On Priests and Imams

Here’s what it’s come to: the banner headline in today’s printed version of El Nuevo Día quotes the Secretary of Justice saying, Quedan protegidos los pederastas (Pederasts Remain Protected).

And here’s what’s worse…

My reaction?

That’s news?

The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico has decided to cave in to the Catholic Church, specifically the diocese of Arecibo, and allow the church to withhold documents requested by the Justice Department related to abusive priests. Why? Because some of the victims chose to tell the church, and all that communication is “confidential.”

Here’s what happened, or at least what I presume happened: some kids got abused, walked around wounded for months or years, and finally got the courage to go to the church and complain. Not surprising, because listening for fifteen minutes to the morning radio shows in Puerto Rico will tell you exactly what you don’t want to have happen to you. And that’s being the topic of the day.

If you know anything about the dynamics of sexual abuse, you’ll know that the victim, paradoxically, usually feels responsible or guilty for his or her own abuse, and that it takes a level of maturity not often seen in kids to have the strength to confront the adult world, especially when that adult world is wearing a Roman collar. So the likelihood is that most of the victims were kids, and most of the victims coming forward were young adults who reported abuse years after it happened.

So the Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court judge has to look at all the documents, determine if the complainant is an adult, and then ask the person if he / she wants the documents released to Justice.

Guys? We’re talking about crimes here.

However, so loopy is our need to “protect” religious freedom, covering up abusive priests may be perfectly legal; here’s Wikipedia on the topic:

A communication is "confidential" if made privately and not intended for further disclosure except to other persons present in furtherance of the purpose of the communication.

Yeah? So if I sit in an office and tell the bishop that the parish priest had his hand on my crotch four years ago, that’s confidential?

Yup, and that’s why we have seven priests in Arecibo who have been defrocked, and who are all walking around, or perhaps lurking outside school playgrounds, reenacting all those lurid 1950’s educational films. And does anybody think out there that those priests got defrocked for something that wasn’t illegal?

It doesn’t stop surprising me, the stuff that religious people get themselves up to, because who knew that the largest chain of charter schools is run—maybe—by Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic Imam from Turkey, now living in the Poconos?

Here’s what the website for the chain’s Texas branch has to say:

Our mission at Harmony is to prepare each student for higher education by providing a safe, caring, and collaborative atmosphere featuring a quality, student-centered educational program with a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 

In Numbers:

            40 Campuses (24 T-STEM schools) 

            25,000 Students

            2,276 Faculty and Staff

            Student-to-Teacher Ratio of 14-to-1

            100 percent Graduation Rate for Seniors

            100 percent College Acceptance Rate

Umm… 100% college acceptance? 100% graduation rate?

Well, if true, that would account for the waiting list of some 30,000 kids—more kids than are currently enrolled in the system. And in the video below, the kids certainly look happy, and the school is a knockout. True, most of the teachers are Turkish, and some of them are substantially less fluent in English than I am in Spanish. Which is odd, since some of them are teaching…English.

And that 100% Graduation Rate? Well, here’s one less-than-gruntled account by a teacher fired by a Gülen school:

When it came time for OATs, as they were called then, testing was a disaster. Several Turkish men arrived and pulled “at risk” students from their classrooms, taking them to the moldy rooms in small groups, despite the lack of written documentation allowing accommodations. The week after testing, I went to school on a Saturday morning in order to keep ahead of my planning, and I saw a dozen Turkish men sitting in a classroom with stacks of OATs on their desks. The current principal brought a cup of tea and a plate of cookies to me while I worked alone in my classroom. He said that the men were simply darkening in the answers for students who wrote too lightly.

Right—we all know that kids have an instinctive bent for delicacy, which undoubtedly accounted for those faint markings….

And there have been questions, as well, about how accountable these schools are. Reports have surfaced that at least the Turkish teachers have to kickback up to forty percent of their salary to the Gülen movement. Oh, and what about the question of immigration? Is there really such a shortage of American teachers?  And do these “teachers” have any formal training?

That said, it’s also true that, bar having done if for twenty plus years, I’m completely untrained too, and that didn’t stop me from fooling a passel of students and the world’s largest company into thinking I knew what I was doing.

