 149).
“Propaganda Fide, the Vatican department responsible for missionary works and related activities, controls about 2,000 apartments valued at €9 billion, which last year reportedly earned €56 million in rents,” Paddy Agnew reported in 2010.
If there’s close to €10 billion in commercial real estate and €7 billion in just two bank accounts that we know of, Vatican wealth has been underestimated by even the best experts. The Italian financial newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, had valued Vatican assets – investments, commercial properties, gold reserves, bank accounts, cash – to be €15-17 billion “by a conservative estimate” in 2015.
“APSA has 187 million euro in currencies, 32,232 ounces in bullion and 3,122 ounces of gold coins (worth 30.8 million euro) in Switzerland and England,” Italian journalist, Emiliano Fittipaldi, reported in 2014.
The Vatican has $50 million in gold on deposit at the U.S. Federal Reserve, stated Fortune magazine in 2014. Within months of his election, Pope Francis appointed Peter Sutherland as a “consultor” to APSA. Sutherland was managing director and chairman of Goldman Sachs International, former chairman of BP Oil, European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and on the steering committee for the “secretive” Bilderberg Conference.
The Holy Father appointed Argentine Bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta as assessor of APSA in December 2017. Zanchetta was “a surprising appointment, because at APSA the position of assessor did not exist and was invented for the occasion,” wrote Vatican reporter, Sandro Magister. Zanchetta had been Bishop of Orán when he was “forced to resign” because “there were numerous complaints about economic mismanagement” according to the Argentine press.
In June 2019, an Argentine prosecutor charged Zanchetta with “aggravated continuous sexual abuse [of seminarians].” Yet he remains employed by the Vatican working at APSA, as reported by Ines San Martin. The Institute for the Works of Religion, often referred to as the Vatican Bank, reported net assets of 654.6 million euro in 2018.
After 9/11, laws were put in place regulating anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing (AML/CTF) around the world.
The IOR was forced to begin producing audited statements in 2012 in order to continue doing business in international financial markets. “In fact, who knows which are the real assets managed? Who knows the real results?”asked Italian journalist, Marco Tosatti.
A suit was brought by Holocaust victims and their heirs in U.S. Federal Court based on U.S. government records that reported the deposit of gold in the IOR by the Nazi-allied Croatian government. The suit alleges that gold and other assets stolen from concentration camp victims were deposited in the Vatican after World War II. The case was dismissed in 2010 on grounds of Vatican sovereign immunity to lawsuits filed in the United States.
The Vatican’s 2016 ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption was dismissed as mere “window dressing” because it included “two reservations and three interpretative declarations. One of these reservations states that the Vatican reserves the right not to participate in any ‘appropriate mechanism or body to assist in the effective implementation of the Convention.’”
That reservation might be useful if anyone investigated the Vatican financial institutions in the Cayman Islands and/or the Turks and Caicos. Both locations are known as havens for off-shore bank secrecy. Both were removed under Church law from their geographical dioceses of Kingston, Jamaica and Nassau, Bahamas respectively and created as “independent missions.” RENÉ BRÜLHART, HEAD OF THE FINANCIAL INFORMATION AUTHORITY Like the IOR’s audited and public financial statements, the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority was created out of necessity. Pope Benedict XVI signed a Monetary Agreement with the European Union in December 2009 as a requirement before the Vatican could obtain permission to continue minting their own euro coins. The agreement called for the Vatican to regulate its finances in accordance with the European Union’s anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing (AML/CTF) Code of Practice.
The deadline for compliance with the Agreement was Dec. 31, 2010. Pope Benedict issued a law creating a Financial Information Authority as the Vatican’s financial regulator the day before. The FIA was given financial
supervision over all the institutes and offices of the Vatican City State and the Vatican bureaucracy including APSA and the IOR. René Brülhart, a Swiss lawyer, was appointed as director.
Pope Francis promoted Brülhart from director to president of the FIA in November 2014.
“My role at the Holy See carries a certain amount of moral responsibility,”
Brülhart said in a 2017 article reporting he also held a position on the board of a Swiss mortgage lender. “Formerly Liechtenstein’s top anti-money laundering expert, it is Brülhart’s role at the Holy See which has raised the 45-year-old lawyer’s profile internationally,” according to the finews.asia report.
