Tomás Ó Flatharta

A Cardinal born in the USA city of Chicago 69 years ago – Robert Prevost – will in future be called Pope Leo XIV.

No surprise – child abuse allegations lurk – let’s see

The child abuse connection with Pope Leo XIV is probably the same as all top leaders of the Catholic Church. He wasn’t interested when the news started to break, he moved the rapists to a new parish or new job, while remaining indifferent to the victims.

Pope Francis’ small reforms like allowing communion to LGBT or divorced and remarried people seem likely to be accepted as a modernisation.

Let’s wait and see.

Here is an extract from an Irish Times report “The cardinal, who is a member of the Order of St Augustine, resembles Francis in his commitment to the poor and migrants. Often described as reserved and discreet, Prevost will depart stylistically from Francis. His supporters say he will most likely continue the consultative process started by Francis to invite laypeople to meet with bishops.

It is unclear whether he will be as open to LGBTQ+ Catholics as Francis was. Although he has not said much recently, in a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”. He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

Rev Michele Falcone (46), a priest in the Order of St. Augustine previously led by Prevost, described his mentor and friend as the “dignified middle of the road” to the New York Times earlier this week.

“He does not have excesses,” Fr Falcone said of Prevost. “Blessing babies, yes. Taking them in his arms, no.”

“I know that Bob believes that everybody has a right and a duty to express themselves in the church,” said Rev Mark R Francis, a former classmate of Prevost who runs the American arm of the Clerics of St Viator, a religious order.

While praised in Peru for supporting Venezuelan immigrants and visiting far-flung communities, the cardinal has drawn criticism over his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.

One woman in Chiclayo, who said she and two other women were sexually abused by two priests as girls long before Prevost was bishop, accused him of mishandling an investigation and of not stopping one of the priests from celebrating Mass.

The diocese of Chiclayo said Prevost opened an investigation that the Vatican closed. After a new bishop arrived, the investigation was reopened. Supporters of Prevost say he is the target of a smear campaign by members of a Peruvian-based Catholic movement that Francis disbanded.”

This is a promising scandal that might run and run. The sad truth is that so many of the Catholic church leaders have dirty hands over child abuse, it would be a shock if one of them was clean.

Sarcasm Rules :

Oh so it’s a pope that hates gay people and loves pedophiles? Groundbreaking stuff.

Another credible source indicates there are grave child abuse issues in the career of Cardinal Prevost :

“Survivors respond to Pope Leo XIV’s election with grave concern about his record managing abuse cases

“SNAP filed a complaint against Pope Leo XIV under Pope Francis’ 2023 decree Vos estis lux mundi on March 25, 2025.” Survivors respond to election of Pope Leo XIV’s election with grave concern about his record managing abuse cases

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One Positive Irish Example Pope Leo XIV Could Follow Regarding Child Abuse : Statement by retired Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Child Abuse in the Dublin Diocese of the Catholic Church devasted the lives of many innocent people. Shocking details are exposed by the Irish State’s Yvonne Murphy Report, published in May 2009.
This 5-volume report details “widespread abuse of children in Ireland’s residential institutions run by 18 religious congregations.” Links :
How the story of abuse in Irish Catholic Church Institutions Emerged; 1986/7 to 2012

Child Abuse in Catholic Church’s Dublin Diocese – Murphy Report

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin opened the Dublin Diocese Archive to the state investigators. Martin’s predecessor, Archbishop Des Connell, tried to legally stop the Murphy Report investigators from accessing that source.

After the publication of Yvonne Murphy’s report, Martin issued the following statement, that is worth quoting in full :

One years after the publication of the Murphy report, into clerical sexual abuse, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin has called the Catholic Churches method of dealing with the situation “catastrophic”.

He said the church in Ireland has become self-centered and had let itself become “beyond what is legitimate.”

“I see more clearly that the catastrophic manner in which the abuse was dealt with was a symptom of a deeper malaise within the Irish church,” said Dr Martin.

“The church in Ireland had allowed itself to drift into a position where its role in society had grown beyond what is legitimate. It acted as a world apart. It became self-centered. It felt that it could be forgiving of abusers in a simplistic manner and rarely empathized with the hurt of children.”

These comments appeared on a statement, posted on the Dublin archdiocese website (dublindiocese.ie). The statement marked the anniversary of the publication of the Murphy report on November 26, 2009.

In his statement he said the church had “also deluded itself about the faith of Irish people. It failed to recognize what radical evangelization of its structures and of its people actually meant. It spoke of renewal but really did not change. It failed adequately to recognize that renewal demands conversion.”

In the future, he said, “we need to sustain our robust child safeguarding norms and practices. They will, however, only work in the context of a renewed church.”

He said that Church is “not just an elite of the perfect. Many people with little education have a deeper insight into the message of Jesus Christ than some learned theologians or bishops.”

Speaking about he publication of the Murphy report he said “I unequivocally repeat what I said on publication of the report: ‘the Archdiocese of Dublin failed to recognize the theft of childhood which survivors endured and the diocese failed in its responses to [survivors] when they had the courage to come forward, compounding the damage done to their innocence. For that no words of apology will ever be sufficient’.”

Dr Martin said “The diocese failed not just in its responses to victims and their families. It failed itself and it failed society by trying to keep the evidence within its own structures.

