"Looking back on the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, most Roman Catholics in the United States offered mixed reviews of his leadership, a new New York Times/CBS News poll found."
Related: Benedict's Next Stop
You can ditch the robe.
"Pope Francis tells Benedict: ‘We are brothers’; Meeting marks huge transition for the papacy" by Nicole Winfield and Paolo Santalucia | Associated Press, March 24, 2013
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Benedict’s resignation, and his choices about his future, have raised the not-insignificant question of how the Catholic Church will deal with the novel situation of having one reigning and one retired pope living side-by-side.
Before Benedict announced his decision to be known as ‘‘emeritus pope’’ and ‘‘Your Holiness,’’ one of the Vatican’s leading canon lawyers, the Jesuit Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, penned an article suggesting that such a title would be inappropriate for Benedict since in renouncing the papacy he had ‘‘lost all the power of primacy’’ conferred on him by his election.
The Vatican had originally said Benedict would probably be known as ‘‘emeritus bishop of Rome’’ precisely to avoid confusion with the new pope.
But Benedict went ahead with the title and chose to keep wearing the white cassock of the papacy, albeit without the sash and cape worn by Francis, leading to questions about both his own influence on the future pontiff and whether Catholics more favorable to his traditional style might try to undermine his successor’s authority and agenda by keeping their allegiance to the old pope.
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He quit for a reason:
"The next pope has a major challenge awaiting him inside the Vatican walls, after the leaks of papal documents in 2012 exposed ugly turf battles, allegations of corruption, and even a plot purportedly orchestrated by Benedict’s aides to reveal a prominent Italian Catholic editor is gay."
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Papal Politics
A good time to get out.
"Pope Francis opens Holy Week" Associated Press, March 25, 2013
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, encouraging people to be humble and young at heart and promising to go to a youth jamboree in Brazil in July, while the faithful enthusiastically waved olive branches and braided palm fronds.
The square overflowed with a crowd estimated by the Vatican at 250,000 people. Pilgrims, tourists, and Romans jostled each other in an effort to glimpse Francis as they joined the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity’s most important day.
Keeping with his spontaneous style, the first pope from Latin America broke away several times from the text of his prepared homily to encourage the faithful to lead simple lives and resist the temptation to be sad when life’s obstacles inevitably come their way.
‘‘Don’t let yourselves be robbed of hope! Don’t let yourselves be robbed of hope!’’ Francis told the crowd, in an apparent reference to the economic difficulties people are grappling with as they try to find adequate work amid a poor job market in much of the world.
At the end of the two-hour Mass at St. Peter’s, Francis took off his red vestments, and wearing his plain white cassock and skull cap, climbed into an open-topped popemobile to circle through the excited crowd.
He leaned out to shake hands, kiss and pat the heads of infants passed to him by bodyguards, and give children the thumbs-up sign.
His security detail seemed to be reluctantly dealing with this get-close-to-the-people pontiff, scrambling around the vehicle to pick up this child or that one.
What are they tying to say, there is a chance of assassination?
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Related: Sunday Globe Special: Easter Insults
He better be careful if he is preaching that liberation theology stuff and actually acting upon it.
And he better be even more careful tackling this:
"Vatican moves on money laundering" by Nicole Winfield | Associated Press, September 12, 2012
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has hired a Swiss anti-money-laundering specialist to advise it as it moves into a new phase of trying to combat money laundering and terrorist financing....
Through the Vatican bank? I know the Wall Street banks were involved somehow, but money launderers and terrorist financiers? I guess when you are broke you will take any dough.
The bank, or the Institute for Religious Works, isn’t a traditional bank but rather a private financial institution created in 1942 to manage the pope’s assets destined for religious or charitable works. Today it has about $7.7 billion in assets, which it invests primarily in bonds and the stock market, and its 35,000 accounts belong primarily to Vatican employees and religious orders.
The institute, known by its Italian acronym IOR, has long been the subject of rumor and scandal, earned in part because of its role two decades ago in one of the most spectacular banking collapses in Italy, and ongoing suspicions by Italian investigators — which the Vatican denies — that it hasn’t abided by anti-money-laundering norms.
Good place to wash drug money.
