Capuchin priest sentenced to 15 years in prison
for child sex abuse charges
BY JOSEPHINE VON DOHLEN
The Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington, D.C. (CS file photo/Jaclyn Lippelmann)
After being found guilty on Aug. 15 of four counts of child sexual abuse, Father Urbano Vazquez, a Capuchin Franciscan priest and former parochial vicar at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington, D.C., received a sentence of 15 years in prison.
Father Vazquez served at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart from 2014 until 2018. An eight-day trial and two days of jury deliberation in August found him guilty of three felony counts of second-degree child sexual assault with aggravating circumstances, and one misdemeanor count of sexual abuse of a child.
“This has been a difficult and painful time for the victim-survivors, their families, members of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart parish community and all of us in the Archdiocese of Washington,” Archbishop Wilton Gregory said in a Nov. 22 statement released by the Archdiocese of Washington.
After Father Vazquez's first arrest in November 2018 with charges of second-degree sexual child abuse, the priest was arrested again in December 2018, charged with the abuse of two others, including a minor. He was ordered by D.C. Superior Court Judge Juliet J. McKenna to remain in jail until his trial in August.
In 2018 when the Archdiocese of Washington was made aware of the allegations against Father Vazquez, he was immediately removed from ministry and his priestly faculties were suspended.
When offered a plea deal in March 2019, Father Vazquez turned the opportunity down and chose a jury trial instead, maintaining his innocence since accusations first rose.
Father Vazquez was charged with second-degree child sexual abuse with a 13-year-old girl in 2015. Additional allegations arose and he was charged with two additional counts, second-degree sexual assault of a minor female and assault of an adult woman in 2016. The victims were all members of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart. Father Vazquez also received a misdemeanor sex abuse charge from an accusation that he groped a woman during Confession; two additional misdemeanor allegations were made but due to the expired statute of limitations, they could not be prosecuted.
Courtney Chase, executive director of the archdiocese’s Office of Child Protection and Safe Environment, said in an interview with the Catholic Standard that her office was satisfied with the judgment of the sentencing.
“We are very proud of the victims that came forward, and I think this sentencing confirms that child sex abuse is not going to be tolerated,” she said. “There is zero tolerance of child abuse of any kind, and survivors and victims need to be validated and commended for coming forward with this very painful information and getting justice.”
The Archdiocese of Washington’s Office of Child Protection and Safe Environment recently revised the archdiocesan child protection policy in July, expanding its policy to ensure safe environments for people of all ages.
Anyone who may have been abused by a priest, employee or volunteer of the Archdiocese of Washington, or who may be aware of any suspected abuse, is encouraged to report this immediately to civil authorities and to contact the archdiocesan Office of Child Protection and Safe Environments at 301-853-5302.
NJ priest charged with sexual assault of teen in 1980s
Joshua Chung, Asbury Park Press
The sexual assault charges against a New Jersey priest arrested Wednesday in Ocean County involve incidents that happened more than 35 years ago before the man was a priest, according to the Diocese of Metuchen.
Patrick J. Kuffner, 72, is facing three counts of sexual assault of a minor between the ages of 13 and 16, according to court records. But in a statement, the Diocese of Metuchen said that Kuffner -- the former pastor of Our Lady of Mount Virgin Parish in Middlesex -- said the incidents took place in Massachusetts more than 35 years ago, and before Kuffner was a seminarian or ordained as a priest.
“First and foremost, our prayers are with the person who came forward last year with these allegations, after many years of carrying this burden, and all those who are survivors of sexual abuse,” said Anthony P. Kearns III, spokesperson and chancellor of the Diocese of Metuchen, noting that the incident took place in the 1980s.
“The charges are nevertheless shocking and are being taken seriously by the Diocese of Metuchen,” Kearns said.
Kuffner has been on a leave of absence since the allegations and cannot function as a priest, Kearns said. "No cleric in the Diocese of Meteuchen who has had a credible accusation of child sexual abuse is in active ministry," Kearns said.
Kuffner was assigned to Queenship of Mary in Plainsboro, St. Bartholomew in East Brunswick and Our Lady of Mount Virgin in Middlesex.
