The Vatican Harbors Pedophile Clerics
The Vatican has a long history of harboring accused pedophiles and their facilitators. In 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace over his systematic cover up of priestly child molestation in Boston.
|
Cardinal Bernard Law, accused protector of pedophiles. |
Victims were incandescent that Pope John Paul II protected Cardinal Law, granted him sanctuary from secular prosecution, and appointed him archpriest of a basilica in Rome.
The 2014 case of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, then 66, is instructive. Wesolowski was the papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic, the Vatican’s ambassador to that country, and the subject of “countless criminal complaints that led to the warrant for his arrest for child sex abuse last year.”
|
Faces of pedophiles. Accused pedophile Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski. Pedophiles look like this. Nihil Obstat. |
After local media followed Wesolowski on one of his frequent visits to the Santo Domingo waterfront where he solicited children for sex, he detected their surveillance and never returned.
He then sent a Dominican church deacon to procure children for him, and that deacon, Francisco Javier Occi Reyes, was arrested in June 2014, charged with solicitation of minors, and jailed. No one bailed him out. So Reyes wrote a letter dated 2 July 2014 to Archbishop Wesolowski, a letter which was hand delivered to his office.
|
Pedophile facilitator Deacon Francisco Javier Occi Reyes and pedophile Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski. iDominicanas. |
The New York Times, which acquired a copy of this letter, quoted “We have offended God” and the church….by sexually abusing children and adolescents “for crumbs of money.” The deacon wrote that he had agreed to find child victims for the nuncio so that “your sexual appetite can be satiated,” but that he was now asking God for forgiveness.”
“Hopefully you will consider asking for God to help you walk away from this evil disease of continuing to sexually abuse innocent children.”
The deacon sent copies of the letter to Cardinal Nicholas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, the head of the Catholic faith in the Dominican Republic, and to a Dominican bishop, Gregorio Nicanor Peña Rodriguez.
Cardinal Nicholas then hand carried that letter to the Vatican, and met personally with Pope Francis.
Another article explains, however, that Wesolowski was “also a fugitive from secular law, having been swiftly rescued from criminal prosecution in Poland and Santo Domingo in 2013 to face a private canonical trial by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which ultimately ended with his defrocking.”
The New York Times article states that the Vatican “secretly recalled him to Rome last year before he could be investigated” by secular authorities in the Dominican Republic.
In other words, Wesolowski absconded to the protective confines of the Vatican, where he enjoyed house arrest and immunity from extradition, even after he was defrocked, or reduced to the status of a layman. Defrocking a cleric is just short of excommunication. But it expels that cleric from holy orders, and it makes him, in essence, a mere civilian.
It was alleged that Wesolowski broke his house arrest and departed from the confines of the city state, which is very small, and was observed walking in Rome, but he was never arrested and extradited, as should have happened.
“A Dominican bishop, Victor Msalles, visiting Rome in late June, said in a Twitter message that he was surprised to see Mr. Wesolowski “strolling the Via della Scrofa,” in the center of Rome. “He added, “The silence of the Church has hurt the people of God.”
In August 2013, when Wesolowski was “secretly recalled” to the Vatican, the attorney general of Warsaw filed an immediate order for his extradition.
The response was an instantaneous rebuttal from the Roman Curia: “Archbishop Wesolowski is a citizen of the Vatican, and Vatican law does not allow for his extradition.”
That reply by the Vatican Secretariat of State implied that defrocking Wesolowski, a Polish citizen, did not mean that he lost his Vatican citizenship nor his diplomatic immunity.
“The Vatican says that because Mr. Wesolowski was a member of its diplomatic corps and a citizen of the Holy See, the case would be handled in Rome.”
Under child sex abuse laws issued by Pope Benedict in 2010, Wesolowski could face up to 7 years in a Vatican prison upon conviction.
Another article states that sexual abuse charges could bring a maximum of 12 years in prison and a fine of nearly $200,00.
If convicted in the Dominican Republic under secular authority, his sentence could be as long as 50 years.
Media observed that there are no extradition treaties between any countries and the Vatican, which is an independent non-state entity that issues its own passports.
The Holy See is not a member of the UN, as it has never applied for membership, but it enjoys permanent observer status as a non-member state dating back to 1964.
