Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 10:45am

PopeWatch: Marie Collins

 

Sandro Magister brings up the resignation of Marie Collins from the pontifical commission of the protection of minors and an example of why she resigned:

 

But there is one point that has essentially met with silence. And it is the criticism that Marie Collins has leveled against Pope Francis himself.

The most pointed criticism dates back to two years ago.

When on January 10, 2015 Francis promoted to the diocese of Osorno, Chile the bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, Collins and other members of the commission protested strenuously.

The new bishop, in fact, was under substantiated accusations from three victims of sexual abuse, who charged him with having shielded the priest Fernando Karadima, for many years a celebrity of the Chilean Church but in the end condemned to “prayer and penance” by the Holy See for his countless verified misdeeds.

The new bishop’s installation in his diocese was heavily contested. But on March 31 the Vatican congregation for bishops stated that it had “attentively studied the prelate’s candidacy and had not found objective reasons that would block his appointment.”

So in April, Collins and other members of the commission for the protection of minors went to Rome to ask the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley (in the photo), to urge the pope to revoke the appointment.

But they got the opposite result. One month later, in May, Pope Francis responded to questions from a former spokesman of the Chilean episcopal conference he met in Saint Peter’s Square. And he went after the bishop’s accusers, in his most indignant words ever.

The video of the encounter was made public afterward. And these are the pope’s actual words:

“It is a Church [that of Osorno] that has lost its freedom because it has let its head be filled up by the politicians, judging a bishop without any proof after twenty years of service. So think with your heads, and don’t let yourselves be led by the nose by all those leftists who are the ones who drummed up the business.

“Furthermore, the only accusation that there has been against this bishop has been discredited by the judicial court. So please, eh? Don’t lose your serenity. Yes, [the diocese of] Osorno is suffering, because it is stupid, because it is not opening its heart to what God is saying and is letting itself get carried away by the stupidities that all those people are saying. I am the first to judge and punish those who have been accused of such things. . . But in this case there is a lack of proof, or rather, on the contrary. . . I say it from the heart. Don’t let yourselves be led by the nose by these people who are seeking only to make ‘lío,’ confusion, who seek to calumniate. . . .”

The “leftists” – “zurdos” in Argentine slang – who had particularly irritated the pope included the 51 Chilean deputies, for the most part of the socialist party of president Michelle Bachelet, who had signed a petition against the appointment of Barros as bishop of Osorno.

So then, when the video with Francis’s words were made public, Marie Collins said she was “discouraged and saddened when you see the claims of Karadima’s courageous victims categorized in this way” by the pope.

That of the bishop of Osorno is not the only case in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio has commandeered judgment for himself, nullifying or sidestepping canonical procedures.

In Italy there has been an uproar over the act of “mercy” with which he has graced Fr. Mauro Inzoli, a prominent priest of the movement Communion and Liberation, reduced to the lay state in 2012 by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith for having abused numerous young people, but restored to the active priesthood by Francis in 2014, with the admonishment that he lead a life of penance and prayer. In the civil arena, Inzoli has been sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison.

Marie Collins also protested against such indulgences: “While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important. If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse.”

 

 

Go here to read the rest.  Mercy without justice is always injustice.

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Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, March 14, AD 2017 3:57am

“Mercy without justice is always injustice.”

And it is unmerciful to grease the skids to hell for the perpetrator of the wrong-doing by exonerating him in the public eye.

“So think with your heads, and don’t let yourselves be led by the nose by all those leftists who are the ones who drummed up the business.”

That’s rich, coming as it does from the commie crucifix wearing Argentinian Marxist Peronist Pontiff himself who endorses every left wing fling there is.

Clinton
Clinton
Tuesday, March 14, AD 2017 1:16pm

Pope Francis has shown considerable indulgence towards abusers and those who shield
them– I’m surprised that the article didn’t also mention Cardinal Daneels. Cardinal Daneels,
despite being retired as Archbishop of Brussels, was personally appointed by Francis to attend
the Synod on the Family and helped shape the results. Back in 2010, Cardinal Daneels had
urged the nephew of the Bishop of Bruges not to go to the police with accusations that
his uncle had been molesting him for 13 years, citing the bishop’s upcoming retirement as
a reason. The nephew had been recording the conversation and went to the police despite
the Cardinal’s advice not to “make a lot of noise”. Ultimately, the Bishop of Bruges admitted
to the abuse. Later that year, the Church in Belgium released a report on 488 cases of sexual
abuse in the Church in Belgium occurring between 1950 and 1990. In 50 cases, the Cardinal’s
name was linked– not as an abuser, but as someone who knew of the abuse by the clergy.