Nor is Gülen, apparently, the most virulent of imams. Because his message was / is that the Muslim world doesn’t need more mosques and madrasas, but rather schools that focus on the sciences and math. And though virtually a recluse, his movement carries such weight that, in Turkey at least, his opponents fear that he may be planning a coup. 

And the schools—are they really connected to Gülen? They—some of them—say no, others say yes. Why the confusion, or the secrecy?

Well, would you want to be a Muslim in America? And here, I have to say that however radicalized I might be as an atheist, I’d welcome an imam like Gülen who—if true—is a moderate and condemns extreme forms of Islam. We need these guys….

And the charter schools? With their reports of not accepting some students, of kicking out students who don’t perform, of shifting kids around? That’s the negative stuff. But what about all those kids you see in videos who are solemnly swearing that school is fun, learning is cool, going to school is a joy?

Don’t know. But this I do know: if I were a parent, I’d certainly check out the charter schools in my area….

Shadow Land

It’s gotta be said—the combination of being a blogger and cruising the Internet for stories is a perfect recipe for a mouthwatering dish of paranoia.

The question of the day, therefore, is whether Dr. Thomas L. Philpott, of the University of Texas at Austin, really killed himself.

Well, the university is on record; here’s what they say:

Thomas Lee Philpott–associate professor of history, fiery Catholic moralist and polemical leftist, and charismatic and much-honored teacher–ended his life on October 9, 1991, in Austin, Texas, after a yearlong illness. He was 49.

OK—so why think that Philpott was murdered? Well, justly-named Paranoia Magazine has this to say about Philpott, who took part in a 1981 documentary called Boys for Sale. Here’s an excerpt from the magazine:

Boys for Sale depicts the pervasive practice of sex with boys in Houston, Texas—yet another dark tale of government and local authorities failing to live up to their electorates’ expectation that they will protect our most vulnerable citizens. Frank Morrow hosts a show in which Dr. Tom Philpott, history professor at the University of Texas, details the issues concerning the prostitution of boys and the power structure behind it that helps to promote and profit from the business.

Boys for Sale is mirrored in the later documentary The Conspiracy of Silence (1995), which concentrates on Omaha in the same years. Sadly, on October 9, 1991—soon after his interview was aired—49-year-old Dr. Philpott was “suicided” and investigations into what was happening in Houston came to a halt—much like what happened to “Baer boys” just before the Franklin Credit Union investigations began, though I don’t think that Dr. Philpott decided to wrap plastic around his face like the boys around here had done to them. 

Well, I had watched The Conspiracy of Silence, and the tale it told was not hard to swallow but hard to gulp. In essence, it alleges that rich and powerful people in Omaha, Nebraska, sexually abused boys from the legendary Boys Town (located nearby) and that the investigation had been covered up. Oh, and that the trail went all the way up to the White House. (At the time, George H. W. Bush was in office, if I recall correctly.)

In both Boys for Sale and The Conspiracy of Silence, similar charges are made. The perpetrators are powerful, straight men who form alliances to trade boys, and to crush anyone rash enough to investigate and ask questions. Philpott claims that he got a shotgun blasted though his car windshield, as well as through the living room window. The professor also claims, at one point, that Robin Lloyd, another person who had stuck his nose into a place where it wasn’t much wanted, suffered a highly suspicious accident.

OK—so is any of this true?

According to one study—no. Here are the findings from a 2008 study on prostitution of minors in New York City issued by the Department of Justice:

• Nearly half the kids—about 45 percent—were boys.
• Only 10 percent were involved with a "market facilitator" (e.g., a pimp).
• About 45 percent got into the "business" through friends.
• More than 90 percent were U.S.-born (56 percent were New York City natives).
• On average, they started hooking at age 15.
• Most serviced men—preferably white and wealthy.
• Most deals were struck on the street.
• Almost 70 percent of the kids said they'd sought assistance at a youth-service agency at least once.
• Nearly all the youths—95 percent—said they exchanged sex for money because it was the surest way to support themselves.

OK—if all of that is true, then we may have to rethink the notion of human trafficking that most of us have in our minds: a runaway girl falls into the hands of a pimp, who beats her and abuses her and forces her to bring home her “quota.”

