The fall of the Vatican.....bring it down

http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/06/fall-of-vatican-fall-of-romebring-it.html

Benedict XVI is a mixed-up Pope. The Catholic Church is the safest haven for criminals

Benedict XVI is a mixed-up Pope trying to act infallible one way and rambling incoherent words in another. The latest words coming out of Benedict XVI’s mouth are “penance, forgiveness and justice to resolve the sexual abuse” which are contrary and incompatible with each other. There is no room for “penance and forgiveness” in CSI Crime Scene Investigation sites, crime laboratories and jails in every cities and countries in the world. “Penance and forgiveness” have no function in every country’s justice system or else all our courthouses would be empty and judges and lawyers would be totally unnecessary. “Penance and forgiveness”, including the Mass, the Rosary, all forms of spirituality, canon laws and doctrines cannot protect children from criminals and pedophile priests; neither can they control the abominable lust of predator priests as exemplified by the immoral Fr. Marcial Maciel, the most famous cash cow of the Vatican and one of the best friends of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. See our earlier article “Theology and John Paul II are heartless and together they made the immoral Fr. Marcial Maciel thrive" http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/theology-and-john-paul-ii-are-heartless.html

The speedy (unexpected and unpredicted) move of Obama to assert Benedict XVI’s political immunity in the USA almost quashing a US litigation against the Holy See shows that there will never be justice within the Catholic Church and within the Vatican. In fact, the Catholic Church is the safest haven for criminals who can simply come and go incognito in the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist. So for the victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army, they can only expect the rambling talks by the Pope and Cardinals and Bishops who are biding time for the world to forget this most heinous crime under the Holy See of John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. The only justice Benedict XVI knows is silencing Jesuits like Jon Sobrino and Jacques Dupuis for criticising the hypocrisy of the papacy. Benedict XVI never silenced one pedophile priests or one Cardinal guilty of perpetuating priest pedophilia. Instead he promotes them like our own criminal Cardinal Bernard Law who aided and abetted more than 100 pedophile priests in Boston and is now sitting as Archpriest in Rome’s most prestigious basilica of St. Mary Major.

The papacy is the only remaining feudal system in the world with its powerful Conference of Bishops and papal nuncios in every country. The Vatican Bank can still bribe and buy justice to cover up its own crimes as it has done for 2,000 years and this is shown in recent court ruling in favour of dioceses and pedophile priests and in Obama’s latest move to protect Benedict XVI’s political immunity in the USA.

Why is Obama not siding with American victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army?

Obama is busy meeting with Benedict XVI’s Vatican representatives instead of solving the BP oil leak crisis at the Gulf of Mexico and other more important problems of other larger countries than (the smallest state of ) the Vatican. If American presidents will observe and honor the 5,000 American victims of September 11 for all years to come, why can’t Obama also observe and honor the more than 12,000 victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army? See our earlier article “Vatican buys Obama's soul and he quashes US litigation against Benedict XVI who aided and abetted pedophile priest who sodomized 200 deaf boys" http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/05/vatican-buys-obamas-soul-and-he-quashes.html


The ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’ is the safest haven for criminals

No amount of papal words Benedict XVI says and media-spins his Vatican trillion dollar Bank paid professional journalists make, especially the highest paid journalist John L. Allen Jr of All Things Catholic of NCR in the USA, can protect children from pedophile priests. In Los Angeles alone, there are more than 600 pedophile priests roaming free under the cloak of holiness and the Eucharist and they are free to go on sodomizing children for the rest of their lives because they are protected by “confidentiality” paid for by billionaire Cardinal Roger Mahony. There is no Catholic registry of pedophile priests today to protect children and inform parents and therefore they can never keep their children from harm’s way within Catholic Churches. So the Catholic Church is the safest haven for criminal pedophile priests and all other criminals because priests are, under the Seal of Confession, re not allowed to report them to the police.

The almighty pope Benedict XVI can NEVER bring justice to victims of pedophile priests because the ‘One, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’ is the best shelter of the criminals of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army.

Benedict XVI’s Zeffireli costumes or Emperor’s Clothes cannot hide his evil heart and soul which are reflected in his evil eyes. “The eyes are the windows of the soul” and every papal gaze of Benedict XVI is very scary. See his actual evil eyes photos http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/evil-eyes-of-benedict-xvi.html


Benedict XVI’s range of incoherence

The range of emotions and incoherent papal exhortations that Benedict XVI have displayed since the shocking revelations of priest-pedophilia in Ireland, in his personal hometown of Bavaria in Germany and in Europe, and in the personal lawsuit against him exposed by the New York Times shows a deranged leader who is both guilty and out of control with their defense of their crimes. On Palm Sunday and Holy Week, he and Cardinal Sodano belittled the New York Times as “Cheap Gossip of the moment” for its expose of Fr. Lawrence Murphy who sodomized 200 deaf boys under Cardinal Ratzinger’s powerful watchful eyes.

During the entire holiest week of Catholicism, Benedict XVI and his Vatican media-spinners, including the papal preacher Cantalamessa who drew the Anti-Semitism card, tried to defend the guilty then Cardinal Ratzinger by mocking the New York Times as “cheap gossip”. Cardinal Ratzinger was the most powerful Head of the CDF Conference for the Doctrine of the Faith (a sweeter 20th century name for the Inquisition as modified by John Paul II) and he condoned Fr. Lawrence Murphy who sodomized 200 deaf boys in Milwaukee and when New York Times revealed it, he simply called it “cheap gossip”. That proves how callous Benedict XVI really is to children who were sodomized by pedophile priests. He has neither remorse nor shame and after Holy Week, he went on to celebrate his birthday with a lavish party at the Vatican with the president of Italy http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedicts-birthday-party-sick-parody-of.html.

Just like his papal clone John Paul II, Benedict XVI neither has compunction nor compassion for the hundreds of thousands of little boys sodomised by the thousands of holy members of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. Today, with the revelation that Italy has about 100 pedophile priest for decades, Benedict XVI is mixing up “penance and justice” which really are incompatible. Those Italian pedophile priests should be revealed in a Catholic registry and stand trial and be put to jail where they can no longer have access to children. We already exposed it first that “Penance is not justice. Penitence is inequality to lifetime sufferings of victims of John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army” http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/penance-is-not-justice-penitence-is.html


Catholic Church justice incompatible and impossible in secular justice

The fact is, it is impossible to mix “penance, forgiveness and justice” within the Catholic Church’s ways and with Canon laws. The Catholic forgiveness and mercy or whatever way they call it would shut down all our CSI Crime Scene Investigation and laboratories, all justice and court houses, and there would be no need at all for lawyers and judges. The Sacrament of penance is no use for the safety of children and women. Canon law is totally useless for the protection and safety of children from pedophile priests.

The fact is the Vatican is the most corrupt institution today and the priest- pedophilia is the last frontier to bring this institution down -- for God will do it soon to totally demise the Vatican as predicted by the Third Secret of Fatima. No Eucharist and sacraments can save it because the Pope and the Vatican Bank are the most corrupt leaders on the planet.

No amount of Latin Masses and Rosaries of the Opus Dei can save it for OD was the most responsible complicit of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army for over 26 years. So their time is coming close to an end like the City of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Temple of Solomon. Now it’s the Vatican City of Rome that will disappear from the face of the Earth ready to be swallowed up in Hell…as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917.

