Month: Sep 2020

A case now before the criminal courts of Germany involving a former high-ranking Vatican Monsignor reveals the alleged mishandling of credible allegations of sexual abuse within the Vatican’s own walls. 

Sat Sep 5, 2020 – 10:30 am EST

September 5, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) –

In 2002, the Catholic Church was rocked by the widespread public revelation of sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy. While sexual abuse in all professions was nothing new, among clergy it brought a particular repugnance. But more than that, the new revelations highlighted the role of the bishops themselves in the crisis, as it made clear that they had allowed known sexually abusive priests to go without punishment and be transferred to other parishes or dioceses where they would sometimes even abuse again.

Sixth months after the revelations first surfaced in the Boston Globe, the US Bishops issued their “Dallas Charter.” While stipulating a zero-tolerance policy for sexually abusive priests, it came under criticism for failing to address the bishops’ own role in the scandal. The charter, which excluded responsibilities of bishops, was led by the then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Archbishop Wilton Gregory, then-President of the USCCB.

Pope John Paul II met with the U.S. Cardinals to address the issue in the wake of the scandal breaking in 2002 and then in 2004 with US Bishops. Pope Benedict XVI too had many meetings addressing the abuse scandal.

Nevertheless, the Vatican itself came under scrutiny for its handling of abuse early on as well. The reputation of Pope St. John Paul II’s pontificate was marred significantly as the revelations of sexual abuse by Legion of Christ founder Fr. Marcial Maciel came to light. A source close to Pope John Paul II told LifeSite that John Paul II could not bring himself to believe the accusations since Maciel masqueraded as a conservative, and in John Paul’s native Poland the Communists often accused faithful priests of sexual abuse so as to damage their reputations.

A group of eight former Legionary seminarians first went to the Vatican to lodge abuse complaints in 1998, but it took until 2006 for Maciel to be removed from all public ministry, and only after the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

Just prior to that, in late 2005 Benedict took decisive action to reaffirm a ban on homosexual men from seminary responding to the finding that the vast majority of abuse perpetrated by priests was homosexual in nature.

Nevertheless, it seems there was another homosexual abuse scandal playing out quietly inside the Vatican at the same time as Maciel. While Pope Benedict himself along with the rest of the Church was expressing public grief, meeting with abuse victims and promising reforms, those in high Vatican positions were using the same old playbook in mishandling credible allegations of sexual abuse within the Vatican’s own walls.

There is a case now before the criminal courts of Germany in which two priests allege gruesome sexual abuse at the hands of a then-senior official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, Monsignor Christoph Kühn.

Monsignor Florian Kolfhaus and a second man – a former priest – both allege that Kühn violently compelled them into sexual masochistic acts.

Kolfhaus first lodged a complaint against Kühn at the Vatican in 2006. He testifies that his abuse took place inside the offices of the Secretariat of State, as well as inside the Casa Santa Marta, a residence for Vatican prelates.

But it appears no formal investigation was launched until 2019, in spite of the fact that the Report of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, was presented to the Superiors of the Secretariat of State on July 3, 2006.

The other priest has since become laicized and is now a practicing homosexual and LGBT activist. He has given his testimony for the Kolfhaus complaint that is currently underway in Germany. In the court files is also to be found a WhatsApp message (seen by LifeSite) from Kühn to him (from April 2017), in which the Monsignor offers some future financial support should the laicized priest help him to clear his name with regard to the allegations against him.
On Monday, September 7, Kolfhaus will have his first hearing at the Diocese of Eichstatt, Kühn’s home diocese.

Kühn was the head of the German Section of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican from 2001 till 2008. This position put him in charge of vetting priests and bishops from Germany for elevations, and as such he was privy to all the personnel records of these prelates. Being in such a high position and involved in the German church, Kühn was often in close contact with Pope Benedict XVI both after his 2005 election and prior to that in his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

As head of the German Section until 2008, Kühn organized Benedict’s trips to Germany, traveled with him on the papal plane, and was often photographed side by side with him at official receptions such as that with German President Horst Kohler in 2005 during his visit to Cologne, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, as well as the future Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Kolfhaus says he suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Kühn from the end of 2003 until 2004 and has been reporting the abuse to different superiors in the Vatican and elsewhere since 2006. Through his lawyer, Dr. Alexander Stevens, Kolfhaus told LifeSite that he did not begin the legal process or go to the press with the abuse he suffered. Only after details of the abuse were reported by the German newspaper Die Bild in 2019, and police questioned Kolfhaus, did he act.

“When journalists or civil authorities come to me I have to answer truthfully, to lie here would be nothing other than covering up for the perpetrator,” Kolfhaus told LifeSite.

Viganò intervention

On January 22, 2020, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò provided testimony for the Church investigation into the case because from May 1998 till July 2009 he was the Delegate for the Pontifical Representations at the Secretariat of State, a position which was responsible for the personnel of the Roman Curia subordinate to the Substitute of the Secretary of State.

In Viganò’s testimony — which LifeSite confirmed with the Archbishop that he did indeed issue it — he states that he is “aware of precise information regarding the harassment and all kinds of abuses committed by Msgr. Christoph Kühn against Msgr. Florian Kolfhaus.”

Archbishop Viganò also notes that Kolfhaus informed various individuals of the abuse including a superior at the Secretariat of State and also a Bishop in charge of preparation of candidates for diplomatic service for the Vatican.

Archbishop Viganò also reports that now-Cardinal Pietro Parolin was informed as well. Parolin at the time was Undersecretary of the Section for the Relations with States of the Secretariat of State.

