April 07, 2005

The death of a reactionary

Socialist Worker

April 8, 2005 | Page 3

THE MEDIA haze of kind words and rosy reminiscences about Pope John Paul II can’t change what the man was in real life--a hard-line right-winger who saw his mission as defending the most backward institutions and traditions of the Catholic Church. ...

When the U.S. church was exposed for harboring sexual predators among its priests, John Paul’s Vatican helped organize the cover-up, refusing to admit that anything about the workings of the church contributed to the scandal. Even a right-winger like former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a member of theAbuse Tracker Review Board of Catholic Lay People, which authored one report on the priest scandal, was forced to resign after he compared the Church hierarchy’s methods of concealing sexual abuse to those of La Cosa Nostra.

Posted by kshaw at April 7, 2005 09:01 AM