See our related articles which Benedict XVI and the Vatican are studying under a microscope:

Sins and crimes are not synonymous. Sinners and criminals are not one and the same
http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/sins-and-crimes-are-not-synonymous.html

Penance is not justice; penitence is inequality to the lifetime suffering of victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/penance-is-not-justice-penitence-is.html

The French Revolution at the Vatican might start in England with the arrest of Benedict XVI led by the British Dawkins and Hitchens http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/french-revolution-at-vatican-might.html

No amount of ‘historic apology’ Benedict makes will matter -- unless he fires the first criminals Cardinal Bernard Law & Cardinal Roger Mahony http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

Opus Dei female symbol for John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/opus-dei-female-symbol-for-john-paul-ii.html

Spiritual healing, the Eucharist and the Rosary bring NEITHER JUSTICE NOR SAFETY FOR CHILDREN, the preys of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/spiritual-healing-eucharist-and-rosary.html

Vatican Pandora Pedophile Box and “The Myth of the Pedophile Priest” in Zenit.org in 2002 http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/vatican-pandora-pedophile-box-in-2002.html

John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army committed Holy ES Eucharist-and-Sodomy of Biblical proportions http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/01/biggest-vatican-stories-of-decade-john.html

‘Forgiveness’ is a gizmo of injustice to victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. To Vaticanista chiesa.espresso Sandro Magister, Baloney! http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/03/forgiveness-is-gizmo-of-injustice-to.html


See our weblogs in the John Paul II Millstone http://jp2m.blogspot.com/

John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/

John Paul II indeed led a sinful 26 years papacy and the filth the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Armyis now rest upon the shoulders of Benedict XVI. But Cardinal Ratzinger is as guilty as John Paul II because he had all the powers as Cardinal Ratzinger to defrock and excommunicate pedophile priest but instead he chose to aid and abet them and cover-them up.

And Benedict XVI’s Vatican paid media-spinners are as tangled as he is. The Vatican trillion dollar bank cannot cover-up truth no matter how professional those Vatican writers are, for at the end of the day, they are still evidently Pied Piers for the Vatican, see John L. Allen Jr the Pied Piper of Benedict XVI toots “Will Ratzinger's past trump Benedict's present?” http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/john-allen-of-ncr-pied-piper-of.html. The Vatican was able to cover-up priest-pedophilia for decades, especially the 26 years papacy of John Paul II and now Italy reveals 100 cases were covered up for decades.

But ever since the Vatican Pandora Pedophile Box opened in 2002 here in Boston, the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army keeps marching on, not only in the USA, but In Ireland, in Germany, across Europe, in South America and around the world. Wow, what filth Benedict XVI is sitting on in his trillion dollar Chair of St. Peter!

In hindsight, Benedict XVI should have let the Jesuits won the papacy. The Jesuits have their own fair share of pedophile priests and so they would have taken all these dung on their face. But instead, Benedict has to deal with this most grievous sin that John Paul II left behind. At the end, the chickens have home to roost. Benedict XVI after all is the most guilty complicit of John Paul II.

Compare the crimes and sins - Victims - criminals and sinners - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 pedophile priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity



The pope insists in penance, forgiveness and justice to resolve sexual abuse

VATICAN CITY

Rome Reports
[with video]

May 27, 2010. Benedict XVI showed again the necessity of penance, forgiveness and justice to overcome the cases of sexual abuse committed by priests. It was during a meeting with Italian bishops.

Benedict XVI
“What gives rise to scandal must, for us, translate into a profound reminder of the need to re-learn penance and accept purification; to learn, on the one hand, forgiveness and, on the other, the need for justice.”
The pope observed that the desire for a new evangelization in the Church “does not hide the wounds” caused by “weakness and sin of some of its members.”

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Priests’ sex abuse is ‘weakness of sin’, says Pope

VATICAN CITY
Thaindian News

Vatican City, May 27 (IANS/AKI) A few members of the Catholic Church had yielded to the “weakness of sin”, Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday, referring to the sex abuse cases that have engulfed the Vatican.

The pope, who met Catholic priests at the general assembly of the Italian Bishops Conference at the Vatican, said some members of the church had yielded to the “weakness of sin”. But this should not distract people from the contribution of others to the church.

“What gives rise to scandal must, for us, translate into a profound reminder of the need to re-learn penance and accept purification; to learn, on the one hand, forgiveness and, on the other, the need for justice,” Benedict said.

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Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse

ROME

Washington Post
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 25, 2010; 9:48 AM

ROME -- An Italian bishop says there have been about 100 cases of clerical sex abuse over the past 10 years in Italy that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures.

The ANSA and Apcom news agencies say Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops' conference, gave the estimate during a news conference on the sidelines of the bishops' general assembly.
He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation of the priest. And he insisted that Italian law doesn't require bishops to report suspected abuse to police. Some defense lawyers say bishops are required to report since they are public officials.

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For immediate release: Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Italian bishops rule out abuse inquiry; SNAP responds

Statement by Joelle Casteix, SNAP Western Regional Director (949) 322-7434 cell
We’re disappointed but not surprised. In a church hierarchy that largely still insists on denying, minimizing, ignoring and concealing child sex crimes, the Italian bishops are among the worst.

What’s needed in Italy, and many other nations, is an Irish-style inquiry into clergy sex abuse and cover ups - a thorough independent, government-funded probe that will help expose not only predatory priests but corrupt bishops.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world's oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We've been around for 22 years and have more than 9,000 members across the globe. Despite the word "priest" in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contacts: David Clohessy (314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747), Mark Serrano (703-727-4940), Peter Isely (414-429-7259)
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2010/05/26/Italian_bishops_rule_out_abuse_inquiry_466136.html

Italian bishops rule out abuse inquiry

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 » 04:06am

Italy's Bishops' Conference ruled out setting up a special commission to look into child abuse in the Catholic Church on Tuesday, despite the high number of cases, its secretary general said.

The Church has dealt with some hundred paedophile priest cases during the past decade and even a single case is always too much, Mariano Crociata said.
But the bishop said there was no need to imitate the German Bishop's Conference and create a special commission.

Vatican guidelines and the Pope's recommendations to Irish Catholics in March were sufficient for dealing with sex abuse cases, he said.

In a watershed trial in Italy, Bishop Gino Reali testified Thursday in a sex abuse trial against a priest working in his diocese near Rome - a landmark in the predominantly Catholic nation.

Reali had been asked to explain to the court why he had not reacted when two young men complained the priest had sexually abused them when they were teenagers.
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In Brief to High Court, U.S. Supports Vatican in Sex-Abuse Case; SNAP responds

Statement by Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (312-399-4747)

We're glad this brave victim still has a chance to expose Vatican complicity in horrific child sex crimes. We are certain he's known from the outset it would be an uphill struggle seeking justice against the world's largest and oldest monarchy. We're disappointed that a man who has suffered so much will likely see this as another setback, though at the same time, we realize that any time a clergy sex abuse victim clears any hurdle, it's progress, even if it doesn't feel that way at the time.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world's oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We've been around for 22 years and have more than 9,000 members across the globe. Despite the word "priest" in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contacts: David Clohessy (314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747), Mark Serrano (703-727-4940), Peter Isely (414-429-7259)
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/05/25/in-brief-to-high-court-us-supports-vatican-in-sex-abuse-case/

In Brief to High Court, U.S. Supports Vatican in Sex-Abuse Case
By Ashby Jones

For the most part, the U.S. government has stayed on the sideline while big-ticket litigation against the Vatican over sex-abuse claims has played out.
But you can rest assured that folks at the U.S. State Department are paying close attention. After all, it’s not every day that litigation against a foreign nation makes its way to the steps of the Supreme Court.

In a filing made late last week, the U.S. government weighed in, largely siding with the Vatican’s argument that the Ninth Circuit erred by allowing a sex-abuse case to go forward against the Vatican. The move represented a rare foray by Washington into the highly sensitive litigation.

In the filing, the solicitor general’s office urged the Supreme Court to set aside the Ninth Circuit ruling and order the Ninth Circuit to reconsider it in light of a different reading on the law of sovereign immunity. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the filing.

The lawsuit, Doe v. Holy See, was filed in 2002 on behalf of a man who claimed he was sexually abused by a priest in Oregon in the mid-1960s. The plaintiff named the Holy See as a defendant, in addition to a handful of other parties.

The plaintiff’s theory: Since the accused priest had previously been accused of abusing children in Ireland and Chicago, the Vatican should be held accountable for moving the priest to Oregon and continuing to let him serve, where it was conceivable he would continue to abuse. Jeffrey Lena, attorney for the Vatican, noted that the plaintiff has not provided evidence that the Vatican moved the priest in question around, or had control over the priest.

Specifically, the solicitor general’s office argued in its brief that the Ninth Circuit misapplied the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 federal law governing when U.S. courts can hear cases against other countries.

Commenting on the brief, David Bederman, an international-law expert at Emory University School of Law, said that, “the door may still be cracked a bit,” for the plaintiff, “but there’s not a lot of daylight showing.”

