Melbourne, Australia, May 28, 2019 / 04:05 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, who was sentenced to six years in prison in March after being convicted of five counts of sexual abuse of minors in December 2018, will not ask for a shorter sentence… […]
A priest who was ordained by then-archbishop Theodore McCarrick and who worked with the defrocked prelate for decades has published a report detailing correspondence that confirms that Pope Benedict XVI had placed restrictions on McCarrick’s […]
St. Louis, Mo., May 28, 2019 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- Banning abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy is a “giant step forward for the pro-life movement,” Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis said in a statement on Friday, after Governor Mik… […]
Mexico City, Mexico, May 28, 2019 / 01:56 pm (CNA).- The portion of a constitutional reform initiative seeking to legalize abortion and same-sex marriage in Mexico did not advance last week in the nation’s legislature.
A gender parity bill was debated and approved in both houses of the Mexican Congress May 23. The bill would require that half of the country’s public service sector be women.
Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, president of the Chamber of Deputies and a member of the National Regeneration Movement, had proposed that the bill establish rights to abortion and same-sex marriage. These proposals were not included in the bill’s final version, however, for lack of widespread support.
The bill would have to be approved by at least 17 Mexican states to take effect.
Muñoz Ledo tweeted his disappointment that the measure “fails to strengthen the comprehensive rights of women such as the right to decide about their own bodies.”
Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, said that “Muñoz Ledo was very frustrated that the special session was only called to discuss the Senate’s draft version on gender parity in public service positions, and so not on the introduction of abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.”
“There was only consensus on the part about parity,” he said, and so not about “the other points.”
Cortés stressed that “the initiative of Porfirio Muñoz Ledo is a Pandora’s Box, since under the facade of the umbrella of gender parity, what it introduces are elements of an even stronger contraceptive mentality and gender ideology.”
“For the National Front for the Family’s part, we are having a campaign to tell Muñoz Ledo that Mexico doesn’t need more culture of death. Mexico doesn’t need colonizing ideologies imposed on it such as that of gender. What Mexico needs is a culture of life and of the family.”
Vatican City, May 28, 2019 / 10:14 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has said that he did not know anything about accusations of sexual abuse by Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal and Archbishop of Washington, prior […]
Derry, Northern Ireland, May 28, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The pastor of Holy Family parish in Derry had led prayers for the young people who committed an arson attack at the church last week. No one was harmed, but both the church and parochial house were damaged.
CCTV showed a group of young people starting a fire in a shed on the parish property the night of May 24. The Police Service of Northern Ireland have said, “we believe two males may have been involved in starting this fire and we are keen to identify them.”
An event was being held at the time in the parochial house, and those in attendance were evacuated to safety.
Fr. Patrick O’Kane told the Belfast Telegraph that “nobody was injured, and that’s the main thing, but there is quite a lot of damage.”
“The people who did it – they did it deliberately. We could see them on the cameras deliberately setting the fire. It wasn’t accidental,” he reflected.
“But we prayed for them at Mass today. I told them I had forgiven them, and we prayed for the young people, because anybody who does things like that has obviously a very disturbed mind.”
Gary Middleton, a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Democratic Unionist Party and a Presbyterian, commented that “it’s just such a sad act. How can people stoop so low? Never mind targeting any premises, but a church I think is particularly low.”
“So many people from all faiths and backgrounds have been united in saying that what happened at Holy Family was absolutely dreadful,” Middleton added.
Last year, St. Mary’s parish in Limavady, within 20 miles of Derry, was vandalized with sectarian graffiti.
Washington D.C., May 28, 2019 / 11:09 am (CNA).- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld part of an Indiana law requiring aborted babies to be cremated or buried, while declining to take up another part of the law that banned abortions based solely on… […]
Vatican City, May 28, 2019 / 11:06 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has said a preliminary investigation against Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta has concluded and will now proceed to trial.
Zanchetta, Bishop Emeritus of Orán, had been under Vatican investigation for sexual abuse of seminarians and other sexual misconduct.
Pope Francis said in an interview with Valentina Alazraki published May 28 at Vatican News that he read the results of the investigation earlier this month and “saw that a trial was necessary.”
He said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will conduct the process. “They will make a trial, they will issue a sentence and I will promulgate it,” the pope stated.
After resigning as Bishop of Orán in August 2017, Zanchetta was appointed by Pope Francis in December 2017 to a position created for him within the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which oversees the Vatican’s assets and real estate holdings.
The bishop is on a leave of absence from APSA while under investigation.
The Vatican has twice insisted it knew nothing about abuse reports against Zanchetta until the fall of 2018, though media investigations suggest that Pope Francis knew about the allegations in 2015, two years before he gave Zanchetta a Vatican job.
In the May 28 interview, Pope Francis also said he knew nothing about accusations of sexual abuse by Theodore McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington, prior to thoese accusations becoming public in 2018.
