19/05/13 13:46 from Archbishop of San Juan (Puerto Rico) González Nieves - B�squeda de blogs
Roberto Octavio Gonzlez Nieves , the outspoken Archbishop of San Juan , Puerto Rico , has been accused by Vatican emissaries of allegedly protecting pedophile priests. This past December, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of ...
Sex Abuse Molestation In The Church
It should come as no surprise that the first crisis facing Pope Francis involves a sex abuse scandal.
Roberto Octavio González Nieves, the outspoken Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been accused by Vatican emissaries of allegedly protecting pedophile priests.
This past December, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops at the Vatican, asked Archbishop Gonzalez Nieves to leave his post and move elsewhere within the Church. Since then the Vatican has made numerous more requests for the Archbishop to step down, all of which he has refused.
The U.S. territory's most senior Catholic has said there is no reason for him to resign, despite being asked to do so by the Vatican. "Injustice, persecution, defamation, distortion of the facts and an unfair process cannot be reasons to resign," he said in a letter to the Cardinal Ouellet in February.
The matter is important because the Vatican has long been criticized by victims of sexually abusive priests for having failed to punish bishops who shielded abusive priests, moving them from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police. If the Vatican is trying to persuade Gonzalez Nieves to resign for having done just that, it would mark a significant development.
There continue to be cases worldwide of pedophile priests being sheltered by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Many of the Cardinals who voted in Pope Francis at the conclave in March have been involved in scandals and accused of cover-ups.
The church continues to insist it will do everything it can to protect children from pedophile priests. But recent scandals in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Boston and Puerto Rico seem to suggest the church is still more concerned with protecting its brand than helping the victims of sexual abuse.
In Puerto Rico alone, Saunders & Walker has filed a number of federal lawsuits against various bishops for allowing and covering up sex abuse of children.
Archbishop González Nieves remains defiant and the Vatican has yet to indicate if it will forcibly remove him if he continues to resist resigning on his own. It is worth noting that the archbishop has sought the council of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston in 2002 when the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in the U.S. Rather than being punished for covering up for the pedophiles on his staff, however, Law was given the plum job as archpriest of one of the Vatican's major basilicas in Rome.
Perhaps in the wake of being accused of protecting pedophile priests Archbishop González Nieves sees the opportunity for a promotion.
It seems to be the way the Catholic Church works.
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