LifeSite reached out to Cardinal Parolin for comment via the Secretariat of State and, on August 24, received the following response from the Vatican Press Office: “As you are aware, the accusations pertaining to Mons. Kühn are being examined by canonical and civil authorities. Under these circumstances we are confident that you understand that at this time a comment is not appropriate.” The reply issued by the Vatican press office added, “In the meanwhile, we trust that you will make every effort to report the facts, and avoid speculation, on the case.”

According to Viganò’s knowledge, no official investigation was undertaken by July 2009 (when he ceased his duty as Delegate for the Pontifical Representations) to examine Kolfhaus’ reports of the abuse he suffered. Evidence which would have called for official investigation included: the report sent to the Secretariat of State by Archbishop Justo Mullor, President of the Pontifical Academy; a report of the Psychologist who returned a negative judgment on Kühn, dated June 14, 2006; and Viganò’s Note for the Substitute on July 3, 2006. Archbishop Viganò relates:

His Excellency Msgr. Mullor considered it his duty to inform his superiors at the Secretariat of State in writing about the confidences he had been told by Fr. Kolfhaus. Given the seriousness of the case, the President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy considered it opportune to submit the documents containing the confidences of Fr. Kolfhaus to the judgment of Fr. Bartholomew Kiely, S.J., Professor of Psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, reticito nomine [removing names]. On the basis of this document, Fr. Kiely formulated a negative prognosis about the personality of Msgr. Kühn. (These documents too may be found in the Archives of the Secretariat of State).

Viganò’s testimony also calls into question the 2001 decision to have Kühn at the Vatican in the first place. He recounts that sexually scandalous behavior by Kühn was known to the Vatican as early as 1997 when Kühn was a priest in the Nunciature in Zimbabwe. Viganò relates:

Msgr. Christoph Kühn began his service on July 1, 1997, in the Apostolic Nunciature in Zimbabwe. During this, his first assignment, the Nuncio, His Excellency Msgr. Peter Prabhu, had to report some of the behavior of his collaborator [Kühn] that could have indicated his possible homosexual tendency.

The Nuncio reported in February 1998 that on returning from a pastoral visit of several days, he was told that Fr. Kühn was very sick and that he [Kühn] wanted to see him [Prabhu] immediately. The Nuncio went to his room and knocked on the door. Kühn told him [Prabhu] to come in and revealed himself lying in his bed wearing only very skimpy panties. The Nuncio told him to get dressed and went away. Afterward, Kühn went from his bedroom to his office dressed in the same way, despite the admonition he had received, and then went down to the common area of the Nunciature in that same undressed state.

On another occasion during an encounter that lasted two hours in an Italian club, with the lights out as slides were projected, Fr. Kühn took a young blond boy about 9 or 10 years old and made him sit on top of him with his arms around the young boy.

In 2008, Kühn was moved by the Substitute then-Archbishop Fernando Filoni to Vienna to work in the nunciature (Vatican embassy).

Two sources close to Pope Benedict spoke anonymously to LifeSite about this matter, suggesting that Kühn was moved to Vienna because his scandalous sexual behavior (some believed to be consensual) became too well known. One said that the Pope moved Kühn knowing of the problems and even asked Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, to take Kühn into his diocese but Meisner refused. Another source stated:  “When it became known that he [Kühn] had harassed various young men (among them also Kolfhaus), he was removed by Benedict XVI from the Vatican and sent to Vienna.” This source insisted, defending the Pope, that Benedict did personally intervene and that he punished Kühn two times by sending him into less important positions, first to Vienna (2008) and then to Eichstätt (2012), this time removing him from the diplomatic service.
Pope Benedict was the Roman Pontiff of the Catholic Church from 2005 until 2013.

Another source from Benedict’s circle however suggests that Benedict did not know of the matter and it was handled either by the then Secretary of State himself (now-Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone) or the then-Substitute (now-Cardinal Fernando Filoni).

LifeSite reached out to Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, via his personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein, asking for comment, but did not receive a reply.

In the court files, currently with the State Attorney, a man who was employed in a high-ranking position by the diocese of Eichstätt sums up what he was told by higher-ups in the diocese concerning Kühn. He was warned to be “cautious” around Kühn “because of his somewhat difficult past.” When he asked for further information, both the finance director of the diocese and the Vicar General informed him that Kühn was known to have had some “unresolved encounters” during his station in Africa that were related to the “homosexuality of the prelate Kühn.” During his time in Vienna, they added, “it went so wild he was forbidden entrance into a hotel.”

According to this source, the Vicar General told him that the official reason for Kühn’s dismissal from Vienna was the “story with the hotel” as well as “additional non-consensual sexual contacts during his diplomatic stations.”

In the midst of this scandal in April 2011, Pope Benedict awarded Kühn a special designation as “Prelate of Honour of His Holiness,” a papal designation that often comes after a number of years of service in the diplomatic corps of the Vatican.

At the end of August 2012, Kühn was removed from the diplomatic service of the Vatican and was moved to his home diocese of Eichstätt in Germany where he was personally appointed Canon of the Cathedral by Bishop Gregor Hanke.  That position, however, gained Kühn a much larger salary and notable position.

In April of 2019, accusations against Kühn were brought to the public by the German newspaper Die Bild. Only after this did Bishop Hanke of the Diocese of Eichstätt, who according to the Viganò testimony, had been informed of Kühn’s assaults previously, suspend Kühn from his duties. Kühn was also told only to celebrate private Masses; however,  LifeSite found that in June of 2020, he celebrated a public Mass in the Diocese of Regensburg. Responding to a media request by LifeSite about this, the Diocese of Eichstätt merely pointed out that Kühn celebrated the Mass in a different diocese. The Diocese of Regensburg declined to comment.