This status was confirmed by the UN General Assembly in 2004, despite opposition from non-governmental organizations like Catholics for Choice, which argued in 1999 that the Vatican is a religious organization and not a state. This organization also noted that other religions did not enjoy commensurate prerogatives.
This non-state yet sovereign status enabled the Vatican to defy Italian authorities when Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus was indicted in a banking scandal in the 1980’s. The Vatican protected Archbishop Marcinkus, and gave him safe harbor, arguing that he had diplomatic immunity.
Adding offense to injury, the Vatican again harbored an accused pedophile priest who remains unnamed and declined to deport him back to the US to face secular criminal charges in September, 2017.
Harboring pedophiles is a policy that is rampant within Catholicism. Just one example is an “ultra-conservative Catholic splinter group” in Kent, UK, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) Resistance, which is helmed by a notorious convicted Holocaust denier, “Bishop” Richard Williamson, aged 70.
Bishop Richard Williamson claimed that no Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Second World War during an interview on Swedish television in 2008. As the interview was conducted at a seminary in Zaitzkoven, Germany, he was prosecuted and convicted in 2010. Denying the Holocaust in Germany is a criminal offense.
In 2009, Argentina expelled him back to the UK. Over the decades since his rebellious ordination by ultraconservative French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, with whom he was excommunicated by the Vatican in 1988, Williamson expressed controversial opinions.
|
Bishop and protector of pedophiles Bishop Richard Williamson. YouTube. |
Williamson claimed that Jews are fighting for world domination to “prepare the anti-Christ’s throne in Jerusalem,” that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the US government itself in order to rationalize the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Freemasons are conspiring against Catholics.
The SSPX Resistance is also known as Respice Stellam. Bishop Williamson harbored two priests accused of molesting children in April 2017 who were allegedly investigated in an internal clerical proceeding sanctioned by the Vatican. Secular authorities were not informed.
Incredibly, Bishop Williamson was excommunicated by the Vatican twice by different popes. Pope John Paul II excommunicated him, apparently in 1988, but he was later readmitted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. Mr. Williamson was again excommunicated in 2015.
In March 2017, senior Australian Catholic official Francis Sullivan said that Vatican “bureaucrats and courtiers [were] doing all they can to either undermine the Pope” or protect the institution.
Mr. Sullivan pointed to the resignation of “campaigner and abuse survivor” Mrs. Marie Collins, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM), who accused the Vatican of a “shameful lack of cooperation.”
In 2014 discussions with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the head of the PCPM, and in her resignation letter to the Pope, Mrs. Collins “cited her frustration at the lack of cooperation…by other offices in the Roman Curia.”
Such passive aggressive resistance by the institution of the Vatican defies the decree of the Pope himself, Pope Francis, who declared a “zero tolerance” policy for clergy who molest children, adding that “three bishops are currently being investigated by the Vatican for allegations in connection with abuse.”
Pope Francis established the PCPM in March of 2014, writing that “The Commission’s specific task is to propose to me the most opportune initiates for protecting minors and vulnerable adults, in order that we may do everything possible to ensure that crimes such as those which have occurred are no longer repeated in the Church.”
Mr. David Clohessy, the executive director of SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), dismissed these papal gestures, saying that the Pope reformed church governance and Vatican finances, but failed to reform Vatican handling of child molestation.
“The simple truth is this is another gesture, another public relations coup, another nice bit of symbolism that will leave no child better off and bring no real reform to a continuing, scandal-ridden church hierarchy.”
The UN itself condemned the Vatican for failing to protect children from pedophile priests, particularly over the church policy of shuffling abusive priests to different jurisdictions and failing to report child sex crimes to secular authorities.
But the case of Cardinal George Pell is historic as he is the highest ranking Vatican official to ever be charged with pedophilia, and he is also the highest ranking Catholic prelate to confront his accusers in a secular court of law.
As we will see, archbishops in lesser diocese also stand accused of pedophilia, and in some cases, they occupy positions from which they can distract, divert, delay and dissolve allegations against themselves and other ranking clerics.
=
Links in order of precedence.
|
Faces of evil. Protector of pedophiles Pope Benedict XVI and accused pedophile Cardinal George Pell. |
This is my 28th installment on PedoGate and the continuing pedophilia epidemic.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home