After having been called a devil, like everyone else who criticizes the Catholic Church, by the Pope - I would like to suggest that the Pope reread the Book of Revelations for a revelation of who Satan really is. The church will come under continuous criticism as long as the astonishing revelations of child abuse and abuse of nuns by priests continue, and it will continue for a long time.
Just today I saw a report that estimated the number of children born from Priests as fathers is in the area of 50,000. However, the two stories mentioning this number give no indication of where it came from. Consequently, I consider it dubious at best. Frankly, I'd be a little surprised there are that many priests in the world who are straight.
If calling critics 'instruments of Satan' is the starting point of his great congregation of 'Princes' of the church in dealing with the astonishing problem of child sex abuse, the meeting is already a failure. They needed to start from a confession of horrid sins against children, against Catholics all over the world, and especially, against God. They didn't!
Meanwhile, the horror stories keep coming...
India Catholic Cardinal Oswald Gracias
‘failed abuse victims’
By Priyanka Pathak
Global religion reporter, Delhi
Cardinal Oswald Gracias told the BBC it pained him to hear accusations that he had neglected victims of alleged abuse
One of the Catholic Church's most senior cardinals has admitted that he could have better handled sexual abuse allegations that were brought to him.
Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Mumbai is one of four men organising a major Vatican conference on child abuse this week.
We found two separate cases where the cardinal, who is tipped by some to possibly become the next Pope, is claimed to have failed to respond quickly or offer support to the victims.
Victims and those who supported them allege that Cardinal Gracias did not take allegations of abuse seriously when they were reported to him.
India's Catholics say there is a culture of fear and silence in the Catholic Church about sexual abuse by priests. Those who have dared to speak out say it has been an ordeal.
'My heart was hurt'
The first case dates back to 2015 in Mumbai. A woman's life changed when her son returned from Mass at the church and told her that the parish priest had raped him.
"I could not understand what should I do?" she said. She did not know this yet, but this event would put her on a collision course with the Catholic Church in India.
The man she reached out to for help was and remains one of the most senior representatives of the Church.
It was nearly 72 hours after the alleged rape that the family briefly met Cardinal Gracias, then president of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of India and Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences.
The issue of sexual abuse within the Church is being called the Vatican's biggest crisis in modern times, and the integrity of the Catholic Church is said to ride on the outcome of this conference.
Not 'modern times', it's the biggest crisis ever! Unfortunately, they don't seem to realize that yet.
Pope Francis with Cardinal Oswald Gracias (fourth from left)
Over the past year, the Catholic Church has been reeling under multiple allegations of sexual abuse around the world.
But while abuse claims have made headlines in North and South America, Europe and Australia, very little is known about the problems in Asian countries. In countries such as India there is a social stigma about reporting abuse.
Among Christians, who are a minority of nearly 28 million people, a culture of fear and silence makes it impossible to gauge the true scale of the problem.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago - a colleague of Cardinal Gracias on the four-member organising committee - has promised that decisive action in Rome and in dioceses worldwide will follow after the meeting so as to safeguard children and bring justice to the victims.
Speaking for himself, obviously. We will see that watered down by the Cardinals. They may make great promises, but they will make few significant changes.
Cardinal Gracias will open the second day of the summit with a conversation about accountability in the Church. This vital role given to him during this crucial conference has made some in India unhappy.
They say his track record in protecting children and women from abusers is questionable. Those we have spoken to who have taken cases to him say they received little support from him.
The mother of the abused boy said: "I told the cardinal about what the priest had done to my child, that my child was in a lot of pain. So he prayed for us and told us he had to go to Rome…my heart was hurt in that moment.
"As a mother, I had gone to him with great expectations that he would think about my son, give me justice, but he said he had no time, he only cared about going to Rome."
The family say they requested medical help but were offered none.
The cardinal told us it pained him to hear this, and that he was not aware that the boy needed medical help - and if he had been asked, he would have immediately offered it.
