…we have heard it before.. NO MORE COVER UPS. No more hidden secrets being kept from the flocks of flocks from around dioceses that have been hit with awful sexual abuse scandals .. scandals at the hands of their priests…
Now the POPE has intervened with a letter, one the media is calling “deeply personal.” …Or the press spokesman for the Vatican told the media that the letter is deeply personal. Anymore in journalism, it’s highly unpredictable to predict who says what..
Bergoglio, Pope Francis, wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics on Monday, asking each one of them to help root out “this culture of death” and vowing there would be no more cover ups.
Francis referred to the suffering endured by minors due to sexual abuse at the hands of a “significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.”
The Vatican said it was the first time a pope had written to all of the world’s some 1.2 billion Catholics about sexual abuse. Past letters on sexual abuse scandals have been addressed to bishops and faithful of individual countries.
“We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death,” he said.
Meanwhile the reverberations continue in Vaticanland and beyond.
Places like the Pennsylvania Capitol city.. Father Paul Helwig of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque church in Harrisburg is “taking a break from ministry” after being named in the 40th Grand Jury report investigating sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese.
And this from the city of Brotherly Love: Steve Maronni writes,
Two priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have been deemed to be unsuitable for ministry.
The Archdiocesan Professional Responsibilities Review Board made this recommendation for Rev. Andrew D. McCormick, 62, and Monsignor Gregory J. Parlante on Thursday, NBC 10 of Philadelphia is reporting.
McCormick, 62, had served at the Sacred Heart Parish in Swedesburg and was arrested in 2012 after he was accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old altar boy in 1997, according to reports.
And Parlante, 61, was arrested and charged in January with intentional possession of a controlled substance and theft after staff members opened a package delivered to him while he was on a leave of absence from the St. Cornelius Parish in Chadds Ford and found what was believed to be illegal drugs, reports indicate.
The reaction will continue. The dust will continue to settle. And the way that the Catholic Church looks after the newest schism is anyone’s guess.