During a background check for Kuffner, the diocese found nothing in his behavior to suggest he could be capable of the alleged acts, according to Kearns.
Once the diocese learned of the allegations, the incident was immediately reported to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office and then later referred to the Hampden County Prosecutor's Office in Massachusetts, according to the statement.
“The diocese is committed to helping abuse victims and survivors in their healing process and stands ready to provide pastoral care, counseling assistance and support,” Kearns said. “The terrible acts perpetrated in the history of our church, will not be tolerated in our church today or in the future.”
In 2002, the Diocese of Metuchen examined all clergy files to review any reasonably available and relevant information pertaining to allegations of sexual abuse. Upon their findings, the diocese turned over every alleged case of sexual abuse or misconduct, the diocese said.
This included cases that happened even before the diocese was founded. Most of the reported cases happened between the 1960s and 1980s.
"Since the initial audit, the diocese has required background checks, child protection training for all who work or volunteer with children and has implemented zero-tolerance policies," the statement said.
In February, an additional review of diocesan archives conducted by an outside law firm was completed to prepare the list of "credibly accused." There were no new cases found.
Local sisters sue Catholic dioceses as new law in New Jersey takes effect
Caution: graphic, sickening details follow
BY J HUGHES
NEWARK, NJ.- Two sisters living in the Harrisburg area are suing the Archdiocese of Newark in New Jersey and the Harrisburg Diocese in Pennsylvania, as new statute of limitations laws that take effect today. The new laws allow them to take legal action against a priest who they say sexually-assaulted them when they were children.
Giella and one of the Fortney girls
“I was 10 years old and in the 5th grade, when I met our abuser, Augustine Giella” Lara Fortney-McKeever said during a news conference in Newark. She said Giella was their new family pastor and was looking for volunteers at her school. She says when she raised her hand, the abuse began, “I can’t bring myself to call him reverend or father.”
The sisters allege how both dioceses were involved in covering up reports of abuse by Father Giella, when he reportedly abused them in Pennsylvania and at his New Jersey summer home, where he invited the Fortney family for visits. According to the grand jury report, Giella collected samples of the girls’ pubic hair, menstrual blood, and urine. In some cases, he would consume them.
The grand jury explains if the Diocese of Harrisburg had acted on a complaint in the 1980’s, the abuse could have ended much sooner (2nd story on link).
Fox43 Reveals spoke with the Fortney sisters back in October. They have been telling the public about their story of abuse in order to persuade lawmakers in state legislatures around the country to reform the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims.
Today, their desires have been met and they could appear in court in a few years. “Today is a momentous day for our family, because we can finally move forward in our pursuit for justice” said Patty Fortney-Julius, “Today is about answers… our family will be able to get answers to some of the questions we need in order to put the missing pieces of our life’s puzzle together.”
Attorney Benjamin Andreozzi, representing the Fortneys, says discovery could take up to two years and would require the Diocese of Harrisburg to turn over all of its documents related to predatory priests, including the ones on Giella.
Sisters Carolyn Fortney, Teresa Fortney-Miller, Laura Fortney McKeever and Patty Fortney-Julius
The grand jury report, released in August of 2018, detailed systemic sexual abuse by hundreds of predator priests and more than 1,000 child victims in addition to an internal system within the church to prevent reports from surfacing that could cause “scandal.” The grand jury recommended eliminating the criminal statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse, extending the age limit for survivors to file civil lawsuits, and creating a retroactive window for survivors frozen out of the statute of limitations to file lawsuits.
The state legislature had the chance to vote on bills to make those reforms possible last year, but the state senate chose not to vote, citing the constitutionality of the retroactive window and the impact the lawsuits could have on the Catholic Church.
One major obstacle the Pennsylvania legislature faced was the Catholic Church’s lobbying efforts. A report released earlier this year showed the church spent more than $5.3 million in Pennsylvania, from 2011 to 2018, to influence lawmakers’ votes on issues like civil justice, crime victim assistance, criminal justice, courts, and liability reform.
In 2018, following the release of the 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Report, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia spent $291,674 on lobbying firms between October and December. The Archdiocese spent another $138,972 to lobbying firms in the following three months, according to records with the PA Department of State.