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This other thing could also get him into trouble:
"Pope urges dialogue with Islam; Also seeks closer ties with China" by Elisabetta Povoledo | New York Times, March 23, 2013
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis appealed for more intense dialogue with Islam on Friday, while calling on church leaders to renew diplomatic discourse with countries that do not have official ties with the Holy See, like China.
The pope addressed ambassadors from the 180 countries accredited with the Holy See, urging them to share his objectives: fighting poverty, building peace, and establishing ‘‘true links of friendship between all people’’ by building bridges between them.
To this aim, promoting interreligious dialogue, particularly with Islam, is critical, he said, adding that he was grateful that ‘‘so many civil and religious leaders from the Islamic world’’ had attended his installation Mass on Tuesday.
During Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy, relations between the Vatican and Islam were strained by remarks he made in a 2006 speech that were interpreted as critical of Islam, prompting widespread protests in the Muslim world. The Vatican apologized, explaining that the remarks had been misinterpreted, but the incident weighed on the papacy....
As he has done on other public occasions, the pope on Friday drew attention to his decision to choose the name of Francis of Assisi, a ‘‘familiar figure’’ around the world, known for helping the poor, caring for those who suffer, protecting the environment from greedy exploitation, and setting an example ‘‘to make society more humane and more just,’’ he said....
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Related: Passing Over This Post
That pisses 'em off.
So what is this Pope's dirty little secret?
"Papal election stirs Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ past" by Michael Warren | Associated Press, March 15, 2013
BUENOS AIRES — Pope Francis is known for his humility, his reluctance to talk about himself. The self-effacement, admirers say, is why he has hardly ever denied one of the harshest allegations against him: That he was among church leaders who failed to confront Argentina’s murderous dictatorship.
The one the U.S helped bring to power and encourage with aid.
It’s without dispute that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, did not challenge the 1976-1983 military junta while it was kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a ‘‘dirty war’’ to eliminate leftist opponents.
But the new pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, asserts that this was a failure of the Roman Catholic Church in general, and that it’s unfair to label Bergoglio with the collective guilt that many Argentines of his generation still deal with.
It's only good when it can be applied to German$, if you know what I mean.
‘‘In some way many of us Argentines ended up being accomplices,’’ at a time when anyone who spoke out could be targeted, Rubin recalled.
Some leading Argentine human rights activists agree that Bergoglio doesn’t deserve to be lumped together with other church figures who were closely aligned with the dictatorship.
‘‘Perhaps he didn’t have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship,’’ said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta’s atrocities. ‘‘Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship,’’ he told Radio de la Red in Buenos Aires.
Other activists are angry over the positions Bergoglio, 76, has taken in recent years, as Argentina pursues investigations aimed at exposing those responsible for killing as many as 30,000 people, and finding traces of their victims.
Some say he has been more concerned about preserving the church’s image.
‘‘There’s hypocrisy here when it comes to the church’s conduct, and with Bergoglio in particular,’’ said Estela de la Cuadra, whose mother cofounded the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo activist group to search for missing relatives. ‘‘There are trials of all kinds now, and Bergoglio systematically refuses to support them.’’
Bergoglio twice invoked his right to refuse to appear in open court in trials involving torture and murder inside the Navy Mechanics School and the theft of babies from detainees. When he did testify in 2010, his answers were evasive, human rights attorney Myriam Bregman said.
Bergoglio’s own statements proved church officials knew from early on that the junta was torturing and killing its citizens even as the church publicly endorsed the dictators, she said.
Rubin, a religious affairs writer for the Argentine newspaper Clarin, said Bergoglio took major risks to save ‘‘subversives’’ during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, but never spoke about it publicly before his 2010 biography, ‘‘The Jesuit.’’
In the book, Bergoglio wrote that he didn’t want to stoop to his critics’ level — and then shared some of his stories. He said he once passed his Argentine identity papers to a wanted man with a similar appearance, enabling him to escape to Brazil, and added that many times he sheltered people inside church properties before they were safely delivered into exile.
The most damning accusation against Bergoglio is that as the young leader of Argentina’s Jesuit order, he withdrew his support for two slum priests whose activist colleagues were disappearing. The priests were kidnapped and tortured at the Navy Mechanics School.
Bergoglio said he had told the priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused.
But Yorio later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work. Yorio is now dead, and Jalics has refused to discuss these events since moving into a German monastery.
