Sex Crimes and the Vatican is a documentary film by Colm O’Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old. Father Sean Fortune was charged with 66 counts of sexual, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence relating to eight boys but he committed suicide on the eve of his trial. Colm started an investigation with the BBC in March 2002 which led to the resignation of Dr Brendan Comiskey, the bishop leading the Ferns Diocese. Colm then pushed for a government inquiry which led to the Ferns Report.

*Caution if you are more offended by adult words than child-raping priests you had better watch something else.

TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.

Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.

They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”.

They claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own”. This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell.

It was “a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s emotional and mental integrity”. The Pope was “responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his Church, he was jointly responsible” with Pope John Paul II.

Catholics “threatened by HIV-AIDS . . . are faced with a terrible alternative: If they protect themselves with condoms during sexual intercourse, they become grave sinners; if they do not protect themselves out of fear of the punishment of sin threatened by the church, they become candidates for death.”

There was also “strong suspicion that Dr Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his church and as Pope, has up to the present day systematically covered up the sexual abuse of children and youths and protected the perpetrators, thereby aiding and abetting further sexual violence toward young people”.

Source: Irish Times

The future Pope Benedict XVI refused to defrock an American priest who confessed to molesting numerous children and even served prison time for it, simply because the cleric wouldn’t agree to the discipline. The case provides the latest evidence of how changes in church law under Pope John Paul II frustrated and hamstrung U.S. bishops struggling with an abuse crisis that would eventually explode.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press from court filings in the case of the late Rev. Alvin Campbell of Illinois show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, following church law at the time, turned down a bishop’s plea to remove the priest for no other reason than the abuser’s refusal to go along with it.

“The petition in question cannot be admitted in as much as it lacks the request of Father Campbell himself,” Ratzinger wrote in a July 3, 1989, letter to Bishop Daniel Ryan of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill.

With the church still recovering from a notable departure of priests in the 1970s to marry, John Paul made it tougher to leave the priesthood after assuming the papacy in 1978, saying their vocation was a lifelong one. A consequence of that policy was that, as the priest sex abuse scandal arose in the U.S., bishops were no longer able to sidestep the lengthy church trial necessary for laicization.

New rules in 1980 removed bishops’ option of requesting laicizations of abusive priests without holding a church trial. Those rules were ultimately eased two decades later amid an explosion of abuse cases in the United States.

Campbell’s bishop had requested that he be quickly defrocked, in part to spare the victims the pain of a trial, but Ratzinger’s response was in keeping with church law at the time. Bishops retained the right to remove priests from ministry or to go through with a trial and recommend to Rome a cleric’s defrocking, and nothing prevented them from reporting such crimes to police as they should have done, the Vatican has argued.

“Nothing in the new code prevented a bishop from exercising his discretion to restrict ministry or to assign a priest to a job where he was out of contact with the public,” said Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s attorney in the U.S.

Campbell’s is one of several decades-old cases to emerge in recent months raising questions about Ratzinger’s decisions and the church law he was following involving abusive priests as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog office, a position he took in 1981. The round of scandals worldwide left the Vatican initially blaming the media and groups supporting abortion rights and gay marriage, but recently Benedict has denounced the “sin” that has infected the church.

John Paul’s views on laicizations were made known in a 1979 letter to priests, in which he wrote that their ordination was “forever imprinted on our souls” and that “the priesthood cannot be renounced.” Ryan, in his letter to Ratzinger, quoted Campbell saying essentially the same thing: “Once a priest, always a priest.”

“The whole idea was that the priesthood was so sacred you couldn’t kick these guys out,” said the Rev. Tom Doyle, a canon lawyer who reviewed the Campbell case and who has advocated for abuse victims. “It wasn’t that it wasn’t possible – it was possible – but the practice had been not to accept the petition unless the priest accepted.”

Campbell’s misdeeds date back at least 15 years before his defrocking.

As an Army chaplain, he was reprimanded and ultimately left the service after abusing at least one boy, according to military and church correspondence. An Army letter in his file said he had exploited his rank and position as a chaplain “by engaging in indecent homosexual acts” with a child under 16 who had been under his supervision.

Even so, Bishop Joseph McNicholas, then at the helm of the Springfield diocese, wrote to him, “Be assured that we will welcome you with open arms here at home.” While church officials overseeing clergy in the military were alerted of Campbell’s actions, and reference is made to the molestations in Ryan’s letter to Ratzinger, it’s not clear whether McNicholas knew.

Campbell became a pastor upon his return to the diocese. In at least three instances after returning to diocesan work, he was forced to depart jobs as parish pastor or administrator “for reasons of health,” a euphemism for sexual abuse used within the church that Ryan himself put in quotes.

