The Power of the Paedos - another high profile case hits the 'never happened' wall?

[Magda Hassan]

Yes. I think you are right David.

[Jan Klimkowski]

"He created a structure that allowed sexual abuse, financial fraud and spiritual improprieties to go completely unchecked,” said Kineke. “Believe me, the best and the brightest got sucked into this scam. I was one. I was an elite bully for Christ.”
Kineke said part of Maciel’s allure was that he represented an old-school alternative in a modern, post-Vatican II world.
“But these recent incest claims have rattled even the sturdiest of cages,” she said.
Paul Lennon, 66, was a member of the order from 1961 to 1984 and directs ReGAIN, an organization founded by ex-Legionaries.
“It was nothing short of mind control,” said Lennon, who wrote a 2008 book about Maciel called Our Father Who Art in Bed. “He conned everybody.”
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, 70, who was named the world’s richest man by Forbes last week, has long been a supporter of the Legion. His children attended Legion schools in Mexico.
Harvard professor and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Mary Anne Glendon has also been a staunch supporter of the Legion.

The Legion of Christ seems like the Vatican's very own Hitler-Jugend, run by cult leaders according to paedophile cult rules. :eviltongue:

I wonder if the Legion of Christ went for picnics at Colonia Dignidad, the Chilean masterclass outpost for this sort of programme:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=1476

[David Guyatt]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...34064.html

April 2, 2010
Vatican was warned about paedophile priests in 1963
By David Usborne



Lawyers for US victims of abuse reveal letter of concern written to the then Pope

A letter sent in 1963 to Pope Paul VI by a senior American priest who outlined the "problem of the problem priest" suggests that the Vatican was fully aware - or at least should have been aware - of the extent of sexual abuse within the US Catholic Church almost five decades ago.

The missive, unearthed and made public yesterday by lawyers representing victims of alleged sexual abuse in Los Angeles, argued even then that the best solution for dealing with priests found to have violated young men and boys was to defrock them, rather than shuffle them to other dioceses, as was the practice of the Catholic Church for so long.

The Rev Gerald Fitzgerald penned the letter at the behest of Pope Paul VI after meeting him in Rome to discuss cases of abuse in the US. Fitzgerald was a former head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete, a religious congregation of men dedicated to ministry to priests with personal difficulties.

"Personally, I am not sanguine of the return of priests to active duty, who have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young," Fitzgerald wrote. "Where there is indication of incorrigibility, because of the tremendous scandal given, I would most earnestly recommend total laicisation. I say 'total'... because when these men are taken before civil authority, the non-Catholic world definitely blames the discipline of celibacy for the perversion of these men."

The letter has surfaced just as the Vatican is striking back at what it has called unfair coverage of the burgeoning paedophilia scandal by US media outlets. A lawyer for abuse victims in Kentucky has filed a lawsuit against the Vatican that could seek to force Pope Benedict XVI to testify in court.

Partly in response to the Kentucky filing, the head of the Vatican's legal tribunal, Giuseppe dalla Torre, told an Italian newspaper that Pope Benedict, as a head of state, had legal immunity and could not be called to testify in any court on this or on any other matter.

Another senior official, Cardinal William Levada, an American who leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, meanwhile singled out The New York Times for its coverage of the scandal, saying it "lacks fairness" in its reports, including those dealing with allegations that Pope Benedict failed to act to stop the abuse of deaf boys in Wisconsin before he ascended to the papacy.

Cardinal Levada noted that his predecessor was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, who had forced through new laws to punish priests found guilty of abuse. "I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on," Cardinal Levada wrote in an article on the Vatican website. "We owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors."

Lawyers for abuse victims in California sought to underscore the significance of the 1963 letter to Pope Paul VI. "The letter proves Vatican officials knew about clergy abuse decades ago and should have done more to protect children," said Anthony DeMarco.