Is all this money being accounted for to the congregations, and to the Vatican? I presume the expenses are authorized by the Archbishops, which, I would think would present themselves as the moral leaders in the church and communities. What a disgrace!
Until recently, the statute of limitations for childhood sex abuse victims in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey prevented people from taking legal action because the age limits were too low. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law back in May to extend the state’s statute of limitations for sex-abuse lawsuits. The law also creates a two-year window to file suit based on previously expired claims. That law went into effect yesterday.
Neighboring New York passed similar laws earlier this year, including a one-year retroactive window, which went into effect in August. More than 400 new lawsuits were filed on the first day of that window, with some claims going as far back as the 1950s.
Gov. Tom Wolf signed bills into law last month to eliminate the criminal statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims and to extend the time limit for civil lawsuits. Another bill, House Bill 963, would create a two-year retroactive window for survivors whose time has already expired even with the new extensions, but the state legislature has to pass it again in the 2021-2022 legislative session so it can become a ballot question in a general election. If voters approve it, then it would become an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution to open up the window.
More than 5,000 new lawsuits could cost Catholic Church $4BN after 15 states extend statute of limitations on sex abuse by members of clergy
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
At the end of another long day trying to sign up new clients accusing the Roman Catholic Church of sexual abuse, lawyer Adam Slater gazes out the window of his high-rise Manhattan office at one of the great symbols of the church, St. Patrick's Cathedral.
'I wonder how much that's worth?' he muses.
Across the country, attorneys like Slater are scrambling to file a new wave of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by clergy, thanks to rules enacted in 15 states that extend or suspend the statute of limitations to allow claims stretching back decades.
Associated Press reporting found the deluge of suits could surpass anything the nation's clergy sexual abuse crisis has seen before, with potentially more than 5,000 new cases and payouts topping $4billion.
It's a financial reckoning playing out in such populous Catholic strongholds as New York, California and New Jersey, among the eight states that go the furthest with 'lookback windows' that allow sex abuse claims no matter how old. Never before have so many states acted in near-unison to lift the restrictions that once shut people out if they didn't bring claims of childhood sex abuse by a certain age, often their early 20s.
That has lawyers fighting for clients with TV ads and billboards asking: 'Were you abused by the church?' And Catholic dioceses, while worrying about the difficulty of defending such old claims, are considering bankruptcy, victim compensation funds and even tapping valuable real estate to stay afloat.
'It's like a whole new beginning for me,' said 71-year-old Nancy Holling-Lonnecker of San Diego, who plans to take advantage of an upcoming three-year window for such suits in California. Her claim dates back to the 1950s, when she says a priest repeatedly raped her in a confession booth beginning when she was seven years old.
'The survivors coming forward now have been holding on to this horrific experience all of their lives,' she said. 'They bottled up those emotions all of these years because there was no place to take it.'
Now there is.
Nancy Holling-Lonnecker, 71, of San Diego plans to take advantage of an upcoming three-year window for such suits in California. Her claim dates back to the 1950s, when she says a priest repeatedly raped her in a confession booth beginning when she was seven years old
AT LEAST 5,000 NEW CASES EXPECTED - WITH PAYOUTS EXCEEDING $4BILLION
AP interviews with more than a dozen lawyers and clergy abuse watchdog groups offered a wide range of estimates but many said they expected at least 5,000 new cases against the church in New York, New Jersey and California alone, resulting in potential payouts that could surpass the $4billion paid out since the clergy sex abuse first came to light in the 1980s.
Lawyers acknowledged the difficulty of predicting what will happen but several believed payouts could exceed the $350,000 national average per child sex abuse case since 2003.
At the upper end, a key benchmark is the average $1.3million the church paid per case the last time California opened a one-year window to suits in 2003. That offers a range of total payouts in the three big Catholic states alone from $1.8billion to as much as $6billion.
Some lawyers believe payouts could be heavily influenced by the recent reawakening over sexual abuse fueled by the #MeToo movement, the public shaming of accused celebrities and the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report last year that found 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children in that state over seven decades. Since then, attorneys general in nearly 20 states have launched investigations of their own.