Jeffrey Anderson, the lawyer for the plaintiff, called the Solicitor General’s brief “a little perplexing,” but said he remained heartened that the government didn’t recommend more-drastic action, such as dismissing the case altogether.

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Pope Benedict NEVER defended children abused by priests during his lifetime of 82 years – proofs are in the books written by him and about him http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/02/pope-benedict-never-defended-children.html

Vatican buys Obama's soul and he quashes US litigation against Holy See

There is nothing and no one that the trillion dollar Vatican Bank cannot buy and that includes the most powerful man in the world, the President of the United States. So why does it not surprise us that Obama is doing this against the American victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army? Last week, the Vatican just released its latest defense on Benedict XVI and that is lies, lies and lies that “the Bishops are not employees of the Holy See”. And the following week, soon enough, Obama acted and quash the US litigation against the Holy See and nullify every hope of justice for the 200 deaf children who were sexually abused for years in Milwaukee by a pedophile priest under the watchful evil eyes of Cardinal Ratzinger. See the real evil eyes of Benedict XVI http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/evil-eyes-of-benedict-xvi.html

During the presidential campaign, we promoted McCain and Palin because we knew that the Opus Dei were praying for Obama to win in their daily Mass, in their daily Rosary and all their daily prayers throughout the day. We exposed that the Opus Dei were supporting Obama especially when Obama's picture riding on a donkey -- which is the animal to which St. Josemaria Escriva adopts himself to – because the WORLD DOMINATION AGENDA of the Opus Dei is the kingdom of Christ on earth, Christ who rode on a donkey in his triumphant entry in Jerusalem.

Anyone who criticizes the Pope like Fr. Jon Sobrino and other Jesuits were silenced by the Opus Dei Bishops and the Pope. And we are not surprised that we have received threats from Opus Dei foot soldiers. But we are confident that St. Michael the Archangels will burn down the Vatican and its trillion dollars Vatican Bank shall disappear like smoke exactly like the Temple of Solomon as predicted by the Third Secret of Fatima. This time, the Opus Dei cannot buy God's mercy nor pacify the anger of God because the sins of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army are crying to Heaven like the blood of Abel and the popes and Cardinals and Bishops who condoned and aided and abetted these countless pedophile priests have millstone tied around their necks.


See our related articles on Obama and the Opus Dei

Minnesota Attorney Files Lawsuit Against Pope & Vatican http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/minnesota-attorney-files-lawsuit.html

Benedict XVI Audacity of Hate http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/10/benedict-xvi-obamas-audacity-of-hate_12.html

Benedict XVI and Obama are totalitarians: Associated Press dictates that “Nobody can every say anything bad about Benedict XVI and Barrack Obama” http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/10/benedict-xvi-and-obama-are.html

Obama rides on a donkey in "Benedict XVI lifts excommunication ban on Lefebvre" http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2009/02/benedict-xvi-lifts-excommunication-ban.html

Benedict XVI & Opus Dei media maul Jon Sobrino http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/09/benedict-xvi-opus-dei-media-maul-sarah.html

Benedict XVI against CELAM in Medellin 1968...40 years later Liberation Theology is alive and well http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/10/benedict-xvi-against-celam-in-medellin.html

Benedict XVI receives 5 BILLION Euros annual deposits into " Bank of the Pope".....September 11 anniversary of SNAP & VPP Victims of Pedophile-Priests http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/09/benedict-xvi-receives-5-billion-euros.html

Protest the Pope. Say NO to an official state visit to the UK http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/protest-pope-say-no-to-official-state.html

Project Reason: end the "diplomatic immunity" which the Vatican claims protects the Pope from any responsibility http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/project-reason-end-diplomatic-immunity.html

Benedict XVI’s priest brother, Georg Ratzinger admits “slapping” famous Regenesburg choir boys …but, was that all? http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/03/benedict-xvis-priest-brother-georg.html

The John Paul II Millstone

John Paul II's clone Cardinal Egan Helped President-Elect Obama Win http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2008/11/john-paul-iis-clone-cardinal-egan.html

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Obamania

Obama constitutionally eligible to serve? http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98546

THE SECRET LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA http://superstore.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=2329&RELATED_ITEM_ID=2393

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Obama administration sides with Vatican in Oregon case

Reported by the National Catholic Reporter who pays the Pied Piper John L. Allen Jr

See our article on John L. Allen Jr (we no longer read his Vatican paid articles) John L. Allen Jr of NCR is the Pied Piper of Benedict XVI toots “Will Ratzinger's past trump Benedict's present?” http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-allen-pied-piper-of-benedict-xvi_25.html


Obama administration asserts Vatican immunity

UNITED STATES
CathNews

The Obama administration has taken the side of the Vatican in the US lawsuit that wants the Holy See to be held responsible for the sex abuse crisis in the country.

In a strongly-worded brief for the United States Supreme Court, the government asserted that the standards for an exception to the immunity that foreign governments enjoy under American law have not been met in the Oregon case, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

The brief stops short of recommending that the Supreme Court directly take up the case of Doe v. Holy See, originally filed in federal district court in Oregon in 2002.

Posted by Abuse Tracker at 7:53 PM


U.S. Backs Immunity for Vatican in Case

UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

BY ASHBY JONES
The U.S. government has largely sided with the Vatican's argument that a court erred in a closely watched lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a former priest, a rare foray by Washington into the highly sensitive litigation.

In a filing made Friday, the solicitor general's office urged the Supreme Court to set aside a federal appellate court ruling in a case that had allowed the Oregon suit to go forward against the Vatican. The solicitor general speaks for the government on Supreme Court matters.

Posted by Abuse Tracker at 7:50 PM


Obama administration asks court to bar lawsuit against Vatican

UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

May 24, 2010
The Obama administration has weighed in strongly against efforts by abuse victims to bring suit against the Vatican.

In a brief filed with the US Supreme Court, the Justice Department asked for a reversal of a federal district court ruling that allowed the Vatican to be listed as a defendant in an Oregon case.

Posted by Abuse Tracker at 7:46 PM

Reasons why Opus Dei covered-up the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army for decades: Words of Opus Dei Joaquin Navarro-Valls http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/reasons-why-opus-dei-covered-up-john.html

Opus Dei female symbol for John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/opus-dei-female-symbol-for-john-paul-ii.html



Compare the CRIMES and their VICTIMS in America

Victims - Attackers - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity

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Vatican is burning under Benedict XVI

Vatican is burning under Benedict XVI

The Third Secret of Fatima predicted that the Vatican will be burned to the ground...like the Temple of Solomon. All those God and Mammon Vatican trillion dollar Bank controlled by the greedy Opus Dei will disappear like smoke like the City of Sodom and Gommorah. But this time the Pope cannot bargain like Abraham did because he is msot guilty of the crimes and thus papacy will also end -- as predicted by Nostrasdamus. God is the judge now and there is no way for the Pope to escape. John Paul II is the most guilty pope who did nothing for 26 years together with the Opus Dei to stop the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army.

The sins of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army are unforgivable and no amount of papal and priests penance and penitence can undo or pacify God's anger on the Vatican.

See our related articles:

Penance is not justice; penitence is inequality to the lifetime suffering of victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/penance-is-not-justice-penitence-is.html

Things Benedict XVI must do as proofs of his penance for the Irish victims of pedophile priests http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/02/things-benedict-xvi-must-do-as-proofs.html

What do we Catholics got to lose if Benedict XVI was brought to World Court for his crimes as the Hitler-Pope of pedophile priests? http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-do-we-catholics-got-to-lose-if.html

The French Revolution at the Vatican might start in England with the arrest of Benedict XVI led by the British Dawkins and Hitchens http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/french-revolution-at-vatican-might.html

Beware! Benedict XVI-Cardinal Ratzinger and his allies can be violent http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/03/benedict-xvi-cardinal-ratzinger-and-his.html)

John Paul II the Great clashing cymbal of St. Paul http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2009/11/john-paul-ii-great-clashing-cymbal-of.html

Benedict XVI beatify John Paul II is “brought to nothing” by St. Paul http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2009/11/benedict-xvi-to-beatify-john-paul-ii-is.html

Vatican segue Benedict XVI sex abuse scandals into the Devil, celibacy and role of women. Who’s biting the Vatican bait of deception? http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/03/vatican-segue-benedict-xvi-sex-abuse.html

Who’s responsible & to blame: The Devil or Benedict XVI-Cardinal Ratzinger? Satan as scapegoat for Vatican's chaotic sex scandals http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/03/whos-responsible-to-blame-devil-or.html

German man demands Benedict XVI’s apology and compensation "even if the church goes bankrupt" for his abuse as an altar boy by a pedophile priest http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/german-man-demands-benedict-xvis.html

Compare the CRIMES and their VICTIMS in America

Victims - Attackers - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity

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Forgive Not

A Catholic’s struggle with the sins of his church.
*
Garry Wills
* May 18, 2010 | 12:00 am

This early in the twenty-first century, the rulers of the Catholic Church have suffered an earthquake of crumbling credibility. Nearly ten years ago, with the initial revelations about sexual abuse of the young by priests, some argued that the problem was limited in time and place, since most of the abuse cases had occurred 30 or 40 years before, and they took place in the United States. There was hope that an investigative and reformist effort would restore the U.S. Church’s authority. An emergency Dallas meeting of American bishops in 2002 and a lay inquiry with its recommendations in 2004 were supposed to make the problem go away.

