Cathedral of St. Paul with it's own lightning strike.
The Pope himself asked journalists to investigate.
So that's what everyone is doing - with the approval of the Pope. A lot of the information emerging is news to me, a lot is stuff I used to dismiss as gossip and hearsay and anti-clericalism. I was so stupid. For instance, I never knew this:
Archbishop Harry Flynn had conveyed concerns about Archbishop Nienstedt’s sexual behavior to Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re while he was prefect for the Congregation for Bishops in Rome. - SourceJust when I was wondering why we haven't heard from Jennifer Haselberg ...
She shows up in the linked article: Questions Still Surround Papal Accuser's Role In the Nienstedt Probe.
In recent days, Archbishop Viganò has rejected claims that he tried to interfere in the investigation. Yet new interviews with some of the pivotal players – along with confirmations that two U.S. cardinals were involved to varying degrees with discussions over Archbishop Nienstedt’s potential removal – suggest that question marks about his role have not yet been resolved.
In January 2014, Archbishop Nienstedt agreed to an internal investigation into claims from two priests within the archdiocese who had accused him of “unwanted touch.”
Father Dan Griffith, who served as the archdiocese’s Safe Environment coordinator and later as the liaison between the archdiocese and the outside legal counsel tasked with leading the investigation, Greene Epsel, penned a 2014 memo saying the archdiocese was in possession of letters from a gay bar and strip club called the “Happy Tap,” in Ontario, Canada, claiming that Archbishop Nienstedt was a regular presence there.
In addition, according to affidavits signed during the investigation, Archbishop Nienstedt was also a close personal friend of Father Curtis Wehmeyer, who, in 2013, was convicted for sexually abusing two boys at his church.
Court documents reveal that Archbishop Nienstedt was responsible for advancing the career of Father Wehmeyer, going against counsel of others within the archdiocese who had warned him of a history of predatory behavior and heavy drinking.
In March 2015, Pope Francis issued a decree removing Father Wehmeyer from the priesthood, just one month prior to Archbishop Nienstedt’s resignation.
Archbishop Nienstedt’s dismissal of the warnings he received on Father Wehmeyer, along with his broader handling of the archdiocese’s sexual abuse policies, led to the resignation of his former chancellor for canonical affairs.
Jennifer Haselberger told The Tablet she decided to leave because “we needed to radically alter the Catholic Church’s approach to sexual misconduct and sexual abuse. I believed in the commitments made in the 2002 Charter and was frustrated to discover them to be empty promises.
[The reference is to a 2002 charter adopted by the U.S. bishops in Dallas pledging the Church to combat child sexual abuse aggressively.]
“I was further troubled by the lack of urgency that was exhibited, especially when presented with cases of abuse perpetrated more than a decade after the crisis that was supposed to have resulted in a zero tolerance policy,” she said. - Source
They operated like Organized Crime or the Mafia. It creeps me out. I guess I was naive or just in total denial, believing what I wanted to believe. It's disgusting. All the secrecy and corruption is sick.
"I am telling you this to make you see what great purity I demand of you and them, and especially of them (priests), in this sacrament. But they do just the opposite to me, for they come to this mystery wholly impure - and not simply with the sort of impurity and weakness to which all of you are naturally inclined because of your weak nature (although reason can calm its rebellion if free choice so wills). No, these wretches not only do not restrain their weakness; they make it worse by committing that cursed unnatural sin. As if they were blind and stupid, with the light of their understanding extinguished, they do not recognize what miserable filth they are wallowing in. The stench even reaches up to me, supreme Purity, and is so hateful to me that for this sin alone five cities were struck down by my divine judgment. For my divine justice could no longer tolerate it, so despicable to me is this abominable sin. The stench displeases not only me, as I have said, but the devils as well, those very devils these wretches have made their masters. It is not its sinfulness that displeases them, for they like nothing that is good. But because their nature is angelic, that nature still loathes the sight of that horrendous sin actually being committed. It is true that it was they (the devils) who shot the poisoned arrows of concupiscence, but when it comes to the sinful act itself they flee..." - Catherine of Siena, Dialogue
