Two or three years ago
we had the egregious spectacle of the leading candidate for the presidency of France
or some such post, brought down by a sudden allegation of attempted rape by a
New York chamber maid. It all since has
pretty well gone away but not without smashing the man’s career.
In the meantime, the
leader of Italy carries on like Caligula in his prime making one wish for a
restoration of that other fine Roman custom of a sharp knife from a best friend.
Whatever the result
here, it will be handled professionally and compassionately as that is what the
Church brought to our civilization, however imperfectly. In the meantime we read nonsense.
Pope Francis is strengthening
the virtue of humility in the Catholic Church and this is welcome. Without question there are long festering
errors to resolve but starting with humility is a good start. Do not forget that problems of this sort are
identifiable and been caused by people, can be resolved by people. One can only look at the confrontation with
the problem of pedophiles that did finally get handled and cleansed. Could if
have been sooner? Of course. However it could never have been even started
until society itself understood the problem and also confronted its own
failings. The Church, the boy scouts,
our teachers all needed to confront the reality that they were even unwittingly
an office of enablement that a blind eye had been turned to for centuries.
Today our communities
are aware of the risks and this allows all our institutions to resolve
historical abuses. It is not entirely
over yet but it is certainly well begun.
And now we want to jump
all over homosexuality. That is what makes this piece of gossip so
annoying. It is not the homosexuality
that is an issue here, but whether or not the prelate broke his vow of
chastity. He may well not have but that
is surely something between him and his superior. It certainly appears that he was reckless in appearances.
As it is, I consider priestly
chastity as a not so divinely inspired historical anomaly that served the Church
well this past Millennia to prevent dynastic ambitions within the fabric of the
Church. Those are gone now and it needs
a Divine rethinking to strengthen the Church.
After all, couples are today living well past the demands of child
rearing and sustaining an active old agvge that is now likely to run between 60
and 90 years of age. This population is
a natural recruiting ground for pastoral work.
Gay scandal at the
heart of the Vatican: Pope Francis faces his first crisis
Pope
Francis is discovering just what a nasty place the Vatican can be. Having acknowledged
that there was a "gay lobby" in the Curia, the Pope has been told
that the man he's appointed to be prelate of the Vatican Bank, Monsignor
Battista Ricca, has an allegedly scandalous gay past. Moreover, Ricca is not
only Francis's personal representative at the bank: he's also Director of
the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis has chosen to live. Indeed, the Pope
often eats with the 57-year-old Ricca, whose supposed sexual indiscretions are
the subject of an explosive article by Sandro Magister, Vatican expert
of L'Espresso magazine.
The
best guide through this troubling affair is Dr Robert Moynihan, one of the most
respected of all commentators on Vatican affairs and the author of a new book
about Pope Francis. I receive his email newsletter, the Moynihan Report, in
which he sets out the sequence of events:
Ricca,
a 57-year-old Italian prelate is a career Vatican diplomat who … in the past
year, has directed the Domus Santa Marta, where the Pope is now living. In his
post at the Secretariat of State, Ricca was in charge of accounting for all
financial expenditures in all the nunciatures of the world. So he has a certain
competence in economic matters.
His
staff confirm that he is a considerate, thoughtful man. I myself, during recent
stays in the Domus, have spoken with him several times, and he has spoken
eloquently of the need for Christians to live out the Christian faith,
especially through acts of charity toward the poor and needy.
During
these years, Ricca got to know Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio [who] came not only to
know Ricca, but to trust him.
When
Bergoglio became Pope, and decided to remain in the Domus Santa Marta, he
turned to Ricca, with whom he often took his meals at the great central table
in the dining room, to help him in his work of cleaning up and reforming the
Roman Curia, one of the main things the cardinals asked for in the days leading
up to the conclave.
On
June 15, the Pope named Ricca to perhaps the key post in the overall effort to
reform the curia: his personal representative at the Vatican bank, to oversee
every aspect of the managment and reform of the bank.
Since
the Vatican bank is a very important "nodal point" for the Curia and
for the Church, the Pope's decision to appoint Ricca as his "eyes and
ears" at the bank immediately made Ricca much more important than he had
ever been before, and a potential target of those who might wish that something
up until now hidden at the Vatican bank might not come to light.
In
other words, if there were any "weak points" in Ricca's personal or
professional past that could be used either to condition, control, or discredit
him, his appointment might have made it urgent (to some) to discover those
"weak points," and then make use of them.
On
July 3, Magister – himself a renowned Vaticanologist – ran an articleclaiming there was evidence that
Ricca had engaged in "scandalous behaviour" while in the nunciature
in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2000 and 2001. But there were no specifics. As
Moynihan says, it seemed like a public warning to Pope Francis. Nothing
happened. Then Magister published a much more damning article,
entitled "The Prelate of the Gay Lobby". He wrote:
The
black hole in Ricca's personal history is the period he spent in Uruguay, in
Montevideo, on the northern shore of the Rio de la Plata, across from Buenos
Aires.
