Sister Donna Quinn Confronts Vatican on Absence of Women at Conclave on CNN

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Sister Donna Quinn Confronts Vatican on Absence of Women at Conclave on CNN

A transcript of the segment, which aired on CNN Newsroom on February 27 at 9:04 a.m. EST, is as follows:

CAROL COSTELLO: As you watch the celebrations in Rome, what goes through your mind?

DONNA QUINN, coordinator, National Coalition of American Nuns: Well, I'd like to thank the Pope for his work and wish him well. I'd like to also pick up on something he just said, "for the good of the church." We women are calling this papal election invalid. It has to be declared fraudulent because it has no women included in the process. By that I mean there are no women on the ballot in the conclave, there are no women voters, there are no women in the whole process, and women make up half of the Church's Membership.

We know that's not for the good of the church. And when Pope Benedict was first elected, we were tired, as women, of the gray smoke and then the white smoke, so what we had outside of all the cathedrals across the United States, we had pink smoke rising up. Now this time around, we are saying there can be no pink smoke. It has dissipated. What we are calling for is to have women included in the whole process. You know, young women today, they don't respect the church. They don't go to church. They are bright, articulate, intelligent women. They know they are made in the image and likeness of God, and they hold CEO positions, elected office positions, but they are saying no to gender abuse.

CAROL COSTELLO: Sister, let me interrupt you.

QUINN: – and sexual abuse.

COSTELLO: Let me just interrupt you for a second. You have a very liberal view there and I'm sure many nuns feel the way do, you but not all of them. I want to bring in our Vatican analyst John Allen. John, I don't know if you heard what the sister said but she's upset because there are no women involved in this process, in the selection of a new pope. That's not likely to change, is it?

ALLEN: No, I mean I think the central fact to understand about this conclave is that all 115 cardinals who will be voting were appointed either by John Paul II or Benedict XVI and therefore on the big picture issues they are all of one mind. So I think it's quite unlikely that the next Pope is going to ordain women or repeal church teaching on abortion or gay marriage or those kinds of issues. Now on the other hand, I would certainly say from my own experience of talking to cardinals the more thoughtful among them realize that the church has a woman's problem. They understand that there are a lot of sisters who feel the same way as our guest does and it's not just nuns, of course. Lots of women generally feel that way. So I do think the next pope is going to face this very difficult challenge of trying to reach out to women and assuring them there's a place for them in the church, while at the same time drawing a line in the sand on the ordination question.

COSTELLO: When you say that they're going to select the new pope and they're going to think outside the box and they're maybe going to South America or Africa to choose the next pope, they're really not thinking outside the box though, are they? Maybe they are in picking a pope from another country but as far as –

ALLEN: – you mean the hot-button issues that we talk about, that is the culture wars, they're not going to think outside that box. Papal transitions are more about changes in tone and style than they are substance. But on the other hand, we've seen in recent experience that things do change. John Paul II was a very different man than the pope he followed, Paul VI. Just as Benedict XVI was quite different from John Paul II in many ways. So if by "box" we mean things bigger than issues, if we mean tonality and approach and personality, those kinds of things, then yeah, I think it's reasonable to think there might some changes on those scores.

With The Pope's Resignation, Everything Has Changed

Comment:Best summary written-excellent commentary Nancy.
Bottom line: If the pope can resign, the rest of us can say goodbye to the cult of suffering and the cultic exaltation of the priesthood -- and we can welcome women to the pulpit, the poor to our table, and the laity to the exercise of their own common sense.


With The Pope's Resignation, Everything Has Changed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-dallavalle/church-on-a-human-scale_b_2759948.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false    

 

Archbishop O'Brien, the disgraced leader of Catholics in Scotland, won't be the last casualty of the current Vatican shakeout precipitated by Benedict XVI's resignation. The question now is not whether the Church will survive, but how and for whom.
The most long-lasting outcome of the decision by Joseph Ratzinger -- "Benedict XVI" seems passé already -- to resign from the papacy continues to be the act itself. We have not come close to absorbing this. While there have been other cases of papal resignation in the last two millennia, they have little bearing on this moment. This is different.
As with the decision to divorce or leave the country or have the surgery after all, our attention at first was consumed with the clutter of detail: the rules of the conclave, the renovation of the residence deep in the Vatican, what happens to the papal ring.
We know the drill. There will be a conclave, white smoke, a figure in brocade will be presented to the joyful crowd below, a subdued yet authoritative narrator's voice commenting as I watch the scene on cable. I follow the news closely, I may opine on the choice, perhaps you'll read my words in your newspaper as I note the significance of an Italian (stability, housecleaning at the Curia) or an African (global Catholicism!) or that guy from Quebec (pro-family conservatism, Canadian-ness).
But everything has changed. Whoever it may be, his papacy will be defined not by the reign of Benedict, but by Benedict's last act, foregoing the slow swoon of a death on stage in favor of a short bow to the audience before a most purposeful exit. The houselights have come up rather quickly and we are all struggling to our feet, gathering our things and checking our watches -- until we glance sideways and see the slowly emerging and unintended consequence of this resignation in one another's eyes: all bets are off.
The image of the barque of Peter, floating serenely through the various ages of human history, has been un-done by this one public act and the dominoes that keep falling. From here on, as bishop of Rome, the pope does not serve above history; he serves with a college of his peers as they guide a very human church in history. For Christians, for Catholics in particular, this distinction matters. It does not negate the gift of the Spirit to the Church, but it re-affirms, with surprising resonance, that the Church is both a spirited and deeply human institution. In resigning the papacy, Benedict has allowed the Church to rejoin the world. This is potentially even more important than the necessary bloodletting about the sexual scandals that will have our attention at first.
In the world the Church re-joins, trials can make one stronger, but unnecessary suffering generally crushes its victims. If the pope can resign, a woman with a compromised uterus, for whom pregnancy means certain death, may have her tubes tied. If the pope can resign, the pastor who gave his all with fidelity and vision for 30 years, but now sees his deep loneliness, can leave the priesthood and marry without shame. If the pope can resign, the older couple who have taken in her mother with severe dementia, risking their own health and driving their adult children away, can call that nursing home. Today.
In the world the Church re-joins, the priesthood can serve the Church, but not as its supreme exception. If the pope can resign, we can put to rest the numbing grip of clericalism. Celibacy didn't cause the sex abuse crisis, but the clerical fiction that celibacy makes priests holy did. There is not more sexual abuse in the Church than elsewhere, but the perversion of clericalism geometrically increased its impact, often on the most vulnerable. Clericalism dictated that when the Church got serious about eradicating sexual abuse from the clergy, the laity received re-education. Clericalism has kept bishops from speaking plainly about other bishops; it has put artificial barriers between priests and those they serve, and it has too often reduced the Church's sacramental action to nothing more than pretentious superstition.
If the pope can resign, the women students I have mentored all these years can walk into their local bishop's office and put their credentials, and their years of witnessing to the faith, on the table. If the pope can resign, Catholics in wealthy countries might have to account for the glaring disparities, the "geographical differences," between rich and poor parishes in a world church. If the pope can resign, a pastor can finally give the response he's always wanted to give to the anxious person at the wedding reception who wants to know if the Saturday afternoon wedding "counts" for Sunday mass: "It's your call."
Bottom line: If the pope can resign, the rest of us can say goodbye to the cult of suffering and the cultic exaltation of the priesthood -- and we can welcome women to the pulpit, the poor to our table, and the laity to the exercise of their own common sense.
The pope has resigned; the bad news is tumbling out of all corners. What a relief.

