Jon Stewart: Holy Sh*t (video: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart)
It’s officially official: It’s no longer humanly possible to keep up with the relentless firestorm of reports about the Roman Catholic Church’s pedophile priest pandemic. And it not just journalists and bloggers having a difficult time. Vatican officials say they’re worried about being inadequately equipped to handle the massive and growing onslaught of accusations of decades of child molestations and sexual abuse by priests and the subsequent cover-ups by church authorities.
At The New York Times, Rachel Donadio writes:
ROME — As hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse surface in the German church alone, a top Vatican official acknowledged Tuesday that, with only 10 people handling such cases, his office might not be adequate for the task.
But the official, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, who is effectively the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, said the church was working to bring more “transparency” to the delicate and emotional process of settling allegations of abuse by priests that have severely damaged the church’s moral standing.
“We have to get our act together and start working for more transparency in investigations and more adequate responses for the problem,” Monsignor Scicluna said, adding that this should happen “on every level of the church.”
Just FYI you Vatican officials: Your “moral authority” is history.
At the United Nations yesterday, Britain’s National Secular Society went on the offensive:
The Pope and the Vatican’s record on child abuse have been challenged today at the United Nations. Both were criticised with unprecedented candour at the UN Human Rights Council by Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society.
Keith Porteous Wood, who made the intervention in Geneva on behalf of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), said: “Billions of dollars – and euros – have already been paid out in respect of thousands of victims in the USA and Ireland. News of further abuse has since appeared in Austria, the Netherlands and now Germany – and this is just the tip of the iceberg. How much more evidence of children’s suffering at the hands of the Church will the UN and the international community tolerate before fulfilling their responsibility to those children to hold the Vatican to account?
“The Vatican is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but has contravened several of its articles, and is more than 10 years behind in its reporting. It has habitually compounded the abuse and facilitated multiple reoffending by moving offenders around and shielding them from prosecuting authorities by imposing the “pontifical secret”. Major investigations in the USA and Ireland have been deliberately and cynically obstructed by the Church at all levels without censure from above. This includes the Vatican’s representative in Ireland, suggesting that he acted under instruction from the highest level in the Church. All this has led to abusers being allowed to continue offending and to escape justice, while their victims despair – some even committing suicide.
“The Church cannot claim it is being victimised. It still places the protection of its reputation, and even more its assets, above the protection of those entrusted to its care. Over 90% of the compensation payments paid by cash-strapped Ireland came from the tax payers, including the abused themselves.
Wood singled out then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who now serves as Pope, for criticism in regard to a report that is 13 years overdue, “Following an instruction from Cardinal Ratzinger when head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly The Inquisition], all suspicions and accusations of child abuse were to be sent to the Vatican in secret.”
And in the Western Hemisphere, video of an 82-year-old priest having sex with an altar boy was broadcast on Brazilian television. Writing for the Associated Press, Bradley Brooks reports:
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police and church officials said Tuesday.
The case came to light after the SBT network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years. Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused by Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa.
Also under investigation are Monsignor Raimundo Gomes, 52, and Father Edilson Duarte, 43, for allegedly having sexual relations with boys and young men.
[ ... ]
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said officials there were aware of the case.
Needless to say, there’s much more at the link.
