Archbishop rapes Dominican children and gets away with it: Pope Francis where is your zero tolerance policy?

For the first time, according to the New York Times, a top Vatican ambassador — a personal envoy of the pope — has been accused of sexual abuse of minors.

Sneaking around Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in black track pants and a baseball cap, he would walk along the oceanfront promenade where poor shoeshine boys worked and lure them down to the rocky shoreline or to a deserted monument for a local Catholic hero. The boys say he gave them money to perform sexual acts.

They never knew his identity until his picture was front page local news and after he was suddenly recalled to Rome: Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Before the Vatican shipped him out, a local video crew got a tip about the stealthy molester and went to film him – he then disappeared from the waterfront.  According to Dominican law enforcement authorities Wesolowski began sending a young Dominican church deacon to procure children for him.

The deacon, Francisco Javier Occi Reyes, was arrested by the police on June 24, 2013, accused of solicitation of minors, and jailed. Although Reyes wrote to Wesolowski  he was ignored and left in jail. In his letter Reyes said, “We have offended God” and the church by sexually abusing children and adolescents “for crumbs of money.”

We all remember the recent claims of Pope Francis, who called child sexual abuse “such an ugly crime” and pledged to move the Roman Catholic Church into an era of “zero tolerance.” For priests and bishops who have violated children, he told reporters in May, “There are no privileges.”

Was he punished?  Wesolowski received “the harshest penalty possible under the church’s canon law short of excommunication: he was defrocked by the Vatican.   What terrible punishment for him! How does that help the abused children? What justice do they get? The Vatican says that it intends to try Wesolowski on criminal charges — we know what a great job they do policing themselves. What about criminal prosecution in a real court of law like any other criminal? What about sending him back for a jail sentence in the Dominican Republic?

It didn’t happen because the church, acting against its own guidelines for handling abuse cases, failed to inform the local authorities of the evidence against him, secretly recalled him to Rome before he could be investigated, and then invoked diplomatic immunity for Wesolowski so he could not face trial in the Dominican Republic. Diplomatic immunity ensures that diplomats like the serial pedophile Wesolowski cannot be sued or prosecuted in the country where they committed crimes and are given safe passage back home. This is a failure of justice for the sexually abused children.

Has the church changed?  Is there still a culture of accepted and covered up child abuse? Where are the authorities?  The United Nations recently condemned the Vatican’s behavior in handling child sex abuse cases – will they say something?  If the Roman Catholic Church is serious about dealing with child sexual abuse they need to revoke Wesolowski’s diplomatic immunity, return him to Dominican Republic, and give authorities the evidence to convict him. We don’t know if Vatican representatives are committing the same crimes against children in other countries, but their failure to turn over Wesolowski to local authorities ensures that such crimes will be repeated over and over while pope francis ensures us how much he cares about the children.

Latin Mass, Nazis and anti-Semitism: What is pope Francis thinking?

An article in the Washington Post (originally reported by Lilly Fowler, the religion reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 6, 2014) talked about the “rising popularity of the Latin Mass.” Because pope Francis has not been wearing some of the fancy garments that previous popes (like pope benedict) wore, some Roman Catholics were worried that Francis wouldn’t  be saying the old Latin Mass – called the Tridentine Mass -- and that not saying it was threatening  traditional worship. 

But the Latin Mass, not much celebrated for the last few decades is “alive and well”.  In fact, according to the Post, “a throwback movement is growing, in many cases with young people leading the charge.”  There is even a Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, a nonprofit based in Glenview, Ill., that promotes the Latin Mass. There is a slow but steady rise in the practice, with more than 400 churches offering the Latin mass today.

This is really dangerous.  Why? Because the Tridentine Mass has long been associated with anti-Semitism and Nazis – including neo-Nazis.   I previously posted information about this Mass (9/14/13 and 5/20/14) because many people do not know the history.  There are others who do know the history and promote this Mass for their own agendas. 

Back in 2011 Nicole Winfield reported (09/16/11 Huffington Post) that Jewish groups were worried about the vatican’s relationship with a group of Catholics, including a bishop, Richard Williamson, who denies that the Holocaust ever happened -- that Nazi gas chambers were used for mass killing.  This Swiss-based society of st. pius X (SSPX) believes that Christ's death was the fault of all Jews. They favor the Tridentine Mass because it includes a prayer that asks God to lift the veil so they [Jews] may be delivered from their darkness.

The real darkness is in the black heart of this neo-Nazi society and popes who support it: Benedict who said SSPX could come back into the “fold” without having to give up their beliefs and lifted Williamson’s excommunication; and Francis gave indications that he might welcome SSPX back by supporting a Pontifical Commission called Ecclesia Dei, which has tried to lead the SSPX flock back into the fold. 

SSPX allows convicted Nazi war criminals to be buried in their church cemeteries. In the 1990s the group had harbored Nazi collaborator and war criminal Paul Touvier.   Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, one of Rome’s top dogs, wrote a letter to SSPX priests, pleading for “reconciliation and healing.”

SSPX is a growing danger because they have six seminaries, three universities and 70 primary and secondary schools around the globe. In addition to Williamson it has three other bishops, more than 550 priests and 200 priests in training.  Are they training to incite another Holocaust?   Pope Francis doesn’t talk about the real issues -- these skeletons in the vatican closet.