However, officials for the Catholic archdiocese in Los Angeles said it was highly unlikely that Pope Paul VI ever even saw Fitzgerald's letter. "The fact is the prevailing ideas at the time about how to deal with abusive behaviour were not adequate," said a spokesman. "Clearly, society and the Church have evolved new understandings of what causes sexually abusive behaviour and how to deal with it."

[David Guyatt]

Oh dear.

Buggery and Beating.

Perhaps it's a Church version of Sturm und Drang?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...32764.html

April 1, 2010
Papal ally accused of 'ritual beatings'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin



German bishop accused of hitting child with carpet beater at church-run home

The child abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church widened yesterday as a leading German bishop personally appointed by Pope Benedict was accused of ritually beating and punching children at a church-run home during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Five former residents of the St Josef's home in Bavaria submitted written statements to Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper claiming the Bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, a controversial conservative churchman appointed by the Pope in 2005, used to hit and degrade them during punishment sessions at the home.

Bishop Mixa's diocese yesterday rejected the allegations as "absurd, untrue and obviously invented in order to defame the bishop".

The allegations emerged as the Vatican prepares a legal defence it hopes will shield the Pope from a lawsuit in the US seeking to have him answer questions under oath related to an abuse scandal. Court documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the Pope has immunity as head of state and that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican. The Vatican is trying to fend off the first US case to reach the stage of determining whether victims have a claim against the Vatican for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

In Germany, Hildegard Sedlmayr, 48, a former resident of the home in the Bavarian town of Schrobenhausen, where Bishop Mixa was a priest, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that at age 15, the bishop dragged her from her bed and punched her repeatedly on the arm.

"He grabbed me by the nightshirt, pulled me up out of my bed and punched me repeatedly on the upper arm. Afterwards it was covered in bruises," she said. "The two years at St Josef's were the worst in my life."

Another former St Josef's resident, named as Thomas Huber, said he was in pain for "several days" after Bishop Mixa flogged him. "I was made to bend over a bench, then Mixa hit me 35 times with a carpet beater," he said.

Three other former residents said Bishop Mixa habitually punished children with slaps to the face, punches to the arms, and beatings. The former residents claimed that Catholic nuns who ran the home also hit children with brooms and wooden shoes.

"The children whose parents never visited the home were the ones who were beaten most," said one former resident, named as Markus Tagwerk. "Over the years, Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me hard on the behind on at least 50 separate occasions," he said.

A contemporary of the Pope, Bishop Mixa, 68, was a priest in Schrobenhausen until 1996, when he was appointed bishop of the Bavarian town of Eichstätt. In 2005, the pontiff personally appointed his colleague to the higher post of Bishop of Augsburg.

Bishop Mixa is renowned for being a member of the hardline conservative group of German Catholic Church leaders, to which the Pope belonged before his appointment to the Vatican.

The bishop attracted controversy earlier this year by claiming that the "so-called sexual revolution" was to blame for the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised him for claiming that her attempt to improve childcare provision in Germany turned women into "birth machines".

Bishop Mixa is the second senior German Catholic figure linked to the Pope to face accusations. Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, the pontiff's brother, this month admitted hitting young choristers during his time as the director of Germany's renowned Regensburger Domspatzen boys' choir.

[Magda Hassan]

If he was having sex with consenting adult males he would have been defrocked tossed out of the clergy before you could say "Danny La Rue" but these perverts have such a welcome home in the church for some reason.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Vatican strategy, as far as it can be discerned, appears to be to offer non-apology apologies where the evidence of child abuse cannot be denied, whilst denying any systemic problems and denying that the Church acted inappropriately in moving paedophile priests from parish to parish to continue abusing.

However, if there was to be a proper judicial investigation, this strategy will fail and Pope Ratzinger will end up in prison. Precisely because, once again, Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981-2005, which is the Vatican's intelligence and enforcement arm.

Ratzinger knows where all the skeletons are buried, because he was in charge of burying them.

