Ukraine’s prime minister asks Pope Francis to help bring back children taken to Russia

Vatican City, Feb 15, 2018 / 05:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a conversation with Jesuits during his recent visit to Peru, Pope Francis said he regularly meets with victims of sexual abuse on Fridays, and that while the percentage of priests who abuse is relatively low, even one is too many.

When it comes to sexual abuse, if you look at the statistics, roughly “70 percent of pedophiles are in the family environment, acquaintances. Then in gyms, at the pool,” the Pope said in a conversation with Peruvian Jesuits, published Feb. 15.

The meeting took place Jan. 19 after a courtesy visit to Peruvian President Pedro Kuczynski during a three-day visit to the country, which was part of a wider, Jan. 15-21 visit to South America.  

“The percentage of pedophiles that are Catholic priests doesn’t reach 2 percent, it’s around 1.6 percent. So it’s not a lot,” he said. However, Francis stressed that “it’s terrible even if it were just one of our brothers!”

“God anointed them for the sanctification of children and adults, and he, instead of sanctifying them, has destroyed them. It’s horrible!” he said, and underlined the importance of listening to victims and hearing directly about the suffering they’ve undergone.

To this end, he said he regularly meets with victims of abuse on Fridays, and “their process is so difficult, they are annihilated. They are annihilated!”

For the Church, abuse is “a great humiliation,” he said. “It shows not only our fragility, but also, let’s say it clearly, our level of hypocrisy.”

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke confirmed the news about the Friday meetings, saying in a Feb. 15 statement that “several times a month” Pope Francis meets with victims of sexual abuse either individually or in groups.

Pope Francis, he said, “listens to the victims and tries to help them heal the serious wounds caused by the abuses they’ve undergone. The meetings are held with the utmost privacy, in respect of the victims and their suffering.”

The Pope’s comments were made to Peruvian Jesuits during his recent Jan. 15-21 visit to Chile and Peru. He met privately with Jesuits in both countries, taking questions from attendees and listening to their concerns.

The conversations, published in Jesuit journal La Civilta’ Cattolica, touched on a variety of issues, and included his discussion with both the Chilean and Peruvian Jesuits. Both Chile and Peru are currently at the center of two major, high-profile cases of sexual abuse, carried out by a Chilean priest and a Peruvian layman.

Francis met privately with abuse victims in Chile, and spoke openly about the tragedy in his Jan. 18 meeting with priest and religious in the country. His comments on abuse were made in response to a question posed by a Peruvian Jesuit about how to handle sex abuse, and whether he had any encouragement to give.

Speaking to the some 100 Jesuits present for the Jan. 19 encounter, Francis responded to the question saying sex abuse is “the greatest desolation that the Church is undergoing.”

He recalled a time when was returning home after hearing the confessions of Carmelite nuns on Argentina’s March 24 “Plaza de Mayo” celebration, which commemorates all those who were “disappeared” during the country’s military dictatorship.

After getting off the metro, Francis said he saw a couple with a young toddler walking down the street. When the child started to run in his direction, the father immediately yelled for the child to come back, and to “watch out for the pedophiles.”

“What shame I underwent! What shame!” Pope Francis said. “They didn’t realize that I was the archbishop, I was a priest, and what shame!”

He noted that often times abuse, particularly in new and flourishing communities, is linked to corruption, citing three types of abuse which often go together.

“Abuse in these congregations is always the result of a mentality linked to power, which must be healed at its evil roots,” he said, explaining that the various communities undergoing scandals generally all suffer from a deadly trio of “abuse of authority – with which it means to mix the internal and external forum – sexual abuse, and economic messes.”

Noting how both he and Benedict XVI have had to “suppress” various communities, such as the Legionaries of Christ, Francis said there are “many painful cases,” and that this phenomenon has also affected new and prosperous congregations, most notably the Peruvian-born Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.

In cases like this, “money is always in the middle,” he said, adding that “the devil enters through the wallet.”

According to St. Ignatius, one of the first steps of temptation is for wealth, he said. “Then come vanity and pride, but first there is wealth. In the new congregations that have fallen into this problem of abuse these three levels are also found together.”

However, citing the Ignatian spiritual exercises, the Pope said the shame experienced can also be a grace, and urged his fellow Jesuits to accept these experiences “as a grace and be deeply ashamed,” because “we must love the Church with her wounds.”

Though spoken beforehand, the Pope’s comments have been made public at a time when he’s currently under fire for his reaction to accusations of abuse cover-up on the part of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Chile.

Appointed to head the Osorno diocese by Pope Francis in 2015, Barros is accused of both witnessing and covering the abuse of his longtime friend Fr. Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty of abuse in 2011. Barros has repeatedly denied these claims.

Opposition to Barros and his appointment has been relentless since his installment in 2015. Pope Francis faced major blow-back during his visit to Chile for saying the accusations were unfounded, and amounted to “calumny.”

On his flight back to Rome Francis apologized for the comment, saying he had intended to say that there was not enough evidence to convict Barros of cover-up, and that no victims had come forward with information that could prove the Chilean prelate’s guilt.

Shortly after the visit, Francis tapped Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the Vatican’s top man in clerical abuse appeals cases, to go to Santiago hear victims’ testimonies. The trip also includes a stop in New York to speak with one of Karadima’s most high-profile victims, Juan Carlos Cruz, who has been among the most vocal opponents of Barros.

After Scicluna’s appointment, reports came out indicating that before Barros’ appointment in 2015 Cruz had sent an 8-page letter detailing Karadima’s abuse to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, alleging that Barros had not only witnessed his abuse and the abuse of others, but had at times participated and covered it up.