'The general public is more disgusted than ever with the clergy sex abuse and the cover-up, and that will be reflected in jury verdicts,' said Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who was at the center of numerous lawsuits against the church in that city and was portrayed in the movie Spotlight.
Said Los Angeles lawyer Paul Mones, who has won tens of millions in sex abuse cases against the church going back to the 1980s: 'The zeitgeist is completely unfavorable to the Catholic Church.'
For Mones, the size of lawsuit payouts under the new laws could hinge on whether most plaintiffs decide to settle their cases with dioceses or take their chances with a trial.
'The X-factor here is whether there will be trials,' he said. 'If anyone starts trying these cases, the numbers could become astronomical.'
Expect the church to very aggressively pursue out of court settlements.
Since the 15 states enacted their laws at different times over the past two years, the onslaught of lawsuits is coming in waves.
This summer, when New York state opened its one-year window allowing sexual abuse suits with no statute of limitations, more than 400 cases against the church and other institutions were filed on the first day alone. That number is now up to more than 1,000, with most targeting the church.
New Jersey's two-year window opens this week and California's three-year window begins in the new year, with a provision that allows plaintiffs to collect triple damages if a cover-up can be shown. Arizona, Montana and Vermont opened ones earlier this year.
Even one of the biggest holdouts, Pennsylvania, is moving closer to a window after legislators voted last month to consider amending its constitution to make it easier to pass one.
Already, longtime clergy abuse lawyer Michael Pfau in Seattle says he's signed up about 800 clients in New York, New Jersey and California. Boston's Garabedian says he expects to file 225 in New York, plus at least 200 in a half-dozen other states. Another veteran abuse litigator, James Marsh, says he's collected more than 200 clients in New York alone.
'A trickle becomes a stream becomes a flood,' Marsh said. 'We're sort of at the flood stage right now.'
Church leaders who lobbied statehouses for years against loosening statute-of-limitations laws say this is exactly the kind of feeding frenzy they were worried about.
They should have worried about it a lot sooner than they did.
And some have bemoaned the difficulty of trying to counter accusations of abuse that happened so long ago that most witnesses have scattered and many of the accused priests are long dead.
'Dead people can't defend themselves,' said Mark Chopko, former general counsel to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Except, Catholic Dioceses document everything!
'There is also no one there to be interviewed. If a diocese gets a claim that Father Smith abused somebody in 1947, and there is nothing in Father Smith's file and there is no one to ask whether there is merit or not, the diocese is stuck.'
You mean, stuck, like the victims have been for 70 years?
‘The Pope Ignored Them’: Argentinian Priests Convicted Of Sexual Abuse Of Deaf Children
Peter Castagno, Citizen Truth
His Holiness Pope Francis delivers his message during the General Audience of senior Government Officials and members of the Diplomatic Corps at the Rizal Hall of the Malacañan Palace for the State Visit and Apostolic Journey to the Republic of the Philippines on January 16, 2015. (Photo: Benhur Arcayan)
Another priest sexual abuse scandal has rocked the Catholic Church this time implicating officials as high up as Pope Francis.
The global sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has devastated the reputation of the Catholic Church in recent decades emerged in the Pope’s homeland last Monday, as two Argentinian priests were found guilty of systematically molesting students of a Church-run school for deaf children. The cases revealed disturbing accusations that Pope Francis ignored victims for years, calling attention to the enduring problems within the institution that represents the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Argentina Priests Convicted of Child Sexual Abuse
Corbacho in green jacket; Corradi in the wheel chair; the guy in the middle is probably the gardener
An Argentine court sentenced Rev. Nicola Corradi to 42 years and Rev. Horacio Corbacho to 45 years in prison last Monday, November 25 for sexually abusing children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Mendoza, Argentina. Gardener Armando Gómez was also sentenced to 18 years in prison.
A Washington Post investigation of “court and church documents, private letters, and dozens of interviews in Argentina and Italy,” found that “church officials up to and including Pope Francis were warned repeatedly and directly about a group of alleged predators that included Corradi,” yet took no action.
“I want Pope Francis to come here, I want him to explain how this happened, how they knew this and did nothing,” a 24-year-old alumna of the Provolo Institute told the Post, “using sign language as her hands shook in rage”. She and her 22-year-old brother were among at least 14 former students who say they were abused at the now closed facility.
