BishopAccountability.org
	Abuse Victims to Protest at Cardinals" Ceremony By Paddy Agnew Irish Times November 19, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1119/1224283709721.html IT SAYS much about today’s Catholic Church that this weekend’s Consistory of Cardinals, always an occasion for self-congratulatory, full technicolour, Holy See pomp and circumstance, may be marked by a series of protests from the US clerical sex abuse survivors group Snap. Even as the 203-strong College of Cardinals is meeting in the Synod Hall today, Snap activists will be staging protests nearby urging the so-called “Princes of the Church” to “stop making symbolic gestures about abuse” but rather to “each spend two hours publicly reaching out to victims”. The reason for the protest is that earlier this month the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI wanted the cardinals to begin the consistory today with a day of prayer and reflection on a series of key issues affecting the life of the church. Thus it is that the cardinals will today discuss religious freedom, contemporary liturgy, relations with the worldwide Anglican community and, last but not least, “the response of the church to cases of sexual abuse”. While the Prefect of the Congregation For the Doctrine of the Faith, US cardinal William Levada, addresses fellow cardinals on the adequacy (or not) of the Catholic Church’s response to the sex abuse crisis, Snap activists will be protesting just down the road in Piazza Navona. The activists intend to walk around the square holding placards with “childhood photos” while handing out fliers urging anyone who “saw, suspected, or suffered child sex crimes” to speak out, thus exposing wrong-doers and starting the healing process. Earlier in the day, Snap will hold a news conference close to the Vatican at which four or five clerical sex abuse victims from Belgium, England, Germany and the US will urge the cardinals to stop making “symbolic gestures” but rather to reach out to those “who may have been hurt in the church and who are still suffering in silence, shame and self-blame”. Furthermore, Snap will again call on all Catholic prelates to “turn over to police and prosecutors the personnel files of proven, admitted and credibly accused child-molesting clerics”. It is unlikely, however, that the Snap protest will much impinge on the three-day celebration, heralding the appointment of 24 new cardinals. In two lavish ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday, the pope will present the new cardinals with their rings, zucchetti (small skullcaps) and birette (four-cornered silk hats), the latter two scarlet in colour, of course, as symbolic of the commitment of the cardinal to hold fast to the faith “even unto the shedding of blood” ( usque ad sanguinis effusionem ). Arguably the most significant aspect of this week’s appointments is the extent to which they reflect a creeping “re-Italianisation” of the Catholic Church. Ten of the new cardinals are Italian as compared with two from the US and Germany and one each from Brazil, Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, Guinea, Poland, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Zambia.
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