I suspect Vatican secrecy will win the day though. I cannot imagine lawyers acting for the abused being allowed anywhere near the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[David Guyatt]

The Vatican strategy, as far as it can be discerned, appears to be to offer non-apology apologies where the evidence of child abuse cannot be denied, whilst denying any systemic problems and denying that the Church acted inappropriately in moving paedophile priests from parish to parish to continue abusing.

However, if there was to be a proper judicial investigation, this strategy will fail and Pope Ratzinger will end up in prison. Precisely because, once again, Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981-2005, which is the Vatican's intelligence and enforcement arm.

Ratzinger knows where all the skeletons are buried, because he was in charge of burying them.

I suspect Vatican secrecy will win the day though. I cannot imagine lawyers acting for the abused being allowed anywhere near the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

If things get too difficult the Vatican will issue a diplomatic protest note to the US State Department and the law case will go away.

This is what happened in the class action lawsuit against the Vatican for laundering Yugoslavian gold.

[Magda Hassan]

The Vatican strategy, as far as it can be discerned, appears to be to offer non-apology apologies where the evidence of child abuse cannot be denied, whilst denying any systemic problems and denying that the Church acted inappropriately in moving paedophile priests from parish to parish to continue abusing.

However, if there was to be a proper judicial investigation, this strategy will fail and Pope Ratzinger will end up in prison. Precisely because, once again, Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981-2005, which is the Vatican's intelligence and enforcement arm.

Ratzinger knows where all the skeletons are buried, because he was in charge of burying them.

I suspect Vatican secrecy will win the day though. I cannot imagine lawyers acting for the abused being allowed anywhere near the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

If things get too difficult the Vatican will issue a diplomatic protest note to the US State Department and the law case will go away.

This is what happened in the class action lawsuit against the Vatican for laundering Yugoslavian gold.

More recently there was some sort of arrangement with Bush not to push the Vatican about the pedophilia law suits and the Vatican wouldn't push Bush on the war crimes and atrocities. I can't recall is it was the panzer pope or the Polish pope though.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My oh my -

The experience the church has gained in battling abuse in its ranks "could be useful to other institutions and society as a whole," (Father Federico Lombardi) added.

Let's see - the Vatican MO is: refusing to report abuse to the police, moving the perpetrator to a new location to continue abusing, and taking out insurance policies to cover future litigation.

Yes, I can see how such an MO might be "useful" to other powerful paedophiles. :mad:

Pope hit by fresh allegations of paedophile priests cover-up

Pope failed to defrock paedophile priest in 1985

Pope Benedict XVI was hit by fresh allegations yesterday that he failed to crack down on sexually abusive Catholic priests before becoming pontiff.

A letter written in 1985, when the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the head of the Vatican's doctrinal unit, resists a request for the defrocking of an American priest with a record of molesting children, for the "good of the universal Church".

The letter, published by Associated Press, also notes the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age". The priest, Father Stephen Kiesle, was 38 at the time.

Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, confirmed the cardinal's signature on the letter, but added: "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations."

But the letter does switch the spotlight back to Benedict as a wave of sex abuse scandals involving priests, as well as alleged cover-ups by their bishops, sweeps Europe and the US. The Vatican has previously denied reports suggesting Benedict failed to tackle cases of abuse in Munich and Wisconsin before he became pope. Kiesle was sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco rectory.

In 1981 he asked to leave the priesthood, a request backed by his diocese, which forwarded the papers to Rome. In 1982, Oakland bishop John Cummins urged Ratzinger, as head of the Vatican's congregation for the doctrine of the faith, to grant the request.

But the case was still pending in 1985 when Ratzinger wrote to Cummins that although the argument for defrocking Kiesle was of "grave significance", it was necessary "to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time".

Another priest, George Mockel, wrote to Cummins: "My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older," reported AP.

Kiesle was finally removed in 1987, but in the meantime had carried out volunteer work with children through the church. He was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s, but all but two were thrown out after the US supreme court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations. He was later sentenced to six years in jail in 2004 for molesting a young girl in 1995. He is now 63 and a registered sex offender.