Now then—how many kids are out there? Well, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there were about 800,000 kids reported missing in 1999. As well, the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) noted a 1,000% increase in complaints of child sex trafficking from 2004 to 2008.

I don’t know about you, but something about all these numbers is seriously screwy. 800,000 reports of missing kids? That’s an enormous amount of kids. And a 1,000% increase in child sex trafficking in just four years?

We got a problem, guys. And it seems clear—however “sexy” the image of a teenage girl being lured and controlled by her pimp could be to any of you, the reality is most likely different. Oh, and as for a vast hidden network of pedophiles? Nah—don’t think so.

But we have a large number of kids on the street—kids that nobody will or even can hire. And they’re all hungry, they all need shelter. We’ve gotta find a way to get help to these kids. And then, maybe it’s time to rethink the idea of arresting johns and putting their names…

…on the front page of the local newspaper!

Open Letter to Roberto González Nieves

(Note: this post was written several weeks ago. The most recent news is that Archbishop González Nieves is cooperating with the federal and local authorities. However, the diocese of Arecibo—which has been accused of being the “dumping ground” for abusive priests—is still fighting in court the subpoenas that have been issued against it….)
 

When are they going to get it?

What happens if I go out, take a shine to a 13-year old kid on the playground, offer him candy and the coolest tennis shoes (which his mother won’t buy him because she can’t) and then take him home and rape him? Well, the cops do an investigation, there’s a trial, and if convicted, I go to jail.

OK—what happened when a Catholic priest sexually abused a minor? Here’s what the archbishop of San Juan had to say:

“En una investigación preliminar el sacerdote admitió el abuso al entonces menor. Fue suspendido, quedando relevado de sus funciones ministeriales el 7 de septiembre de 2010. El día 30 de diciembre de 2011 el Tribunal Metropolitano culminó la investigación preliminar y el 4 de enero de 2012, el Tribunal Metropolitano remitió el expediente de este asunto a la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, dando cumplimiento al trámite requerido por el orden jurídico canónico”, aceptó González Nieves.

(“In a preliminary investigation, the priest admitted to the abuse of the (then) minor. He was suspended, being relieved of his ministerial duties on the 7^th of September of 2010. On the 30^th of December of 2011, the Metropolitan Tribunal (a church court) culminated its preliminary investigation and on the 4^th of 2012, the Metropolitan Tribunal submitted the file on this matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, complying with the process of canonic law,” accepted González Nieves.)

Full disclosure: this quote comes from a blog called Cristianos Bíblicos, which attributes it and the whole post to an article in El Nuevo Día. A cursory search in El Nuevo Día’s website revealed no results for the title of the article, Dinero a cambio de silencio; víctima de violencia sexual en la iglesia católica en Puerto Rico.

Another disclaimer: from my reading of the paragraph, it’s not entirely clear whether the victim was a minor at the time she or he made the complaint, though it’s clear that the victim was a minor at the time of the abuse. And that’s important because, as Telemundo assures us,

De igual forma, González Nieves confirmó que la Iglesia no refiere a las Autoridades los casos de sacerdotes pedófilos si las víctimas ya son mayor de edad.   

(“As well, González Nieves confirmed that the church doesn’t refer to the authorities those cases of pedophile priests if the victims are currently of age.”)

OK—so let’s assume that the quote is indeed by González Nieves, the article did appear in El Nuevo Día, and that the victim was of age at the time of making the complaint. So what? The archdiocese has a sexual predator on its hands—one who has confessed to the crime, by the way, and for which it has taken the church over a year to “investigate”—and they don’t go to the cops? And weaseling out by saying that the victim is now of age is—however legal—questionable morally. If the priest abused some kid once, will he do it again? Very likely.

Oh, and remember this quote from my February 13, 2014 post (extracted from childwelfare.gov)?

Puerto Rico

P.R. Laws Ann. Tit. 8, § 446(b) (LexisNexis through Dec. 2009)     

Any person who has knowledge of or suspects that a minor is a victim of abuse, institutional abuse, neglect, and/or institutional neglect shall report that fact through the hotline of the department, to the Puerto Rico police, or to the local office of the department.

True—it says “a minor.” But look, González—where’s your law degree? How do you know whether the statute of limitations has run out? Shouldn’t you let the District Attorney figure that out?

