Related: Sunday Globe Special: Persecuted Christians
"The Vatican faced sharp questioning by a United Nations panel Monday about whether it had failed to abide by an international treaty against torture in its response to the sexual abuse of children by priests."
It probably is, but that is a slippery slope.
"Vatican defrocks 848 priests over 10 years of abuse" by John Heilprin and Nicole Winfield | Associated Press May 07, 2014
GENEVA — The Vatican revealed Tuesday that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004.
The Vatican’s UN ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a United Nations committee monitoring implementation of the UN treaty against torture....
Related: Jesus Crist
Legal specialists have said that sexual violence against children can be considered torture [and] classifying sexual abuse as torture could expose the Catholic Church to a new wave of lawsuits since torture cases in much of the world do not carry statutes of limitations....
Then Obummer and all the Bush war criminals can still be prosecuted.
The Vatican statistics are notable in that they show how the peaks in numbers over the years — both of cases reported and sanctions meted out — roughly parallels the years in which abuse scandals were in the news. And they showed that far from diminishing in recent years, the number of cases reported annually to the Vatican has remained a fairly constant 400 or so since 2010, the last year the scandal erupted in public around the globe. These cases, however, concern mostly abuse that occurred decades ago....
The latest spike began in 2010, when 464 cases were reported, more than twice the amount in 2009. Starting in that same year, the Vatican began resorting more and more to the lesser penalty of sentencing accused priests to a lifetime of penance and prayer rather than defrocking them. The Vatican often metes out such sentences for elderly or infirm priests, since defrocking them would essentially render them destitute in their final years....
Tomasi stressed the lesser sanctions still amounted to punishment and the abuser was ‘‘put in a place where he doesn’t have any contact with the children.’’
The main US victim’s group, SNAP, praised the Vatican for releasing the data, saying, ‘‘Every step toward more transparency about clergy sex crimes and coverups is good.’’
But the group called the numbers ‘‘meaningless’’ and urged the Vatican to release the names and whereabouts of molesters.
Tomasi’s appearance marked the second time this year that the Vatican has been hauled before a UN committee to face uncomfortable questions about how it has handled the crisis of priests who raped and molested tens of thousands of children, and the bishops who covered up for them.
I'm not defending that perversion, not at all; however, as a Catholic I am starting to feel picked on and persecuted.
The Vatican was required to appear as a signatory to UN treaties.
As opposed to the U.S. government that ignores them.
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Related: Pope OK’s miracle for Paul VI in sainthood process
He was the only Pope who didn't pump a pooper.
"What’s at stake when Pope Francis visits the Holy Land" by John L. Allen Jr. | Globe Staff May 17, 2014
Pope Francis leaves next Saturday for a brief but intense three-day outing to Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, and Israel, a region Christians traditionally call the “Holy Land.” He’ll become the fourth pope to make the trip, which is always a religious and political high-wire act.
Four challenges await him, beginning with the situation facing the region’s small Christian minority.
Related:
"I am very alarmed that the Israeli media has published a detailed itinerary of the Pope's visit, stating where he will be and when he will be there. If I were head of the Pope's security I would be changing the schedule right now. This detailed itinerary is an open invitation for some Muslim (nudge nudge wink wink) to assassinate the Pope, angering the world's Christians against the world's Muslims (not to mention allowing Pope Benny to come out of retirement and re-assume the throne."
That's the biggest challenge. I can see Israel setting up some Arab patsy and setting Muslims and Christians at each other. Already been doing it for decades.
Please take great care, Pope. Hell, just cancel the trip.
Across the Middle East, Christians have declined from 20 percent of the population in the early 20th century to roughly 4 percent, and that decline is palpable in the Holy Land. The city of Bethlehem in the Palestinian Territories, where Francis will say an open-air Mass on Sunday, was almost entirely Christian a century ago, but today it’s more than two-thirds Muslim.
Related: Globe Xmas Gift: Little Town of Bethlehem
The Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, warns that the Holy Land, if the trend continues, could become a “spiritual Disneyland” — full of glittering attractions, but empty of flesh-and-blood believers.
Though Israel’s Christian population is actually inching up, things are hardly rosy. They’re reeling from a series of attacks by Jewish extremists, including graffiti left on Christian sites reading “Death to Arabs and Christians” and “Jesus is Garbage.”
Just wondering how all the Christian Zionist jerks in AmeriKa feel about those people they are supporting over there. It isn't only Muslims getting kicked in the teeth by Zionist militants.
Life is hardly a picnic on the Palestinian side either. In 2007, the only Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip was firebombed and its owner murdered by Islamic radicals. In 2010, the lone Christian orphanage on the West Bank was closed under pressure from the Palestinian Authority.
I don't believe the Jewish narrative or version when it comes to Palestinians. Sorry.