Can the next pope keep Cardinals out of jail?

Comment:
For a long time, I have not understood hierarchical dynamics that shielded clerics from criminal prosecution.  I could not understand why ordination allowed them to remain above the law and I certainly do not understand this movement to grant immunity to the pope for crimes against humanity.  Jerry Slevin, an international lawyer, has answered many of my questions.  We have been schooled to keep our eyes shut, our ears closed and our actions dimunitive.

Catholics need to rise above this if they do not want to be labeled accomplices in it.  Criminal behavior has been leveled against the hierarchy.  We need to stand back and allow the courts to do what needs to be done.  And in the meantime-plan for a renewal the is "Catholic" at its best.

http://christiancatholicism.com/next-pope-can-keep-cardinals-out-of-jail-only-if/

Last Chance To Fix Church For Next Pope Or Let Judges Fix It For Him

"Last Chance To Fix Church For Next Pope Or Let Judges Fix It For Him" - Views of Jerry Slevin, a retired Catholic and Harvard "schooled" international lawyer

http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-ww
LISTEN UP, PLEASE, ALL VOTING CARDINALS!

Truth always seems so absent at the Vatican. Joseph Ratzinger leaves the papacy for his extensively refurbished convent as he arrived in Rome over thirty years before–up to his eyeballs in lies. The latest is the leaked claim he, and his constant companion, Georgeous Georg, whom the Pope just boosted suddenly into an Archbishopric, were just “shockingly informed” that a gay clique live on their tiny campus. Is it any surprise the bold butler seemed to distrust Georg? Next the Pope will be “shocked” when he learns some in the clique speak German as well as Italian. Really, your Holiness, you can find a better way to duck the dark truths rapidly being unveiled. The Gospels tell us the Apostles were often weak men. But few of them seem as bad as some of their purported successors. Who knows, though, Jesus was talking to someone when he demanded children be protected?
This last ditch effort by Benedict to blame his Vatican’s endless sins on gay persons is, at least, consistent for with his opportunistic career pattern and his early Third Reich formation. He arrived at the Vatican after helping feed his old “friend”, Hans Kung, to John Paul II’s inquisitorial lions in 1980. Fr. Hans Kung was too smart and intrepid, though, for both of these shameful and ambitious hierarchs whose constant concern for clerical child abusers is being sickenly disclosed on an almost daily basis. Typically gracious and candid, Fr. Kung spoke of his former university colleague, Joseph Ratzinger, this week as reported here at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/theologian-hans-kueng-discusses-the-future-of-the-catholic-church-a-884080.html
The seemingly unending and substantially unaddressed Vatican scandals of child abuse cover-ups, sexual blackmail, financial corruption and managerial incompetence have reached a tipping point making resignation the only option apparently. Shortly, on March 1, Cardinals reportedly will be told secretly what is in the confidential report of the three octogenerian Cardinal survivors of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Franco. They have seen it all before, no doubt.
The next Pope will surely be bogged down for years in ongoing worldwide governmental investigations, civil litigation and criminal prosecutions of the Church’s hierarchy that are now beginning to mushroom. These challenges are already burdened by the overall dark legacy left by ex-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and his Polish predecessor, so concisely summarized by Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, a student of key theologian, M.-D. Chenu, who theologically guided Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wotyla at Vatican II, accessible here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-fox/the-dark-legacy-of-pope-benedict-xvi_b_2720313.html
Here’s what well-advised Cardinals who want to survive can and should do, in my view as an experienced international lawyer and lifelong Catholic.
First, they must read my unheeded brief advice to Pope Benedict XVI in the Washington Post in 2010, accessible here:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/04/pope_should_endorse_independent_investigation.html
Cardinals then need to join together and block by a one-third vote any papal candidate, otherwise acceptable, that will not agree publicly BEFORE installation to take the following three actions:
(1) Serve only a three year term subject to re-election thereafter. Pope Benedict just proved by resigning that the papacy is not a lifelong position.
(2) Appoint now a special commission to identify and recommend within nine months needed structural and pastoral changes, with specific changes preliminarily listed now for the commission’s consideration.
(3) Implement the needed changes so identified at a worldwide council held away from Rome within six months of receipt of the special committee’s recommendations as described in my Washington Post article.
Alternatively, Cardinals can just consider giving the Vatican clique their blank papal proxies, then hire expensive criminal lawyers and pray for a miracle. How do they really think God will respond?
Typically, the “secret dossier” reportedly will not be publicly disclosed to the worldwide Catholic faithful whose contributions funded the report and the Cardinals’ opulent lifestyles. Catholics will once again have to wait until some of the slime is selectively leaked by conniving Cardinals. Why doesn’t Benedict not just release the full report now and give the new Pope a fighting chance to regain some of the diminishing trust of a majority of Catholics that Benedict lost so completely? It will be on the Internet eventually anyway!
As an experienced international lawyer, I am constantly surprised at how naive and/or ill advised so many Cardinals seem to be about their own personal prosecution risks. Now is the time to begin seriously to fix the Church, which will also surely reduce the risk of prosecution for many Cardinals. The Vatican clique seems to live in a legal fantasyland, perhaps hoping to forestall prosecutors for their few remaining years like Cardinal Bevilacqua did. Fine, but any Cardinals who plan to be around awhile need to wake up!