"The then cardinal Ratzinger did not cover up the case, but as is clearly shown by the letter, he indicated the need to study the case with greater attention," said the Vatican's assistant spokesman Ciro Benedettini.

In an editorial published yesterday on the website of Vatican radio, Lombardi said the pope had become the victim of "unfounded insinuations and criticisms", and recalled the offer made by Benedict to meet abuse victims in a letter to Irish Catholics last month.

The experience the church has gained in battling abuse in its ranks "could be useful to other institutions and society as a whole," he added. "It seems that the media has not considered this aspect sufficiently."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr...s-cover-up

[Jan Klimkowski]

Paedophile monk allowed to strike again at abbey school

Charity Commission criticises trust that oversees St Benedict's school in Ealing

A Benedictine monk who abused children at an independent abbey school in west London was allowed to strike again despite senior officials in the Catholic church and regulators being warned about his record as a paedophile, an official inquiry has revealed.

A highly critical report published by the Charity Commission concluded that the trust that oversees St Benedict's school in Ealing failed to protect pupils from Father David Pearce, 67, despite assurances that he would be kept away from children as a result of his history of abuse.

Pearce, who lived and worked at the £12,000-a-year school, whose alumni include the writer Peter Ackroyd and former Europe minister Denis MacShane, was jailed for eight years in October for indecently assaulting five boys. The most recent case, when he abused a teenage pupil who was hired to wash up for the monks in the abbey, took place between July 2006 and January 2008. It happened despite the civil courts already having awarded damages against Pearce following accusations of paedophile activity with pupils in 1984 and in the early 1990s, when he was headmaster of the junior school and taught in the senior school.

The child protection commission of the diocese of Westminster also knew about Pearce's past but advised the abbey that he could continue to live at the abbey under restrictions. Its involvement could embarrass the head of the Catholic church in Britain, the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, who has campaigned vigorously against child abuse among priests.

Following revelations of Pearce's history of abuse, the abbey assured the Charity Commission that he could continue life at the monastery "as long as this does not bring him into contact with children and young persons". It promised he would have "no public ministry within the parish setting" and would only be allowed to "say mass in private, or within the monastery setting, with no members of the public present".

After the assurances were made the pupil who washed up revealed he had been abused by Pearce, who was arrested in January 2008.

A Charity Commission inquiry report was "extremely critical" of St Benedict's failure to implement the restrictions, but stopped short of demanding the removal of trustees. It said it was awaiting the results of the abbey's internal inquiry.

"One of the terms of [Pearce's] continued role in the charity was that he was to have no access to children and young people on the charity's premises," the Charity Commission concluded. "The trustees failed to ensure this was the case."

"If this were a secular school I am sure the headmaster and the chairman of governors would have been removed," said Jonathan West, a local parent whose son attended the school while Pearce was a teacher and who remains critical of the school's child protection measures.

Martin Shipperlee, abbot of St Benedict's, issued an apology. "We were in error allowing the young man to work in an area where he could potentially come into contact with David Pearce," Shipperlee said. "It is a very sad situation and we didn't care for him as we should have done. Hindsight makes that devastatingly clear. I am quite aware of child abuse happening among priests as a wider issue, but I wasn't aware enough of how paedophiles work and how they exploit situations."

Asked why he did not expel Pearce from the abbey when the first allegations of abuse were proved, Shipperlee said: "Where else is he going to go? If I sent him anywhere else I would have had no idea of what he was up to." He added it was "highly unlikely" Pearce would return to the abbey when he is released.

A spokesman for the diocese of Westminster described Pearce as "a cunning and determined paedophile able to exploit any restrictions placed on him". He added: "The advice provided by the diocese of Westminster followed the guidelines laid down by Copca (the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults), which established robust child protection and safeguarding procedures for the Catholic church in England and Wales."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/28...criticised