Zanchetta was reported to the Vatican in 2015 and 2017 when he was discovered in lewd sexual photographs on his cellphone, and suspected of sexual abusing of seminarians.
In the interview, Pope Francis confirmed that there had been an accusation against Zanchetta and said that he “immediately” brought him to the Vatican to discuss it, confirming documents published Feb. 21 by The Tribune, a newspaper in the Salta region of Argentina. The documents confirmed earlier reporting by the Associated Press.
The pope says in that meeting, Zanchetta “defended himself by saying that they had hacked him, and he defended himself well.” He added that the evidence left a doubt, so “in dubio pro reo.”
Francis acknowledged Zanchetta had been, according to some, “despotic, authoritarian,” and had some unclear economic management.
According to Pope Francis, Zanchetta did not in fact “mishandle” things economically, though it was “disorganized.”
“There is no doubt that the clergy did not feel well treated by him” when he was Bishop of Orán, he stated. Francis explained that after receiving complaints about mistreatment by Zanchetta from some clergy, communicated through the nuncio, he asked for Zanchetta’s resignation as Bishop of Orán.
According to The Tribune, three of Zanchetta’s vicars general and two monsignors made a formal internal complaint before the Argentine nunciature in 2016, alleging inappropriate behavior with seminarians, such as encouraging them to drink alcohol and favoring the more “graceful” (attractive) among them.
When Zanchetta resigned in 2017 he claimed it was for health reasons. The Vatican did not open an investigation at that time.
Pope Francis said he sent the Argentine prelate to Spain for a psychiatric test, not “a holiday in Spain” as he said some media reported, and “the test result was normal, they recommended a therapy once a month.” This is why, the pope stated, he did not go back to Argentina — because he had to go to Madrid for two days of therapy every month.
The pope said he shared all of this background information to answer the “impatient people” who say that “they did nothing.”
“The Pope should not publish what he is doing every day, but from the first moment of this case, I did not stand by and watch,” he defended.
To the journalist’s statement that “I think it was important to tell all this, don’t you think?” he said: “I told it now. But I can’t do it every moment, but I never stopped.”
Vatican City, May 28, 2019 / 01:54 am (CNA).- A former priest-secretary to Theodore McCarrick has issued a report that claims to contain excerpted quotes from correspondence between the disgraced former cardinal McCarrick and various church officials.
The quotes seem to contain admissions of wrongdoing from McCarrick, and to confirm subsequent reports about the Vatican’s response to the former cardinal’s behavior.
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo of the Archdiocese of Newark published a website, “The Figueiredo Report,” May 28 which contains apparent excerpts from private correspondence between McCarrick, the priest, and various other Church officials.
News of the priest’s report was first reported by CBS News and news site Crux.
Neither the full text of the correspondence nor images of the letters have been published on Figueiredo’s site.
“I present facts from correspondence that I hold relevant to questions still surrounding McCarrick. These facts show clearly that high-ranking prelates likely had knowledge of McCarrick’s actions and of restrictions imposed upon him during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. They also clearly show that these restrictions were not enforced even before the pontificate of Francis,” Figueiredo’s report claims.
“It is not my place to judge to what extent the fault lies with the failure to impose canonical penalties, instead of mere restrictions, at the start, or with other Church leaders who later failed to expose McCarrick’s behavior and the impropriety of his continued public activity, and indeed may have encouraged it,” the priest writes.
In one apparent excerpt, from a September 2008 letter from McCarrick to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, McCarrick wrote that “in one particular [case] I had been at fault in an unfortunate lack of judgment. I have always considered my priests and seminarians as part of my family, and just as I have shared a bed with my cousins and uncles and other relatives without thinking of it being wrong, I had done this on occasion when the Diocesan Summer House was overcrowded. In no case were there minors involved, but men in their twenties and thirties.”
However, “I have never had sexual relations with anyone, man, woman or child, nor have I ever sought such acts,” McCarrick reportedly wrote to Bertone.
The quotes excerpted by the monsignor, who was formerly attached to the Pontifical North American College in Rome as a spiritual director, appear to confirm claims by former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, that in 2008 McCarrick was ordered to leave the archdiocesan seminary where he had been living.
Sources present at a 2008 meeting between then-nuncio Archbishop Sambi and McCarrick told CNA in August 2018 the former cardinal had been ordered out of that seminary.
According to Figueiredo, McCarrick wrote in a letter to Sambi after that meeting that “having studied the letter of Cardinal Re and having shared it with my Archbishop, I pledge again that I shall always try to be a good servant of the Church even if I do not understand its desires in my life. Of course, I am ready to accept the Holy Father’s will in my regard.”
“I could find a place to live in one of the parishes of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Archbishop is willing to arrange for that in any area that the Holy See would desire,” McCarrick apparently added.
