UNITED STATES
Daily Times
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2012
While the world awaits the verdict on the Philadelphia clerical sexual abuse trial in which the first church official in the United States is charged with endangering children for allegedly protecting the abusers, 14 nuns are on a national bus tour protesting proposed federal budget cuts because of their ill effects on the poor.
These nuns were organized by Network, a Washington-based Catholic social justice group recently criticized by Pope Benedict XVI — aka “The Vatican” — for focusing too much on economic injustice and not enough on abortion and same-sex marriage protests. This is the same pope who recently told Irish Catholics in a videotaped message that the cause of decades of child abuse in parishes, schools and other church-run institutions was a “mystery.”
This is also the same pope who, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, once headed the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and oversaw all abuse cases, allowing many to fester. For example, the future pope reportedly allowed an Arizona priest, who a church tribunal determined molested children as far back as the late 1970s, to remain a priest until 2004, more than 12 years after learning of the man’s predilection for youngsters.
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