LifeSite reached out to Monsignor Kühn with questions. In response, Kühn’s lawyer threatened a lawsuit should LifeSite report on the case. The response denied all charges and not only forbade reporting on the case but also further research into it.

Kühn publicly addressed the accusations for the first time in July 2020 after Italian Vaticanist Marco Tosatti published a translation of portions of a July 16, 2020, Die Bild article on the case on his blog. Kühn vehemently denied all charges. Moreover, Kühn claims that Kolfhaus’ lawyer Alexander Stevens is “a well known LGBTQ activist and supporter of the relative lifestyle and debauchery.”

Stevens told LifeSite Kühn’s accusation against him is false. “The prelate obviously doesn’t hesitate to even discredit the victim’s lawyer,” he wrote via email. “Here, in my opinion, Kuehn’s strategy is once again exposed: to neutralize the enemy by deliberate untruths.”

Canon law (1395) insists that “a cleric who persists with scandal in another external sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished by a suspension. If he persists in the delict after a warning, other penalties can gradually be added, including dismissal from the clerical state.” Canon law experts have told LifeSite that much of the problem leading to the Church sex abuse scandals has been the ignorance of and refusal to apply canon law.

Dr. Maike Hickson contributed to this report

PAT SAYS

This is a very interesting story and reveals even more of what goes on in the Vatican, dioceses, nunciatures, monasteries etc.

But it’s rather startling that a senior monsignor in a diplomatic mission be in bed and be walking around in skimpy panties.

Was the man drunk or on drugs at the time?

Or was he just proud of his kink?

Or is that type of behaviour so common no one turns a blind eye?

Vatican and RCC clerical homosexuality seems to of the kinky kind – and not the lovey dovey, kissey kind.

Its just as well Robert Mugabe didn’t come across Kuhn in his knickers or he might have ended up knickerless and knacker-less😃

The Disappeared http://www.tuambabies.org

Irish Official accounts say almost 60,000 vulnerable babies and children were “disappeared” by the Irish Catholic Church, illegally trafficked, sold like cattle into North America by the Religious Orders of Ireland. But many  groups of Survivors say the figure is at least 100,000. The disappeared children have left a deep scar on Irish Society for decades and for decades to come. Figures as high as 35,000 children are known to be buried in secret graves and septic tanks that haunt the landscape of former Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, Mother and Baby Homes and Orphanages of Ireland. This pattern was similar for those stolen, the women and their children who were taken from their homes in the middle of the night, only to be tortured, raped, enslaved for life at the many Religious run Institutions of Ireland. 

The weak among the children were deliberately starved to death and then crudely disposed of at clandestine septic tank sewage systems. Most of the babies and a few children were disposed of by flushing them down toilets, flushed into secret Victorian sewage systems attached to all Religious run Institutions. After years of investigations, it is thought that some bodies of the disposable babies and children were destroyed with caustic soda, in the abattoirs that operated in all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. We also know that caustic soda was added soon afterward to prevent blockages in the sewage drains, the Nuns taught of everything.  Caustic soda was also known for its corrosive effects by the Nuns and was added by the Nuns to speed up with the decomposition of the child’s body to erase the baby’s identification, while others, babies and children were just dumped, or dismantled  into unknown mass graves. 

Many Religious run Institutions in Ireland have mass secret graveyards for the disappeared, the mothers, the babies, the children, unwanted, not profited by the Catholic Church in Ireland. Children Raped, mothers brutalised by the Religious Orders in their rape rooms of Orphanages, Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, Mother and Baby Homes. I still have hopes of finding the remains of my own Mother, my Brother/s and Sister/s, one day I hope to find them and learn with them, their stories, my story. Today, families of some of the disappeared children are watching closely to see what is recovered from the long delayed septic tank at Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home in the West of Ireland. Over 800 babies and children still remain in the septic tank since it was discovered four years ago. One excuse after another is offered, it’s all to do with saving the Irish Catholic Church public humiliation. After all it was from a Mother and Baby Home run by the Catholic Order of Bon Secours Sisters. The unscrupulous Catholic Nuns disposed of the babies and children into an active septic tank with regularity for over 40 or 50 years. The septic tank was used for human waste, so the babies they flushed down the septic tank were also human waste. It was the diabolical Nuns that disposed of the babies and children into the septic tank with their own human waste. 

The same order of Nuns, also trafficked illegally, over 1,000 more babies and children from Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home into North America. Now we learn that both the Irish Government and the Irish Catholic Church want the septic tank to be kept secret, forever. It is understandable, because if they remove the babies and children’s bodies from this septic tank, they know that they will have to investigate and open probably dozens of other septic tanks and mass grave-pits that dot the religious houses of Ireland. 

Child Euthanasia was carried enthusiastically out by the Religious Order of Nuns and endorsed by the Catholic Church in Ireland in most of the Mother and Baby Home of Ireland. The sanctioned murder of severely mentally and physically handicapped children and young people up to 14 years old during The Cults reign in Ireland. We know that there were so-called special children’s wards at all Mother and Baby Homes in the Irish State. The organised euthanasia of babies and children was carried out with religious fervour, ruthless efficiency by the Nuns that ran all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. 