The cardinal admits he left for Rome that night without alerting the authorities. By failing to call the police, Cardinal Gracias may have violated India's Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO).
The provisions of this law state that if the head of any company or institution fails to report the commission of an offence in respect of a subordinate under his control, they shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, and with a fine.
The cardinal told us he had telephoned his bishop the next day, who told him the family had subsequently informed the police themselves.
Asked if he regretted not calling the police personally at the time, he said: "You know I'm being honest, I'm not 100% sure… but I must reflect on that. I admit whether immediately, the police should have got involved, sure."
He says he was under a duty to evaluate the credibility of accusations by speaking to the accused man. Emerging from that meeting, the family decided to go to a doctor.
"He took one look at my boy and said that something has happened to him. This is a police case. Either you report it or I will… so we went to the police that night," the mother said.
A police medical examination found that the child had been sexually assaulted.
India is home to about 19 million Catholics
A current priest who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity said this was not the first time allegations about this priest had been brought to the cardinal's attention.
"I met him some years before this [alleged] incident," the priest told us.
"There were strong rumours about [the accused priest] in the diocese, and like these are about abuse that is taking place. And yet he seems to be moving from one place to another, one parish to another. The cardinal told me directly that he is not aware directly of all these things."
The cardinal says he cannot recall the conversation. He says he did not recollect any "cloud of suspicion" over the man.
'A lonely battle'
As part of our investigation, we wanted to see if there were other allegations of the cardinal being slow to act. We found an instance dating back almost a decade, brought to his attention just a couple of years after becoming archbishop of Mumbai.
Catholic activist Virginia Saldanha says three legal notices were sent to the cardinal, threatening court action unless he took action about the claims of abuse
In March 2009, a woman approached him with accusations of sexual abuse by another priest who conducted retreats.
She says that he took no action against the priest so she reached out to a group of female Catholic activists, who say they forced the cardinal to act.
Under pressure, he finally set up an enquiry committee in December 2011. Six months after the enquiry, there was still no action and the accused priest continued working in his parish.
"We had to send the cardinal three legal notices to act, threaten to take the matter to the courts if he did not act," said Virginia Saldanha, a devout Catholic who has worked on the women's desk of multiple Church-affiliated positions for over two decades.
When the cardinal replied, he said: "The priest is not listening to me."
What? You're the Cardinal; he a priest! Make him listen!
The family says they have been ostracised from the church and isolated within their communities since reporting the sexual assault
During the time, Saldanha said she had to leave the church because "I could not bear to see that man giving Mass in the church. I did not feel like going there."
The priest was eventually removed from his parish, but the reasons for his departure were never made public.
The punishment, decided by the cardinal personally in October 2011, was a "guided retreat and therapeutic counselling". After a stay in the seminary, the accused priest was briefly given a parish again and still conducts retreats.
When we pressed him about the speed of process and punishment, the cardinal said it was a "complicated case".
Meanwhile, the family of the allegedly raped minor feel abandoned by the institution that they had built their lives around. "It has been a lonely battle," the mother concedes. They say they have been ostracised from the church and isolated within their communities.
"After complaining to the police, when we would go into church, people would refuse to talk to us, to sit next to us during Mass. If I went to sit next to someone… they would get up and leave," she said.
The hostility she encountered eventually "made us leave the church. But it got so difficult for us that we eventually had to change our home as well. We left it all behind".
Church members say that it is this hostility that makes it harder for victims and their families to speak up. Caught between an apparently unsupportive clergy and hostile social network, many find their voices faltering.
So often I see parishioners putting the welfare of a pedophile priest or pastor above that of sexually abused children. It is not Christian; and it is not right.
The story of Dublin’s ‘most notorious child sexual abuser’, and how the Church hid it for so long
Fr Tony Walsh was sentenced in 2010 to a total of 123 years
for abuse of one boy
Patsy McGarry, Irish Times
Tony Walsh performing with the All Priests Show, from the documentary ‘Cardinal Secrets’.
Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times
Ahead of the Vatican conference on abuse in the Church, The Irish Times examines the case of Dublin’s “most notorious child abuser”
Few cases illustrate so succinctly why the Catholic Church merited criticism for its handling of clerical child sex abuse as that of survivor Darren McGavin and perpetrator Fr Tony Walsh.
Walsh’s abuse of the child took place in Ballyfermot from 1978 to 1983 (from when the boy was six) and was so extreme that the then laicised priest was sentenced in December 2010 to a total of 123 years’ imprisonment.
Five of the 13 counts, for buggery, attracted sentences of 10, 12, 14, 16 and 16 years each. The remaining counts, for indecent assault, brought sentences ranging from four to nine years. As Walsh was to serve his sentences concurrently, 16 years was the maximum time he would spend in jail for those crimes.
Four years were suspended as a psychologist’s report said it was unlikely he would offend again. It was the most severe sentence imposed on a clerical child sex abuser in the Republic.
And yet, he only got 12 years!!!??? That's the most severe sentence ever? The Irish judicial system badley needs to be educated on the incredible severity of symptoms of being a survivor of child sex abuse. They (we) suffer for much longer than 12 years, and we don't get the opportunity for a do-over. This creep should never see the light of day again in his life.
Before looking at the details of those assaults, which are shocking and probably should carry a warning, almost as outrageous is how the case was handled by the Church at the time. While it is unlikely this would happen in Ireland now, no such assurance can be given about Catholic Church authorities elsewhere.
The Murphy Commission described Walsh as “the most notorious child sexual abuser” to have come to its attention. “It is likely that he has abused hundreds of children,” its 2009 report said. The commission investigated how clerical child sex abuse allegations were handled in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese between 1975 and 2004.
It found that the archdiocese did not report child sexual abuse allegations against Walsh to the Garda for 17 years after it first received such complaints about him.
It also revealed that in 1989 it had been suggested in the archdiocese that Walsh, then an admitted (to the archdiocese) child sex abuser, be appointed to the regional marriage tribunal, which dealt mainly with annulments.
This was not done, however, two other abusing priests were already on the tribunal.
In May 1988, Walsh admitted to then chancellor of the Dublin Archdiocese Mgr Alex Stenson that over the years he had been in Ballyfermot, “he was involved with boys about once a fortnight”. That was 10 years after the first complaint about him was made to the archdiocese.
And if he admitted once a fortnight, rest assured it was more than once a week.
Treatment centre
Walsh was sent to the Stroud treatment centre in England and returned to Dublin in November 1988 where he was appointed chaplain at a hospital for older people.
He signed a contract of good behaviour with the archdiocese and nominated Fr Michael Cleary as his spiritual director. In August 1989, there were complaints about his dealings with a boy at Dublin’s All Hallows College. Walsh was returned to Stroud.
In April 1990, then Archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell and Msgr Stenson gave Walsh weeks to decide on either dismissal from the priesthood or voluntary laicisation. Archbishop Connell also removed Walsh from public ministry.
In March 1991 there were further reports of Walsh’s contacts with children. In August 1991, and for the first time, a parent complained to gardaí about Walsh’s attempt to pick up her son.
Apparently, he couldn't decide on dismissal or laicisation, so the Archbishop allowed him to continue!
The following month Walsh was ordered by Archbishop Connell to go to St John of God psychiatric hospital in Stillorgan. The night before he did so he attempted to pick up another boy and gardaí were alerted.
Walsh returned to Stroud in January 1992 where he posed in nearby streets as a priest counsellor at the clinic and agreed to babysit for a family. By chance the father of the family found out who he was.
Clerical abuse survivor Darren McGavin, now 47 and still in recovery. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times
Back in Dublin, in July of that year he befriended a 15-year-old boy. One of the boy’s parents contacted gardaí, who contacted the archdiocese. More parents complained about Walsh’s activities in December 1992 and again in May 1993.
