VATICAN CITY
Addicting Info
Pope Francis wasted no time kicking off the New Year by labeling priestly pedophiles as “little monsters” according to a just released report of a meeting held in November.
Sex abuse scandals have plagued the Catholic Church for decades (centuries?) and the lack of action on the part of church officials has been a source of anger across the world. Rather than immediately handing known pedophiles over to the police, the “little monsters” were simply shuffled off to a new city or even country. There, they would continue to abuse children. It has been suggested that one of the reasons the Catholic Church has so many degenerates in it is because it shields, even enables, predators.
Because of this, the reputation of the Church has been seriously damaged over the years and the Pope has taken great strides to repair it. Pope Francis has already shaken the comfortable world of the religious right by openly condemning the pursuit of wealth and the harassment of homosexuals. He’s also taken on financial corruption. If he is serious about fixing the Church’s sexual abuse problem and not just fixing its public relations problem, Pope Francis may go down in history as the man who restored the Church’s moral clarity.
The phrase “little monsters” is likely to rub some people the wrong way. More specifically, the parents and victims of the hundreds (thousands?) of pious predators. Lady Gaga will surely not be amused.
To be fair, Pope Francis was not only referring to sexual predators but also “clericalism.” This is when a person enters the church for the purpose of rising through the ranks as a career instead of a calling. The church is quite wealthy and a high ranking official, like the “Bishop of Bling,” can live like a king. Further in his defense, the Pope was not mincing words:
In his remarks to the superiors, Francis flagged as a risk the “huge problem” of accepting into the seminary someone who has already been asked to leave another religious institute, and cited Pope Benedict XVI’s tough line on priests who commit sexual abuse.
“I am not speaking about people who recognize that they are sinners: we are all sinners, but we are all not corrupt,” Francis said. “Sinners are accepted, but not people who are corrupt.”
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