The Vatican's unprecedented four-day sex crimes symposium ended in Rome last week with high-ranking churchmen revealing the staggering extent of child abuse by priests working in the largest religious organization in the world. With more than 100 cardinals, bishops, other churchmen, religious and some laypersons in attendance, Pope Benedict XVI, who has faced thousands of sex abuse scandals in Europe and the United States since becoming pontiff, did not participate in the proceedings convened not far from the Vatican itself. The symposium was organized by Rome's Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University and co-sponsored by several Vatican departments including the Evangelization of Peoples that chooses bishops. As unbelievable as it is, the core of the symposium's function was to address the mushrooming crisis of sex crimes committed by agents of the Vatican upon young members of the Catholic Church that were covered up by those ranking highest in the Holy See, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
Covert Vatican dealings
The defining address was given by Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), originally the Office of the Inquisition and the department currently responsible for collecting and examining evidence of child sex crimes from Catholic dioceses around the world. Cardinal Levada, who covered up criminal reports of child rape and sexual assault when he served as archbishop of San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon ('Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests', SNAP, www.snapnetwork.org), revealed that in the last decade, and under the directorships of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dealt secretly with more than 4,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic bishops and priests. That figure is in excess of one new priestly rape case every day of the week for ten consecutive years, and that task required the full-time involvement of 38 Vatican staff members. That figure is barely the tip of the iceberg as far as rape and molestation of children in the Church of Rome is concerned, confirmed by the USA's main victim's advocacy group, 'Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests' (SNAP). Their detailed research estimated that the true number of paedophiles employed by the Vatican world-wide is '20,000 priests' (SNAP, September, 2011; www.snapnetwork.org).
Chilling new figures
The figures admitted to the attending delegates were stunning. Two American experts, Michael Bemi, President of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group, Inc., and Pat Neal, Director of VIRTUS Programs and Services, told the gathering that in recent times there may have been as many as 100,000 child victims in the United States alone, almost ten times the estimate recently given by US bishops. If the USA figures are extrapolated worldwide, one can conservatively estimate that in excess of 300,000 children have been sexually molested by Catholic clerics, and that illustrates a reality which can only be described as horrendous.
'Mafia-like' tactics exposed
The Vatican's prosecutor on sex abuse cases, Maltese Monsignor Charles Scicluna told participants in the summit that while the Vatican has canonical laws to punish priesthood abusers, the existence of those laws wasn't enough to be effective. He made a stunning reference to the 'deadly culture of silence, or omerta' that has pervaded the Catholic Church's reaction to the sex abuse crisis. 'Omerta' is the Italian word for the Mafia's 'code of silence', and rarely, if ever, has it been used by a Vatican official to describe the actions of the Holy Mother Church. Monsignor Scicluna, who works at the side of Pope Benedict XVI in dealing with the sexual abuse of minors by priests, called for stricter accountability for bishops who suppressed child abuse crimes and admitted that 1,000 cases had been reported to him in just the past two years. 'It is not acceptable that when there are set standards, people do not follow the set standards', he added.
Hierarchs still seeking 'forgiveness'
Professor Eugene Cullen Kennedy, emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago, in his learned article about last week's Rome symposium entitled, 'Does the hierarchy's getting together mean it's falling apart?' made this comment:
'There is something immensely poignant about these administrators coming together back at square one, still fighting a rear-guard action about a problem whose dimensions have been explained to them on many occasions'.It is a remarkable fact that Cardinal Levada was fully briefed on the magnitude of the crisis in a graphically detailed report presented to him in 1985 by Fr. Thomas Doyle, a Vatican canon lawyer and devoted defender of victims of clergy sex abuse. Fr. Doyle informed the Vatican in writing of a major clerical sex abuse problem that he predicted would cost the Church of Rome 'a billion dollars a year' if the hierarchs failed to respond (National Catholic Reporter). Some two and half decades ago Levada, Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Pio Laghi, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, and Cardinal John Krol [of Philadelphia] were all fully briefed, verbally and in writing on the enormity of sexual assault reports facing the Church of Rome. Of last week's symposium, Professor Kennedy added this comment: 'The assembled hierarchs, like sinners coming down at a Billy Graham crusade to be saved, attended a service at which 'we implore', in the words of Canadian Cardinal Marc Oullet, 'forgiveness for those who have abused in various ways'. Jail sentences would be far more appropriate.
