Friday, February 7, 2014

Did an Employee of the Vatican Commit Crimes on US Territory?

Well, let’s start with two caveats. First, it may be that reality—subjected to the blazing light and sopping humidity of the tropics—gets a little warped. In fact, I once hesitantly breathed this theory to Harry, a native of Old San Juan.

“Of course,” he cried, and told me the following story:

A gringo comes to oversee a factory in a small mountain town. The factory is running well, but the workers tend to call in sick a day or two every week. What was wrong? Clearly, the workers were unhappy: the gringo sought to increase morale by giving them higher pay. The result? The workers now called in sick three times a week!

“They weren’t interested in money,” said Harry, “they just wanted enough for their rice and beans and a caneca (flask) of rum. So when they got paid more, they didn’t have to work as much. See?”

It makes total sense, really—it’s just a different way of thinking. And so after living here for over twenty years, and after having written well-past-exhaustively on the topic of priestly abuse, who’s to say that my own sense of reality isn’t a bit warped? 

Second caveat: being a blogger tends to lead to a sort of conspiracy mindset. You read a lot about something, and then go on to the next thing, and then—weeks or months later—the first thing crops up again. You’ve now forgotten most of what you read, which makes it easy to believe that Machiavellian forces are at work.

So now—at long last—let me tell you what I remember.

A lawyer in Minneapolis, Jeff Anderson, has been an early and rigorous fighter for justice for the victims of clerical abuse. And he has had to fight long and hard to get a few dioceses to reveal their internal records. Chicago, for example, released in January of this year a collection of over 6000 documents that exposed what was happening internally in the diocese.

That’s great, but it’s only half the story. Yes, if within the diocese’s records there are Vatican letters, you can get a glimpse of what is going on in the Vatican. But it frequently is the blandest, most opaque glimpse. So the logical thing to do would be to go to court and ask for the court to tell the Vatican to hand over its records. Especially logical since the diocese is required to report all cases of clerical abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) which used to be the Holy Office, and which—more colorfully and forcefully—started out as the Inquisition.

Thus, local bishops were writing off to Ratzinger and the CDF, and guess what? God’s time is infinitely, majestically, gloriously… slow. So the bishops waited and waited, often for years at a time. In the meantime, the bishops were stuck with seriously sick priests; you can—almost—understand why they were shuffling them around to new victims in different parishes. What else could they do?

So what happened when lawyers went to court to ask the court to force the Vatican to reveal its records? Ah, cried the Vatican, but those bishops aren’t our employees! They are paid by the diocese, not the Vatican!

For this, the word jesuitry was made.

Hard shift to the southeast, specifically Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico—once defined by the US Supreme Court as not being the United States but pertaining to the United States (anybody up there get that? Drop me a line, if you do…)—falls within US jurisdiction.

And things have been a little strange in Arecibo. For one thing, six priests have been expelled in three years, and our local newspaper, El Nuevo Día, reports that there have been 20 cases of priestly abuse, as well as a federal lawsuit brought by one of the victims. Here’s what The New Day has to say in today’s electronic edition:

Fuentes de El Nuevo Día indicaron que agentes de ICE-HSI se acercaron al secretario interino de Justicia, César Miranda, y al fiscal general José Capó para colaborar e intercambiar información con la investigación que comenzó el gobierno estatal la semana pasada y así ellos también poder abarcar ángulos de jurisdicción federal.
“Hay mucho interés en indagar sobre los detalles de abuso sexual de menores por parte de sacerdotes y todo lo que ha salido publicado provoca que haya que actuar de inmediato”, dijo una fuente federal.

(“Sources for El Nuevo Día indicated that agents of IE-HIS approached the interim Secretary of Justice, César Miranda, and the Attorney General José Capó to collaborate and exchange information with the investigation which the state government began last week and thus to be able to also cover any angles that are of federal jurisdiction.

‘There’s a lot of interest in investigating the details of sexual abuse of minors on the part of priests, and everything that has come out publically makes it necessary to act immediately,’ said a federal source.”)

Now then, here the waters turn murky, as the runoff of politics surges into the pond.

The highest Catholic official on the island, Archbishop of San Juan Roberto González Nieves, is a strong proponent of independence and rubbed it a little too hard into people’s noses. So the statehooders had him investigated for four things, one of which was covering up abusive priests. And thus, in an investigation that lasted years, the papal nuncio—the Pope’s own ambassador and yes, a Vatican official—came to Puerto Rico, and were did he stay? Not in San Juan, but in…

…Arecibo.

The papal nuncio for the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico was Jozef Wesolowski, and where is he now? Apparently in the Vatican, where he fled—or was recalled—just before investigative news series was about to show him walking the malecón of Santo Domingo in search of something other than lovely seascapes.

Authorities in the Dominican Republic have in some accounts asked for extradition: the Vatican has no extradition policy and Wesolowski, as a diplomat, enjoys immunity. But there are reports that Wesolowski didn’t behave much better in Puerto Rico than he did in Santo Domingo. Here’s what the Dominican press said about Wesolowski in Puerto Rico:

Según los testimonios difundidos por Burgos, en su programa Código Calle, del canal 29 de Santiago, Wesolowski es acusado en Puerto Rico de encubrir a los sacerdotes pederastas.
Los fieles católicos se quejaron ante el obispo puertorriqueño monseñor Iñaqui y ante el propio Wesolowski, pero no recibieron el apoyo que esperaban.
Un seminario fue cerrado, pero todo se mantiene en silencio, y el obispo Iñaqui [Sic.] fue promovido, en lugar de ser sancionado.

(“According to witnesses’ statements broadcast by Burgos in his program Código Calle on channel 29 in Santiago, Wesolowski is accused in Puerto Rico of covering up pederast priests.

Faithful Catholics protested to Puerto Rican bishop Iñaki (former bishop of Arecibo) and in front of Wesolowski himself, but never received the support they expected.

A seminary was closed, but everything was kept silent, and the bishop Iñaqi was promoted, instead of sanctioned.”)

Remember what I said about reality being different in the sun-drench vibrant air of the tropics? We seem to have Wesolowski—a man now accused of pederasty—investigating the archbishop of San Juan for covering up…pederasty. Who’s guilty of what? I sure don’t know.

And am I wrong in thinking that…

…a Vatican official may have committed crimes in the United States? This case is unique, the case we’ve been waiting for. At long last, a US court has the right to petition the Vatican to release its records, its internal documents, its policies and directives to bishops. At last, we can throw open the doors of the Vatican and take a look inside.

Am I the only one who sees that?

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