Both priests were eventually dropped off blindfolded in a field, two of the few detainees to have survived that prison.
Rubin said Bergoglio only reluctantly told him the rest of the story: that he had gone to great lengths to save them.
Then in his 30s, he persuaded the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so that he could say Mass instead. Once inside Videla’s home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy, Rubin wrote.
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Related: "In Argentina, an early riser who shunned luxuries; The son of middle-class Italian immigrants to Argentina, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio generally denied himself the luxuries that previous cardinals in Buenos Aires enjoyed."
That gave him the inside track at the job.
Also see: Jose Martinez de Hoz; faced rights charges in Argentina
He was a friend of Francis?
"Latin America sees change under region’s first pope" by Katherine Corcoran | Associated Press, March 15, 2013
MEXICO CITY — Many hope Pope Francis will bring a familiar cultural warmth, while pushing the church to address a divisive gap between rich and poor in the region. He is also seen as someone who could bridge Latin America’s left-right political split as a conservative devoted to fighting poverty....
Careful, dude.
Almost everything about Pope Francis suggests a shift from Benedict, who put his focus on saving Europe and was criticized for waiting seven years before visiting Latin America. The new pope picked a name that has never been used, an apparent reference to a humble friar who dedicated his life to helping the poor. He comes from an order, the Jesuits, that had never produced a pope. He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church....
Latin America, with roughly 600 million people, is home to some of the world’s poorest and most violent countries, with organized crime and drug trafficking causing a spike in killings in recent years. It is one of the most unequal regions in the world, though the gap has been closing as more people have moved into the middle class.
Francis was unafraid to challenge the Argentine government for being too liberal or to label fellow church members as hypocrites for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.
‘‘His discourse is very close to the social doctrine of the church,’’ said Elio Masferrer, a religion expert at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. ‘‘That includes the criticism that in this time there are sectors of the clergy who behave like aristocrats, like princes of the church.’’
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"Vatican defends pope against Dirty War accusations" by Daniel J. Wakin | New York Times, March 16, 2013
VATICAN CITY — For the first time since the election of Pope Francis two days ago, the Vatican formally defended him on Friday from accusations that, decades ago in the so-called “dirty war” in his home country of Argentina, he knew about serious human rights abuses but failed to do enough to halt them.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said there had ‘‘never been a credible accusation against him’’ relating to the period in the 1970s when he was superior of the Jesuit order in Argentina.
Indeed, ‘‘there have been many declarations of how much he did for many people to protect them from the military dictatorship,’’ Lombardi said in a statement at a news conference.
‘‘The accusations belong to the use of a historical-social analysis of facts for many years by the anti-clerical left to attack the church and must be rejected decisively,’’ he said.
Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was elected by fellow cardinals Wednesday and much of his behavior since then has seemed to indicate a shift of tone at the Vatican to a more humble and frugal approach....
The question of his past has never been far below the surface, rekindling accusations relating to a conflict in which as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.
At the news conference Friday, Lombardi repeated assertions by a prominent human rights campaigner that there had been ‘‘no compromise by Cardinal Bergoglio with the dictatorship.’’
The debate has simmered in Argentina, with journalists there publishing articles and books that appear to contradict Francis’s account of his actions.
These accounts draw not only on documents from the period, but also on statements by priests and lay workers who clashed with Francis.
After the church had denied for years any involvement with the dictatorship, he testified in 2010 that he had met secretly with General Jorge Videla, the former head of the military junta, and Admiral Emilio Massera, the commander of the navy, to ask for the release of two kidnapped priests.
The following year, prosecutors called him to the witness stand to testify on the military junta’s systematic kidnapping of children, a subject he was also accused of knowing about but failing to prevent.
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"Argentina’s ‘Grandmothers’ seek pope’s assistance" by Jorge Pina | Associated Press, April 25, 2013
VATICAN CITY — Members of the Argentine human rights group ‘‘Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo’’ asked Pope Francis on Wednesday for help finding still-missing children taken from political prisoners during the country’s 1976-83 military dictatorship — and said the pontiff told them they could count on him.
Estela de Carlotto, president of the group, met briefly with the Argentine pope after Francis’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square. She handed him a written request that he authorize the opening of archives from the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Argentina in hopes of finding clues about the whereabouts of the children.
The organization estimates that around 500 babies were taken from their mothers while they were detained by the military.