('National Catholic Reporter', February 9th, 2012, article by Eugene Cullen Kennedy; 'Does the hierarchy's getting together mean it's falling apart?')
Bishops still not accountable
Victims' groups dismissed the conference as nothing more than a PR stunt that added thousands more meaningless words to the tens of thousands of insincere statements already uttered by Catholic leaders around the world:
'It was an affront to the thousands of victim/survivors and their families from around the world that the Vatican insisted on turning a conference supposedly centred on child protection into a publicity stunt. The same Church officials who hosted this 'conference' are the same clerics who conspired, enabled, and covered up child sex crimes for decades, and left countless victims in their wake. It is unconscionable that these same individuals would purport to instruct others, even bishops, on how to protect children … the conference was notable for those who did not attend; there were no law enforcement officials, no victim's advocacy organizations, no human rights organizations, and no mental health professionals not affiliated with the Church'.Many victims were concerned that the Holy See had done nothing, and will do nothing, to punish bishops for their high-level involvement in the cover-ups of crimes committed in their dioceses. One spokesperson said, 'The Church's words and its actions do not go together; bishops are still not accountable and still do not have to report abuse to the police, nor have they been made subject to independent oversight'.
(SNAP Wisconsin, February, 2012; www.snapnetwork.org)
What Pope Benedict XVI didn't say
As a prelude to the conference, Pope Benedict XVI sent a message asking the attending bishops to respond to the clerical sex abuse crisis in a 'Christ-like' manner as part of a 'profound renewal' of the Church of Rome, not mentioning the fact that the Vatican has never brought forth any physical evidence for the existence of a Gospel personality called Jesus Christ.
The 'crisis is far from over' (Cardinal Reinhart Marx)
The final act of the symposium was the announcement of a new internet-based 'Centre for Child Protection', designed to educate priests, deacons, and other church personnel, and 'promote a culture of vigilance in Catholic environments' (Deacon Hubert Liebhardt, educational scientist). Cardinal Reinhart Marx of Munich said one thing seemed clear to him as a result of his experience with paedophile priests in Germany and that was highlighted by the revelations at the symposium: 'The work of dealing with the abuse crisis is far from over', he said.
Startling breaking news
To confirm Cardinal Marx's opinion on just the day after the Rome symposium ended, spectacular news was released in the USA by attorney Jeffrey Anderson who revealed that 8,000 children were sexually abused by around 100 previously unnamed priests and other offenders in the Milwaukee Catholic Diocese. Anderson spoke of files that he obtained presently under seal that relate to the Vatican's involvement, adding that they paint an 'ugly picture' of the Vatican's role in an alleged international cover-up conspiracy. The sheer magnitude of the Milwaukee numbers, and the international extent of Church sex crimes constitutes a public and child safety crisis, and these offenses are an intrinsic part of a religion that is strangely accepted by Catholics who turn a blind eye to the crimes. It is notable that Catholics who chanted 'santo subito' ('saint immediately!') at John Paul II's funeral, never rose up in anger against the Vatican to chant, 'End papal protection of paedophile priests immediately!' and were silent about the extraordinary case in Alaska where a Catholic priest and a 'deacon' molested nearly 80% of the children in one village, almost on a daily basis (The Silence, a Frontline investigation of priesthood sex abuse in Alaska, PBS, April 19th, 2011).
Vatican rumours of assassination and skulduggery reminiscent of the Borgia's
Again, on the day after the closing of the Rome symposium and amidst a flurry of rumours, leaks and allegations of a widespread culture of financial corruption in the Vatican that experts believe is emanating from a bitter power struggle, the explosive story broke of a purported plot to kill Pope Benedict XVI during this year. The Vatican did not deny that in January 2012 it received a top secret letter from a high Church official describing how an Italian cardinal visiting China had said that it is possible the Pope is being targeted by assassins to be killed before November 2012.
The sordid truth remains
For over three decades now, the noxious influence of the sex-abuse scandal has spread like a disease throughout Catholicism, demoralizing millions of faithful followers and undermining the hierarchy in one country after another. The dark reality of the end result of the Rome symposium substantiated the fact that the Catholic priesthood is a cesspool of depraved paedophile and pederast priests wallowing in a sewer of moral defilement, and the toxic influence of their scandals, and the complicity of popes, cardinals and bishops in protecting them, has seeped deadly poison into the very heart of the pretence of Christian morality right across the globe.
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