“In summary, in the future I will make no commitments to accept any public appearances or talks without the express permission of the Apostolic Nuncio or the Holy See itself.”
After leaving the seminary residence in early 2009, McCarrick moved into a specially renovated suite of rooms at the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Woodley Park, an upscale neighborhood in central Washington D.C.
In August, a priest resident in the parish in 2008-2009 told CNA that he been told McCarrick was “no longer allowed” to live in the seminary, and that Cardinal Wuerl had “ordered” the move, but he stressed that he did not have direct knowledge of those circumstances.
In August 2018, Figueiredo made public statements in support of Vigano.
“I know him personally,” Figueuiredo said at the time. “I know him as a man of great integrity, honest to the core.”
The excerpts from Figueredo’s correspondence also appear to confirm reports that McCarrick played an ongoing, though sometimes unofficial, role in Vatican diplomatic efforts, especially in China, during the pontificates of both Benedict XVI and Francis.
Some Vatican officials have said Figueiredo’s report does not fully explain the ways in which McCarrick operated in the Vatican.
Sources at the Congregation for Bishops in Rome told CNA that Figueiredo’s excerpts offer only “partial” context for McCarrick’s apparent ability to work around the imposition of restrictions on his ministry.
“McCarrick was very good at exploiting the left and right hands not speaking,” an official at the Congregation for Bishops said.
“[Cardinal] Re could tell [McCarrick] ‘No appearances, no living here,’ and then [McCarrick] would go to Bertone and present himself as being available for discreet use, ask to travel somewhere and use the conflicting instructions to slip through the cracks.”
Another official close to the Congregation said that McCarrick exploited a curial culture which resisted plain speaking.
“He would talk and write about needing to keep a low profile, about having to change residence, but never explicitly say why. Those that knew didn’t need it to be spelled out, those that didn’t but suspected were smart enough not to ask,” he explained.
The same official told CNA that piecing together McCarrick’s complex engagement with various curial office is part of an investigation now being undertaken by the Congregation for Bishops at the direction of Pope Francis.
“The man made a total mess of the communications with Bishops, State, the Holy Father, the dioceses, everyone,” he said. “Anyone looking to check on him could find three different things in three different places.”
CNA has learned from senior sources in Rome that the Archdiocese of Washington has already completed a review of all of McCarrick’s personal correspondence and forwarded the results to Rome.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington declined to comment about that review.
The spokesman did tell CNA that “Cardinal Wuerl has previously stated – and he reiterates again – that he was not aware of any imposition of sanctions or restrictions related to any claim of abuse or inappropriate activity by Theodore McCarrick. Based on descriptions from [media report], none of the documents released today explicitly indicate that Cardinal Wuerl had any such knowledge.”
Figueiredo, who served as priest-secretary to McCarrick for one year in the 1990s, previously described McCarrick as a “spiritual father.” He told CBS News that revelations about McCarrick had driven him to a relapse of alcoholism.
In October 2018, Figueiredo was involved in a car accident outside of London, in which he hit another vehicle, driven by a pregnant woman. A visibly intoxicated Figueiredo initially stopped after the accident, but then fled the scene. He was caught by police and tested at more than twice the legal limit of alcohol. He pled guilty to driving under the influence and received an 18 month driving ban.
Figueiredo was employed on a part-time basis by the EWTN News Vatican Bureau as a “Senior Contributor” beginning November 2017 and ending on October 27, 2018 following news reports of his guilty plea for drunk driving. CNA is a service of EWTN News.
Senior sources at the Archdiocese of Newark, where Figueiredo is incardinated, told CNA that the priest was asked, and then directed, to return to the archdiocese following his road accident last year.
Despite repeated instructions to return to his home archdiocese, they told CNA, Figueiredo has refused to do so, or to meet with his archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Tobin. He has remained in Rome without an ecclesiastical assignment, sources said.
“There has been contact between him and the cardinal, but it’s done little good.”
According to a May 28 report from CBS News, Figueiredo says he has now “embraced a life of sobriety” and claims to have been “trying for months” to share the correspondence with Church leaders, though the report does not specify the nature of those efforts, and makes no mention of his apparent resistance to meet with his own archbishop.
Beginning in November 2018, Figueiredo approached CNA and other EWTN News media outlets to indicate possession of correspondence concerning McCarrick. The priest was unwilling to provide access to primary documents, offering only excerpts, and his overtures were declined.
On May 28, Crux reported that it had been given original copies of the correspondence in Figueiredo’s report, and had them authenticated by “a cyber-security expert.”
While complete copies of the correspondence have not been released by Figueiredo, the priest claims that he was inspired to release some information by Pope Francis.
“Pope Francis himself has asked all of the church to be transparent. That’s the reason I feel a moral obligation to put out this correspondence.”
Editor’s note: The following essay is a summary of an address given at Martin Saints Classical High School, in May 2019. ——– Modern education as we have known it for a century now tries to […]
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