International, Politics, Religion, Society

Vatican’s Second in Command Implicated in Abuse Scandal


Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has been named as the person most responsible for allowing a serial child molester to remain as a priest in Wisconsin. He has been named as the party who blocked the defrocking of Reverend Lawrence Murphy.

Vatican officials appear to be confirming the role in an effort to deflect criticism from the Pope who, as a cardinal, was also reportedly involved in the matter.

The Pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, failed to take action despite being informed twice that Murphy had abused 200 children.

New information released in coverage suggests that Bertone demanded that the scandal be “treated in absolute secrecy” to avoid “enlarging the scandal.” Coverage also quotes Bertone as saying that he wanted to “avoid a scandal for his boss.”

Murphy died in 1998 aged 72, without being defrocked for his crimes, let alone turned over to the police.

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11 thoughts on “Vatican’s Second in Command Implicated in Abuse Scandal”

  1. Ahhhh, life is like crazy circles. I had to share this treat about another misbehaving theologian, Jerry Fallwell, Jr., son of Jerry, Sr., and current head of an . . . interesting educational institution of the Jesus Was American Crowd. A place also known as “Daddy’s Joint”, Liberty University in Lynchberg, VA. Junior’s been a very bad and – oh to our entertainment – very stupid boy.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gerdy/jerry-falwell-jr-steals-f_b_527754.html

    Please read this article even if you don’t care about Falwell. The last paragraph is going to make you laugh until you hurt yourself. Enjoy the karma. Best served funny. 😀

  4. “…they knew of 345 cases of molestation in Alaska by 28 perpetrators who came from at least four different countries.

    This concentration of abuses is orders of magnitude greater than Catholic sex-abuse cases in other parts of the United States. Today, Roosa said, there are 17,000 Catholics in the diocese of Fairbanks, though there was a much smaller number during the peak of the abuse. Roosa compared this lawsuit to the famous Los Angeles suits of 2001, which claimed 550 victims of abuse in a Catholic population of 3.4 million.

    These abusers in Alaska, Wall said, were specifically sent to Alaska “to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage” to the church’s public image.
    …
    The sheer concentration of known sex offenders in these isolated communities begins to look less like an accident than a plan. Their institutional protection looks less like an embarrassed cover-up than aiding and abetting. And the way the church has settled case after case across the country, refusing to let most of them go to trial for a public airing, is starting to look like an admission of guilt.”

    http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-pedophiles-paradise/Content?oid=1065017

  5. “In September 2005, former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—who’d just become the pope—asked the justice department of the Bush administration to grant him immunity from prosecution in sex-abuse cases in the United States. Ratzinger, the onetime head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was accused of “conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian” in Texas, according to the Associated Press. Ratzinger had “written in Latin to bishops around the world, explaining that ‘grave’ crimes such as the sexual abuse of minors would be handled by his congregation. The proceedings of special church tribunals handling the cases were subject to ‘pontifical secret,'” Ratzinger’s letter said. The Bush administration granted Ratzinger the immunity.
    …
    http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-pedophiles-paradise/Content?oid=1065017

  6. “Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has been named as the person most responsible for allowing a serial child molester to remain as a priest in Wisconsin.”

    Which entitles him to 20,000 bonus miles on his Vatican card, a personalized parking space, and a fourteenth century silver Vaseline salver, laser-engraved with a likeness of Macaulay Culkin.

  7. What about those people that live near the end of the boot. I hear they have family connections all over.

  9. “I would rather be first in a small village in Gaul than second in command in Rome”
    Julius Caesar

  11. Isn’t blaming one’s second in command the same move Michael Steele just made at the RNC?

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