The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #NunsToo speak up

Updated February 16, 2019 8.49pm AEDT



All eyes will turn to Rome between 21-24 February, when senior church clerics across the world meet to discuss how to handle the widening sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Until recently, this has been focused on the abuse of children. But now Pope Francis has admitted – for the first time – sexual abuse by priests against religious women exists and must be acknowledged.

And Catholic women are speaking out, under the #NunsToo hashtag.

Twenty-five years ago, Irish nun, Maura O'Donohue prepared an extensive report for the Vatican on the abuse of nuns internationally by priests. Her report was based on information supplied by priests, doctors and others, and she had been assured records existed for several of the incidents. But the report was covered up.

In late November, influenced by the success of the #MeToo movement, a group of women theologians convened a meeting – called Voices of Faith – in Rome to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of male clerics, and decry the patriarchy of the Catholic hierarchy.

Doris Wagner, a German theologian, recalled her terror as a young woman in a mixed-gender religious order. A superior of the order entered her room one night and raped her. She knew if she were to report this, she would be told it was her fault, so she kept quiet. Years later, she did tell her superior, who did exactly as she feared – she blamed her, and asked if she had used contraceptives.

Wagner said she was later groomed by priest Hermann Geissler. He worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican organisation that deals with complaints of child sexual abuse. This led to a series of sexual assaults in the confessional, which she reported.

Geissler was found to have acted inappropriately but was not removed from his job, despite working on child sex abuse cases. He was publicly outed and resigned only after Wagner disclosed the story at the meeting in Rome last year. But the priest who committed the rape is still ordained and living in a religious community with young women.

Wagner also read from a report that estimated up to 30% of Catholic sisters had been sexually abused and many more are at risk of clerical sexual abuse.



In Australia, reports suggest the number of Catholic women abused by priests vastly outnumber the survivors of child sexual abuse uncovered by the royal commission into the issue. These women and men often came from strict religious families, and had little experience of the world or sexual matters.

As this group finds its voice and begins to speak out, the leadership of the Church will face another crisis of legitimacy and round of public inquiries.

It is clear the sexual abuse of women, children and vulnerable adults has been normalised in Catholic clerical culture. Abuse is exercised at every level of ministry, from parish priest to the most senior clerics. Perpetrators are protected and victims silenced. This is aided by a culture of clerical entitlement and opportunity.

The child sex abuse royal commission’s final report provided ample evidence of this. It states:

Few survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred before the 1990s described receiving any formal response from the relevant Catholic Church authority when they reported the abuse. Instead, they were often disbelieved, ignored or punished, and in some cases were further abused.

Recently, a number of international cases have seen very senior Catholic clerics accused of protecting perpetrators of child sexual abuse. A Philadelphia Grand Jury recently found Church leaders protected more than 300 priest perpetrators. Australia’s royal commission also noted:

… the avoidance of public scandal, the maintenance of the reputation of the Catholic Church and loyalty to priests… largely determined the responses of Catholic Church authorities when allegations of child sexual abuse arose… Complaints of child sexual abuse were not reported to police or other civil authorities…

There are also cases of high-level clerical sexual abusers, including serial offender US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is now being defrocked, and Argentian bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who has been accused of sexual misconduct with young seminarians. Pope Francis’ response was to remove Zanchetta from Argentina and promote him to a position of power in the Vatican’s finance office.

Francis has not adequately handled a number of crises. This includes last year, when he defended a Chilean bishop who had covered up cases of child sexual abuse. As US feminist theologian Mary Hunt says, “you can’t make this stuff up”.

Little information has been provided about the agenda for the upcoming, so-called “protection of minors in the Church” meeting in late February. But it’s clear there will be no survivors, lay women or men in attendance – just the bishops, senior Vatican officials and Pope Francis.

This is the cohort who has protected priest perpetrators, covered up hundreds of cases, failed to report criminal activity to the police, blamed victims and promoted the guilty to positions of power. It is clear the answers to this catastrophic problem will not come from Church leaders. Instead, it is victims, survivors, lay people and experts in institutional change that need to be leading the dialogue, and enacting change. And one such group may be the Voices of Faith.

This article previously referred to the group “Voices of Faith” as “Voices of Change”. This has now been fixed.

Vatican Will Open Secret Archives of Nazi-Era Pope Accused of Ignoring Holocaust

03-05-2019 Emily Jones

Pope Pius XII on balcony at St Peter's Basilica in April 1955 (AP video screenshot)

Pope Francis announced on Monday that he will open up the Vatican archives on Pope Pius XII, a World-War-II-era pope who has been criticized for allegedly staying silent while the Nazi's executed millions of Jews.