But, ten years later, all across the globe, the problem has shown a stubborn refusal to subside. Pedophile scandals have devastated the Church in Ireland. Fresh horrors have come to light in the United States, especially in Wisconsin and Arizona. There are urgent investigations in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, and Italy. And the Pope himself has been implicated in the scandals, some of which occurred when he was Archbishop of Munich and some when he oversaw the treatment of pedophile reports at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This has led to calls for the Pope’s resignation, or arrest, or criminal indictment—things not even imaginable ten years ago.

It should come as no surprise that a world scandal has succeeded the American troubles. Leading members of the hierarchy in country after country dismissed the U.S. reports of abuse by priests as a thing made up by the hyperthyroid American press, out of an anti-Catholic animus, a pro-Jewish zeal, or the hope to cash in on Church wealth. It is no wonder these foreign cardinals have been blindsided by their own neglected scandals. At first, the Vatican rejected the measures taken by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after their meeting in Dallas, as not being fair to accused priests, giving too much scope to lay panels of critics, and violating the confidentiality of confessions.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, at the time a second-in-command to Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later the second-in-command (secretary of state) to Ratzinger as Pope Benedict, set the tone in an interview with an Italian magazine:

[T]here is a well-founded suspicion that some of these charges [of abuse], that arise well after the fact, serve only for making money in civil litigation. ... In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of pedophilia is unfounded. ... If a priest cannot confide in his bishop for fear of being denounced, then it would mean that there is no more liberty of conscience.

Bertone was soon chosen by the Vatican to serve on a panel that would soften the directives adopted by the American bishops for punishing pedophile priests. Another member of this panel, made up of eight bishops, was Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, the head of the Congregation for the Clergy, which handled all issues having to do with priests. Castrillón Hoyos was delegated to read a papal letter that mentioned the scandals, where he defended a policy of “keeping things within the family.” A third member of the panel was Archbishop Julián Herranz Casado, who attributed the pedophile scandal to American “exaggeration, financial exploitation, and nervousness.”

Some critics of the American bishops’ treatment of the pedophile problem cited an article from the Vatican-monitored newspaper Civiltà Cattolica, written by the dean of the canon law department at Rome’s Gregorian University, famous for training the clergy. It said that “the bishop and the superior [of religious orders] are neither morally nor judicially responsible for the acts committed by one of their clergy.” Among those attacking the Jewish press in the United States for causing the scandal was Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, who said that the Vatican’s reception of Yasir Arafat had offended the media, that a supporter of feminism was judging the priests’ cases in Boston, and that Cardinal Bernard Law had been subjected to “Stalinist processes against Churchmen.” At a press conference in Rome, Rodriguez called the emphasis on the scandals by U.S. newspapers an “obsession [that] is a mental illness,” and a trick to get money from the Church:

When I was in the United States in the 1970s, there was a fashion when one slipped on a sidewalk to sue the owner of the house for millions. This became a kind of industry. I remember that people used to put on a neck brace and go find a lawyer. ... So why now is there such interest in taking up these [pedophile] cases from the past? Because there is money in play. But we know that money doesn’t heal any wound. ... If it were up to me, I would give the money neither to the lawyers nor even to the victims. ... For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop. We are totally different, and I’d be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests.

The harm, you notice, was to the priests, not to the children they preyed on. The priests, Rodriguez said, can “also be victims.”

Members of the hierarchy outside the United States regularly called accusations against priests the real scandal. Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City said there was “an orchestrated plan for striking at the prestige of the Church” that constituted a “ferocious persecution.” Cardinal Jan Schotte of Belgium (where new scandals have now been reported) cited with approval the Civiltà Cattolica article by Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, saying that the priests should not be accountable to secular authorities and noting that the Belgian bishops had successfully avoided turning over their records on the grounds that they were official Church documents. Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez of Guadalajara claimed that the Church was being persecuted for its opposition to abortion and its support of Palestinians:
The powerful don’t like what the Church affirms and testifies to regarding the defense of life and of the family. For the powerful of the world, the positions of the Church against the financial strangulation of the countries of the Third World and in favor of the millions and millions of robbed and exploited poor don’t go down well. The powerful also won’t tolerate the balanced position of the Church regarding the dramatic situation in the Holy Land.


Most of these reactions by the hierarchy date from two to four years after my book, Papal Sin, was published. But they show the same patterns of denial, evasion, defensiveness, accusation, and protestations of innocence and holiness that I had already analyzed. The U.S. scandals had not reached their height in 2000, and they did not lead me to write the book. The occasion for my doing so was a careful reading of Lord Acton’s collected historical writings. Though Acton was a lifelong Catholic, he had been a scathing critic of the First Vatican Council, and of the dishonest way Pius IX extracted from it a definition of papal infallibility. But he assured William Gladstone that a papacy that had survived the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and had based its claims on fraud and forgery for centuries was just acting true to form.

Acton’s most famous criticisms of the papacy occurred in his dealings with Mandell Creighton in 1887. Creighton would later become the Anglican bishop of London, but, at the time, he was a professor of history at Cambridge University and the editor of the English Historical Review. He asked Acton to review in that journal volumes three and four of The History of the Papacy, which Creighton had just published. Acton attacked the volumes for whitewashing papal crimes. Creighton honorably published the review, despite its criticism of him, but, when Creighton wrote objecting to certain matters in the review, Acton sharpened his attack. His letter of April 5, 1887, contains this famous passage:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ... There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Though Acton lived before the Second Vatican Council defined the Church as “the people of God,” the entirety of Acton’s writings prove that he never equated Catholicism with the papacy. He was too good a historian for that. The Pope is a freak of history—specifically, of medieval history. His office does not date from the early history of the Christian community. Peter was not a Pope, or a bishop, or a priest—offices that did not exist in his lifetime. There are no priests in the New Testament. Peter was not the leader of the Church in either Jerusalem or Rome—communities led, respectively, by James, Jesus’s brother, and Clement. Paul, at the famous clash in Antioch, showed that he did not think Peter a sound interpreter of Jesus’s message. Males were not the only ministers at the outset, as the apostle Junia proves. In fact the early preachers of the Gospel were often a husband-and-wife team.

When the current Pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he was asked how so many Catholics could disregard official teachings of the hierarchy. He answered that doctrine is not set by majority vote. But that is precisely how creeds and doctrines were formulated. At the great Eastern councils, like that of Nicaea, hundreds of bishops from around the world voted on the deepest mysteries of the faith—the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection. And there was no Pope at any of those councils. The democracy that would be denounced by Pius IX had been practiced in the early Church, where priests and bishops were elected by the people, and bishops could no more leave a people, once elected, than a man could leave his wife. (That is why, for a long time, no bishop could become a Pope—he could not leave his diocese.)

In the Middle Ages, it was the worldly assumption that all authority had to be feudal or monarchical in character. So the Pope became a monarch. He ruled territories. He had armies, prisons, spies. These things were finally stripped from him, but not until the nineteenth century, and despite the frantic efforts of Pius IX to retain them. Even now, the vestigial papal state is being invoked to show that the Pope, as ruler of a sovereign government, cannot be called to account for priestly sins.