After workers at a rape crisis center alerted authorities that they were treating one of Campbell’s victims, police found he had been plying boys with video games, bicycles, watches and other gifts to get them to the waterbed in his second-floor rectory bedroom. Ryan sent Campbell to a New Mexico treatment facility after the arrest.

Campbell was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1985, after admitting to molesting seven boys during his time as pastor of St. Maurice Parish in Morrisonville, Ill. He was released in 1992 after serving about seven years for sexual assault and sexual abuse.

Ryan apparently waited four years after Campbell went to prison, according to church files, before asking for the priest’s defrocking. It’s unclear what accounted for the delay.

In his 1989 letter to Ratzinger, Ryan outlined Campbell’s many offenses against children and asked for his laicization. He pointed out the local notoriety of the priest’s case and said his crimes and those of another abusive priest had already cost the diocese $1.5 million in damages and legal fees.

“I fear the infliction of further pain upon the victims of his criminal activity and their families,” Ryan wrote. “I fear that the diocese will suffer further pastorally and in public relations, to say nothing of greater financial damage.”

Ratzinger refused, citing Vatican policy, and told the bishop to proceed with a church tribunal.

It is unclear whether a church trial was ever held for Campbell. After his release from prison, he was cajoled by Ryan and his subordinates into accepting his defrocking. Three years after Ryan’s initial letter to Ratzinger, the bishop’s request to Rome was granted.

For bishops attempting to remove a child molester without a church trial or the priest’s cooperation in the 1980s, requests were rebuffed and sent back to diocesan tribunals where the cases could stagnate for years. While a full-fledged canonical trial could make sense given such a serious crime, bishops found them virtually inapplicable, in part because the statute of limitations very often had expired well before allegations had even been reported. Bishops’ hands, in some cases, were tied.

“In that case, it was tied by the universal law of the church,” said Monsignor Kenneth Lasch, a retired priest and canon lawyer who has advocated for abuse victims. “Rome would take the position at that time that unless he was convicted canonically, they wouldn’t laicize.”

Lena defended the church’s handling of cases, but said it has been improved with revisions.

“Is our criminal justice system broken because procedures are complex, or because they are designed to ensure that an innocent person is not wrongly convicted? Any mature criminal justice system – including the canonical system – has two duties: to punish the guilty and, of no less importance, to protect the innocent from mistaken prosecution. Sometimes, in a rush to judgment, people forget about the latter,” Lena said.

“And of course, legal systems can always be improved. I think the consensus is that the implementation of SST and the procedures developed in its wake improved the canonical system,” he said.

SST is short for “Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela,” John Paul’s 2001 letter that, among other things, mandated all abuse cases would be overseen by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger’s office.

Kathie Sass, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Springfield, said no one familiar with the intricacies of the Campbell case was still working in the tribunal and able to talk.

Sass said Ryan, who lives in a nursing home outside the diocese, was unable to respond to questions. He retired in 1999 under a cloud of accusations of sexual relationships with male prostitutes and at least one priest; his successor found that he had engaged in “improper sexual conduct,” allegations Ryan denied.

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that in Campbell’s case “and hundreds like it, Ratzinger chose to put concerns about dangerous pedophiles and the church’s reputation above concerns about children’s safety.”

Others believe the ultimate blame lay with John Paul, whose policies the cardinal was interpreting.

“Ratzinger was just obeying his boss,” said Doyle.

John Paul “certainly, I would say, is more culpable than Benedict,” said Lasch.

The Vatican previously accepted involuntary laicizations, but turbulence of the 1970s, in which the Catholic Church suffered a huge worldwide loss of priests, helped push John Paul to revise the policy and promulgate the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which emphasized more due process rights for priests and discouraged penal sanctions.

“It didn’t have any provisions in it for involuntary laicizations,” said Msgr. John Alesandro, a canon lawyer and professor at Catholic University. “But I think most canonists believed that whether it was in the Code of Canon Law or not, the pope could do it.”

John Paul did not, and as the abuse crisis exploded in the Catholic Church in the United States, bishops grew frustrated.

Alesandro sat on a Vatican-commissioned panel examining the policy, which ultimately was revised under “Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela.” In 2003, new revisions gave bishops the right to ask the Vatican to laicize a priest through a speedier administrative procedure, or for the CDF itself to forward a defrocking case directly to the pope if the evidence is overwhelming.

Source: AP

More than 100,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square on Sunday in a major show of support for Pope Benedict XVI over the clerical sex abuse scandal.

Benedict said he was comforted by such a “beautiful and spontaneous show of faith and solidarity” and again denounced what he called the “sin” that has infected the church and needs to be purified.

Citing estimates from Vatican police, the Vatican press office said 150,000 people had turned out for the demonstration organized by an association of 68 Italian lay groups.