In 1990, Cardinal Daneels had also advised King Baudouin to sign into law Belgium’s liberal
abortion legislation. The Catholic King balked, and in the end his government declared His
Majesty temporarily “incapacitated” so the legislation could be enacted without royal assent.

It is astonishing that Pope Francis brought this man out of retirement to help shape the
results of the Synod on the Family. Evidently, Cardinal Daneels spends a great deal of time
in Rome, having the ear of this Pope. For all his protestations about his “zero tolerance”
for molesters and those who’d cover for them, Francis seems willing to look the other way
if a man has the correct ideology and can make himself useful… Marie Collins was right
to resign from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors– it’s become a bit of
a joke.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, March 14, AD 2017 4:32pm

Ultimately, the Bishop of Bruges admitted
to the abuse. Later that year, the Church in Belgium released a report on 488 cases of sexual
abuse in the Church in Belgium occurring between 1950 and 1990. In 50 cases, the Cardinal’s

If they had 50 cases where the chancery in question had been informed of anything in real time, I’d be quite surprised, much less the Primate. Cdl. Danneels was an academic and held no episcopal position until 1977.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, March 14, AD 2017 4:34pm

I’d also point out there’s a difference between something ‘occurring’ and a complaint that something occurred.

Clinton
Clinton
Wednesday, March 15, AD 2017 1:08am

Art Deco, it was a commission set up by the Church in Belgium which
came up with the report and the statistics I quoted– I believe the report was
made from the same records seized in a police raid on the Cardinal’s residence
after the story broke over the Bishop of Bruges’ abuse of his nephew.

Cardinal Daneels was Archbishop of Brussels almost 30 years. The 50 cases
I referred to are those out of 488 that had been brought to the attention
of the chancery and had received the attention of the Cardinal. Several involved
that same Bishop of Bruges, by the way, with other minors. The news reports
I’ve read suggest that those accusations of abuse were all withheld from the
police–certainly the Bishop of Bruges remained in his position despite several
complaints to the chancery until his nephew went to the police and the press
with his story.

Did His Eminence learn of these cases of abuse “in real time”? Certainly the
accusations involving the Bishop of Bruges came to his attention while the man
was still a bishop. De Standaard reported that 2 Belgian priests, Frs. Rik
Deville and Norbert Bethune had personally informed Cardinal Daneels about
accusations against Bishop Vangheluwe several times over a 10-year period.
Fr. Deville told the AP that he’d told Cardinal Daneels about several cases of
sexual abuse, and the response was “(t)he cardinal sometimes got angry and
said it wasn’t my job, that I should not get involved”. So yes, it appears that
Cardinal Daneels received credible information about sexual abuse of minors
“in real time” and failed to either act or to involve the police, and the records
seized by the police bear out that conclusion.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Wednesday, March 15, AD 2017 2:50am

Bad Pope being bad.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, March 15, AD 2017 3:49am

“[C]ommandeered judgment for himself, nullifying or sidestepping canonical procedures….”

An odd way of putting it, given that Pastor Æernus teaches, “And since, by the Divine right of Apostolic primacy, the Roman Pontiff is placed over the Universal Church, We further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all causes, the decision of which belongs to the Church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, and that none may re-open the judgment of the Apostolic See, for none has greater authority, nor can anyone lawfully review its judgment.”

Moreover, all the old canonists agree that the pope may proceed “summarie et de plano, sine forma et strepitu juris.” – Summarily and without argument, without the forms and measures of law.”

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, March 15, AD 2017 7:16am

Cardinal Daneels was Archbishop of Brussels almost 30 years. The 50 cases
I referred to are those out of 488 that had been brought to the attention
of the chancery and had received the attention of the Cardinal. Several involved
that same Bishop of Bruges, by the way, with other minors. The news reports
I’ve read suggest that those accusations of abuse were all withheld from the
police–certainly the Bishop of Bruges remained in his position despite several
complaints to the chancery until his nephew went to the police and the press
with his story.

Did His Eminence learn of these cases of abuse “in real time”?

If the dioceses from which the accusations originated are ordinary, the Cardinal was typically reviewing a report of an incident which occurred perhaps 15 years earlier. The Cardinal may have been a perfectly awful assessor and adjudicator. The trouble is, even had he been conscientious, he’d still have a high error rate.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, March 15, AD 2017 7:22am

Re law enforcement, was the accusation against the priest in question justiciable? We had a case in the Diocese of Syracuse where a monseigneur who had been in Bp O’Keefe’s camarilla had a mess of accusations against him. The thing is, he’d retired in 1989 with no accusations against him. He was accused by one young man in 1998, an incident to which he confessed. He received 4 additional accusations in 2002 which he denied. One concerned incidents in 1962-63 and one an incident in 1949. So, should Bp. Moynihan have told the police?

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