MENLO PARK (CA)
Inside Bay Area
By Katya Kumkova-Wolpert, CORRESPONDENT
MENLO PARK — A group of Vatican reviewers visited the St. Patrick's Seminary campus last week to review its admission procedures and performance.
"Their aim is to see how our program is going," Assistant Rector the Rev. Fred Cwiekoski said. "It's their committee, not ours. They will be reporting to their commission in the Vatican."
St. Patrick's is one of 229 American seminaries to receive a so-called papal visitation. A papal committee will review the Jesuit School of Theology at UC Berkeley in February.
The visits were conceived in 2002 in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals that began in Boston and spread to dozens of diocese throughout the country.
But advocates of reform in the Catholic Church say the Vatican has used the review to promote its anti-gay agenda.
"It seems to be a simple solution. Let's target the gays because nobody likes them anyway. That way, we will have done something. But they won't really have done anything," said "Father James," a Bay Area priest and a member of the Berkeley-basedAbuse Tracker Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries.