UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary
March 2, 2016 Joelle Casteix
Less than 48 hours after Spotlight nabbed the best picture Oscar, a grand jury report and an Australian cardinal are showing the world that the clergy sex abuse scandal is far from over.
Yesterday in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a grand jury released a 147-page report outlining sex abuse and cover-up in the Diocese of Altoona-Jonestown.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette:
Hundreds of children were molested, raped and destined to lasting psychological trauma by clerics whose abuses were covered up by their bishops, other superiors and even compliant law-enforcement officials in Blair and Cambria counties, the report said.
The conspiracy amounted to “soul murder,” the report said, with abuse happening everywhere from camps and homes to the historic cathedral itself. That description echoes that of similar grand jury probes into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 2005 and 2011 that found cardinals and other clerics shifted numerous known abusers from one unsuspecting parish to another.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane called it a “day of reckoning” for abusers and their enablers but lamented that no one could be criminally charged.
But that’s not all.
Simultaneously in Rome, an Australian Cardinal testified (via satellite) about what he knew about sex abuse and cover-up in his home country.
It didn’t go too well.
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