In keeping with its ahistorical and medieval roots, the papacy has been reflexively opposed to social changes. Pius IX condemned democracy as an evil and illegitimate form of government. The papacy has historically been at war with science—against the Enlightenment, against textual criticism from Erasmus’s time onward, against cosmology and astronomy in Galileo’s time, against the “liberalism” of Lamennais and others, against biology and geology in Darwin’s time, against psychology in Freud’s time—and, at present, against prenatal scans, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, fetal stem-cell research, and condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa.

In order to protect what are considered timeless truths, for centuries, the papacy prevented the study of the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek forms, insisting that only the Latin Bible of the Catholic liturgy be considered authoritative. It made it a condition of ordination that would-be priests take an oath against modernism, subscribing to the biblical simplisms of Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi. It tolerated when it did not encourage—until the 1960s!—the idea that the Jewish people were guilty of deicide.

Since the papacy has been frozen in a defensive crouch, defying historical fact and free inquiry, it has been opposed to anything that might diminish the power of the Church to define reality. The authority of the bishop, of the priest, of the papacy, was more important than the Gospel. It was considered the only power that could say what the Gospel is or demands. Thus, the covering-up of sacerdotal sins and errors was a given in the Church. The infantilism of priests, the combined sexual inexperience and prurience resulting from celibacy, the belief that a celibate male is more attuned to spiritual reality than a married man—all this created a framework where sins, when they occurred, had to be denied, the victims had to be blamed, the solution to the problem was simply one of praying harder. Where therapy failed, the confessional would take the sinner with spiritual force beyond the worldly wisdom of psychiatrists.

Even now, as Church leaders belatedly try to repent and repair things, the mythical underpinnings of the priestly system continue to be taught—that only celibates can be priests (the apostles were married, all but Paul), that refusal to marry gives a man a superior caringness, that it makes him unworldly and concerned with other souls. What real change can occur when such myths are clung to with a blind ferocity? The resistance to change can be seen in the fact that the papacy has not faced the facts of a priesthood dwindling in both numbers and quality, of a financial base eroding as Church attendance goes down and donations dry up, even as damages in the billions must be paid to victims of “holy” predators. The wonderful teaching and nursing services of the nuns have evaporated.

The reaction of the hierarchy has been to dig itself even deeper into the past—to blame the Church’s troubles on such old evils as secularism, relativism, positivism, pluralism, and a “permissive” culture. The Second Vatican Council is blamed as well, and the Popes have tried to blunt or reverse its changes. Pope Benedict wants to go back to the Latin mass, with the priest turned from the people. He has cut back ecumenical initiatives, denying again the validity of Anglican orders, forbidding concelebration of Mass with Protestants, declaring (in Dominus Iesus) that all other churches are “gravely deficient.” He wants to put nuns back in their habits. He is driving to canonize the anti-Semitic Popes Pius IX and Pius XII. These are further signs of the structures of deceit—of self-deception as the first step to defying “worldly wisdom.”

I am asked, if I believe this, why I remain a Catholic. I do that precisely because I do not equate the people of God with the papacy. Well, I am told, other churches honor the Creed and the Gospel without the burden of a papacy as outdated as the medieval costumes it affects. I want to be at one with Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others; but I want all of these communions to come together, and I cannot do that by renouncing the Catholic membership in such an ecumenical Christianity, saying some churches are better than others. When the disciples of Jesus came back from their first mission away from him, the apostle John reported, “Master, we saw a man driving out evil in our name, and he was not one of us, we tried to stop him.” Jesus asks why they did that: “No one who does a work of divine power in my name will be able the next moment to speak evil of me” (Mark 9:38-39). All of us who honor his name must come together. When a Catholic tells me—often these days, it is a young woman—that she can no longer put up with the male monarchical Church, I tell her, “Stay with us, we need you. The people of God need you.”

All those who honor the name of Jesus are engaged in a joint search for the Jesus who will not be found in marble halls or wearing imperial costumes. He is forever on the run. He is the one who said, “Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest [elackistoi], you did to me” (Matthew 25:41). That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualifies himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the “our own” we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.

Garry Wills is the author, most recently, of Bomb Power. A tenth-anniversary edition of his book Papal Sin will be published later this year.

Author Sam Harris joins British to have Pope arrested: an appeal to FUND a legal bid to have the Pope arrested when he visits Britain

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7127805.ece

Author Sam Harris joins plot to have Pope arrested

Marc Horne

(Reuters)



Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leaves after celebrating the Chrismal Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican April 1, 2010.

Sam Harris, the atheist writer, has launched an appeal to fund a legal bid to have the Pope arrested when he visits Britain.

The American neuroscientist is seeking financial backing for the campaign that is being led by British writers Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The pair have asked human-rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church.

Harris, the author of The End of Faith, launched his appeal online, stating: “I would like to announce that Project Reason, the foundation that my wife and I started to spread scientific thinking and secular values, has joined Hitchens and Dawkins in an effort to end the ‘diplomatic immunity’ which the Vatican claims protects the Pope from any responsibility.

“We would greatly appreciate your support in this cause. All donations are tax-deductible in the United States.”

The 42-year-old told The Sunday Times he had been moved to get involved after reading the findings of the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

“The evidence suggests the misery of these children was facilitated and concealed by the hierarchy of the Catholic church at every level, up to and including the current Pope.

“In his former capacity as Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict personally oversaw the Vatican’s response to reports of sexual abuse in the church. Did he immediately alert the police and ensure that the victims would be protected from further torments?

“On the contrary, repeated and increasingly desperate complaints of abuse were set aside, witnesses were pressured into silence and offending priests were relocated only to destroy fresh lives in unsuspecting parishes.”

Benedict is due to be in Britain between September 16 and 19, visiting Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Coventry, where he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian.

Geoffrey Robertson, a UK barrister, and solicitor Mark Stephens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because although his tour is a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.

A spokesman for the Vatican insisted the Pope would enjoy diplomatic immunity and dismissed the campaign to arrest Benedict as a publicity stunt.

Comment

Robert Tobin wrote:
The "Holy" oman Catholic Church was founded by Roman Emperor Constantine I at the time of the Council of Nicea 325 Ce. It ruled the RFoman Empire with an iron fist, suppressing all freedom of thought for 1,500 years. It did that with the Holy Inquisition beginning about the 11th century up till the earky 19th century. It is about time this urhc that is based on a big lie and it's little Dictator Herr Papst Ratslinger was brought down.

I agree with Sam Harris and his words: "Religion poisons everything"
May 17, 2010 6:16 PM BST

Paul Brantley wrote:
My first reaction to the headline was bewilderment at the use of the word 'plot.' After scrolling to the comments, I'm comforted to know that I'm not alone.

'Plot' might accurately describe the efforts of the Pope et al. to cover up abuse; it isn't an appropriate description of the overdue organized effort to bring the real 'plotters' to justice.
May 17, 2010 4:26 PM BST on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Paul Brantley wrote:
My first reaction to the headline was bewilderment at the use of the word 'plot.' After scrolling to the comments, I'm comforted to know that I'm not alone.

'Plot' might accurately describe the efforts of the Pope et al. to cover up abuse; it isn't an appropriate description of the overdue organized effort to bring the real 'plotters' to justice.

May 17, 2010 4:24 PM BST on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Veronique Denyer wrote:
I have to join with the other two (now three) commenters in asking Marc Horne why he used ‘plot’ to describe the growing movement to attempt an arrest of the Pope once he enters the UK.

As a ‘plot’ it doesn’t even make first base – that of secrecy until public denouement.

It doesn’t garner either Horne or his editor any literary or journalistic points; it merely indicates their partisanship. Mind you, I have read Horne before and have not been impressed by his style or treatment of the content about which he attempts to sounds knowledgeable. But that is as is.

This time however it behoves him to think about what he is implying. The CEO of an organisation that stands accused (in the public eye) of deliberately putting its own interests above the interests of the children in its temporal care is the responsible entity. Any other organisation would have to front its CEO; why not the RCC?

After the public furore and disclosures of sexual abuse (and there’s more to come yet), a reasonable person would be entitled to ask why the CEO didn’t present himself to the secular authorities to answer the allegations that are being headlined throughout the world. By not doing so, that CEO is compounding what the RCC was trying to achieve by the decades of cover-up of sexual rape, abuse, impropriety and sadism – the stink that is the RCC is real.