“I repeat again what I said one year ago: ‘The sexual abuse of a child is and always was a crime in civil law; it is and always was a crime in canon law; it is and always was grievously sinful. The investigation of crime within society is the competence of An Garda Síochána’.”

He also spoke about how the publication of the report and the year following the publication had been a disappointment for survivors. He said “many survivors hoped the publication of the Murphy report would bring them finally to some sort of closure regarding their horrific experience. For many this has sadly not been so.

“The hurt done to a child through sexual abuse can last a lifetime. That hurt can very quickly erupt again as further stories of abuse emerge or through insensitive comments or actions by church authorities.”

Of his own experiences he said “in my encounters with survivors I have encountered insight into faith which leaves me humbled. But perhaps humility is not the worst starting point for renewal of the church and recognition of past wrongs.” Source :
Catholic Church’s Catastrophic Dealing With Clerical Abuse

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The North American MAGA Right Sticks the Boot In

Robert Prevost has firm right-wing views, but he has important differences with the far-right Trump-Vance USA government.

We thank Dave Schubert for circulating this report :

The following doesn’t address child abuse but y’all might find it of interest:

These People Are Never Happy – And I don’t think they ever will be – Charlotte Clymer

by CHARLOTTE CLYMER

Yesterday should have been a once-in-a-lifetime miracle for the Republican Party and American conservatives, the kind of event that would render any film or television screenplay vulnerable to fair accusations of jumping the shark.

One of their own, a good Catholic boy from the Midwest who had grown into a good Catholic man, reportedly a consistent voter in Republican primaries, a committed social conservative, anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice, literally an altar boy and the youngest of three brothers—whom would tease him as a kid about being “too holy” and joke he’d be pope someday—the product of a good Catholic family, raised in the greatest country on earth, had become the 267th Bishop of Rome.

Did I mention he’s a baseball fan? “Not the Cubs,” his brother felt the understandable need to emphasize to a New York Times reporter yesterday. He’s always been a White Sox guy, which is quite fitting for a priest. A true advocate for the downtrodden.

Did I mention he has Black ancestry? His maternal grandparents are of Creole lineage, from a Catholic neighborhood in New Orleans’ 7th Ward, both listed as Black Americans in various Census records. Surely, this has to be some kind of opening for potent conservative outreach to Black American Catholics.

All that was missing was the revelation he’s an Eagle Scout, which, in fairness, might also turn out to be true and we just don’t know about it yet because the new pope is apparently known by his colleagues for his humility.

An American pope in our lifetime and he’s an American conservative and he’s from the Heartland and he’s a Republican primary voter and he’s likable and he’s got a storybook biography.

None of it was enough. None of it.

The whole package—delivered like manna from Heaven—was rejected outright by rightwing personalities in the hours after the announcement from St. Peter’s Square.

They didn’t wait a week. They didn’t wait a day. They immediately attacked.

Trump muse Laura Loomer slammed him as a “WOKE MARXIST POPE” (yes, in all caps). Mike Cernovich deemed him an “open borders globalist.” Alt-right personality Joey Mannarino called him a “liberal piece of shit” and claimed he’s worse than Pope Francis.

I was especially impressed with Megyn Kelly speed-running cognitive dissonance in her own reaction: shifting from tweets of joy over the announcement to incredulity in mere minutes. Literally fewer than five minutes.

Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of rightwing outlet The Federalist, went on his own little rant:

“I told colleagues this morning that I was worried the Catholic cardinals would select a left-wing, Western European pope to use the Roman Catholic Church to counter the rise of national populism in general, and Trump in particular, and to bolster globalist forces against those who believe the purpose of a country is to safeguard its own people. The new pope was born in America, not Western Europe, so I was wrong on that score, but I fear I wasn’t wrong about the rest.”

Globalist. Marxist. Left-wing. Woke. Liberal. Piece-of-shit.

And why?

Because he follows Christ’s teachings on migrants and refugees. So, they’re irate.

Their guy is in the Oval Office literally ordering ICE to terrorize migrants, detaining and shipping off innocent people to foreign prisons, defying the Supreme Court’s order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, violently suppressing free speech in service to their hateful ideology, and they’re furious that an American social conservative was just elected pope but is insufficiently hateful toward migrants.

They’ve gotten just about everything they want, and it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

These people are never happy. They crave outrage. They demand purity. They’re apoplectic that the first American pope actually reads his Bible.

It’s astonishing to me that I—a progressive trans woman—can do the (very hard) work of recognizing nuance and offering grace for profound disagreement in theology with the new pope, understanding both he and I are inherently imperfect Christians, but the rightwing can’t do that, yet they whine about “cancel culture.”

Y’all, they are literally trying to cancel the first American pope because he didn’t skip the parts where Christ talks about loving both thy neighbor and thy stranger in a strange land.

They’ve now won the lottery a few times over in the past year, and they’re utterly furious that the new leader of 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide—an American conservative who will be in charge for the next few decades—agrees with them on just about everything except for immigration.

It has to be exhausting to be so intentionally hateful and perpetually enraged like this.

Pray for them. They need way more help from God than the White Sox ever will.

Link :
Charlotte Clymer – These People Are Never Happy