‘‘We ask that they help us, open the archive, and investigate who was responsible in the church for the abduction of our grandchildren,’’ de Carlotto told reporters. She told reporters that Francis had told her: ‘‘You can count on me. You can count on us.’’
The former Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the young head of the Jesuit order in Argentina during the initial years of the dictatorship. In 1998, he was named archbishop of Buenos Aires and the country’s top churchman — a position he held until he was named pope last month.
Under Bergoglio’s leadership, Argentina’s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church’s failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era’s violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.
The babies — some were abducted along with their parents, others were born in captivity — were mainly given to army families or supporters of the military regime, according to a government report titled ‘‘Never Again.’’ In many cases, the infants’ names were changed. The ‘‘Grandmothers’’ group has been marching every Thursday since 1977 in front of Argentina’s Government House, to demand answers about the missing.
Think of it as an adoption program.
‘‘They know where these children can be found,’’ de Carlotto said of church authorities. She said she was satisfied with her brief meeting with the pope but criticized him for not speaking out about the ‘‘disappeared’’ during the dictatorship.
Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, didn’t openly confront the military junta as it kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a ‘‘dirty war’’ to eliminate leftist opponents. But human rights activists differ on how much responsibility Bergoglio himself bears given he was just a young priest in charge of a few hundred Jesuits at the time, not the Catholic Church’s main representative in the country.
The request to open the Vatican archives is somewhat fraught: the archives are sealed for decades after a pontificate and are opened only after they have been catalogued. Vatican archivists are currently working at an accelerated pace to open the archives of Pope Pius XII amid charges from some Jewish groups that the World War II-era pontiff didn’t speak out enough against the Holocaust.
Somehow I knew that would be mentioned at some point.
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"Meeting poses test of pope’s diplomatic skills; Argentine leader requests his help with Falklands" by Nicole Winfield | Associated Press, March 19, 2013
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ diplomatic skills were tested Monday as his political nemesis, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, asked him to intervene in the dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
You can take a swing through if you want.
Related:
Cameron won’t hand over Falklands
Pretty big boast.
Also see: Why Bother Voting in Britain? for more on the Falklands flap.
You can take a swing through if you want.
Related:
Cameron won’t hand over Falklands
Pretty big boast.
Also see: Why Bother Voting in Britain? for more on the Falklands flap.
There was no immediate comment from the Vatican as to whether the Argentine-born Francis would accept her request, which was made during his inaugural audience with a visiting head of state on the eve of his installation as pope.
Francis and Fernandez are longtime rivals: As leader of Argentina’s Catholics, he had accused her populist government of demagoguery, while she called his position on gay adoptions reminiscent of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition.
But where the Falklands are concerned, Francis has been quoted as saying that Britain ‘‘usurped’’ the remote islands, which Argentina claims and calls the Malvinas.
Argentina and Britain fought a 1982 war over the islands. Earlier this month, the islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a British territory.
See: Respect Falkland decision, United Kingdom says
See: Respect Falkland decision, United Kingdom says
Fernandez told journalists Monday after having lunch with the pope that she had asked for Francis’ intercession to ‘‘facilitate dialogue’’ with Britain over the islands.
Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he didn’t agree with Francis’ views on the Falklands.
In asking Francis to intervene, Fernandez said she recalled how Pope John Paul II averted war in 1978 between Argentina and Chile over three tiny islands in the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of South America. With military governments on both sides poised for battle, he sent his personal envoy to mediate the crisis through shuttle diplomacy between Santiago and Buenos Aires, and eventually brought both governments to the Vatican to consider his compromise.
The conflict wasn’t entirely resolved until after democracy returned to Argentina and both sides signed a ‘‘treaty of peace and friendship’’ at the Vatican in 1984, giving the islands to Chile but maritime rights to Argentina.
Also see: Chile's Catholic House of Horrors
Let's just wasn't any fun playing hide-and-seek.
Also see: Chile's Catholic House of Horrors
Let's just wasn't any fun playing hide-and-seek.
On Monday, Fernandez gave Francis a picture of a marble monument honoring the 30th anniversary of John Paul II’s negotiations, and then used the opportunity to bring up the issue of sovereignty over the Falklands.
They also seemed to have patched up their relationship.