According to reports, members of the commission had given the letter to the commission’s president, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is said to have presented it to the Pope, raising questions as to whether Francis had read it and was aware of Cruz’s testimony before naming Barros to Osorno.

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Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Dec 22, 2017 / 12:05 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga has rejected accusations of financial mismanagement, and offered an explanation for allegations that he has received an excessive salary for a large… […]

Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) speaks against the Women’s Health Protection Act on the Senate floor, Feb. 28, 2022. / Screenshot/U.S. Senate

Washington D.C., Feb 28, 2022 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Senate failed to move forward with the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) on Monday, striking down what some pro-life groups identify as the most radical abortion bill in U.S. history.

The WHPA “would enshrine into federal law abortion on demand until the moment of birth, and it would nullify state laws — new and existing – that protect unborn children and their mothers,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, warned ahead of the vote.

The Feb. 28 cloture vote, with 46 for and 48 against the WHPA, needed 60 votes to proceed. It fell largely along party lines with only one Democrat (Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia) voting against proceeding with the bill that would override states’ pro-life laws and remove restrictions on abortion up to the point of birth in some cases. No Republicans voted in support of the WHPA.

Why is the Senate voting on the WHPA now?

While the act did not pass, the vote itself was historic. 

Ahead of the vote on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the Senate floor: “This will be the first time that the Senate takes a vote on a standalone bill to proactively codify Roe.”

The Senate’s vote comes as the Supreme Court prepares to issue a ruling later this year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that threatens Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. The Dobbs case centers on the question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional,” or whether states can ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which the court previously determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy.

If the Supreme Court does not uphold Roe when it decides Dobbs, abortion could be left up to individual states. The WHPA threatens these state laws.

“Sadly, it seems like the Supreme Court is posed to severely limit abortion rights in the coming months,” Schumer said Monday. “That’s why this bill is essential.”

During a press conference hosted by Senators Steve Daines, founder and chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, and James Lankford, chair of the Values Action Team, Republican senators criticized the timing of the vote during the invasion of Ukraine and called the WHPA more extreme than Roe.

Daines recognized the WHPA as the “most extreme legislation on abortion ever considered in the history of this body.”

On the Senate floor, Lankford added that the WHPA is “not going to just codify Roe.”

“This is talking about stripping away every protection for every child in the womb from any state in the country.” Later, he added, “This bill is the one-minute-from-infanticide bill. It mandates abortion in every state up to the moment of birth.”

What is the WHPA?

The WHPA would prohibit abortion restrictions or bans “that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures, do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services, and make abortion services more difficult to access.”

The act’s text lists a series of specific restrictions it would do away with, on everything from limitations on telemedicine to restrictions around viability, which the act defines as the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb — determined by “the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider.”

The WHPA would forbid any kind of limit on abortion before fetal viability, including “a prohibition or restriction on a particular abortion procedure.” After viability, the WHPA would outlaw limits on abortion “when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

National pro-life groups, such as SBA List, have expressed concern over this section because the Supreme Court, in Doe v. Bolton, broadly defined what “may relate to health,” including “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.”

SBA List previously warned that the WHPA would also “nullify pro-life laws in states across the country, including late-term abortion limits when unborn children can feel pain, waiting periods, informed consent laws, antidiscrimination laws, and more.”

Last September, the House passed the WHPA in a vote that fell along party lines, with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, joining Republicans to vote against it. Along the way, the Biden administration repeatedly expressed support for the bill.

Pro-life leaders respond to the vote

Ahead of the vote, multiple pro-life leaders expressed concern over the WHPA and stressed that the act ignored the will of the people.

“The March for Life condemns this bill in the strongest possible terms,” Mancini said. “The misnamed Women’s Health Protection Act is the most radical abortion bill in United States history.” 

She cited a Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll survey released in January that found that 71% of Americans, including 49% of Democrats, want to see abortion limited to – at most – the first three months of pregnancy.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, also criticized the WHPA. 

“Biden, Pelosi and Schumer’s ‘Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act’ would enshrine an unlimited abortion ‘right’ in federal law and block common ground pro-life laws around the country, including limits on late-term abortions when unborn babies feel pain, bans on lethal discrimination abortions, and many more,” she said. “[N]ational Democratic leaders’ support for abortion on demand without limits, at taxpayer expense, is grossly out of step with the will of the American people.” 

As president and founder of Live Action, Lila Rose wanted that if the WHPA passed, it “would be the single most destructive piece of legislation enacted in the history of our nation.”

Like Mancini and Dannenfelser, she said, “The American people do not want this horrific bill aimed exclusively at ensuring the ongoing and expanded destruction of hundreds of thousands of helpless, innocent preborn children.”

“We must walk with families materially, emotionally, and spiritually to show them that they can choose life for their children,” she added. “The Women’s Health Protection Act does the exact opposite, radically expanding the killing of children through all nine months of pregnancy.”

Two senior fellows at The Catholic Association also reacted to the approaching vote.

“In pushing the Women’s Health Protection Act, the Democrats show that their pro-abortion extremism knows no bounds,” Ashley McGuire stressed. “The law, if passed, would override the will of the people in every state that has passed, through legislative means, commonsense protections for women and babies.”

Maureen Ferguson called the WHPA “the most extreme, undemocratic abortion bill ever introduced in Congress.” 

“It would override every limit on abortion everywhere in the country, including limits on late-term abortion, parental consent laws, and conscience protections for doctors and nurses who do not wish to participate in abortions,” she said. “The Women’s Health Protection Act is Roe vs. Wade on steroids.”

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