There are documents to support this, many of the documents come from what are now known as the “Sea Money Files”.Many of the documents are marked “Strictly Confidential” The Nuns called the shots, in all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. Doctors and other medical experts were absent, as were reports that were to be filed with the appropriate health authorities in Ireland. The  pitiless Nuns had decided that if a newborn child is suspected of being afflicted with the following congenital disorders, the child was to die. 

Down’s Syndrome, known at the time as Mongolism, is microcephaly in which the brain  does not develop properly, resulting in a shorter-than-normal head. Malformations of all kinds, particularly the absence of limbs, severe midline defects of the head and spine. Paralysis, including Cerebral Palsy which in most cases was caused by the Nuns themselves, have been untrained as medics. Cerebral palsy is caused by abnormal development or damage to the parts of the brain that control movement, balance, and posture. In some cases the Nuns pulled by force babies out of their mothers. Many within the Catholic Church in Ireland supported euthanasia with great enthusiasm. Make no mistake about it, euthanasia was carried out with ruthless efficiency in all Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. We know that the Nuns spoke to each other, regularly by phone and letters on their many mutual problems of the Mother and Baby Homes. Exchanging ideas, like what to do with a problem baby with birth defects, how to dispose of the baby, how to continuously collect money from the Irish Government, and finally how to dispose of the baby’s body once it dies. More importantly to the Nuns was how to deal with the unwed mother whose baby they killed and her family. The answer was with fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and fanatical devotion to Holy Mother Church with many a night of inhumane pain, visited upon the unwed mothers, a few as young as 11 years old. 

We also know that even though the babies authorised for disposing off by the Nuns, didn’t died immediately, many of the babies instead were used for months in scientific research run by the International drug companies that paid the Nuns for the live babies, and more shocking kept the dead baby’s bodies long after the child die. Something else, there was close collaboration between the Nuns and their enablers, the Doctors, by the placing of some sick children in Irish asylums, where further experiments were carried out under medical supervision. There were “Special Children’s Ward” in all Irish Asylums, there is evidence that a few hundred children with disabilities ended up in Irish Asylums up and down Ireland. Many of these children died and their bodies were preserved as were their brains for future research. There was no family to object, no written consent, and more importantly no documentation to worry about. 

A few thousand children lost their lives through deliberate malnutrition, disease, and neglect, there was no official autopsy ever performed on the babies or children. Yet many of their brains and organs were kept for research, certainly by the Irish medical schools, a few are kept to this day in both Trinity College Dublin and The Royal College of Surgeons also in Dublin. We know from documentations that two International Drug Companies performed their own unauthorised autopsies on the brains of the dead babies and children. We also know that hundreds, if not thousands of children who had been used in medical experiments, died, soon after they were experimented on, and a few died within a few years after, from the complications of the different drugs they were exposed to. I say that the babies and children who had also been used in the drug experiments were brought to the Religious run Institutions to be murdered. Babies as young as a few weeks old and up to children in the age range of 14 were sadly murdered in all the Religious run Institutions in Ireland and that is a fact.

A few professional Researchers were hired by the Irish Government, most of them Academics who would soon be shocked at what they discovered trawling through the religious secret archives, now known as The Sea Monkey Files. All the Academics found themselves at a loss to convey the horrors they encountered and uncovered while compiling, and trawling through the different archives of all the Religious run Institutions in Ireland. Thousands of Boxes filled with alphabetical lists of heinous crimes, documented in thousands of documents, oversized ledger- books filled with the names of the inmates of the various labour camps they worked in. Many Academics were still trying to grasp the reality of what they read and saw, all were horrified. The Academics discovered and saw the vast crimes committed by all the Religious Orders. To most Academics it was like the death camps of Nazi Germany, they read about in history lessons. One professor wrote that it was “Evidence of pure Evil” as a staunch catholic he wouldn’t believe that he was reading.  His notes, his account is unsparing and graphic, with descriptions of what he was reading as he went through the documentation. He also noted that he could smell the odour of fear leaping straight from the old letters and musty journals in the archives. The professor was still trying to grasp the reality of what he was reading. 

The large industrial processing – of human beings” the illegal trafficking of babies and children. The Academics were stunned to learn, this was Ireland after all they were reading about and not Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In the early 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded religious men in Ireland hit on the idea of enslaving unwed women and their children, thus adapting the methods of the death camps in Nazi Germany, and pioneering for themselves or what they preferred to call the processing – of human beings.” 

Every act of cruelty suffered by tens of thousands of babies, children, and their mothers was and is a crime against humanity.  Yet the Nuns and other Religious Orders are desperately trying to destroy their terrible relics, the death camps, slave camps of Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, Mother and Baby Homes and Orphanages of Ireland. As long as these slave and death camps stand, all are evidence and living testament to the atrocities committed within their cold stone grey walls by the Catholic Church. Remember too that all the Religious run Institutions have vast unmarked mass graves and septic tanks, filled with women and children. We Survivors must preserve the memory of the our Holocaust, we owe it to the tens of thousands who died brutal deaths as chattel slaves of both the Irish State and – The Banality-of-Evil, that is the Catholic Church.  We must never allow these remnants of human beings, the babies and children to be forgotten. The Septic Tank of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home and other Septic Tanks in all the Religious run Institutions in Ireland will and must stand as one of the most chilling symbols of the dark days of our most recent history. Let us also not forget that the amoral Nuns had quietly and methodically organised the flushing of over 800 babies and children into their Septic Tank, in Tuam and doing so for over 40 years. Where was their Christian duty of love then, or their Christian compassion.  Maybe the Nuns forgot — Isaiah 49:10

“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”

The Catholic Church did not just murder thousand of babies, and children, but their mothers and other women, and their children, but literally “harvested” their remains to the International Drug Companies allowing them to do illegal drug experiments in the Religious run Institutions. Researchers and Academics were highly shocked when they also discovered illegal drug experiments, committed on vulnerable babies and children. The Academics also discovered a brisk trade which emerged between the death /slave camps,The Mother and Baby Homes, Orphanages  the Magdalene Laundries and the International Drug Companies. The Researchers and Academics were reading the reprehensible crimes from the account books kept by all the Religious Orders and their Institutions. 