Declaring that "the church isn't afraid of history," Francis said Pope Pius' records will be open to researchers beginning March 2, 2020. The Vatican usually waits 70 years after a pope dies to open up their archives, but the church has been under pressure to open Pius' while Holocaust survivors are still alive.

Francis defended Pius' legacy, saying it has been treated with "some prejudice and exaggeration" but also included "moments of grave difficulties, tormented decisions of human and Christian prudence, that to some could appear as reticence."

Jewish groups have been calling for full access to the archives for decades and welcomed the move.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem supported the decision to open the archives and said it expects "researchers will be granted full access to all the documents stored in the archives."

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) also commended the decision.

"It is particularly important that experts from the leading Holocaust memorial institutes in Israel and the US objectively evaluate as best as possible the historical record of that most terrible of times, to acknowledge both the failures as well as the valiant efforts made during the period of the Shoah [Holocaust] ," said Rabbi David Rosen, the AJC's International Director of Interreligious Affairs.

The Rabbi also called Francis' decision "enormously important to Catholic-Jewish relations."

Israel's ministry of foreign affairs expressed hope that the Vatican would truly grant "free access to all relevant archives."

The opening of the archives is interpreted as part of the effort to decide if Pius should be declared a saint, a decision that is undoubtedly controversial.

His critics accuse him of not doing enough to combat the Nazi regime. Pius did not publicly speak out against the deportation of Roman Jews to Auschwitz and did not sign a declaration in December 1942 condemning Nazi Germany’s murder of European Jews.

Pius' defenders argue that some convents and other religious institutes in Italy hid Jews from the Nazis.

Many hope the opening of Pius' archives will settle the debate on his Legacy.

Monsignor Sergio Pagano, who is in charge of the Vatican Secret Archive, said on Monday that thousands of files, letters, and other material will be made available.

Pagano wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Monday that the archives "spoke, speak, and, I hope, will speak to researchers and to historians of an almost superhuman work of Christian humanism" amid mid-20th-century events "that seemed determine to annihilate the very notion of human civilization."

Pope Rejects 'Excessive Demand for Sovereignty', Pushes Idea of Global Authority

05-06-2019 Benjamin Gill and Steve Warren



Pope Francis is pushing for steps toward global authority that supersedes the rights of individual countries, all with the goal of pursuing "the common good" on issues like climate change and immigration.

"When a supranational common good is clearly identified, it is necessary to have a special authority legally and concordantly constituted capable of facilitating its implementation. We think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new forms of slavery and peace," he told members of the Pontifical Academy.

They met last week at the Vatican to discuss the topic of: "Nation, State, Nation-State."

While addressing the conference, Francis rebuked the trend of nationalism among individual countries and the many tensions that "come from an excessive demand for sovereignty on the part of States."

However, the pope defended patriotism as a good thing. But he warned it can become perverted when "it involves the exclusion and hatred of others when it becomes a conflictual nationalism that builds walls, indeed even racism or anti-Semitism,"  according to Breitbart.com.

Francis also implied national sovereignty becomes twisted when countries do not have a welcoming attitude toward migrants.

"The Church observes with concern the reemergence, in many parts of the world, of currents that are aggressive towards foreigners, especially immigrants, as well as a growing nationalism that neglects the common good," he told the conference.

This, in turn, "threatens to jeopardize consolidated forms of international cooperation, undermines the aims of international organizations as a space for dialogue and meeting for all countries in a spirit of mutual respect, and hinders the attainment of the sustainable development goals approved unanimously by the United Nations," the Pope said.

The Pope also said individual countries can no longer look out for their own people by themselves due to globalization.

"The nation-state is no longer able to procure the common good of its populations alone. The common good has become global and nations must associate for their own benefit," Francis said.

The Pope also pushed the idea of supranational entities to the conference.  A supranational union is defined as a type of multinational political union where negotiated power is delegated to an authority by governments of member states.  The term is sometimes used to describe the European Union, according to Wikipedia.

For instance, a group of nations could "strengthen their cooperation by connecting certain functions and services to intergovernmental institutions that manage their common interests," he said.

"When a supranational common good is clearly identified, it is necessary to have a special authority that is legally and concordantly constituted and capable of facilitating its implementation," the Pope concluded.