Just think about what’s coming in terms of governmental investigations in Australia, the USA (LA, Philly, Milwaukee, Washington DC, et al.) , Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and other European nations, and eventually nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa as well. Criminal lawyers will certainly be busy.The U.S. Cardinals can expect to spend most of the next decade in courts, civil, criminal and/or bankruptcy, assuming any of them return to the USA after the conclave and forgo seeking “Cardinal Law” Vatican immunity protection now.
Unless Cardinals take real steps now in the next couple of weeks, it will be business as usual for the Vatican Cardinals clique once the other Cardinals leave Rome, as happened tragically after Vatican II and as Cardinal Martini recently warned in his final testament. Indeed, Cardinal Ottaviani, the “father” of the current Vatican clique, had two “friendly” theologians working on producing a misleadingly named “minority report” to undercut the 1966 Birth Control Commission report within hours of the Commission’s report being delivered to Paul VI favoring family planning, including contraception, as detailed thoroughly in Robert Blair Kaiser’s classic book, “The Politics Of Sex and Religion”, now available as a free e-book download at RobertBlairKaiser.com . Ottaviani and his progeny, including Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wotyla, will have to account to their Maker for the millions of families who suffered needlessly because of their subverting of the Commission’s approval of sane contraceptive family planning to their hierarchical ambition and lust for power and whatever else Vatican celibates lust after, as we may find out depressingly on March 1 when fearful Cardinals start selectively leaking the secret dossier to try to benefit their papal candidate.
The imperial papacy was created coercively by Constantine and his successors beginning in the Fourth Century. It then served a purpose for over a millenium in a European monarchical world that ended with World War I. It no longer is needed and is so tainted with corruption and secrecy that it needs to go the way of other monarchies, as Cardinal Martini with his recent “200 year updating” final advice surely contemplated.
This will necessitate changing the Vatican administration into one that serves, as Jesus contemplated, rather than one that is served. No wonder the Vatican clique picked Cardinal Ratzinger over Cardinal Martini in 2005. The Church cannot wait any longer to adjust to its new freedom from external political and military pressure. This is an opportunity for a New Evangelization, not the last chance for the Vatican clique to tighten their grip.
A Bishop of Rome could still be maintained to preside over the current spiritual tourist Disneyworld with Vatican museums, parades, custumes, Swiss Guards, etc. A networked worldwide church linked by modern communication that returns to the accountable oversight of local leaders, male and female, popularly selected is long overdue. It is also the structure Jesus and his early followers intentionally left behind and one that would curtail most of the Church’s current shortcomings.
Pertinently, among some of the relevant guidelines generally ascribed to Jesus are that he was opposed to a self-important, excessively scrupulous and overly indulgent religious hierarchy and that he thought children should be protected from harm. These points have neither been consistently understood nor respected in the Vatican for decades, even for centuries. The “Good News”, or the Gospels, have often been disregarded by the Catholic hierarchy where a Renaissance culture of opulence and celibate incomprehension of children still predominate today.
Where in the Gospels did Jesus say predatory priests are to be protected before innocent children, like the Vatican has done for decades, if not centuries? Where did Jesus instruct his followers to wear expensive outfits paid for by donations? Where did Jesus tell his followers to launder money like Cardinals reportedly do through the Vatican Bank?
If, as Benedict has clearly indicated, a Pope should go if he is unable to perform his duties, should he be removed if he is unwilling to perform or performs badly? Should there be term limits or maximum age limits? Of course, the only logical answer is yes to all of these related questions. But the Vatican is run by power politics, not logic, or even spiritual values for that matter. Some Vatican Cardinal will likely leak soon the real reasons Benedict is retiring. Why couldn’t Benedict wait until his refurbished convent was ready? Benedict will meet soon with top Italian leaders who seem to be benefiting in their own election contests from the media attention on the Pope. Is an immunity deal in the air? In any event, the real story should be out soon.
It is time to restore Catholic leadership to the consensual approach that Jesus and early Catholics followed for over three centuries until Roman Emperors converted the Catholic Bishops, including the Pope, into an imperial bureaucracy dominated by a Vatican clique that dictated ruthlessly for 1,700 years, and still dictates, top-down to Catholics seemingly to fill the clique’s coffers.
Catholics will not likely in their lifetimes have a better opportunity than in connection with the papal election to reform the Church, and at the same time to protect children as Jesus commanded. It is time to restore the consensual church management structure that the overwhelming vote of Vatican II Cardinals and Bishops contemplated would be adopted a half century ago before a minority of Cardinals like Ottaviani, Wotyla, Ratzinger, Sodano, Bertone, Levada, Rigali, Mahony, Law, Burke, Bevilacqua, Brady, et al., subverted its implementation.
Pope John XXIII issued in 1962 the main secrecy order on priest child sex abuse. But he also realized that accountabilty had to be restored to save the Church. He took the first step by trying to get the Vatican Cardinals to share power with the worldwide bishops. He died soon therafter and the Vatican Cardinals’ clique rejected power sharing craftily. Since then, they have installed compliant Popes who like the papal prestige and are happy to do the clique’s bidding. But the democratic rule of law has run out of patience with clerical child abusers and Popes no longer have any effective political power, as the re-election of President Obama and papal political setbacks in the Philippines, Australia, the United Kingdom, France and elsewhere just proved.
The International Sheriff appears to be on his way to Rome and the Pope cannot hide for long with Georgeous Georg in a refurbished convent. Some of his own Cardinals, or his butler, may likely help nail him, it appears. Why didn’t the butler trust Georg? We may soon find out.
The Vatican clique’s unending stream of blunders, the latest including (1) appointing Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer as chief Vatican prosecutor of predatory priests, (2) appointing as part-time Vatican Bank “chief” a German investment banker, who is reportedly also overseeing a major arms dealer, and (3) the shaming of Cardinal Mahony publicly, selectively and gratuitously, while others like Cardinals Brady and Rigali got a pass.
But at this point does any of this matter to most Catholics worldwide? While it may seem overly pessimistic to say so soon that the next Pope will likely fail too, it is just being realistic; and yet there is also room for much optimism. The papal resignation is tantamount to an admission of failure and will lead to de-mystification of the papacy quickly. Pope Benedict XVI, soon to again be non-Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger, and his Vatican clique led by Cardinal Sodano et al., have already set the stage for the next failure.
The sudden call for a quick election conclave substantially diminishes any chance of a real opposition being mounted by non-Vatican Cardinals. Since the Pope apparently knew for some time he would resign, the suddenness seems well planned. Ratzinger will soon be living a few hundred yards away from the new Pope in his refurbished retirement base, hardly a monastery, where he can continue to dictate policy by remote control.
The reason for some optimism is that the Vatican clique’s apparent raw power grab will now just accelerate the sinking of the Vatican Titanic that much sooner. Even overly trusting Catholics will see through the hierarchical charade. Various prosecutors and survivors lawyers can now be expected to be able to reach Ratzinger, who may lose his legal immunity in less than a week. Once the rule of international law starts pulling hard directly on papal threads, the Vatican hierarchy can expect to be quickly uncovered and forced to initiate reforms, perhaps after some senior officials face prosecution, which is likely not too far off.
For example, longtime Vatican Cardinal Rigali is still at risk of prosecution in Philadelphia where his predecessor, Cardinal Bevilacqua, last year apparently escaped a likely imminent criminal indictment for child endangerment by dying first! Their hapless senior aide, Monsignor Lynn, took the fall so far and is in prison.
Catholics are not and should not be waiting on Cardinals. Australian and Irish Catholics have already gotten their governments to act.Now many from different faiths and no faith all across the USA, and even worldwide, including some of those harmed by the abuse of the deaf victims in Milwaukee, have already signed my petition calling on President Obama to step up. They have indicated they have had enough with the domination of local prosecutors and legislators by the Catholic hierarchy and its well paid apologists and lawyers. The UN Committee on Children’s severe criticism of President Obama’s Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress, echoed by SNAP, just reinforces the need for the national investigation commission that the petition requests.
More signatures, including yours, will help accelerate the establishment of the U.S. national investigation commission, especially important now when the Vatican may be at a turning point.
We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at: http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-investigate-child-sexual-abuse-by-priests-rabbis-religious-leaders
Please, as well, ask those you respect and who value children to sign it also. If you are active in a U.S. advocacy group, ask your leadership to support the petition. Similarly reticent progressive Catholic voices seem reluctant to press for the positive prospects of President Obama establishing a U.S. national investigation commission. With the UN Committee’s and SNAP’S lead, they need now to take a stand.
What are they all waiting for? Blogging, writing, debating and prayer, however admirable and well intentioned, have to date barely influenced the Vatican clique and their subservient U.S. Bishops on reforms and will likely do little more in the future, certainly in the near term as more children are raped by priests, while overly trusting Catholics continue to contribute enabling complicit bishops to protect priest pedophiles and predators perpetually.
It is a sad commentary on the docility and timidity of so-called progressive U. S. Catholics that a UN Committee in Geneva has to take the lead in calling for national action on a nationwide and pervasive outrage against innocent and defenseless children in the USA !
I have separately proposed that President Obama consider appointing First Lady, Michelle Obama, to chair the new Obama commission. She is well respected as a Harvard lawyer and devoted mother. She would be an ideal choice with her established credibility if she were willing to accept the appointment.
If the First Lady would oversee this, President Obama would still be able to focus on his many other priorities, including resisting the Vatican’s and its plutocratic Republican contributors’ unrelenting and opportunistic efforts to derail Obamacare over contraception insurance and immigration reform over gay marriage.
If there tragically were not over 200 million “unplanned” children living miserably in countries where Vatican lobbying effectively denied their parents access to affordable contraception, a dispute among octogenerian celibates over permissible forms of contraception would make good political satire! But sadly, the Vatican’s anti-contraceptive efforts, apparently mainly to please the Vatican’s plutocratic Republican donors by keeping family planning wedge issues in political play, will very likely only fail again, while these efforts continue nevertheless to burden families and children.
Please click on to the black text at the top of this column for my analysis of related topics.
Finally, I hope some of you will consider linking this statement to your comments at appropriate websites and/or circulating it to others via social media.

