Bergoglio's response is insufficient. He refuses to mention the primary cause, an infiltration into the priesthood of men of no faith and homosexual perversion in order to undermine the Church of Christ.
Bergoglio himself has been an enabler and a protector of perverts and their protectors. Think here of Danneels, Ricca, and so many more. Think of the American homosexualist Cardinals whom he has appointed, Cupich, Farrell and Tobin and Bishop McElroy and others to say nothing of the tolerance of such obviously "gay" men such as James Martin and others.
In a quote that makes one wonder about a Freudian slip, Bergoglio said:
"We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite."
Style of Life!
Michael Voris is reporting that Archbishop Scicluna is going to be dispatched to investigate. Scicluna, a man supporting Holy Communion for adulterers, a persecutor of his own priests and a possible homosexual himself. Bergoglio is alleged to be fearing a RICO case in the United States linking to the Vatican. Bergoglio is reported to be "shaken." Will Scicluna simply take the secret files back to Rome? He is a man not to be trusted.
Good, let this pompous boil on the Seat of Peter by shaken, maybe it will wake him up to his own crimes and the crimes of those enabled by him and his ilk.
Bergoglio did not cause all of this, but he participated in it and he has enabled it.
The man is an enemy of the "People of God."
He must go, Let him resign, the filthy disgrace that this man is.
For it is written in the Book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolated, and let no man dwell therein; and his bishoprick let another take.
Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis
To the People of God
“If one member suffers, all suffer together
with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of
Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering
endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of
conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated
persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds
of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their
family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers
alike. Looking back to the past, no
effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must
be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening,
but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is
also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to
ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
1.
If one member suffers…
In recent days, a report was made public which
detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual
abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a
period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of
these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to
know the pain of many of the victims. We
have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us
forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this
culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these
victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or
silenced. But their outcry was more
powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve
it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed
us on which side he stands. Mary’s song
is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to
our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the
mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry
with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style
of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.
With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an
ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not
act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage
done to so many lives. We showed no care
for the little ones; we abandoned them.
I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the
Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of
pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church,
and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to
[Christ]! How much pride, how much
self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by
his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the
greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of
our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).
2. …
all suffer together with it
The extent and the gravity of all that has
happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and
communal way. While it is important and
necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has
happened, in itself this is not enough.
Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our
brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of
omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense,
to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts,
tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an
outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf.
Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity
demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any
person. A solidarity that summons us to
fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and
self-satisfied form of blindness.
Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and
other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as
an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those
who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of
Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen 4:9).
I am conscious of the effort and work being
carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means
to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of
vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making
all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and
sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to
guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.
Together with those efforts, every one of the
baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so
greatly need. This change calls for a
personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord
does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to
say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we
must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to
be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49).
To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to
experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of
God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s
command.[1] This can awaken our
conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that
says “never again” to every form of abuse.
It is impossible to think of a conversion of
our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all
the members of God’s People. Indeed,
whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People
of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological
approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory,
without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of
understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where
sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an
approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends
to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed
in the heart of our people”.[3]
Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons,
leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to
perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic
“no” to all forms of clericalism.
It is always helpful to remember that “in
salvation history, the Lord saved one people.
We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an
isolated individual. Rather, God draws
us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal
relationships present in the human community.
God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et
Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only
way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to
experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and
a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with
a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the
Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our
communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for
sound and realistic change. The
penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to
come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring
forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions
that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to
the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues
arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression,
more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii
Gaudium, 11).
It is essential that we, as a Church, be able
to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated
by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of
watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and
the sins of others. An awareness of sin
helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the
past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a
journey of renewed conversion.
Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to
open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the
thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those
evils. May fasting and prayer open our
ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst
for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial
measures that may be necessary. A
fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity
with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting
all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.
In this way, we can show clearly our calling to
be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire
human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).
“If one member suffers, all suffer together
with it”, said Saint Paul. By an
attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a
community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion,
in justice, prevention and reparation.
Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by
Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals
the way she lived her entire life. When
we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well,
with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love
and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises,
319). She, the first of the disciples,
teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the
innocent, without excuses or cowardice.
To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ.
May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of
conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of
abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.
FRANCIS
Vatican City, 20 August 2018