Despite a drizzling rain, the balloon- and banner-toting faithful from around Italy overflowed from the piazza; banners hung up on Bernini’s colonnade encircling the piazza read “Together with the pope,” and “Don’t be afraid, Jesus won out over evil.”

“We are here to show both to other people and to ourselves our solidarity with the church in this difficult time,” said Simone Pleticos, a 24-year-old student who traveled from Milan for the occasion.

Such large crowds are usually reserved for major holiday Masses and canonizations, not for Benedict’s brief, 10-minute Sunday blessings from his studio window. The crowd interrupted Benedict frequently with applause and shouts of “Benedetto!” and the pontiff himself strayed from his prepared remarks to thank them again and again.

“Thank you for your presence and trust,” he said. “All of Italy is here.”

Benedict didn’t refer explicitly to the scandal, but repeated his recently stated position that the scandal was born of sins within the church, which must be purified.

“The true enemy to fear and to fight against is sin, the spiritual evil that unfortunately sometimes infects even members of the church,” he said.

The Vatican has been mired in scandal amid hundreds of reports in Europe, the United States and elsewhere of priests who raped and molested children while bishops and Vatican officials turned a blind eye. Benedict’s own handling of cases has also come under fire.

Rome’s center-right Mayor Gianni Alemanno was in the crowd, along with other pro-Vatican Italian officials.

“We want to show our solidarity to the pope and transmit the message that single individuals make mistakes but institutions, faith and religion cannot be questioned,” Alemanno told Associated Press Television News. “We will not allow this.”

Luca Colussi, from the farmers’ union Coldiretti, said abuse allegations must be fully investigated. “But as far we’re concerned, our members will always remain close to the Pope as we share the same values.”

Source: AP

Source: inform.com

Even in his seminary days in the early 1970s, there were questions about California priest Stephen Kiesle: Colleagues said he had trouble relating to adults, lacked spirituality and didn’t seem committed to anything but youth ministry.

Those colleagues, who helped make the case to the Vatican in 1981 seeking to let him leave the priesthood, said they were concerned before Kiesle was ordained, and more so after revelations Kiesle had molested children in his parish.

“He was not grown up. He spent more time with kids than with people his own age. You get suspicious of that. There’s something wrong there,” said John Cummins, former bishop in the Diocese of Oakland, now retired.

Still, future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas from the diocese to act on the case, according to a 1985 letter in Latin obtained by The Associated Press that bore his signature as then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

It would take another two years before the Vatican doctrine watchdog office headed by Ratzinger would approve Kiesle’s own request to leave the priesthood in 1987.

Vatican attorney Jeffrey Lena said the matter proceeded “expeditiously, not by modern standards, but by those standards at the time.”

Kiesle pleaded no contest in 1978 to lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two boys and was sentenced to three years probation. He took a leave of absence from his parish position, and in 1981 returned and asked the Oakland bishop to be laicized, or removed from the priesthood.

In building a case to laicize Kiesle, the Rev. George Mockel of the Oakland Diocese asked priests who had worked with Kiesle to share their opinions of his time in seminary and work in the priesthood after being ordained in 1972.

One colleague was the Rev. Louis Dabovich, of the Church of the Good Shepherd, where Kiesle served as a deacon in the early 1970s.

“Stephen Kiesle was a very intelligent, personable and industrious young man, and yet he lacked maturity and responsibility and spirituality,” Dabovich wrote. He said teenagers and children liked him; “Yet he acted as one of them: played ball with them; took them to outings and shows and spent time in their homes.”

Dabovich said he was somewhat concerned about Kiesle’s relationship with the youths, but never heard complaints. Only years after Kiesle left the parish did Dabovich say he learned of “some improprieties.”

Dabovich also said he had spoken with then-Oakland bishop Floyd Begin about concerns he had regarding Kiesle, including the books he was reading and his general lack of maturity and spirituality.

“To me these were signs of some internal turmoil and the need to satisfy his nature, the need to share his life with someone,” Dabovich wrote. “However he was ordained and most probably my observations were not taken seriously.”

Dabovich said it could be detrimental if he were to remain in active ministry.

Mockel replied that there “has been a general ‘tightening up’ in Rome regarding these petitions. I am sure, however, that your cogent observations will be most helpful.”

Another colleague, the Rev. George Crespin, the diocese chancellor, worked with Kiesle at Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Union City. He described Kiesle as talented, creative and bright, but also disorganized, unmotivated and highly undisciplined. Crespin wondered why Kiesle joined the priesthood.

“It was almost impossible to get him to take an interest in the sick, in counseling individuals or families, in offering himself for activities in the parish that were unrelated to youth,” he wrote.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle’s case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence obtained by AP. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials.

