Revolt??? Pope V. Pell and Obama after Newtown

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
December 26, 2012

http://christiancatholicism.com/revolt-pope-v-pell-and-obama-after-newtown-by-jerry-slevin-retired-wall-street-lawyer/

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Pope Benedict XVI is tweeting. Christians worldwide have again celebrated the incomprehensible birth of the divine child, Jesus, that changed and still changes history, both for believers and non-believers. A half world away, Sydney’s Cardinal Pell apologized deeply for the Catholic Church’s continuing failures, directly alluding thereby to his unexpected bold admission, earlier this month to Scottish Bishops, of the Church’s continuing failures sufficiently to protect children from sexual violence and to help sexual abuse survivors heal. In Rome, on the other hand, the Pope amazingly tweeted about his childhood nativity set. You can’t make this stuff up!

What is going on? Is Cardinal Pell campaigning against the ruling Vatican clique’s “Omerta” policy on child abuse to try to get elected next pope on a reform platform? Or is he only trying to spin the media in advance of Australia’s royal commission’s personally threatening investigation of the Catholic Church’s role in condoning sexual violence against children? Or both? Is he expecting that this commission’s proceedings and findings will lead to breaking the centuries’ old power grip of secretive Vatican cliques directly on the Catholic hierarchy and indirectly on the worldwide Catholic Church community? Is he also worried about his own personal situation?

Will other Cardinals follow Pell’s apparent lead, now or before the next papal election anticipated to be occurring soon? Separately, what impact might President Obama’s potential actions have now, in light of the imminent Australian efforts, in ending the Vatican’s long standing efforts to cover-up priest sexual abuse of children?

The Pope, of course, is well aware of the abuse Elephant in the Room. Indeed, a few days ago, he shockingly, apparently either arrogantly or obliviously, appointed as chief Vatican prosecutor of predatory priests one of disgraced Boston Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyers, who reportedly has a reputation for going much easier than many canonists on accused predatory priests. Law’s “man” will replace the last prosecutor who got “promoted out” of Rome after unexpectedly and publicly announcing on child abuse matters that the Vatican administration operates under a code of silence, or “Omerta”, as it is also called in the Godfather movies.

Please tell President Obama to try to stop this endless Vatican evasion by setting up a special U.S. commission now to investigate all organizational sexual abuse, not just in the Catholic Church, and to identify suitable Federal responses. Please click on and read, then sign, the short petition at: http://wh.gov/5aAQ

The Vatican has been “stonewalling” for many decades, if not centuries, trying with considerable success to keep secret its failure to protect children effectively from predatory priests. Enough already! President Obama has made clear that protecting children from sexual violence is more important than protecting institutions. The President needs to act now.

The horrific Newtown massacre has focused attention properly on protecting children from gun violence. President Obama has acted decisively here, directing Vice President Biden, well experienced in legislating, to press Congress to act promptly on curtailing U.S. gun lunacy that harms so many innocent children. Now President Obama must act similarly decisively on organizational sexual violence against children.

The Pope was joined this Christmas by his older brother, Monsignor George Ratzinger, both experienced veterans of the World War II German Wehrmacht, Hitler’s army. Neither of them have yet responded nearly adequately to the serious allegations that publicly arose in 2010 of the earlier serious failures ot the Pope in Munich and his brother in Regensberg to prevent child sexual violence by priests that they each evidentally had to have had sufficient knowledge of.

Then again, why should the Pope and his brother address what arrogant Cardinal Sodano at Easter Mass in 2010 so cavalierly dismissed as “petty gossip”. The Vatican hierarchy is presently unaccountable to anyone, while the “watchdog media” too often focuses on endless insignificant distractions like tweeting, popemobiles and nativity sets.

The earlier sexual violence against innocent and defenseless children in Munich and Regensberg may seem “petty” to arrogant and unaccountable celibate Vatican operators like Cardinal Sodano, reportedly a prime protector of now deceased former predators of many youths, Fr. Maciel of Mexico and Cardinal Groer of Vienna, but that violence was and still is very significant and painful to the abuse survivors of these alleged acts of sexual violence and to their many loved ones, as well. They have all been denied justice for decades.

Another example closer to home of this Vatican arrogance and long time evasion occurred a couple of weeks ago in an incident reported to the U.S. Secret Service that allegedly happened in the public space in front of the Papal Nuncio’s Washington D.C. embassy, across from Vice President Biden’s Blair House residence. A retired steelworker, who was allegedly sexually abused by a priest in Italy over a half centuury ago, just filed charges that a priest who apparently serves on the Nuncio’s staff, spit in his face and trampled on his protest sign.

This retired man, seeking some justice for decades denied to him, had reportedly protested with his protest sign without prior reported incident on almost a daily basis for over 15 years in front of the Papal Nuncio’s residence. This is the same Nuncio who apparently let the Pope’s butler take the fall for, among other things, reporting publicly the financial corruption that the Nuncio had earlier properly, but privately, uncovered in the Vatican administration, resulting in the Nuncio’s reportedly involuntary recent transfer to Washington DC from Rome for uncovering it and wanting the Pope to curtail it.

In many ways, the Vatican has been figuratively spitting in the face of children, and much worse, and their loved ones for decades in the United States, and as we are learning on almost a daily basis, in much of the rest of the world, as well. At a Vatican conference in Rome in February last, invited experts estimated that over 100,000 children in the USA alone so far have been victims of predatory priest sexual violence, with no end in victim count in sight.

The Vatican evidentally has a definite strategy with its secretive predatory priest cover-up policy that is so apparent. For a thorough explanation of this apparent strategy, please click on at the top of this page for my prior article, “Vatican: A New Child Protection Strategy Now?”.