Home

Jesus Says: Cardinals Need Much More Than A New Pope

UN Criticism of Obama DOJ & Italian Vote; Popes & Pols; Kids & Sighs

What If? New Pope, But No Upfront Public Reform Pledge FUGEDABUTIT

“Culpa” Pope: Pres. Obama & Mahony v.Law Pell,Finn,Egan Brady,Rigali&?

A Taboo, a New Pope & a Truer Church

Last Chance To Fix Church For Next Pope Or Let Judges Fix It For Him

New Gospel: Bad News For Popes? Is It “Good News” For Catholics?

Next Pope & Only Some Cardinals Are Immune For Abuse Crimes

Next Pope Is Irrelevant As Roman Holy Empire Falls

A Next & Ex-Pope: Infallible and Immune ? What’s Up ?

Is the Pope Panicking Over Sex Scandals, Political Polls, or Both?

Mea Maxima Culpa, the Pope, the President and Our Children

Vatican: A New Child Protection Strategy Now?

Why Did the Pope Shame LA’s Mahony, But Not Brady of Ireland?

Will Cardinals Try To Delay Benedict XVI’s Choice For Next Pope ?

Will the Next Pope Become the Vatican’s Last Pope?

Pope resigned in wake of gay priest scandal+ digest of 10 nations concerns

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/22/pope-leaks-fallout/1938321/

So we have the following:

Pope leaves because of

Gay Priests Scandal
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/22/pope-leaks-fallout/1938321/

Involvement in the Legion of Christ in America(Skimming wealthy widows)
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4422028396391411284#editor/target=post;postID=3691867449252281929

(Canada)
Pope Evades Criminal Charges by Hiding in Vatican
http://www.politicolnews.com/pope-evades-criminal-charges-by-hiding-in-vatican/

Germany

• German Bishops Halt Child Abuse Inquiry

Australia

• National Inquiry of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church

Belgium-Crimes against Humanity leveled ag BXVI as Joseph Ratzinger

• Report on wide spread child abuse
• Bishop Roger Vanghuewe resigns

Mexico

• Reverend Marcial Maciel

United States-Criminal behavior among clerics in these states

• Los Angeles
• Milwaukee
• Philadelphia
• New Hampshire

Ireland-Crimes against Children of Ireland

• Cloyne Report
• Ferns Report
• Murphy Report
• Ryan Report
• Amnesty International Report

Italy-Money Laundering throught he Vatican Bank

• Genoa
• Vatican Bank inquiry
• Verona
• Vatileaks and Monsignor 007

Statements on the Magdalene Laundries

Comment: Taoiseach Enda Kenny needs to coach the Curia and Pope on how to admit wrongdoing and move on to a new age and time.

Statements on the Magdalene Laundries Report

• An Taoiseach Enda Kenny
• February 19th, 2013

I begin today’s debate by thanking Dr Martin McAleese and his team for their excellent work on this report.
I thank equally all the women who met with them to assist in its compilation. I also thank the religious orders who cooperated fully with Dr. McAleese.
Together they have helped provide Ireland with a document of truth.
The Magdalene laundries have cast a long shadow over Irish life over our sense of who we are.
It’s just two weeks since we received this report: the first-ever detailed Report into the State’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries.
It shines a bright and necessary light on a dark chapter of Ireland’s history.
On coming to office the Government was determined to investigate the facts of the State’s involvement.
The government was adamant that these ageing and elderly women would get the compassion and the recognition for which they have fought for so long deserved so deeply and had, until now, been so abjectly denied.
The reality is that for 90 years Ireland subjected these women and their experience to a profound and studied indifference.
I was determined because of this that this Government – this Dáil – would take the necessary time not just to commission the Report but to actually study it and having done so to reflect on its findings.
I believe that was the best way to formulate a plan and strategy that would help us make amends for the State’s role in the hurt of these extraordinary women.
I’m glad that so many of the women themselves agreed with that approach.
And I’m glad that this time of reflection gave me the chance to do the most important thing of all: to meet personally with the Magdalene Women. To sit down with them, face to face, to listen to their stories.
It was a humbling and inspiring experience.
Today, as their Taoiseach, I am privileged to welcome some of these women to this House many of whom have travelled long distances to be here.
I warmly welcome you every one of you to your national parliament, to Dail Eireann.
What we discuss today is your story. What we address today is how you took this country’s terrible ‘secret’ and made it your own. Burying it carrying it in your hearts here at home, or with you to England and to Canada America and Australia on behalf of Ireland and the Irish people.
But from this moment on you need carry it no more. Because today we take it back. Today we acknowledge the role of the State in your ordeal.
We now know that the State itself was directly involved in over a quarter of all admissions to the Magdalene Laundries.
Be it through the social services reformatories psychiatric institutions county homes the prison and probation service and industrial schools.
In fact we have decided to include all the Magdalene women in our response regardless of how they were admitted.
Dr McAleese set out to investigate five areas in particular;
1: The routes by which the women entered the laundries
2: Regulations of the workplace and State inspections
3: State funding of and financial assistance to the laundries
4: The routes by which the girls and women left the laundries
5: Death registrations, burials and exhumations
In all five areas there was found to be direct State involvement.
As I read this Report and as I listened to these women, it struck me that for generations Ireland had created a particular portrait of itself as a good living God-fearing nation.
Through this and other reports we know this flattering self-portrait to be fictitious.
It would be easy to explain away all that happened – all we did in those great moral and social salves of ‘the culture back then’ = the ‘order of the day’, ‘the terrible times that were in it’.
Yes, by any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy. That much is clear, both from the ages of the Report, and from the stories of the women I met.
As I sat with these women as they told their stories it was clear that while every woman’s story was different each of them shared a particular experience of a particular Ireland judgemental intolerant petty and prim.
In the laundries themselves some women spent weeks others months more of them years. But the thread that ran through their many stories was a palpable sense of suffocation not just physical in that they were incarcerated but psychological .spiritual social. Their stories were enriched by an astonishing vividness of recall of situation and circumstance.
Here are some of the things I read in the report and they said directly to me:

“The work was so hard, the regime was cruel.”
“I felt all alone, nobody wanted me.”
“They sent me because they thought I was going to a good school.”
“I seen these older people beside me, I used cry myself to sleep.”
“I was bold, I wasn’t going to school.”
“I was locked up I thought I would never get out.”
“We had to sew at night even when we were sick.”
“I heard a radio sometimes in the distance.”
“We were not allowed to talk to each other.”
“Your letters were checked.”
“I was so short I needed a stool to put washing in.”
“The noise was desperate.”
“I thought I would go mad from the silence.”
“The heat was unbelievable.”
“I broke a cup once and had to wear it hanging around my neck for three days.”
“I felt always tired always wet .always humiliated.”
“My father came for me after three months but I was too ashamed to go home.”
“I never saw my Mam again she died while I was in there.”