In August 1993 a church tribunal in Dublin decided Walsh should be defrocked. The following October he appealed this to Rome. While the appeal was in train he abused a boy at the child’s grandfather’s funeral in west Dublin.
The boy’s mother contacted gardaí, alleging Walsh had also abused her son a year earlier. In late 1994 there were media reports about this case.
First sentence
Early in 1995 Walsh admitted to gardaí that he had abused two boys in the 1980s. He was charged in connection with his abuse of the boy at the funeral in 1994 and sentenced later to 12 months. It was the first of many such sentences.
In May 1995 the archdiocese provided gardaí with other complaints about Walsh. Meanwhile, and inexplicably, Rome rejected Walsh’s laicisation as recommended by the Dublin tribunal. Rome decided Walsh should remain a priest but spend 10 years in a monastery.
That November, a by now desperate Archbishop Connell, petitioned Pope John Paul (II) to dismiss Walsh from the priesthood. In January 1996, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, issued a decree confirming Walsh’s dismissal.
Acknowledging the role in this of Archbishop Connell, later made a cardinal, the Murphy report said it was he who decided to have Walsh laicised “and he pursued this course in spite of the advice and, indeed, interference of his judicial vicar [Msgr Gerard Sheehy] and in spite of the Roman Rota [Appeal Court]”, at the Vatican.
In December 1997, Walsh was sentenced to consecutive terms of six years and four years for assaults on six boys. On appeal, this became six years. He was in prison until 2001 on that occasion. He was sentenced to 16 years in the December 2010 case involving Darren McGavin.
Victim impact statement
What he did to Darren McGavin as a small boy is heartrending. According to Darren’s victim impact statement, prepared by psychiatrist Prof Ivor Browne, Walsh raped him with his wrists tied to his ankles as he lay over a coffee table at the presbytery in Ballyfermot, which Walsh then shared with Fr Michael Cleary and his housekeeper, Phyllis Hamilton.
Darren was “crying loudly” and “hysterical”. Walsh, who had turned up the music to drown out the child’s cries, took “about an hour to calm me down. I then went home,” Darren said. This assault led to one of the 16-year sentences.
Another incident took place at Enniscrone, Co Sligo. About 50 children from Ballyfermot were taken there by Walsh and three other priests, including Fr Cleary. Walsh took Darren to the sand dunes where he raped him. Sand caused the child to bleed, so Walsh brought him to the sea where he washed the blood off and saltwater stung the child’s wounds.
Darren was also raped by Walsh in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Afterwards Walsh wiped him with “a purple sash [stole] he had with him”. When Walsh picked up his jacket “a small receptacle for holding Holy Communion wafers fell out of his pocket”.
He brought Darren back to the presbytery in Ballyfermot, “put on Elvis records . . . and gave him a glass of Coke”. He then showed him “a Bible with pictures of hell and said if he told anyone he would burn in hell and never go to heaven. Then he let him go home.”
One evening Darren told his mother an edited version of what had been happening. She went to the presbytery and knocked, accompanied by Darren’s aunt. Phyllis Hamilton answered and denied Walsh was inside. The mother insisted he must be in as his car was there. They thought they had seen him at a window. Phyllis Hamilton went inside and Walsh came to the door. He denied everything.
As Prof Browne puts it, in the victim impact report, “then knowing the game was up, Walsh stopped abusing D altogether and terminated their relationship”.
Tony Walsh at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. File photograph: Collins Courts
Walsh spent eight years trying to stop his trial in this case, exhausting the judicial review process. He failed. He had failed similarly in another case in 1997. That time, after another round-the-houses judicial review process, also under free legal aid, he pleaded guilty and served time.
But he forced the December 2010 trial involving Darren McGavin, denying all charges. The jury found him guilty, unanimously, after just 94 minutes and on the 13 counts.