As Kiesle’s fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church. He was eventually defrocked in 1987.

Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

Now 63 and a registered sex offender, Kiesle lives in a Walnut Creek gated community, according to his address listed on the Megan’s Law sex registry. An AP reporter was turned away when attempting to reach him. William Gagen, an attorney who represented Kiesle in 2002, has not returned repeated calls seeking comment.

More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.

Bishop Cummins said Friday he never had a good feeling about Kiesle. In his 1981 letter to the Vatican, Cummins said it seemed clear, with hindsight, that Kiesle should never have been ordained.

Cummins said the years of back-and-forth with the Vatican tested the diocese’s patience but it was typical of the time.

“These things were slow and their idea of thoroughness was a little more than ours. We were in a situation that was hands on, with personal reaction,” he said.

Only the Vatican can approve removing someone from the priesthood, whether it is requested by the priest or his superiors. At the time of Kiesle’s petition, a variety of Vatican offices handled them. In 2001, Ratzinger required all cases involving abuse claims to go through his office, streamlining the process.

Cummins said he believed Ratzinger was following what was the practice of the time, and “that the Pope John Paul was slowing these things down.”

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle were of “grave significance” but such actions required very careful review and more time. Lena, the Vatican attorney, said Ratzinger’s instruction to offer Kiesle “paternal care” was a way of telling the bishop he was responsible for keeping Kiesle out of trouble. Lena said Kiesle was not accused of any child abuse in the 5 1/2 years it took for the Vatican to act on the laicization.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up.

“The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn’t cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved,” he said.

A woman who has alleged in a lawsuit that Kiesle sexually abused her as a child reacted angrily on Saturday to the Ratzinger letter. She said it seemed the Vatican was more concerned with scandal than protecting children.

The woman identified herself by her first name only, Anne, during a news conference in San Diego with her attorney. The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse, however, Anne has chosen to speak publicly about her experience.

She pleaded to the pope: “Do the right thing, for once. Please. The whole world is watching. I’m watching. And if you want any chance at saving the Catholic Church you need to do something and you need to do it now.”

The Document Trail: The Rev. Stephen Kiesle (NY Times)

Proof (should any more be needed) that the Pope is not infallible comes from the comments of Pope Benedict XVI on visiting the “Shroud” of Turin on Sunday, May 2, 2010. Among other things he stated: “This is a burial cloth that wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus.”

Now, it seems the pontiff is not very well informed about the notorious cloth. Is he not aware that it lacks provenance until the mid-fourteenth century? That its earliest record is a bishop’s report to Pope Clement that it had been used as part of a faith-healing scam? That an artist confessed it was his handiwork? That the body’s elongated appearance is consistent with medieval Gothic art? That there are anatomical flaws? That the hair hangs on either side of the face as for a standing rather than recumbent figure?

Is he not aware that the rivulets of “blood” are unnaturally “picturelike”? Or that the stains are suspiciously still bright red after thirteen centuries? That they failed forensic serological tests that were specific for blood? That the “blood” was found (by world-famous microanalyst Walter McCrone) to be red ocher and vermilion tempera paint? That the image — but not non-image areas — were covered with red ocher pigment.

Has the pontiff gotten the news that the cloth was radiocarbon dated, by three laboratories, to the very time of the forger’s confession — i.e., 1260-1390? And that the accuracy of the carbon dating was underscored by correct dates obtained from a variety of control swatches of ancient cloth? Does he comprehend that for the imagined “contamination” to have altered the radiocarbon date by thirteen centuries, there would have to be twice as much contamination by weight, as the cloth itself?

And, may I politely inquire whether the Holy Father has recently read the Gospel of John, chapters 19 and 20? To refresh his memory, John refers not to a single long cloth placed under and then over the body; instead he describes “the linen clothes” in which Jesus’ body was “wound.” He specifies a separate cloth – “the napkin” — which was placed over the face. And he mentions “about a hundred pound weight” of the burial spices, myrrh and aloes — not a speck of which has been discovered on the Turin cloth.

I would respectfully suggest that His Holiness look further into these issues and not be misled by the devout shroudologists who have stood science on its head: starting with the desired answer rather than the clear evidence.

Source: Center for Inquiry

Richard Dawkins, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.

The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.

Benedict will be in Britain between September 16 and 19, visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry, where he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian.

Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.

They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action.

The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.

Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”

Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment.”

Last year pro-Palestinian activists persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli politician, for offences allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. The warrant was withdrawn after Livni cancelled her planned trip to the UK.

“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”

Source: TimesOnline

Hitchens Didn’t Tell You That! Bill Donohue On Church Chils Sex Scandal