Sex Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church: The Untold Story of Cover-Up
Ekaterina Blinova
SputnikNews.com
07.09.2018
The sex abuse scandal that has recently engulfed the Catholic Church is dramatically affecting Pope Francis’ authority, Maurizio Blondet, a prominent Italian journalist and author, has told Sputnik, sharing his views on Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s testimony and cases of cover-up of sexual misconduct among priests.
Pope Francis (Bergoglio) has found himself at the epicenter of the scandal over a letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States (2011-2016) and ex-secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State (2006-2011).
In his testimony, released on August 30, 2018, Vigano accused the pope and other top-level prelates of the Catholic Church of covering up sexual abuse of priests and seminarians by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned from the College of Cardinals on July 28, 2018 over sexual harassment allegations.
According to Vigano, he informed Pope Francis about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct on June 23, 2013, but the pope did nothing to address the problem. The archbishop further presumed that Pope Francis could have known about “sanctions” imposed on McCarrick by his predecessor, Pope Benedict, over the case, but nevertheless made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.”
“Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” Vigano underscored.
Commenting on Vigano’s testimony, Maurizio Blondet, a prominent Italian journalist and author who has worked for the Il Giornale, l’Avvenire and La Padania newspapers, told Sputnik that trouble had long been brewing for the Roman Catholic Church.
Cover-Up Story
According to Blondet, McCarrick’s case is not the episode triggering concerns among Catholics. He recalled that in 2013, Pope Francis appointed Monsignor Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca as a head of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, despite the fact that the prelate had been accused of a reported “intolerable ménage” with a Swiss army officer in Uruguay.
“Even the nuns working within the embassy complained about it!” Blondet noted. “In 2001, Ricca was found in Montevideo’s gay area [Bulevar Artigas] where he had been beaten. In August 2001, in the middle of the night, the elevator of the nunciature stopped working. The firemen had to intervene in the early hours. Inside the blocked elevator the firemen found, together with Monsignor Ricca, a young man whom the police authorities identified.”
The Rest…HERE