Fernandez gave the new pope a mate gourd and straw, to hold the traditional Argentine tea that Francis loves, and he gave her a kiss.
‘‘Never in my life has a pope kissed me!’’ Fernandez said afterward.
Fernandez and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner, defied church teaching to push through a series of measures with popular backing in Argentina, including mandatory sex education in schools, and free distribution of contraceptives in public hospitals.
Related: Kissing Kershner Good Night
He's the one who told western creditors and debt enslavers to f*** off, huh? And he died a sudden death? And now his wife has cancer?
Related: Kissing Kershner Good Night
He's the one who told western creditors and debt enslavers to f*** off, huh? And he died a sudden death? And now his wife has cancer?
Fernandez called on the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires at his temporary home, the Vatican hotel on the edge of the Vatican gardens, and the two later had lunch together, a day before she and other world leaders attend his installation Mass in St. Peter’s Square that some estimates say could bring 1 million people to Rome.
The Vatican on Monday released details of the Mass....
"Pope seeks decisive action against sex abuse" by FRANCES D’Emilio | Associated Press, April 06, 2013
VATICAN CITY — The announcement was quickly dismissed by some victims’ advocates as just more talk, while others lobbying for reform in the church held out hope the new pontiff might challenge the Vatican’s bureaucratic culture seen as fostering a cover-up mentality....
That's what we were hoping about Obama and you see how that worked out.
That's what we were hoping about Obama and you see how that worked out.
In his homeland, Roman Catholic activists had characterized him as being slow to act against such abuse in his years heading the Argentine church....
Pope Francis’s expressed intentions left some victims’ advocates unimpressed. ‘‘Once again, as have happened hundreds of times already, a top Catholic official says he is asking another top Catholic official to take action about pedophile priests and complicit bishops,’’ said Barbara Dorris, an official of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a US-based organization.
‘‘Big deal. Actions speak louder than words. And one of the first actions Pope Francis took was to visit perhaps the most high-profile corrupt prelate on the planet, Cardinal Bernard Law, who remains a powerful church official despite having been drummed out of Boston for hiding and enabling crimes by hundreds of child molesting clerics,’’ Dorris said in a statement.
Others were cautiously giving Francis the benefit of doubt — for now....
The clergy child abuse scandals in many countries have drained morale and finances from the church, driving countless Catholics away, especially in Western Europe.
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"US abuse victims demand action from pope" by Gillian Flaccus | Associated Press, March 16, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Most Roman Catholics are rejoicing at the election of Pope Francis, but victims of clergy abuse in the United States are demanding swift and bold actions from the new Jesuit pontiff: Defrock all molester priests and the cardinals who covered up for them, formally apologize, and release all confidential church files.
Adding to their distrust are several multimillion dollar settlements the Jesuits paid out in recent years, including $166 million to more than 450 Native Alaskan and Native American abuse victims in 2011 for molestation at Jesuit-run schools across the Pacific Northwest.
The settlement bankrupted the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus....
See:
You Better Be Prepared For This Post
Better Be Prepared For This Post
Catholic Church Crimes in California
Worship This Missouri Post
Pope Francis, who has set the tone for a new era of humility and compassion, is likely to be sensitive to the plight of clergy abuse victims and aware of the need to work with the worldwide church to prevent more abuse, said Christopher Ruddy, an associate professor at Catholic University of America.
But meting out punishment to individual cardinals is much less likely, Ruddy said.
‘‘My sense is that if a bishop really wanted to dig in his heels, it would be very difficult to get him to resign. We have this idea that the pope says something, and everybody just leaps. It doesn’t really work that way,’’ Ruddy said. ‘‘The bishops themselves have certain rights under church law and they have authority, so that’s a hard thing to talk about.’’
The new pontiff, who comes from Latin America, where the clergy abuse scandal has been more muted, will probably lean on the American cardinals for advice when it comes to handling the crisis — particularly Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley....
Related:
"Observers say that Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s moment in the spotlight could propel him into a more prominent role in the worldwide church. It might also offer a boost at home, where a decade into his tenure, he continues to face daunting challenges: Pews are emptying, finances remain strained, and he is in the midst of an ambitious effort to reorganize the archdiocese in hopes of changing those dynamics."
Also see: Pope’s visit with Cardinal Law criticized
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Not leaving you on a very hopeful note.