Not only did the International Drug Companies gave money to the Religious run Institutions, but so did local textile manufacturers. The Laundry was a profitable business for all the Magdalene Laundries, why not it was run entirely by slave labour. Carpets were also made and sold in many Religious run Institutions in Ireland. As was carpentry, tailoring, shoe making, farming, and hiring out domestic servants to locals and the hospitality industry, as well as hospitals, schools, universities. All Irish Government Departments, all the Irish Defence Forces, An Garda Síochána, The Prisons. The true profits made from the illegal selling of babies, children, women and orphanage boys and girls, that ran into tens of millions of dollars a year.  All can now be found and seen in the many well kept ledger-books used as account books by all the Religious Orders. 

My question is “Can one do evil without being evil? And my answer after 18 years in a few Religious run Institutions in Ireland is a resounding YES.  What is extraordinary was that many of the Nuns, Christian Brothers, Priests were just ordinary, probably from good middle class homes. Once in religious life and donning their uniforms many turned into amoral monsters, perverts, pedophiles, sadistic, and yes  ‘terrifyingly normal’. Most performed evil deeds with evil intentions, many seem to get pure joy at inflicting pain on children, and women. What is sad is now I understand, many Religious people I met later in life and spoke to seemed disengaged from the reality of their evil acts. Many  ‘never realised what they were doing’ due to an ‘inability to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, they ‘committed heinous crimes, against children and women under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for them to know or to feel what they were doing wrong’. All said they were doing the Lord’s work, many religious people said that they drifted into the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief. Sadly many of the Religious Orders afterwards felt no remorse at their actions. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive they said, things just ‘happened’, many claimed it was the work of the devil or they were led astray by seductive children and their immoral mothers. Owen Felix O’Neill 

                           Survivors Lives Matter 

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2020/07/ireland-mother-baby-scandal-200708133901707.html
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Ireland’s Mother and Baby Scandal

In two special episodes of People and Power, (above link) from filmmakers Callum Macrae, Mark Williams and Al Jazeera correspondent Laurence Lee, we investigate deeply disturbing allegations that both the Irish state and its religious orders were responsible for a systematic decades-long regime of institutional neglect and exploitation involving the death of thousands of children.

Over the period from 1922 to 1970, 195,000 children entered the gates of the 50 or so Industrial Schools in Ireland. The period for which they stayed varied widely, but the average was more than 7 years.​

‘There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about our duty to preserve the purity of Irish motherhood through the sanctity of holy matrimony, according to the rites and traditions of the Irish Catholic Church, this was said at the time in the late 1940s.’

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The Irish Bishops also said this;-

     “We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness.” in eliminating this scourge from our pure Irish society, these unwed women, and their filth, their offsprings.’  

Should the Irish Catholic Church Pay Reparations for Slavery?

  Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.
— John Locke, “Second Treatise”

    Religious texts in Judaism, Islam and Christianity all recognise slaves. So the question I pose is should the Irish Catholic Church pay financial Reparations to the women and children of their Religious run Institutions, like the Magdalene Laundries, the Mother and Baby Homes and the Industrial Schools of Ireland?. My answer is a clear “YES”, the Irish Catholic Church made money, hundreds of millions of pounds from the dehumanisation and demonising of unwed women and their children. It is naive to think that the past has nothing to do with the shape of today. It’s not enough that the Irish Catholic Church closest to ever offer a full apology was “ with deep sorrow and great sadness”. Financial reparations should be paid in consideration of the forced and uncompensated labour these women and their children performed in the Religious run Institutions in Ireland in which the Irish Catholic Church profited. Also many private institutions and local businesses, profited with the use of free labour from these Religious run Institutions. The main people who profited from the slavery and trafficking of children, itself, were the Irish Catholic Church.

These are the reasons Reparations must be paid and why:

1. The slave women and their children built these Religious Institutions against their will. They were compensated with rape, torture, beatings and death. 

2. The women and their children never had anything of value to pass down to generations to keep their memories alive, many lost their complete families within and because of these run Religious Institutions.

3. Slaves of these Religious run Institutions were not considered humans so we have no true documented history of where we are from, who we are related to or anything pertaining to our family history. Most survivors lost their complete families to the evil system, run by the Catholic Church in Ireland. 

    If we want closure, both the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Irish State must pay Reparations. I believe that our entire Irish society would benefit from this move of paying Reparations to the women and children of these Religious Institutions. First of all, much of the economy of these Religious run Institutions, current and past were built upon the success of the Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and the Industrial Schools, with the use of free slave labour in the form of women and their children. 

    For example all the Magdalene Laundries made money with the use of free slaves in the form of women and their children, who were held captive in these Religious run Institutions.The Religious Orders as slaveowners were allowed to do whatever they wanted to their slaves including beating them, sometimes to death, raping them, including impregnating them, stealing their children and babies from them to be sold as slaves and worse than anything else, dehumanising them. In many areas of these Religious run Institutions, educating their slaves was actually discouraged.