No, Mr Horne – there is no plot – just outrage from ordinary people that hopefully spreads to all organisations that have the care of children (and other vulnerable groups) as their raison d’être and abuse that trust every day in some form.

That includes orphanages, old age care homes, educational establishments etc – interestingly so many of these sorts of organisations are run by the religious. Not all, mind you. But the safety of a publicly and/or privately funded group of this ilk attracts some pretty awful adults.
May 17, 2010 4:02 PM BST on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Peter Denyer wrote:
To add my voice to the previous two posters, the use of the word 'plot' is inappropriate (it implies secrecy) and simply shows the writer's bias. To be accurate, Dawkins and Hitchins aren't 'behind' the action and have not instructed any solicitors, they have just voiced their support.
May 17, 2010 1:39 PM BST on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Anna Crumb wrote:
You're showing your bias. This isn't a 'plot' - it's a cause or, at the very least, a move.
May 16, 2010 7:02 PM BST on community.timesonline.co.uk
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Ashton Black wrote:
How is it a "plot" ? Which implies some sort of wrong doing. They are trying to bring an alleged criminal to justice.

Good luck to them I say.
May 16, 2010 6:53 PM BST

Evil eyes of Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI has the most evil eyes becuase he covered-up the John Paul II Pedophile Priests for more than 26 years and it was the ES Eucharist and Sodomy of Biblical Proportions - see the John Paul II Millstone www.jp2m.blogspot.com



Look closely at these natural evil eyes of Benedict XVI.

Benedict XVI has a very effeminate (old woman) voice that's because he is GAY.

John Paul II was very ugly in his last years as pope. God allowed him to become so ugly, and he could barely speak or write, as ugly as Lucifer he could be. At the end he took his own life by committing euthanasia so he could die at the Vatican as John Paul II the Great.

But all of John Paul II's ugly photos have been removed from Google in preparation for his canonization-in-a-hurry by Opus Dei who created him.

Opus Dei produced the papacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. That is why Opus Dei is the most guilty in the complicit cover-up of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army for the entire 26 years papacy of John Paul II.

Reasons why Opus Dei covered-up the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army for decades: Words of Opus Dei Joaquin Navarro-Valls http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/reasons-why-opus-dei-covered-up-john.html

Opus Dei female symbol for John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/2010/04/opus-dei-female-symbol-for-john-paul-ii.html



Compare the CRIMES and their VICTIMS in America

Victims - Attackers - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity

Read our latest articles which are timeless and very relevant during this coming weeks for the lawsuit against Benedict XVI and the Vatican:

Sins and crimes are not synonymous. Sinners and criminals are not one and the same
http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/sins-and-crimes-are-not-synonymous.html

Penance is not justice; penitence is inequality to the lifetime suffering of victims of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/penance-is-not-justice-penitence-is.html

The French Revolution at the Vatican might start in England with the arrest of Benedict XVI led by the British Dawkins and Hitchens http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/04/french-revolution-at-vatican-might.html

The Homosexual Colonization of the Catholic Church http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedict-xvi-campaigns-against.html

Benedict XVI’s Consecration to Mary cannot protect children from pedophile priests http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedict-xvis-consecration-to-mary.html

Protest the Pope. Say NO to an official state visit to the UK http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/protest-pope-say-no-to-official-state.html



The John Paul II Millstone

Theology and John Paul II are heartless and together they made the immoral Fr. Marcial Maciel thrive http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/theology-and-john-paul-ii-are-heartless.html

Spiritual healing, the Eucharist and the Rosary bring NEITHER JUSTICE NOR SAFETY FOR CHILDREN, the preys of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/spiritual-healing-eucharist-and-rosary.html

Vatican Pandora Pedophile Box and “The Myth of the Pedophile Priest” in Zenit.org in 2002 http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/05/vatican-pandora-pedophile-box-in-2002.html

Videos of Pedophile Priests and Vatican GAY ring

Benedict XVI keep preaching against same-sex marriage but homosexuality thrive best in the Vatican and the Catholic priesthood. Watch these videos on how pedophile priests abused altar boys

(March 4) -- The Vatican is at the center of a gay sex scandal involving a young chorister who allegedly procured men, including at least one seminarian, for a lay member of one of Pope Benedict's inner circles.

Angelo Balducci, a civil engineer and honorary Vatican usher, was quoted in police wiretaps allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican choir member, about the kind of men he wanted brought to him. Some of the wiretap transcripts were published Wednesday in the Italian daily La Repubblica.

Balducci has been a member since 1995 of "Gentlemen of His Holiness," an exclusive fraternity of ushers within the papal household who serve during state and special occasions. Members of the group bore Pope John Paul II's coffin in 2005.

This latest Vatican embarrassment, coming not long after Irish priests were summoned to Rome to discuss decades of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, surfaced inadvertently as a result of a probe into corruption involving public works contracts.

Balducci, who sits on the board of Italy's public works council and is a construction consultant to the Vatican, was one of four people arrested in February in connection with the corruption probe. He has not yet been charged in that case, which remains open.

On Wednesday, La Repubblica published excerpts from the wiretaps and other police documents from the probe, which indicated Balducci was in regular contact with Ehiem, a member of the Vatican's Giulia Choir. Police identified him as part "of an organized network ... to abet male prostitution."

Among the men allegedly procured for Balducci, according to the transcripts, were "two black Cuban boys," a former male model from Naples and a rugby player from Rome.

Ehiem told Panorama magazine in an interview set to run Friday that he had been introduced to Balducci 10 years ago. The Guardian quoted Ehiem as saying: "He asked me if I could procure other men for him. He told me he was married and that I had to do it in great secrecy."

Ehiem was fired Wednesday from his job in the choir, according to news reports.

Some of the more sensational excerpts from Italian police transcripts obtained by the Guardian quote conversations recorded in January between Balducci and Ehiem about a young seminarian. Balducci inquires about the seminarian and Ehiem says he is "probably at Mass or something."

When it turns out that seminarian is not available, Ehiem calls another time recommending one of the student priest's colleagues or friends. Ehiem says the substitute is "better, taller, a bit taller than you."

Still later, Ehiem is quoted in the transcript asking: "Can I send [him] around right away?" and asks where Balducci is. Ehiem is told that he is "up at the seminary ... where the cardinal lives." Ehiem then says the man "could get there within half an hour ... the time it takes to catch a taxi and get there."

Balducci's lawyer, Franco Coppi, told reporters Thursday night that he had no comment for the moment. "We have more serious questions to tackle," Coppi said. "Second, if these claims are correct, they regard his private life. It is disgraceful that these transcripts, which have nothing to do with the case, should have been spread about."

The wiretaps stemmed from a probe into public works contracts, including a venue in Sardinia that was planned for last year's G8 summit before it was moved to Abruzzo.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/vatican-hit-by-gay-sex-scandal/19383948



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k&feature=player_embedded

Benedict campaigns against abortion but keeps pedophile priests active

A news came out today that a hospital nun was fired from her job in a hospital in Arizona and was rebuked for allowing abortion and an “automatic excommunication” for the teenager who had the abortion because her life was endangered. John Paul II campaigned against abortion everywhere he went so does Benedict XVI. Abortion's punishment in the Catholic Church is instant excommunication...but pedophile priests can go on saying Mass reincarnating the flesh of Christ in the fairy tale of the Mass and they can go on sodomizing children for as long as they live and stay as priests.

Read our related article: Benedict XVI’s Consecration to Mary cannot protect children from pedophile priests http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedict-xvis-consecration-to-mary.html

Sins and crimes are not synonymous. Sinners and criminals are not one and the same http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/sins-and-crimes-are-not-synonymous.html

From Fatima, Jacinta would throw the first stone at John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army‏ to defend her little brothers and sisters http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/04/from-fatima-jacinta-would-throw-first.html

Compare these Catholic sinners and secular criminals

Sinners & criminals - Victims - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 pedophile priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity

---------

Hospital nun rebuked for allowing abortion

She agreed that seriously ill woman needed procedure to survive

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care

updated 10:21 p.m. ET, Sat., May 15, 2010

PHOENIX - A nun and administrator at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix has been reassigned and rebuked by the local bishop for agreeing that a severely ill woman needed an abortion to survive.