Related(?):
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Well, yeah....
In that context, Francis’ trip represents a chance to urge believers to hold on, and to persuade them that the world’s most important Christian leader has their back.
The second challenge of the visit is its ecumenical dimension, meaning the church’s ongoing effort to foster unity within the divided Christian family. Nowhere are those divisions more apparent than the Holy Land, where virtually every form of Christianity has a toehold which it defends tenaciously.
***************
Francis will meet the patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, regarded as the “first among equals” in the Orthodox world, and for the first time in the Holy Land the two leaders will preside together over a public prayer....
It remains to be seen whether the tête-à-tête between Francis and Bartholomew can overcome mutual suspicions centuries in the making.
Third is the inter-faith level of the journey, meaning relations between Christianity and the other two great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam.
Pope Francis is setting the right tone, inviting both a Jew and a Muslim to be part of his official delegation. They’re old friends: Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires, with whom the future pope coauthored a 2010 book, and Omar Abboud of the Islamic Center of the Argentine Republic. A Vatican spokesman defined the choice to include leaders of other faiths in the papal party as an “absolute novelty.”
In terms of inter-faith relations, Francis may carry less baggage than any pope who has ever visited the Holy Land.
As a non-European, Francis isn’t associated by most Jews with anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, while most Muslims don’t tie him to the Crusades or the “clash of civilizations.”
Related: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
It was a NEO-CON IDEA!
They know the pope’s record of outreach in Argentina, including having a private Christmas dinner every year with the director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, visiting a mosque and an Arabic school, and inviting Jewish and Muslim leaders to join him for celebrations of Argentina’s Independence Day.
As popes have done in the past, Francis will visit the Dome of the Rock to meet Muslim leaders, and will pray at the Western Wall followed by a session with the chief rabbis of Israel.
Let's hope no Zionist zettlers are mucking around it.
Francis is not expected to deliver a breathtaking new vision for inter-faith relations, though Skorka made an interesting point in a recent lecture in Rome about the pope’s approach. When Europeans set the agenda, Skorka said, talk is usually about the burdens of the past. With Francis, the focus is on what religions can do together right now, especially for the poor.
Fourth and finally, there’s the political subtext.
For decades, the Vatican’s diplomatic line on the Middle East has favored a two-state solution with security guarantees for Israel, sovereignty for the Palestinians, and a special status for Jerusalem and holy sites. The question is not whether the new pontiff will uphold that position (he will), and certainly not whether he’ll be energetic about promoting peace. It couldn’t be otherwise for the first pope named Francis.
The drama is instead whether this popular pope can spend some of his political capital to shame each side into making concessions that will at least allow them to resume talking.
By themselves, papal trips rarely change the world. If Francis accomplishes even a fraction of his ambitious agenda, however, this one could go down as among the most memorable chapters of his papacy.
Let's hope it is not because he is assassinated.
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Related: Meeting will highlight Christianity in Turkey
Is that who they are going to set up as a patsy again? A Turk?
This kind of talk will also get you killed, but here is an example:
"Two people accused of scamming Catholic charity" by Nicholas Jacques | Globe Correspondent May 11, 2014
Uxbridge police are seeking the public’s help to find two people who allegedly scammed a church charity in April.
According to a statement released by police Saturday, Joseph Viscusi and Laura Ryan, who are believed to be New York residents, gave false information to St. Mary’s Church’s chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in order to receive emergency aid from the charity.
Police are warning local charities that the pair may be serial swindlers, having possibly bilked money from similar charities around the Northeast.
Viscusi allegedly told parishioners at St. Mary’s that he needed financial assistance for rent, child care, and travel and living expenses after spending the money he had on his uncle’s burial in New York, the statement said. The society provided the two alleged scammers with immediate aid because Viscusi said he needed the money to pay his rent that day before going to work, police said.
It was not clear how much money was taken.
After providing the pair with the money, the church discovered the Uxbridge and Douglas addresses they had provided were fake, authorities said.
Stephen Abate, president of the St. Mary’s St. Vincent de Paul chapter, said in an interview that the charity wrote Viscusi and Ryan a check without going through normal procedures. Typically, volunteers fact-check applicants’ requests and do not pay them directly, but because Viscusi said he needed the money immediately, that precaution did not take place.
“We did it for the right reasons, so we’re not upset,” Abate said.
Taking the forgiveness stuff a bit far, aren't we?
Police said they subsequently determined that Viscusi, who is in his 50s, and Ryan, who is in her late 20s, may be connected to similar scams in New Jersey and elsewhere.
Police have issued warrants for both suspects. They were seen driving a red or maroon sedan, possibly a Ford. The car most likely has New York license plates, police said.
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Related: Police release photos of woman suspected in scam
Found her at home?