The Magdalene Women might have been told that they were washing away a wrong or a sin but we know now and to our shame they were only ever scrubbing away our nation’s shadow.
Today, just as the State accepts its direct involvement in the Magdalene Laundries society too has its responsibility.
I believe I speak for millions of Irish people all over the world when I say we put away these women because .for too many years we put away our conscience.
We swapped our personal scruples for a solid public apparatus that kept us in tune and in step with a sense of what was ‘proper behaviour’ or the ‘appropriate view’ according to a sort of moral code that was fostered at the time particularly in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
We lived with the damaging idea that what was desirable and acceptable in the eyes of the Church and the State was the same and interchangeable.
Is it this mindset then this moral subservience that gave us the social mores the required and exclusive ‘values’ of the time that welcomed the compliant, obedient and lucky ‘us’ and banished the more problematic, spirited or unlucky ‘them’?
And to our nation’s shame it must be said that if these women had managed to scale the high walls of the laundries they’d have had their work cut out for them to negotiate the height and the depth of the barricades around society’s ‘proper’ heart. For we saw difference as something to be feared and hidden rather than embraced and celebrated.
But were these our ‘values’?
Because we can ask ourselves for a State – least of all a republic.
What is the ‘value’ of the tacit and unchallenged decree that saw society humiliate and degrade these girls and women?
What is the ‘value’ of the ignorance and arrogance that saw us publicly call them ‘Penitents’ for their ‘crime’ of being poor or abused or just plain unlucky enough to be already the inmate of a reformatory, or an industrial school or a psychiatric institution?
We can ask ourselves as the families we were then what was worthy what was good about that great euphemism of ‘putting away’ our daughters our sisters our aunties ?
Those ‘values’ those failures those wrongs characterised Magdalene Ireland.
Today we live in a very different Ireland with a very a different consciousness awareness – an Ireland where we have more compassion empathy insight heart.
We do because at last we are learning those terrible lessons. We do because at last we are giving up our secrets.
We do because in naming and addressing the wrong, as is happening here today, we are trying to make sure we quarantine such abject behaviour in our past and eradicate it from Ireland’s present and Ireland’s future.
In a society guided by the principles of compassion and social justice there never would have been any need for institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries.
The Report shows that the perception that the Magdalene Laundries were reserved for what were offensively and judgementally called “fallen women” is not based upon fact at all but upon prejudice. The women are and always were wholly blameless.
Therefore, I, as Taoiseach, on behalf of the State, the government and our citizens deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, and for any stigma they suffered, as a result of the time they spent in a Magdalene Laundry.
I hope that the publication of the McAleese Report and this apology makes some contribution to the healing process.
But in reflecting on this Report I have come to the view that these women deserve more than this formal apology, important though it is. I also want to put in place a process by which we can determine how best to help and support the women in their remaining years.
One of the many things I have learned during my recent meetings with these women is that their circumstances and current needs vary greatly from person to person.
That’s why the Government has today asked the President of the Law Reform Commission, Judge John Quirke, to undertake a three month review and to make recommendations as to the criteria that should be applied in assessing the help that the government can provide in the areas of payments and other supports, including medical cards, psychological and counselling services and other welfare needs.
The terms of reference for Judge Quirke will be published later today and I will also arrange for the representatives of the women to be fully briefed on this process. When Judge Quirke has reported, the government will establish a Fund to assist the women, based on his recommendations.
I am confident that this process will enable us to provide speedy, fair and meaningful help to the women in a compassionate and non adversial way. I am determined that the fund will be primarily used to help the women – as is their stated and strong desire – not for legal or administrative costs.
The McAleese Report also refers to women who recounted similar experiences in other residential laundries, such as the laundry offering services to the public operated in the Training Centre at Stanhope Street, Dublin.
The government has decided that these women should be included in both the apology I have extended today, and in the Fund.
I am also conscious that many of the women I met last week want to see a permanent memorial established to remind us all of this dark part of our history.
I agree that this should be done and intend to engage directly with the representative groups and of as many of the women as possible to agree on the creation of an appropriate memorial to be financed by the Government separately from the funds that are being set aside for the direct assistance for the women.
Let me conclude by again speaking directly to the women whose experiences in Magdalene Laundries have negatively affected their subsequent lives.
As a society, for many years we failed you.
We forgot you or, if we thought of you at all, we did so in untrue and offensive stereotypes.
This is a national shame, for which I again say, I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.
At the conclusion of my discussions with one group of the Magdalene Women one of those present sang ‘Whispering Hope’. A line from that song stays in my mind – “when the dark midnight is over, watch for the breaking of day”.
Let me hope that this day and this debate heralds a new dawn for all those who feared that the dark midnight might never end.

Pope Evades Criminal Charges by Hiding in Vatican

http://www.politicolnews.com/pope-evades-criminal-charges-by-hiding-in-vatican/

February 16, 2013

Feb. 16, 2013 Late breaking news on the real reason why Pope Benedict XVI quit the job as Pope is centered around the fact that he was going to be charged for crimes against humanity by shielding pedophile priests in the RC church.
A statement given to Reuters reveals that the Church has decided to grant Joseph Ratzinger immunity against any and all charges involving his protection of known sex offenders.
As a high ranking member of the Catholic Church, Ratzinger knew priests who habitually were reported as sex offenders with children and shipped them to other parishes where they continued raping children.
Even after becoming a Pope as well he protected priests by denying criminal charges.
When he was an archbishop, J. Ratzinger knowingly and willingly protected the criminal priests and thereby avoiding legal and lawful charges against them. Now the church is willfully breaking the law by giving him sanctuary against the law.

The Hiding of a Criminal Pope

Photo: An Exposed Pope Now Hides from the Law Joseph Ratzinger
In a statement to the press today, the Vatican announced that:

It will give Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Pope Benedict XVI a permanent residency in the Vatican, which gives him legal immunity to any charges against him.
The entire world is wondering why a Pope would consider such drastic action as quitting while still in the papacy, since historically Pope’s usually die in office.
In a report the church officials indicate they are offering Ratzinger legal protection in connection with any charges that he may have protected known sexual abusers in the priesthood around the world. The Church sources indicates:
“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless”. By this statement we gather that if Ratzinger steps outside the Vatican perimeter he could be legally arrested and brought to trial for his criminal cover ups. The Roman Catholic Church is basically admitting the former Pope is guilty, they know it and further more they are giving him cover against the authorities.
Quote from ITCCS.org
” The Vatican decided today to give permanent sanctuary to a proven war criminal by allowing Joseph Ratzinger to obstruct justice and evade prosecution for crimes against humanity. And the government of Italy is colluding in this abrogation of international law.
This decision validates our claims about the criminal conspiracy surrounding Ratzinger and his Vatican co-conspirators. It also makes it clear that the Vatican is a rogue power that is flaunting every law to conceal its own criminality.
In response, the ITCCS calls upon its affiliates and all people of conscience to use our upcoming Easter Reclamation Campaign to converge on Rome and the Vatican to force the extradition of Ratzinger from Vatican City, and place him and his accessories on trial for crimes against humanity.
Commencing Sunday, March 24, 2013, our activists and others will begin an escalating series of Catholic church occupations and seizures of church property to bring about Ratzinger’s extradition and reclaim stolen wealth from the criminal corporation known as Vatican Inc. – in the name of the legion of their victims, both living and dead. “
Quote from Reuters
1) (Reuters) ” The Vatican has consistently said that a pope cannot be held accountable for cases of abuse committed by others because priests are employees of individual dioceses around the world and not direct employees of the Vatican. It says the head of the church cannot be compared to the CEO of a company.
Victims groups have said Benedict, particularly in his previous job at the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department, turned a blind eye to the overall policies of local Churches, which moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them and handing them over to authorities.”
2) (Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

