Obama’s Next Ambassador and Pressing the Next Pope (by Jerry Slevin, Retired Wall Street Lawyer)

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 7, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/obamas-next-ambassador-and-pressing-the-next-pope-by-jerry-slevin-retired-wall-street-lawyer/

As the Vatican’s favored U.S. media types try to spin on behalf of likely “papal preferences” to be next U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, President Obama must remind himself that he just won his recent re-election despite numerous papal agents, especially the U.S. Bishops’, unrelenting efforts to derail Obamacare and defeat him, including by comparing him to Hitler and Stalin. President Obama must show some real spine, like Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny did when PM Kenny closed his Vatican Embassy in evident protest against the Vatican’s alleged cover-up of priest child abuse, as well as to save money.

According to experts at a recent Vatican conference, Catholic priests have so far sexually abused over 100,000 children in the U.S. alone.

If President Obama doesn’t want to save money as well by closing the U.S. Embassy that the U.S. did fine without for over 200 years, then he at least needs to appoint someone as Vatican Ambassador who is both firm and independent and who has not already served on behalf of the U.S. Bishops.

That then excludes Nicholas Cafardi, who apparently has not yet explained adequately his actions in his role as Anthony Bevilacqua’s diocesean lawyer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cardinal Bevilacqua’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania diocesean subordinate, Monsignor Lynn, now sits in a Pennsylvania prison cell convicted of child endangerment. Monsignor Lynn’s main defense was that he was just following Cardinal Bevilacqua’s criminal orders.

What orders did Mr. Cafardi follow? Unless and until Mr. Cafardi publicly and fully discloses that, President Obama should not disrespect the many thousands of U.S. survivors of predatory priests by honoring Mr. Cafardi with this Ambassadorship at this critical juncture in the priest child abuse scandal.

Similarly, President Obama must not reward anyone else who worked in any significant role for the U.S. Bishops or for any of the universities that the U.S. Bishops dominate, like the Catholic University of America. None of them apparently spoke out sufficiently to protect U.S. children from priest sexual abuse or called for the the U.S. Bishops to curtail predatory priests effectively by accepting full accountability.

Moreover, some of these who worked directly or indirectly for the U. S. Bishops may yet be called to explain “what they knew when” about the priest child abuse, and why they didn’t say or do more to try to curtail it. If President Obama, as he has already been asked to do by many, soon sets up a national investigation commission on organizational child sexual abuse, as Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard is now boldly doing, who knows what present or former agents of the U.S. Bishops will have to testify? It would be most unseemly if the Vatican Ambassador were called on the public carpet to explain prior actions or failures to act.

Also, who knows what the U.S. political and moral outcry will be in a few weeks when both (1) the previously sealed Los Angeles Archdiocesan secret priest child sexual abuse files, that underly the earlier major $660 million settlement, are unsealed for public scrutiny, and (2) the award winning documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa”, begins multiple airings on HBO on Feb. 4. The documentary sickenly covers the alleged abuse of over 200 deaf boys by a single Milwaukee priest that local law enforcement officials and the Catholic Church hierarchy, including the current Pope’s then Vatican department, reportedly either “buried or sat on” for too many years, while the sexual violations of more deaf children reportedly just continued.

If President Obama wants to appoint a Catholic as Ambassador to the Vatican, fine. There are many well qualified ones who have never been agents of the U.S. Bishops and can be fully expected first to protect U.S. interests (including protecting U.S. children), and not Vatican interests. The President even knows some of these potential candidates quite well.

For more on President Obama’s urgent need to act to protect U.S. children from organizational sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other religious, educational and youth organizations, please read, “The Next Pope, President Obama & U.S. Child Abuse”, accessible at the top of this page and also at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-cv