Background
Tony Walsh was born in 1954 and ordained in 1978. Even as a seminarian at Dublin’s Clonliffe College, as emerged years later, he abused children and at the home of another abuser, Fr Noel Reynolds, to whose house he had a key.
In July 1978, two days after Walsh took up his first appointment as a curate in Ballyfermot, a complaint was received in Archbishop’s House that he had sexually abused an eight-year-old boy. That was alleged to have taken place in June 1978 at Fr Reynolds’s house.
The next complaint was in 1979 when a mother went to the parish priest of Ballyfermot, the late Canon Val Rogers. Fr Cleary was despatched to educate the woman’s son on male sexuality. In 1985, Canon Rogers admitted this case had been “hushed up”.
Sometime between 1980 and 1982, there were complaints to Archbishop’s House about Walsh’s abuse of young girls at a summer camp.
In June 1985, Walsh began attending a psychiatrist. In October 1985 of that year, he denied indecently assaulting a young girl earlier that month.
Housekeeper’s evidence
Even after he was moved to the Westland Row parish in the south inner city in February 1986, complaints kept coming from Ballyfermot. A housekeeper at his house in Ballyfermot said there were always children there and on one occasion she saw two boys coming from his bedroom.
In January 1987 the housekeeper at Westland Row claimed to have found underwear of hers in Walsh’s room. She also found condoms and syringes and said “a number of boys had slept overnight in his bed and a boy from Ballyfermot had been visiting”.
Walsh denied all of this and protested he did not know what condoms looked like. In April 1988, a woman alleged her son was in Westland Row with Walsh. The following month, parents claimed Walsh had interfered with their daughter.
It was then, in May 1988, Walsh admitted to then chancellor of the Dublin Archdiocese Mgr Alex Stenson that over the eight years he had been in Ballyfermot, “he was involved with boys about once a fortnight”.
Walsh remains in prison. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to two more abuse cases and in 2015 was convicted by a jury in relation to the sexual abuse of a girl. In July 2016 he was jailed for 7½ years for raping a boy three times, once with a crucifix.
Polish Mother Superior details nuns’ sexual assault
at hands of priests
A senior nun has spoken out for the first time about priests sexually abusing nuns in staunchly Catholic Poland following an an unprecedented public admission by Pope Francis
Mother Superior Joanna Olech was speaking after the pontiff earlier this month admitted that priests have used nuns as "sexual slaves" - and may still be doing so.
"The problem of sexual abuse committed by priests against nuns has also existed in Poland for a long time," Olech, who was the secretary general of women's religious orders in Poland between 1995-2008, told Poland's KAI Catholic news agency in an interview.
Olech said that in one of several cases she has seen, "a young nun who became pregnant, was forced to leave her order, but the father of the child is still a priest and certainly has not suffered any consequences for his actions."
Pope Francis is greeted by a group of nuns at the Vatican.
"These cases have never been made public", even after being reported to the superiors of priests responsible for sexual abuse, said Olech.
She added that the scale of the abuse in Poland was unclear as "no studies have been done."
Sexually abused nuns have nowhere to turn, said Olech, who has spent the last 50 years in a religious order. But she also insisted that the "era when this problem has been swept under the rug is drawing to an end. Times have changed, perhaps the new generation of nuns will approach these issues in a different way," she added.
Some 18,000 nuns served in around 100 Catholic women's religious orders in Poland as of 2016, according to the Statistical Institute of the Catholic Church of Poland.
Catholic bishops from across the globe gather at the Vatican this week for a summit called by Pope Frances focused on tackling the wave of child sex abuse scandals assailing the Catholic Church.
The Polish episcopate insists it has "zero tolerance" for these criminal acts. It has vowed to publish statistics on the number of child victims of priestly sex abuse, covering the period starting in 1989, when communism fell.
And now, how about publishing statistics on how many nuns have been raped by priests and bishops? And on how many children have been fathered by priests who have taken a vow of celibacy.
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