As the Washington Post reported in February:
“Vulnerable to the extreme, the deaf students tended to come from poor families that fervently believed in the sanctity of the church. Prosecutors say the children were fondled, raped, sometimes tied up and, in one instance, forced to wear a diaper to hide the bleeding. All the while, their limited ability to communicate complicated their ability to tell others what was happening to them. Students at the school were smacked if they used sign language. One of the few hand gestures used by the priests, victims say, was an index figure to lips — a demand for silence.”
The Post notes that one of the priests had a long record of sexual abuse allegations: “Corradi, now 83 and under house arrest, is also under investigation for sexual crimes at a sister school in Argentina where he worked from 1970 to 1994. And alumni of a related school in Italy, where Corradi served earlier, identified him as being among a number of priests who carried out systematic abuse over five decades. The Italian victims’ efforts to sound the alarm to church authorities began in 2008 and included mailing a list of accused priests to Francis in 2014 and physically handing him the list in 2015.”
Yet the church ignored the victims until Argentine law enforcement eventually arrested the priests and shut down the school in 2016. “Argentine prosecutors say the church has not fully cooperated with their investigation,” reported the Post.
In a 2017 video by the Italian Fanpage.it Youtube channel, Priest Don Piccoli of the Provolo Institute laughs as he confesses that dozens of priests molested the deaf-mute children from poor and disadvantaged families.
“The Church has not acted honorably in this case,” Sergio Salinas, a lawyer for several victims, told the New York Times. He called for Pope Francis to “make a public apology.”
“It hasn’t just failed to give evidence, it has hidden information,” Mr. Salinas said. “It has failed to recognize the facts and has mocked the victims by not recognizing them as such and saying that their testimony is unbelievable.”
Two more trials related to cover-ups and abuse at the Provolo Institutes for deaf children are expected to take place next year. Mr. Salinas told the New York Times that he believes the number of abused children is much larger than currently known.
“We hope the prosecutors now will launch a criminal investigation of the archbishops and other church leaders who knew or should have known that the school was being run by a child molester,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of the online research database BishopAccountability.org, told the Post. “The pope too must accept responsibility for the unimaginable suffering of these children. He ignored repeated warnings that Corradi was in Argentina.”
Scale Of Catholic Church’s Abuse Problem
The Catholic Church’s centuries-long practice of enabling the sexual abuse of children is breathtaking in scope, with recent scandals erupting from Argentina and Chile to Ireland, the United States, Australia and Germany. And don't forget Canada - Newfoundland's Mount Cashel home for boys was the first of all these scandals.
Timeline: A Quick Look at the Catholic Church's Sex Abuse Scandals
“As of Nov. 11, Bishop Accountability, a website that tracks accusations, has named 6,433 priests, brothers and Catholic school officials accused of abuse,” reports Lindsay Schnell with USA Today. “Additionally, 154 archdioceses and dioceses have released the names of 4,771 credibly accused clerics, according to Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm that specializes in representing sex abuse survivors.
Bishop Accountability - Numerous statistics that seem to be relative only to the USA. Nevertheless, victims may number from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands.
However that number is likely a significant understatement: “The church has drawn scrutiny from survivors’ groups for sometimes leaving known abusers off its credibly accused lists and for naming the same clergy members multiple times,” writes Schnell. “Some archdiocese and dioceses have declined to release lists. Most religious orders have not released lists, though that is slowly changing.”
“This lack of uniformity leads to more pain and anguish for survivors who don’t understand why their perpetrator didn’t make the list,” Becky Ianni, the Washington, D.C., and Virginia leader for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests told USA Today. “In fact in some cases, if there is only one allegation, the name is left off.”
“Most dioceses don’t list how many victims each perpetrator had, or when or if the allegations were reported to the authorities … and even then, it would still be self-reporting, leading to numbers we can’t trust,” she said.
Due to the lack of a strong uniform legal framework, nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy that the Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sex abuse are living with little to no oversight from law enforcement, according to an investigation by the Associated Press published in October.
“These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for children,” the Associated Press reports.