Sister Margaret McBride was on an ethics committee that included doctors that consulted with a young woman who was 11 weeks pregnant late last year, The Arizona Republic newspaper reported on its website Saturday. The woman was suffering from a life-threatening condition that likely would have caused her death if she hadn't had the abortion at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

Hospital officials defended McBride's actions but confirmed that she has been reassigned from her job as vice president of mission integration at the hospital. They said in a statement that saving the mother required that the fetus be aborted."In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy," hospital vice president Susan Pfister said in an e-mail to the newspaper. She said the facility owned by Catholic Healthcare West adheres to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services but that the directives do not answer all questions.

‘Automatically excommunicated’
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was "automatically excommunicated" because of the action. The Catholic Church allows the termination of a pregnancy only as a secondary effect of other treatments, such as radiation of a cancerous uterus.

"I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese," Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means."

Olmsted added that if a Catholic "formally cooperates" in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.

Neither the hospital nor the bishop's office would say if Olmsted had a direct role in her demotion. He does not have control of the hospital as a business but is the voice of moral authority over any Catholic institution operating in the diocese.

Pulmonary hypertension
The patient, who hasn't been identified, was seriously ill with pulmonary hypertension. The condition limits the ability of the heart and lungs to function and is made worse, possibly even fatal, by pregnancy.

"This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee, of which Sr. Margaret McBride is a member," the hospital said in a statement issued Friday.

A letter sent to Olmsted Monday by the board chairwoman and the president and CEO of CHW asks Olmsted to provide further clarification about the directives. The pregnancy, the letter says, carried a nearly certain risk of death for the mother.

"If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it," the letter says. "We are convinced there was not."

McBride declined to comment.

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Shun "devil's temptations," pope tells priests

(Reuters) - Pope Benedict, still trying to come to grips with the Church's sexual abuse scandal, prayed on Wednesday that his priests would be able to avoid the snares of the world and reject the temptations of the devil.

World

The 83-year-old pope made his comments shortly after arriving at this shrine city famous with Catholics around the world because the Church teaches that the Madonna appeared there and spoke to three poor shepherd children in 1917.

Tens of thousands of people braved a chill evening wind to see the pope on his second day in Portugal and prayed with him while looking at the spot where the visions are said to have occurred.

Later, in a church in the shrine complex, he prayed that priests would always live up to the duties of their "sublime vocation and not give in to our egoisms, to the snares of the world and the temptations of the devil."

Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him to Lisbon on Tuesday, the pope made one of his most forthright comments on the sexual abuse scandal that has created turmoil in the church.

He said Church leaders had to acknowledged the "terrifying" truth that the sexual abuse scandal was the product of "sin within the Church" and that the Church had to repent for its sins and "accept purification." Purification, at least in the form of rolling heads, has already started. Five bishops in Europe have resigned. One has admitted sexual abuse, another is under investigation and three have stepped down over their handling of abuse cases.

PILGRIMS SHOCKED BY ABUSE

Pilgrims in the crowd to hear the pope were divided on how the sexual abuse scandal can affect a person's faith.

"I believe that the scandals do have an impact on people's faith, especially on trust for teachers," said Domingos Silva, 43, a fisherman who walked 160 km (100 miles) to reach Fatima.

"I think Pope Benedict's response to these outrageous crimes has been too modest and inefficient to prevent this crisis from reaching the scale it has," he said.

A 70-year-old Portuguese nun said: "These scandals should not have an impact on people's faith, but they can harm the Church's reputation if this problem is not tackled properly."

Fatima, which gets some 5 million visitors a year and where the pilgrim trade is the engine of the area's economy, is the centerpiece of Benedict's four-day visit to Portugal.

The Madonna, who is said to have appeared to the three shepherd children six times, gave them three messages.

The first two were revealed soon and concerned a vision of hell, the prediction of the outbreak of World War Two and a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world.

The "third secret" intrigued the world for half a century before it was revealed, inspiring books, cults convinced that it predicted the end of the world, and even a hijacking.

In 2000, the Vatican revealed that the secret vision was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul on May 13, the same day of the first reported apparition in 1917.

John Paul, who was hit by several bullets fired by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, believed the Madonna intervened to save his life. He had one of the bullets that pierced him welded into the crown of statue of the Madonna in the Fatima shrine.

Benedict told reporters on his plane on Tuesday he believed that the interpretation of the Third Secret could be enlarged to include the suffering the papacy and the Church would have to endure as a result of today's sexual abuse crisis.

(Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Jon Hemming)

The Homosexual Colonization of the Catholic Church

Benedict XVI is a perfect papal clone of John Paul II http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/04/john-paul-iis-sole-official-papal.html. He campaigns against homosexual marriage and abortion in every country he goes to. At Fatima, after saying a few crocodile tears mea culpa about priest pedophilia, he campaigned aggressively against homosexual marriage trying to influence the government of Portugal from approving it. Really, what does Benedict XVI expect homosexuals to do after living with each other for a lifetime when one of them dies -- that they should be deprived of their spouse’s income and benefits while pedophile priests are being paid with church’s pensions? And these members of the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army are free to roam and go on sodomizing children for the rest of their life because there is no Catholic registry of pedophile priests and the Cardinals and Bishops spend tens of millions of dollars to keep these pedophile priests record confidential.

Below is a article about “The Homosexual Colonization of The Catholic Church” which is about a book that is not for the faint of heart that has 1,3004 pages containing 4,523 endnotes.

Why is it that Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ who is a serial pedophile who sodomized his own biological son and the pedophile priests covered-up by Cardinal Bernard Law and Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles are not rebuked or excommunicated? Our criminal Cardinal of Boston who resigned in disgraced is sitting in glory as Archpriest of the St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome while the100 pedophile priest he covered-up are performing ES Eucharist and Sodomy for the rest of their lives?

Read our related article: Benedict XVI’s Consecration to Mary cannot protect children from pedophile priests http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedict-xvis-consecration-to-mary.html

Sins and crimes are not synonymous. Sinners and criminals are not one and the same http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2010/05/sins-and-crimes-are-not-synonymous.html

From Fatima, Jacinta would throw the first stone at John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army‏ to defend her little brothers and sisters http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2010/04/from-fatima-jacinta-would-throw-first.html

Compare these Catholic sinners and secular criminals

Sinners & criminals - Victims - Responsible Leaders

Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto

WTC & 9/11 attacks - 5,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden

USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 6,000 pedophile priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity


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The Homosexual Colonization of The Catholic Church



In Randy Engel's book The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church (New Engel Publishing, Box 356, Export, PA 15632; 724-327-7379; www.newengelpublishing.com), she lays out the invasion, colonization, and the metastasization of the priesthood and religious life by homosexuals in the Catholic Church.

On the first page of the Introduction, Engel notes that she wrote an article in The Wanderer (summer of 1987) in which the editor deleted her reference to "homosexual bishops." She says: "I remember promising myself" that as soon as "my familial and pro-life duties as the director of the U.S. Coalition for Life would permit, I would take a closer look at the members of the Catholic hierarchy…." She names the names of homosexual bishops with copious citations and notes. This book, a decade in the making, reveals the homosexual "maelstrom" in the Catholic Church.

The book was published in July 2006 and has 1,3004 pages containing 4,523 endnotes, and a detailed Index. There is some irrelevant material, but not too much.

Mrs. Engel says her book is not for the faint of heart, which we will see later.

She says that "neither the Holy Father nor the Church hierarchy appear to have the necessary will, heart and stomach" to clean up the homosexuality in the Church's ranks.

In the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council "triggered" the homosexual colonization in the Church. A lot of this is due to the pontificate of Pope Paul VI. Engel says that Paul VI was a homosexual, and she gives evidence for this. Engel says that "Pope Paul VI played a decisive role in the selection and advancement of many homosexual members of the American hierarchy...." And it still continues.

Regarding the recent Vatican document on homosexuals in the seminary, Engel says: "In a Vatican Radio interview on November 29, 2005, Cardinal Grocholewski [Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is charged with implementing the document] stated this might include a person who engaged in homosexual acts out of adolescent curiosity; or while intoxicated; or where he prostituted his body to obtain favors. High standards, indeed, for the most sublime of all vocations! The cardinal went out of his way to state that the norms expressed in the document do not apply to already ordained homosexual priests,...acknowledging that Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has no plans to clean house and mount a serious attack on the Homosexual Collective within the Roman Catholic priesthood and religious life."