You know, González, we’re talking about a crime here. We’re talking about a trial, prison time, “rehabilitation.” And what have you done? You’ve completely usurped the civil authorities, taken off your sanctimonious robes, and turned yourself into the cops, the judge and the jury. And so you let a criminal go scot free—since the “priest” is no longer on the island and no longer a priest. I’m not a lawyer, either, González, but you know what I’d call it? Right—obstruction of justice.

Of course, there’s something else I’d call it: aiding and abetting a criminal. And by the way, did you have the perpetrator under 24 / 7 surveillance all that time? And I don’t care whether the victim was currently of age, because, guess what? Relieved or not of his priestly duties, he could well have been screwing little kids all during your yearlong investigation. He probably had more time to do it, in fact.

You know, I’m so frigging tired of the overwhelming, overweening, arrogance of the Catholic Church. I watched a guy, Colm O’Gorman, on YouTube yesterday describe his abuse at the hands of an Irish priest; I heard the story of how the priest made the fourteen-year old kid feel that it was his fault. I heard the story of how the kid left home before he was 18, and landed on the streets of Dublin: it was better than the abuse at home. And he pulled himself together, went on to make a good career, have a life. No thanks to your church, González.

So some guy on your payroll rapes a kid and you take off his collar and buy him a one-way ticket to somewhere. News flash, González:

The guy—very likely—is still raping kids out there.

Sleeping well these days, González?

Throw the Bishop in the Slammer

OK, let’s copy and paste from the website childwelfare.gov:

Puerto Rico
P.R. Laws Ann. Tit. 8, § 446(b) (LexisNexis through Dec. 2009)
Any person who has knowledge of or suspects that a minor is a victim of abuse, institutional abuse, neglect, and/or institutional neglect shall report that fact through the hotline of the department, to the Puerto Rico police, or to the local office of the department.

I bring you the above because the bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico went to court yesterday, and explained why he has been unable to provide nothing except five pages in response to a subpoena issued last week. And the reason? Well, he has an obligation to protect the confidentiality of the 20 victims, all of whom had chosen to go to the church, not to the civil authorities. Oh, and also, every one of those minors from the years spanning 2011 to the present is now magically an adult. So there was no obligation to report.

And the bishop goes farther, alleging that the state is intruding on the traditional and constitutional separation of church and state. So he’s asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction against the state.

Well, I can tell you all this because The New Day’s headline is shouting Colisión entre la Iglesia y el Estado—and yes, that means exactly what you think. So I plunked down the 54 cents to buy the print version of the paper, which would cover the affair more thoroughly than the electronic version. (For the electronic version, click here.)

What’s interesting about this situation is what people aren’t seeing. Yes, journalistic ethics demand that the church be given the chance to present their case. But why aren’t we asking the following questions?

1.     Why didn’t the bishop of Arecibo follow the Vatican’s protocol on reporting sexual abuse of minors to civil authorities? That protocol was contained in a letter of January of 2011. Here’s a direct quote:

Sexual abuse of minors is not just a canonical delict but also a crime prosecuted by civil law. Although relations with civil authority will differ in various countries, nevertheless it is important to cooperate with such authority within their responsibilities. Specifically, without prejudice to the sacramental internal forum, the prescriptions of civil law regarding the reporting of such crimes to the designated authority should always be followed. This collaboration, moreover, not only concerns cases of abuse committed by clerics, but also those cases which involve religious or lay persons who function in ecclesiastical structures.

2.     Why didn’t the diocese of Arecibo release the names of the six priests who have been removed before the current scandal erupted?

3.     How much, if anything, has been paid to abuse victims in Puerto Rico?

4.     How many abuse victims are there in Puerto Rico?

5.     How many abusive priests have been removed?

6.     Lastly, what about the case of the papal nuncio, Jozef Wesolowski, who traveled to Puerto Rico during his investigation of archbishop Roberto González Nieves? As I quoted in a previous post, a Dominican news report alleges that the nuncio may have covered up priest abuse in the diocese of Arecibo. Here’s the quote:

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 [Sic.] 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 testimony of Burgos, in his program Código Calle, on channel 29 of Santiago, Wesolowski is accused in Puerto Rico of covering up pederast priests.