THE AUTHOR

My name is Owen Felix O’Neill, I was born in Dublin, in a Mother and Baby Home, St Patrick’s on the Navan Road, Dublin in 1954. I was put into different Industrial Schools till I ran away at the age of sixteen. I put myself through Catering College, and after two years worked in the U.S.A. and Europe.
The last 35 years or more I started collecting books at auctions or privately, I now buy and restore antiquarian books, the earliest book I have in my collection is for the 7th. century. I have a few of the rarest books in the world. I own over 5,000 books, and ephemera, mainly of the 15th. century to the 19th. century, that are in my collection. My home is a hospital for damaged books and paper. I love all things Books. While I’m not religious, I have a vast English Bible collection, I also restore the word of God. When a book come to me damaged, I renew the books life for another few hundred years. My website is http://www.felixrarebooks.com where some of my collection can be seen.
Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organising, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given individual collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and collect books is a bibliophile. Bibliophile book collecting is distinct from casual book ownership and the accumulation of books for reading.

I decided a year ago to write a book about my brutal childhood, though painful, my story needed to be told. My Book, “Child Laundering Secrets” is the title of my new book now on Kindle and Amazon. I’m proud of the book..it’s not perfect but it’s honest, raw an unvarnished. I have come a long way since my horrendous childhood, but I survived, My collecting of books has helped.

Books By Owen Felix O’Neill

PAT SAYS

What could I possibly add to the above?

I’m shocked.

I’m speechless.

Wikipedia

William Martin Morris (born 8 October 1943) served as the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba in Australia from 1992 to 2011.

In May 2011, the Holy See removed Morris from pastoral care of the diocese, attracting international press coverage.

Pastoral career

Morris was born in Brisbane, where he was educated at St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace, before studying for the priesthood at Pius XII Provincial Seminary in Banyo.

He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Brisbane in 1969.

His parish appointments included Sunnybank, Nambour, Mt Gravatt, Goodna and Surfers Paradise. During 1979 to 1984 he served as secretary to Archbishop Francis Rush in Brisbane and also as Diocesan Director of Vocations.

In 1992, Morris was appointed by Pope John Paul II to head the Toowoomba diocese. His consecration took place at St Patrick’s Cathedral on 10 February 1993. 

He became known for his pastoral leadership and his work with diocesan cases of sexual abuse.

In 2009 he dismissed the principal of a Toowoomba Catholic primary school and two Catholic Education officials for failing to report to the police an early complaint from a schoolgirl.

There were reports of liturgical unorthodoxy and controversy about his support of the Third Rite of Confession.

In 2006 Morris released a pastoral letter that discussed the declining number of priests in remote parishes like Toowoomba. The letter called for discussion of the ordination of married men and the ordination of women.

To call for such a discussion could be interpreted as a challenge to the teaching of John Paul II’s apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which said that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”

The letter also suggested that the Catholic Church might consider recognising “Anglican, Lutheran, and Uniting Church orders”.

In December 2006, Morris received a fax requesting that he come to Rome by February 2007 for meetings with three cardinals; Giovanni Battista Re, then head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, William Levada, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Francis Arinze.

Morris did not attend, citing “pastoral reasons”,[citation needed] and offered to present himself in May.

An apostolic visitation of the diocese was conducted by Charles J. Chaput OFM Cap, Archbishop of Denver during April 2007.

Chaput reported to the Congregation for Bishops in May 2007. Morris says that he has never seen this report. He was given an unsigned document from the Congregation for Bishops indicating 13 separate issues.

Morris then negotiated with several Vatican congregations for several years. Attempts by Vatican administrators to reconcile Morris with the church’s position included several meetings in Rome where, it has been reported, he was asked to resign several times.

In December 2008, Morris wrote to Pope Benedict XVI requesting an audience. He was received by the Pope on 4 June 2009.

Later Morris claimed that he was told that “it is God’s will that you resign”.

In February 2011 the Apostolic Nuncio to Australia, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, wrote to Morris requesting his resignation.

Removal as diocesan bishop

On 1 May 2011, Morris stated in a letter to parishioners of his diocese that “it has been determined by Pope Benedict XVI that the diocese would be better served by the leadership of a new bishop”, but that he felt that he was being denied “natural justice”

Morris announced his early retirement at age 67, stressing the fact that he had not resigned.

On 2 May, the Apostolic Nuncio to Australia announced that the Pope had “removed [Morris] from pastoral care” of his diocese.

At this time, Morris was appointed Bishop Emeritus of Toowoomba.

Several hundred people attended two separate vigils for Morris on 3 May in Toowoomba.

On 13 May 2011, the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ACBC) issued a statement, stating that they supported Pope Benedict’s decision to remove Morris. In the statement they noted:

“it was judged that there were problems of doctrine and discipline, and we regret that these could not be resolved. We are hopeful that Bishop Morris will continue to serve the Church in other ways in the years ahead”.

At a meeting of the Permanent Committee of the ACBC on 2 August 2011, a petition was presented from many Catholics of the Diocese of Toowoomba in support of Morris.

In a statement on 11 August[11] the Permanent Committee said that

“the reality of our ecclesial structure is that the Conference is not able to resolve the issues that have arisen. Not only do the local Bishops not have access to all the information on which Pope Benedict came to his decision, but what has happened in Toowoomba is a matter between the Holy Father and Bishop Morris.”