Roy Bourgeois chosen as one of six Catholic voices

Dear All:

I just received exciting news from Father Roy Bourgeois. He has been chosen as one of six Catholic voices to be featured in next Sunday's LA Times (February 24) . There has been ongoing coverage in the LA Times about the latest cover-up of the ongoing pedophile scandal and the news about the Pope's recent resignation. An editor at the LA Times thought that it would be interesting to have 6 Catholics talk about what they would ask the incoming Pope and Roy was chosen to discuss women's ordination. His piece has been written and approved and together with the other 5 Catholics will be a full page in next Sunday's paper. The readership on Sundays is over a million people!
I am writing to ask a favor. Please forward this email and please respond to the LA Times next Sunday. They closely monitor their online traffic, there is a section for comments, so please write in, or call the editor of the op-ed page. If this goes well, Fr. Roy will be their 'go to Catholic' on women's ordination, the School of the Americas, matters of conscience and other important issues.
As many of you know Father Roy, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for his work to close the US School of the Americas,has been speaking out for women's ordination in the Catholic Church. The Vatican excommunicated him and kicked him out of the Maryknoll Order last October 2012 (he's been a priest for 40 years) for not recanting his belief that women are equal to men and can be called by God to be priests. (Meanwhile the pedophile priests have yet to be excommunicated.)
Thank you for your time,Warmly,Debra Hannula

Comment:
For such a long time, the clerical community thought they were immune to the law.  They falsely believed they autimatically, by ordination, were put above all laws.  This is the result.  Good for Rhode Island.  Catholics as well as the hierarchy need to hear a different story.  Special thanks to Jason Berry, who has not stopped seeking the truth.

http://ncronline.org/node/45366

Rhode Island judge releases documents revealing inner workings of Legion of Christ

Jason Berry | Feb. 15, 2013

 

Documents released Friday by a Rhode Island judge provide a new window into the internal workings of the Legion of Christ, a religious order of priests whose founder was revealed to have sexually abused seminarians and fathered children by at least two women.
The release of the voluminous court records by Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein came within days of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, who ordered an investigation into allegations against Legion founder Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado when Benedict played a powerful role in the Vatican as a cardinal and again in the early years of his papacy.
These documents are expected to shed new light on a scandal Benedict inherited from Pope John Paul II, who was a longtime and loyal supporter of Maciel even after the allegations against him were filed in 1998.
Benedict's trip to Mexico last year ignited a blaze of negative media coverage because of his failure to meet with sexual victims of the late Maciel, and the global reach of the scandal has cast a shadow on Benedict and his papacy.
The documents first surfaced in a suit accusing Legion officials of defrauding a wealthy widow, Gabrielle Mee, of tens of millions of dollars. They remained sealed when Silverstein dismissed the suit against the Legion and Bank of America. He ruled that Mary Lou Dauray, Mee's niece, lacked legal standing to bring suit.
At the time, however, the judge's 39-page ruling detailed questionable fundraising tactics and raised suspicions about the Legion: "The transfer of millions of dollars worth of assets -- through will, trust and gifts -- from a steadfastly spiritual, elderly woman to her trusted but clandestinely dubious spiritual leaders raises a red flag to this court."
The documents were released in response to a petition to Silverstein by the National Catholic Reporter, The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Providence Journal.
The manner in which Maciel and the Legion used their funds as a religious charity is central the fraud allegations in the Rhode Island probate case brought by Dauray, who is seeking to recover the fortune her late aunt handed over to the Legion as a "consecrated woman" in its lay wing, Regnum Christi.
"They used her as a piggy bank," said Bernard Jackvony, Dauray's attorney. "They saw her as an economic engine and used her for $30 million in donations for 16 years. The defrauding of Mrs. Mee looms over this entire case."
Fleet Bank, which later merged with Bank of America, facilitated the Legion's access to the flow of money from Mee and the charitable trust of her late husband, Timothy. According to Jackvony, the bank should have maintained a wall between its duty to administer a trust and the Legion's aggressive action to gain control of the funds.
"The Legion's business relationship as a customer of the bank facilitated a sharing of information on the Mee trust that should have been kept in confidence," Jackvony said.
With access to the trust and Mee's donations, the Legion bought a $35 million corporate campus from IBM in Thornwood, N.Y., in the 1990s.
Maciel's status as a successful fundraiser and his ability to attract laypeople and seminarians to his organization was due in part to a close relationship he had with the late John Paul II. The pope championed the Legion and praised Maciel in 1994 as "an efficacious guide to youth." John Paul continued praising Maciel after Jose Barba, a Mexico City college professor, filed a 1998 case in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seeking Maciel’s ouster for abusing Barba and other youths in the Legion seminary. Ratzinger would go on to be elected to the papacy and take the name Benedict XVI,
As a cardinal, Ratzinger arguably came to know the multiple cases against Maciel as well as anyone. Although he initially blocked the case from going forward in the Vatican's legal machinery, he later reopened the investigation of Maciel. In 2006, the pope dismissed Maciel from ministry to a "life of prayer and penitence." In 2009, the Legion acknowledged Maciel had a daughter and apologized to the seminary abuse victims. Two sons have since come forward claiming they were Maciel's children by a different woman.
Well before the charges and revelations, Mee entrusted her finances to Maciel and the Legion: According to documents Silverstein quoted in a ruling last fall, Mee in 1998 visited the Legionaries center in Cheshire, Conn., and on Aug. 8 of that year gave the order a check for $1 million. In 1991, she revised her will, giving 90 percent of her assets to the Legionaries. She also joined Regnum Christi that year and gave another $3 million to the Legionaries.
"Her estate-planning documents were in the possession of the Legion in Rome," Jackvony said. "They breached their duty to her in trust and confidence."
As the 1998 allegations against Maciel in Ratzinger's tribunal sat dormant during the latter years of John Paul's papacy, Maciel was giving Mee advice on her financial investments. She gave Fr. Anthony Bannon, the Legion's North American territorial director, her power of attorney in 2000 and appointed him executor of her estate.
Bannon became more aggressive in pushing her to increase the flow of donations, but Fleet resisted the encroachment of Timothy Mee's trust. The Legionaries sued the bank in 2001, generating deposition testimony by Mee. The parties finally dropped the suit, which gave the Legion free access to the Mee fortune. "I preferred to put all my eggs in one basket than have it fragmented," Mee said in a deposition in the bank case the judge quoted in a recent ruling.
"I don't know if she was brainwashed, but Mrs. Mee was unduly influenced and defrauded," Jackvony said.
[Jason Berry, GlobalPost's religion correspondent, has been working with National Catholic Reporter on the Maciel story for several years and will be going through the just-released documents. NCR expects to publish what these court files reveal early next week. GlobalPost's religion blog, Belief, will be publishing excerpts of NCR's reports as they come out.]

