News Dump - Vatican

This is a kind of a news dump of items on Vatican related matters.

Belgian Catholic bishop admits molesting boy

Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, the bishop of Bruges, Belgium resigned for molesting a boy in the middle eighties. Not much detail on the how or why the resignation came about now except I would guess they had to throw someone in the higher ranks of the clergy to the wolves to keep the wolves from baying at the gates of the Vatican.

The whole thing would be comical if it were not so tragic. I recall to mind the excellent movie “In Bruges” about two less than skilled hit men trying to tie up loose ends of a botched assassination attempt that involved a contract on a priest and a kid thrown in as well into the storyline.

I guess The Guardian UK is doing some journalism while reporting these Vatican matters in one article as a kind of news dump.

An Irish bishop also resigned. Yawn. When a dozen crime prone Mick bishops resign, that will be real news Joe.

The next part of the Article has to do with the fact that Cardinal Hoyos infamous letter of praise for a French Bishop aiding and abetting a pedo priest after the fact of his crime was a letter reviewed in a meeting attended by none other that Joe Ratzinger aka Joe the Pope these days. Can’t give all the blame to JPII on that one if all his cronies and stooges didn’t object to the letter during that meeting. Hoyos is not the type of guy who is going to take this rap alone.

And there is a lawsuit against the Vatican naming the Pope, Cardinal Bertone and Cardinal Sodano.

The suit was filed on Thursday by Jeff Anderson, an attorney in St Paul, Minnesota. He argues that top officials in the Vatican, including Ratzinger, knew about claims of sex abuse at a school for deaf children near Milwaukee, and that they blocked the punishment of the accused priest, Lawrence Murphy.

Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of molesting up to 200 boys between 1950 and 1974. The defendants in the lawsuit are the pope, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was his deputy at the congregation for the doctrine of the faith and is now his top official, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Bertone's predecessor.

So it goes. The perfect storm of the Vatican meltdown continues.