“When I started to serve the Holy See, I was engaged as an independent adviser to the financial services industry,” Brülhart said. A footnote reported he is also “a board member of two corporations in Zurich tied to his advisory work.”
Brülhart’s company, RnB AG, founded in 2012, is headquartered in Zurich. RnB AG provides “management consulting services.” In addition, “he is Chairman of the Board and responsible for a third of the Swiss branch of the global TD International” which also provides “business consulting services.” On May 12, the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve stated that assets of both of Brülhart’s companies had been frozen by the Swiss courts since October 2018 based on a report by the anti-money laundering authority, according to Manfred Rist.
“In 2016 and 2017, Petrosaudi paid some 2.5 million francs in fees to Brülhart’s companies,” Kazi Mamood reported. The oil company is accused of the massive embezzlement of S$1.8 billion from the Malaysian state investment fund, 1MDB.
“The Swiss Bank, in the case of the 2.5 million francs Petrosaudi paid to the two Brülhart companies, wanted to clarify the background of the payments.
Apparently, they received no satisfactory explanation. Therefore, it came to the money laundering reporting office. From there, a message of suspicionwas received in September 2018 at the office of the Swiss Attorney General Michel Lauber.” In addition to the Swiss courts, “the U.S. attorney’s office blocked the ‘corresponding assets promptly,’” according to Rist.
However, “there has been no action from Switzerland or from Lauber despite the volumes of evidence available to the Swiss authorities,” Mamood noted. “Brülhart and Lauber met almost 20 years ago. Since then, they are friends. ‘They meet in irregular intervals in private,’ confirmed a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office,” Rist reported. As a result, there are “rumors of collusion and attempts by Lauber to cover-up the scandal” to protect Brülhart, Mamood wrote.
Regardless of the outcome, “the money laundering expert and fighter maintained lucrative business contacts with 1MDB scammers and blackmailers who are also involved in money laundering,” Rist observed. Apparently neither Pope Francis nor Brülhart see any conflict of interest between these business contacts and his “role at the Holy See carrying a certain amount of moral responsibility.”
In the Holy Fathers’s first interview with the press following his election, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said he chose the name “Francis” after St. Francis of Assisi because he wanted “a poor Church for the poor.” If he truly wanted that, he could have hired forensic accountants like those in the FBI and Interpol to clean up the Augean stable of Vatican finance. Just as, if this pope truly wanted to curb child sex abuse, he could have put into practice those actions recommended by survivor groups and/or their advocates like SNAP and BishopAccountability.org.
Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America.
PAT SAYS
How can the RCC claim to be the expression of Jesus Christ who said: Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
How can the self proclaimed followers of the Jesus of Nazareth own so many billions of pounds?
How can this cabal claim to be followers of Jesus Christ?
How can the self proclaimed followers of Chrits own multi millions and neglect the poor?
How can Pope Francis, who names himself as the poor man of Assisi when he is CEO of one the richest organisations on earth?
The RCC is a break away that puts mammon bbefore God?
We now see that the RCC is really the anti Christ!
In April, the retired pope sent a compilation of what he described as “some notes” on the crisis to Klerusblatt, a German-language Catholic monthly journal for clergy in Bavaria.
Seeing the crisis as rooted in the “egregious event” of the cultural and sexual revolution in the Western world in the 1960s and a collapse of belief in the existence and authority of absolute truth and God, the retired pope said the primary task at hand is to reassert the joyful truth of God’s existence and of the Church as holding the true deposit of faith.
Most of the criticism, though, focused on Pope Benedict seeming to blame the cultural and sexual revolution of the ‘60s, especially when many cases of priests sexually abusing children occurred before that time, even if the public found out only recently.
In the new note, Pope Benedict said the “the general deficit in the reception of my text” was a lack of willingness to engage with his contention that abuse is related to a lack of faith and strong morals.
He used as an example a critique in the July issue of Herder Korrespondenz by the historian Birgit Aschmann.
“In the four pages of the article by Mrs. Aschmann, the word ‘God,’ which I made the central point of the question, does not appear,” he wrote
PAT SAYS
People, including priests, who abuse children are paedophiles.
Paedophilia is a psychiatric condition, an illness. Of course it is also criminal and immoral.
If paedophilia is caused by lack of faith tthen all the atheists and agnostics in the world would be paedophiles.
Most priests, and and many other paedophiles believe in God.