Pope Benedict XVI recently appointed Donald Wuerl to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Wuerl was a protégé of Bishop John Wright (initially the Auxiliary Bishop of Boston). According to Engel, "Wright's pederastic predilections were an 'open secret' in the Archdiocese of Boston." Bill Burnett accused Bishop Wright of pederasty. Here is an instance of where the book is not for the faint-hearted. If you don't like to read sexually graphic accounts, do not read what Engel has to say about the rite of sodomy here (for it will make you sick):

Burnett stated that the abuse ritual began with drinks, a Coke for him and Coke and alcohol for [Fr. Raymond] Page [his uncle] and [Bishop] Wright. Wright would then undress him, fall on his knees before the standing boy and cover him with kisses -- feet, penis, nipples and lips. He and Page would then undress and while the latter stimulated Wright from behind (without penetration), Bill would fellate the bishop. When Wright neared ejaculation he would turn Bill around and sodomize him. Then Page took his turn at raping his nephew.... [We will spare you the rest of the gruesome story.] When it was all over, Wright handed Bill a $20 bill like he always did.

Then Bishop Wright was made Bishop of Pittsburgh, and this is where Wuerl became his private secretary, protégé, and remained at Wright's side (as he was made a cardinal) until Wright's death in 1979. Is this guilt by association? Who knows?

Engel writes: "From 1980 to 1985, Fr. Wuerl served as Vice Rector and Rector of St. Paul Seminary. The seminary had a reputation for rampant homosexuality going back to the days of Bishop Wright." Then Wuerl became Bishop of Pittsburgh in February 1988, fulfilling his protégé role.

Writes Engel: "After Donald Wuerl was posted to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, he permitted Dignity/Pittsburgh Masses to continue for eight more years.... Dignity/Pittsburgh was one of the last chapters to be evicted from Catholic facilities in the United States [on orders from the Vatican]. According to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Ann Rodgers-Melnick, 'Banning Dignity was a sad moment for Wuerl.'... Under Wuerl, the Pittsburgh Diocese has become a stomping ground for nationally-known doctrinal and moral miscreants including Father (now ex-priest) Matthew Fox, Sister Fran Ferder, Father Robert Nugent, Sister Jeannine Gramick, Father Raymond Brown and howling feminists Rosemary Radford Ruether and Monica Hellwig."

In the summer of 1996, Mother's Watch featured a lengthy article called "Bishop Wuerl's Magnificent Obsession." Engel mentions a segment "dealing with Wuerl's exceptional relations with the members of the Pittsburgh 'gay' community who refer to the bishop as 'Donna' Wuerl...." We've heard that too.

Engel also has doubts about Pope Benedict's manliness. Engel says: "Rome correspondents report that the new pope has acquired expensive taste in designer shoes and accessories, a reputation for 'slightly eccentric behavior' and 'a penchant for disguise.' During Christmas 2005, the pope was photographed showing off a red medieval fur-lined hat -- a picture that can only be described as overtly camp. One month later, La Stampa reported that the pope has been secretly visiting his old residence at 1 Piazza Citta Leonina disguised in black clerical robes in the company of another accessory -- his very handsome 48-year-old private secretary and traveling companion, Don Georg Gänswein." We know just the mention of this will upset some of our readers; however, there is no need to jump to conclusions about this. Let's hope he's straight as an arrow.

But there is a disturbing pattern: Benedict appointed "gay"-friendly Archbishop William Levada to be the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict appointed "gay"-friendly Donald Wuerl to be Archbishop of Washington, D.C.; and Benedict appointed "gay"-friendly George Niederauer to be Archbishop of San Francisco. And Benedict signed the document on homosexuals in the seminary, a toothless document that can be interpreted any way you want.

Don't expect any reforms in the homosexual colonization of the Catholic Church, or what Engel calls the "Homosexual Collective." Sweetie-pie seminarians and priests will continue to flock into the priesthood, and some of them will advance up into the hierarchy. Business as usual.

From: www.newoxfordreview.org

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The New York Times

Editorial
Justice for Child Abuse Victims
Published: May 14, 2010

The Catholic Church is working against the interests of child abuse victims in state legislatures around the country. In recent weeks, lobbying by the church has blocked measures in Wisconsin, Arizona and Connecticut intended to widen the legal window for victims to file lawsuits against hidden predators.

We urge the New York State Legislature to rise above intense lobbying by the New York State Catholic Conference and Orthodox Jewish officials and pass the overdue Child Victims Act. Like a similar measure enacted in 2003 by California, it would create a one-time, one-year suspension of the statute of limitations for bringing civil lawsuits over the sexual abuse of children.

Once that window closes, people alleging abuse would have until age 28 to bring a claim. Current law sets the limit at 23 in most circumstances.

The measure recognizes that it typically takes many years before victims are ready to come forward. The measure also recognizes the Catholic Church’s history of intimidating victims and burying abuses in church files, creating a shroud of secrecy that extended in many cases until victims were in their 30s or older, well beyond existing time limits for prosecutions or civil lawsuits.

An earlier version of the bill passed the Assembly in 2006, 2007 and 2008, but the Senate, then under Republican control, refused to consider it. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver expresses strong support for the latest bill, amended to cover abuses by both religious and non- religious entities. But he is insistent that the Senate act first before requiring his members to cast another politically sensitive vote on the issue.

The Senate Codes Committee is set to consider the measure by mid-June. The committee’s chairman, Eric Schneiderman, Democrat of Manhattan, should work to ensure passage of the bill, which has safeguards against the filing of bogus claims.

The Catholic Church fears a wave of costly settlements and damage awards like those that followed California’s temporary lifting of the statute of limitations several years ago. Those concerns, and the difficulty of trying to judge decades-old accusations, are outweighed by the need to afford victims a measure of justice, the demands of public safety, and the injustice of rewarding any group for covering up sexual abuse of children.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on May 16, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16sun2.html
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Pope Benedict XVI raises his hands as he celebrates a mass at the Catholic shrine of Fatima in central Portugal May 13, 2010.

(Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Wednesday condemned gay marriage as an "insidious" threat to society, implicitly encouraging Portuguese to work against a proposed law that would legalize it.

World

The pope, wrapping up his trip to this country where more than 90 percent of the population is officially Catholic, made his appeal in the shrine city of Fatima on a day that started with a Mass attended by up to half a million people.

In his afternoon address to Catholic charity and social workers, the 83-year-old German pope said he "deeply appreciated" initiatives aimed at defending what he said were "essential and primary values of life."

Among these values, he said, was "the family, founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman," which is Vatican-speak for its opposition to gay marriage.

The audience applauded when the pope said abortion -- which has been legal in Portugal since 2007 -- and threats to heterosexual marriage were "among some of the most insidious and dangerous challenges facing the common good today."

Portugal's parliament last January passed a bill by the minority Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates that would legalize same-sex marriages. The government rejected alternative proposals by the center-right opposition for civil partnerships and a referendum on gay marriage.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva is under great pressure from the Church and conservative groups not to ratify the bill. If he vetoes it, parliament can override the veto with another vote.

On Thursday morning a crowd of up to half a million people turned out to greet the pope at one of holiest shrines in the 1.2 billion-member Catholic Church.

Pilgrims carrying banners and national flags braved a dawn drizzle in the town where the Church believes the Madonna appeared to three poor shepherd children in 1917 and gave them three messages in the form of visions.

The first two were revealed soon and concerned a vision of hell, the prediction of the outbreak of World War Two, a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world, and the need for general conversion to God and the need for prayer.

The "third secret" intrigued the world for half a century before it was revealed, inspiring books, cults convinced that it predicted the end of the world, and even a hijacking.

In 2000, the Vatican said the secret was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul on May 13, the same day of the first reported apparition in 1917.

Fatima gets some 5 million visitors a year and the pilgrim trade is the engine of the area's economy.

On Friday, Benedict makes a morning visit to Portugal's second city, Oporto, before returning to Rome.

(Writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Reed Stevenson)