I want everybody out there to know: I’ve been exercising
incredible self restraint, and it hasn’t been easy, since one of my minor
talents is a significant ability to obsess, and one of my most recurrent
obsessions was a papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic and to Puerto Rico,
Jozef Wesolowski.
You probably know the story: The archbishop of Santo Domingo
ran off a few years ago and whispered into the new pope’s ear that the
Dominican press was about to show footage of the nuncio, drinking beer on the malecón and then strolling it, all while
wearing shades and a baseball cap. What was he doing there? OK—it was pretty
clear, and even if he weren’t, well, what about those 100,000 photos of kiddie
porn that were found on his computers?
It was the old, old story, and don’t tell me, anybody out
there, that our new pope is going to be any more rigorous about sexual abuse of
the clergy than any of the other ones. Did Wesolowski stick around and face the
music in the Dominican Republic? Of course not, he was recalled to Rome, and
one report—can I find it? maybe, but who cares?—was that he travelled under
false documents. So there he was in the Vatican, and then the lies began. The
matter was administrative. Then there had been the feud with the archbishop of
San Juan. Then, when it really couldn’t be denied any more, it was
admitted—Wesolowski was defrocked, and stripped of everything but (and this I
love) the obligation of celibacy.
At some time while all this was happening, reports came in
of Wesolowski strolling the streets of Rome; was he doing so as he had the
malecón of Santo Domingo? And was it wise? So Wesolowski was placed under house
arrest, which was no problem, since he had more time to download, yes, more
kiddie porn, even from within the Vatican.
Do I know how things work at the Vatican? Nope, but I
assumed that someone would take a defrocked priest down to the Greyhound
station, give him a few thousand lira, and then send him off. Alternatively,
they could have sent him off to Santo Domingo to face the music there, but that
was impossible, since the acts that he had committed were all exempted under
diplomatic immunity.
So politically correct do we have to be about religion,
these days! In terms of size, the Vatican is half the size of the average American
farm, nor can I recall those lovely Swiss Guards getting down and dusty in the
Afghan and Iraqi deserts. And in fact, the United States never
recognized the Vatican as a state until 1984.
So Wesolowski had diplomatic immunity, and that meant that
neither Poland nor the Dominican Republic could prosecute him. What absolutely
nobody noticed, of course, was that Puerto Rico is part of the United States,
and given that Wesolowski had spent so much time—remember that feud with the
archbishop of San Juan—on the island, it was quite probable that he had
committed crimes on US soil as well.
But no—Wesolowski than had to face a criminal trial, and
this was trumpeted as a great example of the new pope’s tough, tough stand on
priestly abuse. Now the story gets seriously weird, since on the very first
morning of his trial, Wesolowski’s lawyer stood up and announced that the
ex-prelate was in intensive care.
The Vatican of course couldn’t comment on the cause of the
hospitalization, but they did announce that he had been released after three
days.
Three days?
I’m an old nurse, and I can think of only one way to get
from the ICU to the streets in three days: an overdose. Anything else would
have an underlying pathology that would require treatment, tests, monitoring.
With an overdose, you clean ‘em out and ship ‘em out.
Well, did the trial resume? Of course not, since it gets hot
in August and the judges get cranky, so everybody went on vacation, and
Wesolowski was left in his rooms and that’s where, over a week ago, a priest
found him, at five in the morning, sitting in front of his television, which
was still on.
Time is so relevant in the Vatican. A priest is accused of sexual
abuse, and the process grinds on for years. But what happens when the
Archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy Dolan, needed to shift
57 million bucks to the cemetery fund? Why? Consider this priestly sentence:
I foresee an improved protection of these
funds from any legal claim and liability.
How long did it take for the Vatican to sign off on this
questionable scheme? The article didn’t say, but it was weeks, if not days, if
my memory serves.
So it was no surprise that Wesolowski was buried within days
of dying, but what was a surprise was the eight minutes of silence at the
funeral, in lieu of a homily. As my mother used to say, “if you can’t say
anything nice…”
Or is that just a Midwestern thing?
Anyway, the Vatican reached a new low in smarminess with the
unctuous hope that God might "cancel the sins that (Wesolowski) had committed with human
fragility." Then, it was
ship the body off to Poland, where Wesolowski was buried yesterday.
Of course, there was one other detail to take care of, and
that was the cause of death. And again, the Vatican has been a virtuoso at
deception. First, we were told that preliminary examination indicated that Wesolowski
had died of a cardiac incident.
Did he? Of course he did, because guess what happens when
you die? Right—the ticker stops beating.
Then it was announced that “macroscopic” evidence indicated
that a cardiac event had occurred. “Macroscopic?” Consider, that word is the
opposite of “microscopic,” so what that means is that somebody walked into the
room, stuck a stethoscope of the ex-nuncio’s chest, looked him up and down, and
said, “wow, musta been a heart attack or something.” Presumably, either in
Italian or Latin.
But wait—three distinguished doctors were appointed to do an
autopsy, and then we would know, all the world—or at least one marginally sane
but heavily obsessed blogger in Puerto Rico—what had carried the Wesolowski out
of the world, and into the heavenly hands of God, who would cancel the sins of
that human fragility.
Right—so I waited. And waited. And googled, of course, since
Google is to the obsessed what YouTube is to conspiracy theorists. And at last
it came, from the horse’s mouth—though could it have been the opposite end of
the alimentary tract? At any rate, here is Vatican
Radio, putting an end to the whole affair, in a story entitled, “Autopsy
Results Confirm Cause of Former Nuncio’s Death.” Here’s the lead:
(Vatican
Radio) The vice-Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Fr. Ciro
Benedettini, CP, issued a statement to journalists Saturday morning, explaining
that preliminary results of the autopsy performed on the disgraced and
defrocked former Nuncio, Jozef Wesolowski, confirm the decedent succumbed to
natural causes – specifically a deadly cardiac episode.
Below, please find Vatican Radio’s English translation
of the full statement
Was I going to read the full statement? Dear Reader, how
little you know me! And here we have this:
The investigations took place [Friday] afternoon and,
according to the first conclusions reached on the basis of macroscopic
examination, confirmed the natural cause of death, attributable to cardiac
event.
Friday
afternoon—the day of Wesolowski’s death, and recognize that word “macroscopic”
up there. In fact, the next paragraph states that the lab results, which might
perhaps indicate blood alcohol levels and other toxicology, are still pending.
Does
it matter? Is it really so important what killed the archbishop, or the nuncio,
or the defrocked priest that Wesolowski ended up? Hadn’t he suffered enough?
Sure, he died in relative comfort in front of a television set, but hadn’t he
lost everything? Wouldn’t the seven years in an Italian jail have been
overkill?
Maybe,
maybe not. Ultimately, Wesolowski is less interesting than the institution that
created him, that shaped him, and that—just possibly—turned him into the
predator he became. Sexual abuse thrives in secrecy, shame, absolute power,
lack of transparency, and exclusively male environments. The wonder of it is
that only an estimated one percent of priests are abusers; the other 99% are
fighting huge odds not to succumb to an environment that is a Petri dish for
abuse.
The
Vatican never wanted to try Wesolowski. How do I know? If the actions—or the
consistent lack of action—didn’t tell me, the phrase “human fragility,”
describing Wesolowski’s crimes, gave it all away.
Human
fragility is having that piece of chocolate cake, even when you know you have
to shed 20 pounds. Human fragility is saying an unkind thing about a person who
cannot help him or her self. Chasing a poor black Dominican kid down behind a
statue, convincing him to masturbate, filming him, and then giving him money is
not human fragility. It’s a crime.
Will
these guys ever get it?