So they are not lacking faith and is not lack of faith that makes them abuse.
Pope Francis blames the devil for abuse.
And now Benedict blames lack of faith and morals.
Many Catholics were brought up with a skewed sexuality because of Catholic Church thinking and teaching.
And that skewed thinking is exacerbated by compulsory celibacy for the 400,000 men who are priests.
I do not believe that celibacy is a direct cause of abuse.
But I do believe it to be a contributory factor along with skewed sexuality.
The Catholic Church and its rules and teachings is a breeding ground for paedophelia.
And on top of that the church covering up for priests has led paedophile priests to assume they would not be found out ‘ and even if they were they would never face justice and punishment for it.
It’s not the devil or lack of faith that’s to blame.
Its priests being criminal and immoral that is to blame along with popes and bishop keeping it all covered up.
The church men are blaming the devil and lack faith when it really is their fault.
And Benedict was a right winger who thought the the church’s reputation was more important than children being abused!
It is 20 years since the Republic of Ireland’s first state apology to children abused in Catholic institutions.
It is 10 years since a government-sponsored report exposed the sheer scale of the abuse carried out by priests, nuns and lay staff.
As the number of surviving abuse victims shrinks and the Irish state closes its survivors’ fund, many feel that they have been left without a plan to continue to support
William
Imagine two young brothers. One is visually impaired. His younger brother has brittle bone disease and is severely disabled. Both are forced to witness each other being sexually abused by two priests.
This is William Gorry’s story. His worst experience was when he was 10 years old. His brother, Thomas, was six.
William’s brother, Thomas
Sitting in his living room, he shifts in the black leather couch and looks down at his scrunched hands.
He speaks slowly.
“For him to witness me being abused and for me to witness him, as my brother, being abused, especially with him being severely disabled, was horrific,” he said.
In 1974, his family fell into financial trouble. His mother left home.
There was nobody to look after the children, so they were sent to an industrial school.
In Ireland, these industrial schools were established to care for neglected, orphaned and abandoned children, according to laws at the time.
For 14 years, William was housed at the Mount Carmel Industrial School in Moate, County Westmeath, run by the Sisters of Mercy Catholic order.
Some nuns would hit him with sticks and wooden spoons, hard enough to draw blood, while certain members of the clergy or lay staff would molest him.
“There was a regime from Monday to Sunday,” he said.
“There were beatings. I was abused physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually.”
If you were called to see the head nun, said William, a shiver would go down your spine.
“You knew what was coming to you. You’d have a bloody nose and a sore face,” he said.
One Christmas, William was asked to help put up the decorations in one of the lay staff member’s bedrooms.
The man spilled water on William. He didn’t see it coming, William said, because of his visual impairment.
“It was made out to be an accident,” he said.
That was when he was asked to strip out of his clothes. The lay staff member started to wash him down, touched William and masturbated him.
“I was told if I said anything I would be sorry,” he said.
Later, he enrolled in a first aid course with a voluntary organisation which, at the time, was led by clergy.
William said that even there, the sexual abuse continued.
“It always happened when you were on your own,” he said.
“I once fell and cut my trousers, so they were cut off me.”
He said he was then raped by a priest.
“I was told not to say anything, only that my knee was sore and that is why I was late back to my living quarters,” said William.
William should have left the school at 16, but was so institutionalised that he stayed until he was 21.
“When I left, I could not cope.”
“My body felt dirty. I felt shameful, guilty, useless.”
Feeling hopeless and struggling with his sexuality, he ran away to Dublin.
“I felt messed up. I didn’t know whether I was gay, straight or bi. I wanted to find out my identity,” he said.
For many more years, William struggled. It was only in his 30s when he decided to start talking about the abuse he carried with him.
William, who is now 54, stayed in Dublin, where he still lives. Today he has a life, albeit not an easy one, he said.
“The trauma continues on. It’s hard to find those words for the pain and suffering,” said William.
“You’ll never get on with your life when you recall things like this.”
PAT SAYS
What a tragic story.
Two brothers used for sexual satisfaction by Catholic adults.
What indescribable suffering.
Where was God here?
He was in the abused children.
Is this the fruits of Roman Catholicism?
If so what rotten fruits.
Suggesting a rotten tree.
I hope the Good Lord avenges the horrible wrong done.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 