intercourse, Power And Scandals Loom Over Vatican Pre-Conclave Talks

[HuffingtonPost]

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor                

VATICAN CITY, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The intercourse and power scandals   haunting the Catholic Church look set to play a big role in  meetings before next month's papal election after two senior  cardinals called on Tuesday for more internal debate about them.                

A leading support group for victims of clerical intercourseual abuse  also made what it called a "last-ditch plea" to Pope Benedict to  use his authority before resigning on Thursday to discipline  bishops who have protected predatory priests in their dioceses.                

The abuse issue took on new urgency after Scotland's  Cardinal Keith O'Brien, accused of improper behaviour with young  priests, quit as Edinburgh archbishop on Monday and pulled out  of the Sistine Chapel conclave to elect a new pope.                

A Scottish Catholic Media Office spokesman has said O'Brien  was taking legal advice and contested the "anonymous and non  specific" allegations against him.                

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, now the only British  prelate due to attend pre-conclave talks among cardinals at the  Vatican next week, said in London the intercourseual abuse of children  was the most serious scandal in the Church.                

"That will be one of the main things the cardinals will be  discussing," said Murphy-O'Connor, who cannot vote because he is  over 80 years old but can join the cardinal electors in their  closed-door discussions about the challenges for the next pope.                

French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran said in a newspaper  interview that the cardinal electors, who number 115 after  O'Brien stepped down, should also be informed about a secret  report on Vatican corruption prepared for Pope Benedict.                

The retiring pontiff has decided to reserve the report for  his successor, but the three cardinals over 80 years old who  drew it up will be allowed to inform the cardinal electors about  some of its findings during next week's consultations.                                

ASKING TO NAME NAMES                

"The cardinal electors cannot decide to choose this or that  name to vote for if they don't know the contents of this  dossier," Tauran told La Repubblica newspaper.                

"If it's necessary, I don't see why they should not ask for  names," said Tauran, a former Vatican foreign minister who now  heads its department for interreligious dialogue.                

Italian newspapers have been speculating for days about  conspiracies and alleged intercourseual scandals inside the Vatican that  may have influenced Benedict to become the first pope in some  six centuries to step down rather than die in office.                

The Vatican has accused these newspapers of spreading "false  and damaging" rumours in an attempt to influence the cardinals  who are starting to arrive in Rome for the pope's farewell  meeting with them on Thursday.                

Two directors of the United States-based abuse victims'  network SNAP arrived in Rome on Tuesday to draw attention to  their demands for tougher Church policies.                

"We're here to make a last ditch plea to Pope Benedict to  use the remaining hours of his papacy to take decisive action to  protect kids," said David Clohessy, national director of the  Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.                

He acknowledged that Benedict had met some abuse victims and  made some strong statements condemning the molestation of minors  by priests, but said he only acted under public pressure.                

"We long for the day when Church officials announce that  this cardinal or this bishop is being demoted because Church  officials have found proof of wrongdoing and Church officials  want to clean things up," he told journalists.                

SNAP saw no papal candidates ready to fire bishops for  shielding wrongdoers, he said, but added: "It's hard to believe  there aren't some cardinals who are grabbing their colleagues by  the lapels and saying 'We simply have to do better'."                                

CATHOLICS CRITICAL OF ABUSE HANDLING                

Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, one of the three who drew  up the secret report for Benedict, echoed the Vatican attack on  the media in an interview on Monday with the daily El Pais.                

"This wanting to see snake pits, warring mafias, internal  hatreds - all this is absolutely false," he said.                

Because conclaves are such secretive events, it is hard to  see what effect the heightened public pressure over the abuse  issue might have on the cardinals who will elect the next leader  of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics around the globe.                

Italian newspapers, which dedicate several pages a day to  the papal story, have begun mentioning Cardinal Sean O'Malley as  a possible "clean hands" candidate because he was sent to Boston  to deal with abuse scandals that erupted there in 2002.                

But other factors could lead them to choose a man whose main  strengths lie elsewhere, such as an aptitude to promote its "new  evangelisation" drive, aimed at rekindling the faith in Europe  and boost it in other regions.                

Recent polls in two important national churches, in the  United States and Germany, show that Catholics give their  leaders low marks for their handling of the abuse crisis.                

A Pew Forum poll last week showed U.S. Catholics have become  increasingly critical, with those saying Benedict has done a  poor job rising from 40 percent in 2008 to 63 percent now.                

A survey in January for the weekly Die Zeit showed that only  28 percent of German Catholics polled believed the Church really  wanted to clean up the mess the scandals have caused.     (Reporting By Tom Heneghan; Editing by Will Waterman)

Via: HuffingtonPost