The Catholic faithful complained to bishop Iñaki and to Wesolowski as well, but never received the support they expected.

A seminary was closed, but everything was kept secret, and bishop Iñaki was promoted, instead of being sanctioned.”)

To my knowledge, Wesolowski is the first and only Vatican official who may have committed illegal acts in the United States. Does the Justice Department plan to subpoena the Vatican to determine what part, if any, Wesolowski played in covering up pederast priests?

It can’t be clearer, guys. The six priests who had committed abuse were criminals; the bishop had an obligation to report them. Instead, they were removed silently, and never faced the criminal sanctions they should have faced. Not only must the diocese of Arecibo hand over all their records to the district attorney, but the Department of Justice should be demanding that—at long last—the Vatican hand over all their internal documents as well.

I agree with one assertion that the diocese of Arecibo is claiming. By instigating their own investigation and sanctions of priests who had committed criminal acts, and by failing to notify civil authorities, the church had indeed…

…violated the separation of church and state.

Not Enough Rope

Well, being a bear of very little brain, it took me a while to realize that, even if I wasn’t particularly proficient in Polish (though I do know the word pederastia which is…), the computer is! And so all you have to do is hit the little “translate this page” and the computer, after some thought, will give you a charmingly literal translation. Here’s a nice sample:

In the Vatican's diplomatic career structures could envy him many a clergyman.

Got that? What could be clearer? Definitely better than this, the Polish homologue:

Kariery dyplomatycznej w watykańskich strukturach mógłby mu pozazdrościć niejeden duchowny.

OK, so the syntax is a little screwy, but if you can wait until the end of the sentence to figure out what we’re talking about—both grammatically and logically called the subject—all will be well. Think of it as a game, perhaps, or a linguistic who-done-it. Keeps you in suspense!

And so I realized, yesterday, that the Polish press, unlike the Dominican press, is playing up the story. And they are embellishing their articles with photos like this:

Yup, Wesolowski himself….

And so I spent an interesting afternoon in Poland, yesterday, learning that Padre Alberto Gil, a fellow Pole working in the little mountain town of Juncalito, had taken 3 trips to Poland with about ten boys each time. My first reaction, of course was, “yeah?”

I had an interesting conversation this week with a friend who had been sexually abused by a Baptist minister while his parents slept in the room next to the minister, who was “sharing” his bed with my friend. And Carlos, my friend, swears that in most cases, the mothers either know or suspect that abuse is going on. But why don’t they speak out? Is it fear? Is it a lifetime of poverty, which grinds in the lessons of helplessness and despair and futility?

At any rate, Gil made three trips to Poland with assorted kids—where did the money come from? I’ve been through towns in the Dominican Republic that must have been the equivalents of Juncalito—for all I know, I’ve been through Juncalito. Didn’t look like there’s much money there. And if there is, they hide it well.

So were the Poles sponsoring the trip? And where was that money coming from? How wonderful, those Poles welcoming with open arms (in how many senses, one wonders?) those cute Latin kids!

Even so, it’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the how a parent would allow a child to go off with a priest for over a month. But as I think of it, it makes more sense. First, of course, the parents must have been dazzled by the idea—Europe! My child’s going to Europe! The world is opening for him, who knows whom he could meet, what door could open for him! How wonderful that Padre Alberto….

Then, of course, there’s the reverence for the Catholic Church. Over eighty percent of Puerto Ricans are Catholic—what percent of Dominicans? Probably much higher. Watching videos of families affected by the abuse in Juncalito, I got a visceral sense of the betrayal these families suffered.

Lastly, maybe we should ask if the abuse in the church isn’t structural. The organization is set up in a way that fosters abuse. There’s the hierarchical structure. There’s the control of power at the top, and the demand for complete obedience. There’s the demand to defend the church at all costs, and the terrible consequences doled out to anyone who blows the whistle. Even the pomp, the rituals, the fancy clothes—all contribute to the belief that they are special, invincible, infallible.

I look at Wesolowski, in the photo above—this man who was dressed in all his finery, this man surrounded by all the devotion of his parishioners, this man who, hours after the ceremony, would be chasing limpiabotas (shoeshine boys) on the malecón of Santo Domingo.

He thought he could have everything, could get away with anything.

Sadly, for the most part, he has….

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?