“And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP analysis found.”
The Pope’s New Rule
In May, Pope Francis announced concrete new reforms to address clerical sexual abuse, such as mandatory protections for whistleblowers and victims, requirements for priests and nuns to quickly report abuses, and formalized procedures to guide internal investigations no matter the rank of the accused.
Several church watchdog groups said the changes don’t go far enough, however, because they don’t require accusations to be reported to the police and therefore trust the same internal process that has repeatedly failed victims.
“Bishops watching bishops does not work,” Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability told the Associated Press.
Zach Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the Washington Post that the rules fail by relying on “the very same church structures that have been receiving and routing abuse allegations for years.”
Church Spends Millions To Lobby Against Child Victim Laws
Critics argue that the Catholic Church’s efforts to block legislative reforms that would help victims and prosecutors seek justice for abuse reveal its true priority is protecting its reputation rather than protecting survivors. The Catholic Church spent $10.6 million lobbying against ‘statute of limitations’ laws, which put limits on the amount of time a victim can seek justice after abuse, in the northeastern United States over the last eight years, according to a report published in June which used data based entirely from public filings in eight states.
The report shows that the Catholic Church’s lobbying against child abuse protections increased in recent years in contrast to Pope Francis’ rhetoric about confronting the epidemic. As CBS News reported:
“In New York, for example, the Catholic Church spent $2,912,772 lobbying against the Child Victims Act, which Governor Andrew Cuomo ultimately signed into law on February 14, 2019. The act gives survivors more time to seek justice against their abusers, increasing the age at which victims are able to sue from 23 to 55.
Similarly, in Pennsylvania — where in 2018 a grand jury report detailed evidence of more than 300 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children — the Catholic Church spent $5,322,979 lobbying to keep current restrictions in place on the statute of limitations in which victims can seek criminal or civil charges against their abusers.”
Attorney Gerald Williams, a partner one of the four law firms that jointly commissioned the report, told CBS News that it is “likely that at least some of the money used by the Catholic Church to combat extending the statute of limitations for survivors came from Sunday collections from the faithful.”
“It’s hard for us to tell just from the raw numbers, but it’s likely,” Williams said. “We can’t say for certain where the money comes from. We can only say that it’s a lot of money that could be spent for more constructive purposes.”
The Vatican’s Finances
Williams’ comment on his difficulty in investigating the Vatican’s finances reflects the Catholic Church’s long history of financial opacity. Protections for religious organizations have allowed the Vatican Bank to evade the transparency requirements of other financial institutions.
“The thing about the Vatican Bank is that makes it different in my view is that it’s essentially an offshore bank in the middle of foreign country,” Gerald Posner, author of “God’s Bankers,” told NPR in 2015. “So that once the bank was formed, it meant that somebody sitting over in Italy who had a lot of money, all they had to do was find a priest or a cleric inside Vatican city to take their money in suitcases of cash across the street… deposit it in the Vatican Bank, and it no longer could be taxed.” Or, traced!
“It no longer could be followed by Italian authorities,” Posner continued. “It couldn’t be follower for a drug investigation. So what does that result in? It results in the Vatican Bank being one of the top banks in the world for money laundering.”
There is much more on the Vatican Bank in David Yallop's meticulously researched 'In God's Name'.
Scandals involving money laundering and the funding of priests implicated in child sex abuse have put pressure on the church to become more transparent. Posner said he was impressed by Pope Francis’ reforms of the Vatican Bank in his 2015 interview with NPR, which include external audits and closing hundreds of illegitimate accounts, but that more time would be needed to cement the changes in consideration of the bank’s history and culture.
That history includes support for Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, among other fascist regimes. The Holy See was one of the first governments to recognize the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), and the Vatican Bank was created in large part to obfuscate the church’s financial dealings with the Nazis from the United States and U.K. during World War II.
“They bundled together life insurance policies of Jewish refugees who had been sent to Auschwitz and other death camps,” Posner told NPR. “They escheated these policies early on – meaning they took the cash value out of them.”
Children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were later rejected by the Vatican when they tried to collect on the insurance policies. “These insurance companies would refuse to pay out saying: ‘Show us a death certificate,’ which they knew was impossible. They would keep the money.”