"Easter Reclamation by International Tribunal for Crimes against Church and State

http://itccs.org/2013/02/13/pope-benedict-resigned-to-avoid-arrest-seizure-of-church-wealth-by-easter/
February 13, 2013 by itccs

Diplomatic Note was issued to Vatican just prior to his resignation

New Pope and Catholic clergy face indictment and arrest as "Easter Reclamation" plan continues

A Global Media Release and Statement from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

Brussels:
The historically unprecedented resignation of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope this week was compelled by an upcoming action by a European government to issue an arrest warrant against Ratzinger and a public lien against Vatican property and assets by Easter.
The ITCCS Central Office in Brussels is compelled by Pope Benedict's sudden abdication to disclose the following details:
1. On Friday, February 1, 2013, on the basis of evidence supplied by our affiliated Common Law Court of Justice (itccs.org), our Office concluded an agreement with representatives of a European nation and its courts to secure an arrest warrant against Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict, for crimes against humanity and ordering a criminal conspiracy.
2. This arrest warrant was to be delivered to the office of the "Holy See" in Rome on Friday, February 15, 2013. It allowed the nation in question to detain Ratzinger as a suspect in a crime if he entered its sovereign territory.
3. A diplomatic note was issued by the said nation's government to the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, on Monday, February 4, 2013, informing Bertone of the impending arrest warrant and inviting his office to comply. No reply to this note was received from Cardinal Bertone or his office; but six days later, Pope Benedict resigned.
4. The agreement between our Tribunal and the said nation included a second provision to issue a commercial lien through that nation's courts against the property and wealth of the Roman Catholic church commencing on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013. This lien was to be accompanied by a public and global "Easter Reclamation Campaign" whereby Catholic church property was to be occupied and claimed by citizens as public assets forfeited under international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
5. It is the decision of our Tribunal and the said nation's government to proceed with the arrest of Joseph Ratzinger upon his vacating the office of the Roman Pontiff on a charge of crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy.
6. It is our further decision to proceed as well with the indictment and arrest of Joseph Ratzinger's successor as Pope on the same charges; and to enforce the commercial lien and "Easter Reclamation Campaign" against the Roman Catholic church, as planned.
In closing, our Tribunal acknowledges that Pope Benedict's complicity in criminal activities of the Vatican Bank (IOR) was compelling his eventual dismissal by the highest officials of the Vatican. But according to our sources, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone forced Joseph Ratzinger's resignation immediately, and in direct response to the diplomatic note concerning the arrest warrant that was issued to him by the said nation's government on February 4, 2013.
We call upon all citizens and governments to assist our efforts to legally and directly disestablish the Vatican, Inc. and arrest its chief officers and clergy who are complicit in crimes against humanity and the ongoing criminal conspiracy to aid and protect child torture and trafficking.

Pope Benedict to seek immunity and protection from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on February 23

Pope Benedict to seek immunity and protection from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on February 23      http://itccs.org/

I have been following this for a long time. I thought the resignation was related to Australia's 5 year investigation sex abuse of children, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/julia-gillard-announces-royal-commission-will-probe-child-sex-abuse/story-fn59niix-1226515336333,  but it seems Canada is leading the way.

I have not been aware of this group-but it seems they have been working through the legal system for some time. I am more familiar with the Hague's investigation of 2011 naming Ratzinger as the chief defendant. Because these lawyers could not bring a suit against a sovereign state-they leveled it against Ratzinger. All cases went through his office by his own design long before he was Pope.  Much of the work was done by Jeffrey Anderson of KY and Marci Hamilton. http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/11430070/1800534519/name/pope-lawsuit-2011%284%29.pdf

Because I go to Canada often, I have heard of some of these atrocities-but this is horrible. And yes, it is genocide.   

Patrick Wall has gathered some information from other countries whose investigations have led to Ratzinger’s involvement.  You can read more about this at http://dianedoughertysblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-real-reason-behind-papal-resignation.html

The Real Reason behind the Papal Resignation

Catholic Clergy Child Abuse Investigations Since 2005 ... and a Papal Resignation

Patrick J. Wall Feb.11, 2013

The German Pope's resignation today as the Bishop of Rome (for health reasons) is the final lie in his Papacy. Since 2005, Benedict XVI's church has been the subject of more civil and criminal inquiries of the Church since the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Just look at the sheer volume of child abuse and financial abuse inquiries during Benedict XVI's reign. The real story is how these worldwide child abuse inquires brought on the first resignation of a healthy Pope in eight centuries.

Click on the links to read the full reports.

Germany

• German Bishops Halt Child Abuse Inquiry

Australia

• National Inquiry of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church

Belgium

• Report on wide spread child abuse
• Bishop Roger Vanghuewe resigns

Mexico

• Reverend Marcial Maciel

United States

• Los Angeles
• Milwaukee
• Philadelphia
• New Hampshire

Ireland

• Cloyne Report
• Ferns Report
• Murphy Report
• Ryan Report
• Amnesty International Report

Italy

• Genoa
• Vatican Bank inquiry
• Verona
• Vatileaks and Monsignor 007