Expose them all!
Filthy clericalist sodomite scum.
BY ALMUDENA CALATRAVA,
NATACHA PISARENKO AND NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
JANUARY 20, 2019 06:09 AM,
ORAN, ARGENTINA -- The Vatican received information in 2015 and 2017 that an
Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis had taken naked selfies, exhibited
"obscene" behavior and had been
accused of misconduct with seminarians, his former vicar general told The
Associated Press, undermining Vatican
claims that allegations of sexual abuse were only made a few months ago.
Francis accepted Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta's resignation in
August 2017, after priests in the remote northern Argentine diocese of Oran
complained about his authoritarian rule and a former vicar, seminary rector and
another prelate provided reports to the Vatican alleging abuses of power,
inappropriate behavior and sexual
harassment of adult seminarians, said the former vicar, the Rev. Juan Jose
Manzano.
The scandal over Zanchetta, 54, is the latest to implicate
Francis as he and the Catholic hierarchy as a whole face an unprecedented
crisis of confidence over their mishandling of cases of clergy sexual abuse of
minors and misconduct with adults. Francis has summoned church leaders to a
summit next month to chart the course forward for the universal church, but his
own actions in individual cases are increasingly in the spotlight.
The pope's decision to allow Zanchetta to resign quietly,
and then promote him to the No. 2 position in one of the Vatican's most
sensitive offices, has raised questions again about whether Francis turned a
blind eye to misconduct of his allies and dismissed allegations against them as
ideological attacks.
Manzano, Oran's vicar general under Zanchetta who is now a
parish priest, said he was one of the diocesan officials who raised the alarm
about his boss in 2015 and sent the digital selfies to the Vatican.
In an interview with AP in the pews of his St. Cayetano
parish in Oran, Manzano said he was one of the three current and former
diocesan officials who made a second complaint to the Vatican's embassy in
Buenos Aires in May or June of 2017 "when the situation was much more
serious, not just because there had been a question about sexual abuses, but
because the diocese was increasingly heading into the abyss."
"In 2015, we just sent a 'digital support' with selfie
photos of the previous bishop in obscene or out of place behavior that seemed
inappropriate and dangerous," he told AP in a follow-up email. "It
was an alarm that we made to the Holy See via some friendly bishops. The
nunciature didn't intervene directly, but the Holy Father summoned Zanchetta
and he justified himself saying that his cellphone had been hacked, and that
there were people who were out to damage the image of the pope."
Francis had named Zanchetta to Oran, a humble city some
1,650 kilometers (1,025 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires in Salta province, in
2013 in one of his first Argentine bishop appointments as pope. He knew
Zanchetta well; Zanchetta had been the executive undersecretary of the
Argentine bishops conference, which the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio
headed for two successive terms, from 2005-2011.
And by all indications, they were close. Manzano said
Bergoglio had been Zanchetta's confessor and treated him as a "spiritual
son."
All of which could explain why Francis named him to Oran
despite complaints about alleged abuses of power when Zanchetta was in charge
of economic affairs in his home diocese of Quilmes, which is in the ecclesial
province of Buenos Aires which Bergoglio headed.
Earlier this month, the Vatican confirmed that the new
bishop of Oran had opened a preliminary canonical investigation into Zanchetta
for alleged sexual abuse. But Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti stressed in
a Jan. 3 statement that the abuse allegations had only emerged at the end of
2018, after Zanchetta's resignation and nearly a year after Francis created the
new position for him as "assessor" of the Vatican's financial
management office.
At the time of his resignation, Zanchetta had only asked
Francis to let him leave Oran because he had difficult relations with its
priests and was "unable to govern the clergy," Gisotti said in the
statement.
"At the time of his resignation there were accusations
against him of authoritarianism, but there were no accusations of sexual abuse
against him," the statement said.
Manzano said the Vatican had information about sexually
inappropriate behavior starting in 2015, with the naked selfies, and reports of
alleged misconduct and harassment in May or June of 2017, though he noted they
didn't constitute formal canonical complaints.
After the 2015 report, Francis summoned Zanchetta to Rome,
Manzano said. He returned to Argentina "improved, to the point that no one
even investigated how those photos got to Rome."
But as the months passed, Zanchetta "became more
aggressive and took impulsive decisions, manipulating facts, people, influences
to reach his goals." Manzano said Zanchetta started coming to the seminary
at all hours, drinking with the seminarians and bringing a seminarian with him
whenever he visited a parish, sometimes without asking permission of the
rector.
"The rector tried to keep the students in order, being
present when the bishop appeared, but the monsignor looked for ways to avoid
his attention and to discredit him in front of the young guys," Manzano
told AP in an email. "The bad feeling was aggravated when some of them
left the seminary. It was then that the rector investigated and warned of
harassment and inappropriate behavior."
In May or June 2017, Manzano, the rector and another priest
presented their concerns to the No. 2 in the Buenos Aires nunciature, Monsignor
Vincenzo Turturro, "who moved it forward fabulously," Manzano said.
Manzano said he reported about Zanchetta's alleged abuses of power with the
clergy, while the rector reported about the alleged sexual abuses in the
seminary. Manzano said he didn't know the details of the alleged abuses, but he
ruled out any acts of rape.
The pope summoned Zanchetta again in July 2017. Returning
home, Zanchetta announced his resignation in a July 29 statement saying he
needed immediate treatment for a health problem.
Zanchetta spent time in Corrientes before leaving for Spain,
where he is believed to have met with one of Francis' spiritual guides, the
Rev. German Arana, a Jesuit to whom Francis had sent another problematic
bishop, the Chilean Juan Barros.
Zanchetta largely disappeared from public view until the
Vatican, in an official announcement Dec. 19, 2017, said Francis had named him
to the new position of "assessor" in APSA, a key administrative
department which manages the Holy See's real estate and financial holdings.
Zanchetta has not publicly responded to the allegations
against him. The Vatican has not provided information when asked, other than to
say he is not working while the investigation takes its course.
Manzano defended Francis' handling of the case, saying the
pope himself should be considered a victim of Zanchetta's
"manipulation."
"There was never any intent to hide anything. There was
never any intent of the Holy Father to defend him against anything,"
Manzano said. He denied there was any contradiction in the Vatican's Jan. 3
statement, distinguishing between a report about alleged sexual abuse and a
formal complaint.
The current bishop of Oran, Bishop Luis Antonio Scozzina,
declined to speak to AP on camera, saying he wanted to keep silent until the
investigation was in the hands of the Holy See. He has issued a statement
urging victims to come forward and provide testimony. But he told AP he didn't
want to create a media circus that might compromise the rights of both victims
and accused.
A catechist in the diocese said church leaders had told
staff and volunteers not to speak to the media about the allegations at the
seminary.
The mother of one seminarian said her son had told her that
the allegations of sexual misconduct involving some of his colleagues in the
seminary were true. "Unfortunately yes, he told me when I asked him about
this," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect her son.
The scandal, which was first reported by The Tribune
newspaper of Salta, has taken its toll in Oran, a deeply conservative community
near the Bolivian border.
"I feel a great pain, because as a Christian how can we
let these things take place?" asked pensioner Hector Jimenez. Teacher
Gianina del Valle Chein said the Vatican should have treated Zanchetta like
"like any normal person who did something, and not hide him, take him away
to somewhere else so that he can keep doing the same thing."