“They abdicated their moral position as the head of the world’s largest religion,” Posner said, “especially at a time when they continued to make money with the people committing the murder.”
Archbishop Calls For Pope’s Resignation
Former Vatican ambassador to the United States and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church in a call for Pope Francis’ resignation in an 11-page letter last August, accusing the Pontiff of protecting a sex abuser and his network of enablers.
“I repeat it firmly before God: Pope Francis learned about McCarrick from me on Sunday 23 June 2013, 40 minutes before the Angelus,” Viganò said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I told him of McCarrick’s abuses after the pope himself, on his own initiative, asked me about McCarrick.”
In May, the Pope said he did not remember if Viganò told him about former D.C. archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s abuses after remaining mostly silent about the claim for nearly a year. “I don’t remember if he told me about this,” Pope Francis said in an interview. “If it’s true or not. No idea! But you know that about McCarrick, I knew nothing. If not, I wouldn’t have remained quiet, right?”
“Everybody knew about McCarrick’s lifelong predatory behavior, from the youngest seminarian in Newark to the highest-ranking prelates in the Vatican,” Viganò told the Post. McCarrick’s predatory behavior was an open secret for years in the Vatican and U.S. Church circles, according to Catholic website Crux News, as it was known that the former archbishop of Washington had long “pressured seminarians to share a bed with him” before accusations that he abused a minor finally surfaced in 2017.
“The crisis is about the fact that a corrupt ‘mafia’ has taken control of many institutions of the Church, from the top down, and is exploiting the Church and the faithful for its own immoral purposes.” – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
In February, the Pope formerly expelled, or ‘defrocked,’ Cardinal McCarrick from the Catholic Church. Although many lower ranking priests have been defrocked for abusing minors, the episode represented the first time a Cardinal, a high-ranking Church leader, was completely expelled for sexual abuse. While some viewed Francis’ action as revolutionary, Archbishop Viganò had a different interpretation:
“Instead of a proper judicial procedure, after more than seven months of total silence, an administrative procedure was deliberately chosen,” Viganò told the Post. “It is hard to avoid concluding that the timing was designed to manipulate public opinion.”
Viganò argues that if Pope Francis was serious about fighting sexual abuse, he would confront McCarrick’s network of enablers rather than publicize the punishment of a single abuser.
“Condemning McCarrick as a scapegoat with an exemplary punishment — it was the first time in Church history that a cardinal was reduced to the lay state — would support the narrative that Pope Francis was firmly determined to fight against clergy sexual abuse.”
The Archbishop corroborated what Sergio Salinas, a lawyer for several victims in the Argentinian school for deaf children, alleged in his case: that the Pope concealed information that would help victims.
“The bottom line is this: Pope Francis is deliberately concealing the McCarrick evidence.”
The Vatican’s Deeply-Rooted Problem
Other critics have echoed the Archbishop’s criticism, arguing that the Vatican needs deeper cultural reform rather than the punishment of individual priests.
“How was McCarrick able to advance through the hierarchy, and even become an trusted adviser to Francis on international diplomacy and the selection of cardinals, when his predatory behavior was well known? Simple,” wrote the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen. “A network of corrupt bishops and cardinals, many of whom owed their positions to McCarrick, protected him. It is not enough for Pope Francis to remove McCarrick from the priesthood. The patronage network that enabled him must be rooted out as well.”
Karen Liebreich, the author of “Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio,” explains that this patronage network is deeply embedded in the Vatican, with documents that allege “impure friendships with schoolboys” and “many accusations of impurity and ill-reknown” dating back to at least the 15th century. Liebreich describes how superiors in the church repeatedly worked to cover up abuses to protect their reputation, even promoting priests facing accusations rather than seek justice for victims.
“The culture that needs to be changed is the Vatican culture,” Peter Isley, an abuse victim and a founder member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told DemocracyNow last year. “And I don’t know what confidence anyone can have in this management team, that has covered up child sex crimes, and continues to cover it up around the world, that they’re somehow going to fix it. They’re not going to fix it. Somebody else needs to fix it.”
Amen! Someone will fix it, and He will fix it soon!
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