During an Ad Limina visit in Rome that month, ACBC bishops held discussions regarding the situation in Toowoomba with both Cardinal Marc Ouellet and Cardinal William Levada and among themselves.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge said that the talks “went very positively” and “surpassed” their expectations.

In a letter from the ACBC, released on 21 October:

“What was at stake was the Church’s unity in faith and the ecclesial communion between the Pope and the other Bishops in the College of Bishops … we express our acceptance of the Holy Father’s exercise of his Petrine ministry … (and) we return to Australia determined to do whatever we can to heal any wounds of division.”

Morris responded to the letter on 24 October 2011, writing:

“The statement of the Australian Catholic Bishops contains inaccuracies and errors of fact evidenced by the documentation relating to the issues concerning myself and a number of Vatican Dicasteries.

The Statement made by the Australian Bishops invites me to tell my story which I will publish in the foreseeable future.”

In October 2011, it was reported that several lay Catholics in Toowoomba had expressed concern that Morris still had a high profile in the diocese, giving a public lecture, in-service talks to teachers and officiating at parish anniversaries

Cardinal George Pell said to CNA “if he is a loyal man of the Church he’ll realize that this is totally inappropriate and that won’t continue. That is my hope.”

Morris gave an address for Women and the Australian Church on 26 March 2013. He spoke about the vital role of lay people in interpreting the Second Vatican Council and “reclaiming its spirit”.

In June 2014 his book Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three was published, describing his experience of the dismissal.

PATS SAYS

I’m looking forward to reading Bishop Morris’ book.

An honest man punished by Ratzingler and his mates for his honesty.

The RCC is so corrupt it cannot tolerate voices of honesty and integrity within it.

What Morris was saying is absolutely true. The Church will have to have married and women priests to survive in the future.

Morris is a prophet – a man ahead of his time.

He should move things on by ordaining married men and women himself.

They would excommunicate him.

So what?

Excommunication has no meaning to avtrue Christian.

WRC agreed that Holy Communion mass did not constitute a service within legislation

Sean McCárthaigh 31, 2020 The Irish Times.
    

A claim of discrimination against a Catholic bishop by a Traveller family over their alleged treatment at a Holy Communion mass five years ago has been dismissed by the Workplace Relations Commission.

The WRC ruled that it had no legal authority to adjudicate on 10 individual complaints by members of the Sherlock family that they had been discriminated against by the then bishop of Galway Martin Drennan when they attempted to attend the mass on May 23rd, 2015.

The family, which includes six children, also alleged they were harassed at the ceremony.

They claimed Traveller women were excluded from the mass based on a dress code, even though other women who were wearing elements of clothing that were deemed inadmissible were not asked to leave the church.

The Sherlocks said they were barred due to the length of their dresses and skirts and their necklines.

Bishop Drennan, who retired as bishop of Galway in July 2016, rejected all allegations that he had discriminated against them on grounds of gender, race and their membership of the Traveller community under Section 21 of the Equal Status Act 2000.

The WRC agreed with a preliminary legal argument raised by representatives for Bishop Drennan that the Holy Communion mass provided by the Catholic Church as a religious service did not constitute a service within the meaning of the legislation.

As a consequence, WRC adjudicator, Louise Boyle, said Bishop Drennan had not engaged in prohibited conduct.

Detailed evidence in the case was not heard as a result of the WRC’s ruling on the preliminary challenge raised by the bishop’s legal representatives.

They claimed it was never the intention of the Oireachtas for religious services to fall within the jurisdiction of the legislation.

The Sherlock family had argued that the Catholic Church was the provider of a service as under the legislation a mass was a “service or facility of any nature which is available to the public generally or a section of the public”.

They said there was no exclusion clause in the Equal Status Act 2000 that allowed negative discrimination to occur.

However, the WRC said religious services or sacraments did not come within the ambit of the legislation as otherwise it would be unlawful for churches to refuse the sacrament of matrimony to persons who were divorced or of the same sex, or similarly to only ordain men as priests.

“There seems to be no reason in law or logic to differentiate between these types of religious services and a Holy Communion mass,” said Ms Boyle.

She added: “If the Oireachtas had intended to apply the principle of equal status, enshrined in the Act, to all of these situations, it would have said so in express terms.”

PAT SAYS

This is a very sad case and really shouldn’t have happened.

I have ministered to the Travellers for 44 years now.

They really are a very separate and distinct cultural community.

The women in particular can have very different lives. They are really only “special” on 4 days in their lifetime when they get to wear white – their baptism, their Holy Communion their Confirmation and their wedding day.

The women like a particular style which involves very skinpy dresses bare lega and bare shoulders.

When they turn up to church like that they are not being disrespectful. They are just being themselves.

In fact they are very religious and respectful of priests and churches.

Don’t get me wrong. I have had Traveller weddings that required me to call the police and the ambulance.

But there is a way of talking to them and dealing with them.

You don’t disrespect them or make them feel second class.

They get abused a lot by people.

And some of the Travellets behave badly.

Drennan has never struck me as the sensitive type.

I think he can be sharp and abrupt.

Anyway well done to the Travellers for standing up for themselves.

By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Mark White

This spring, I received a letter from my boss ordering me to take down my blog or lose my job.

Workers all over the country have found themselves in this kind of situation. But I may yet become the first Catholic priest removed for blogging.

Until recently, I was the pastor of two parishes in southwest Virginia, one in Martinsville and the other in Rocky Mount. I love my work and my community of some 800 families. I began blogging in 2008 as an additional way of reaching the faithful. For the first decade, my digital homilies and musings attracted little attention outside my parishes.