Ricca
arrived at this nunciature in 1999, when the mandate of the nuncio Francesco De
Nittis was coming to an end. Previously he had served at the diplomatic
missions of Congo, Algeria, Colombia, and finally Switzerland.
Here,
in Bern, he had met and become friends with a captain of the Swiss army,
Patrick Haari. The two arrived in Uruguay together. And Ricca asked that his
friend be given a role and a residence in the nunciature.
The
nuncio rejected the request. But a few months later he retired and Ricca,
having become the chargé d'affaires “ad interim" until the appointment of
the new nuncio, assigned Haari a residence in the nunciature, with a regular
position and salary.
At
the Vatican they let it go. The substitute for general affairs in the
secretariat of state at the time was Giovanni Battista Re, a future cardinal,
he too originally from the diocese of Brescia.
The
intimacy of the relations between Ricca and Haari was so open as to scandalize
numerous bishops, priests, and laity of that little South American country, not
last the sisters who attended to the nunciature.
The
new nuncio, Janusz Bolonek of Poland, who arrived in Montevideo at the
beginning of 2000, also found that “ménage” intolerable immediately, and
informed the Vatican authorities about it, insisting repeatedly to Haari that
he should leave. But to no use, given his connections with Ricca.
In
early 2001 Ricca also got into a scrape over his reckless conduct. One day,
having gone as on other occasions – in spite of the warnings he had received –
to Bulevar Artigas, to a meeting place for homosexuals, he was beaten and had
to call some priests to take him back to the nunciature, with his face swollen.
In
August of 2001, another mishap. In the middle of the night the elevator of the
nunciature got stuck and in the early morning the firemen had to come. They
found trapped in the car, together with Monsignor Ricca, a young man who was
identified by the police authorities.
Nuncio
Bolonek asked that Ricca be sent away from the nunciature and Haari fired
immediately. And he got the go-ahead from the secretary of state, Cardinal
Angelo Sodano.
Ricca,
dragging his heels, was transferred to the nunciature of Trinidad and Tobago,
where he remained until 2004. There as well he butted heads with the nuncio.
Finally to be called to the Vatican and removed from diplomatic service on the
ground …
In
Uruguay, the facts reported above are known to dozens of persons: bishops,
priests, sisters, laypeople. Without counting the civil authorities, from
security forces to fire protection. Many of these persons have had direct
experience of these facts, at various moments.
But
at the Vatican as well there are those who know about them. The nuncio at the
time, Bolonek, always expressed himself with severity with regard to Ricca, in
reporting to Rome.
And
yet a blanket of public silence has covered until today these past episodes of
the monsignor.
But
if the article was intended to force Francis's hand, it didn't work. To quote
Moynihan:
Once
again, the Pope was not moved. He authorized Father Lombardi [his press
officer] to deny the allegations, saying that Magister's report was "not
trustworthy," and he did not ask for Ricca's immediate resignation.
So
now the world is wondering: what is the truth? Why are these allegations
emerging now, instead of (for example) when the Pope decided to stay in the
Domus, directed by Ricca?
Why
is the Pope not asking for Ricca's resignation, removing even the suspicion of
scandal from the initial efforts of his pontificate to reform the Roman Curia?
In
the past week, a couple of well-informed priests have contacted me about this
crisis. Both noticed the same detail in Magister's second report. When
allegations about Ricca were flying around, one of the Vatican officials who
apparently chose not to act was Giovanni Battista Re – who went on to
become a cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. Re is loathed by
traditionalists, who blame him for undermining the pontificate of Benedict XVI;
certainly as Prefect until 2010 he arranged the appointment of many bishops who
were out of sympathy with Benedict's liturgical and theological opinions – and,
also, he didn't handle the paedophile scandals with any skill. The last thing
conservatives want is for Re to start flexing his muscles under the new regime;
perhaps the Ricca affair will curb his ambitions.
What
are we to make of all this? Moynihan is surely right that this is a crucial
juncture in Francis's pontificate – his first crisis, and not a small one. But
I think Moynihan hits exactly the right note when he writes:
I
have been a Vaticanist for a quarter century. In those years, I have seen many
cases when what seems to be true at first glance is not the truth, or not the
whole truth. There is information, and there is disnformation. There are
maneuvers to gain influence or to ward off change. This can even include
discrediting a person with false charges. We must be very attentive to weigh
all evidence and to ask: Is it true? Who provided the evidence? For what
purpose or goal? Why now? And, could the facts have a more innocent explanation
than appears at first glance? In short, we have to be cautious, and careful,
and fair.
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