In 2018, though, like many Catholics, I was shaken when news emerged of sexual abuse by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington.

I had been a seminarian when the Catholic Church was rocked by revelations of abuse 16 years earlier, in 2002. One of the many distressing facets of that crisis was that bishops had covered up the crimes of abusive priests, often transferring them to new positions instead of calling the police. McCarrick led much of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to that scandal, speaking often to the press and championing a supposed “zero-tolerance” approach.

McCarrick ordained me in 2003. Back then, I believed I was entering the church at the outset of a new era of openness.

But as the world later learned, McCarrick himself molested seminarians under his authority and young boys. In the early 2000s, he arranged settlement payments to his victims, even as he stage-managed the church’s response to the crisis.

In 2018, as accusers came forward, the church stripped McCarrick of his status. It quickly emerged, though, that senior clergy had been aware of allegations against McCarrick for years. Pope Francis promised a thorough study of what the Vatican knew when. But today, two years later, the church has still not produced a public report.

When I learned of McCarrick’s misbehavior and the surrounding cover-up, I was deeply upset. I had received Holy Orders from a criminal — and felt a responsibility to explore how my church had failed. On my blog, I began to question and criticize Catholic leadership.

I understand why my superiors are not keen on a priest speaking out against the church. But Christianity directs the faithful to speak the truth freely. The church was literally founded on that principle, with Christ speaking the truth in the face of oppression. The Second Vatican Council recognized the centrality of this freedom when it asserted that “the search for truth must be carried out in a manner that is appropriate to the dignity of the human person. That is, by free inquiry, with the help of teaching and instruction, communication, and dialogue.”

Unfortunately, Bishop Barry Knestout, the leader of the Diocese of Richmond, does not appear to agree. In November 2019, he ordered me to remove my blog from the internet. I initially complied. But when the pandemic hit, I felt it was important to connect with my parishioners online. I resumed posting this past March.

In April, the bishop transferred me away from the two towns I know and love to serve as a prison chaplain several hours distant. While this is important work, Knestout’s intention was to punish and silence me, as he indicated when he wrote that “the restoration of your priestly faculties . . . will be dependent on your taking down your blog.”

I appealed to the Vatican and was awaiting an answer when Knestout prohibited me from practicing ministry in any form. He even changed the locks on the two churches I served, which include my living quarters. I have no other home in the area, and my mother resides in an assisted living facility nearby. At this point, I have to rely on the kindness of parishioners.

My problems are nothing compared to the larger issues facing the Catholic Church. Its leaders have not been forthcoming about McCarrick. Who enabled him to obtain one powerful position after another, in New York, New Jersey and Washington D.C., rising through church ranks over decades, even as accusations against him reached the Vatican? We still don’t know.

The faithful deserve a forthright conversation that would allow the church to reckon with its past and to prevent abuse in the future. To respond to that call with dictates for silence is to repeat the mistakes of the last two decades.

Right now, I can’t be sure of my future as a priest. But I do know that we need people speaking the truth freely in the Catholic Church more than ever.

Father Mark White is a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.

Word from SILVERSTREAM is that Kirby could still be in the monastery.

This is based on the fact that Kirby is still authoring the daily talk to the monks gathered in chapter.

Is he doing this personally or are his thoughts being read out to the monks by the sub prior?

In either case it does not seem appropriate as the Church and Gardai are investigating claims of sexual and financial misconduct.

A lady who is well versed in the happenings at Silverstream told the blog yesterday that the current tactic of Kirby supporters is to portray Kirby as an innocent victim and to blame everything on the whistleblowing monk who brought everything out into the light.

This seems to me to be a dreadfully horrible tactic.

In society in general now there is great respect for whistle-blowers.

So Brendan Coffee the Abbot of Glenstall, who is temporarily in charge of Silverstream needs to proceed with great caution or this scandal may blow up in his face and even affect his own monastery.

Tom Deenihan of Meath needs to be careful too.

This scandal has already been referred to Rome by a number of people including the Irish papal nuncio.

Anything Coffee and Deenihan do to the whistle-blower will be appealed to Rome.

To date the national and international media have not run this story.

But I have referred the story to media outlets in Ireland and the USA. So it is only a matter of time.

If they step out of line Messrs Coffee and Deenihan will find themselves at the centre of a whirlwind

Paul Prior, ex Rome, ex Maynooth ex SJs, having spent a week as the curate of Glenfarne is now appointed PP of Mullagh on the Cavan / Meath border.

Many regard him as a parish dodger – so finally he has embraced parish life.

He leaves a trail of destruction behind him in Rome and Maynooth as the Grand Inquisitor of erections, wet dreams, underwear and all things associated with those matters.

Hopefully he will restrain himself in these areas as I imagine the 21st century young males of that parish might react rather aggressively to his enquiries.

As Christians we must wish him well.

But as Christians we must ask if he has any plans to express sorrow to all those whose sexual privacy he invaded?

Some of these young men are still carrying deep scars from their encounters with him.

One hopes that Paul has also engaged in proper therapy to address his fixation on these matters – to give himself peace and to stop him having inappropriate discussions with others.

Some on this blog has claimed that Paul was a victim of the unwanted attentions of Father Ronan Drury a native of Mullagh?

Paul has never denied or confirmed this.

I wonder if Drury is interned in Mullagh churchyard?

Somehow, I don’t think that this is the last we will hear of The Very Reverend Paul Prior PP.

MAYNOOTH – THEN AND NOW !!!

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2018/0501/959448-ordination-of-a-priest/