Down and Out in Milwaukee

Damn, I feel bad about it. I mean, I know how it is to be broke, having lost my job a couple years ago. Sure, I get by with a few teaching gigs, selling some (very few) books, and the occasional odd job—but job security? Insurance? Paid vacations? 401K plans? Ah, happy days….

So I sympathize, I really do, with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee because guess what? They’re broke, too! And not only that, but they’ve had to pay a cartload of money in attorney fees—the Miami Herald says the tab adds up to 12 million bucks just to declare themselves broke. Think that’s bad? WISN.com puts the figure at 19 million.

So they’re scrounging—just getting by, those good guys in the Roman collars up there in cold Milwaukee. Had to take out a mortgage in 2006 on the Lake Michigan headquarters. Tried to find you a picture of it, but all I could find was Google Map. Take a look!

Well, they got the mortgage to pay off ten pesky victims of sexual abuse in 2006—settlement was almost 16.7 million. And now the headquarters is underwater—no, not the lake, but the debt is higher than the value of the property.

So of course the then archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy A. Dolan—now Cardinal of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and everybody’s favorite—had to do a smooth move, which he did. He wrote off to Rome in 2007 asking permission to transfer almost 57 million dollars to a cemetery fund. And—as revealed last summer…well, here’s The New York Times:

“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show.

OK—let’s take the tongue out of the cheek. Five weeks? FIVE FRIGGING WEEKS! When I, following the several cases of misconduct, have routinely seen correspondence about abusive priests between bishops and the Vatican that extends for DECADES! One of the worst abusers in the Catholic church, Marcial Maciel—a guy who actually had six children by two women, suffered from morphine addiction, and abused at least nine boys—never got thrown out of the church at all. Nor, by the way, did he ever apologize. So five weeks to approve a money transfer in 2007? That’s fucking outrageous.

Well, they may have acted so swiftly because of words that Dolan had written to Ratzinger in 2003; were the words still ringing through the chambers of the Vatican?

“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

So almost 57 million bucks were transferred to a fund for cemeteries. And then what happened? Predictably, in 2011, the archdiocese declared bankruptcy, joining ten other dioceses around the country to have done so in the last ten years.

But that settlement for the 16.7 million-buck settlement back in 2006? It was just for paying off the victims of two priests. The real scope of the problem was much bigger:

At least 45 Milwaukee priests face sex abuse accusations. One priest in particular was accused of personally molesting close to 200 deaf boys.  

So all of those victims—well, some of them—got together and filed a civil suit. And then what happened. Here’s The New York Times again:

Since then, negotiations between the two sides in Milwaukee have broken down: the church has argued that about 400 of the 575 cases are invalid, while lawyers for the victims have accused the church of hiding assets.

Hiding assets would mean that transfer to the cemetery fund: very logically, the victims of abuse went to court, alleging that the transfer was—in legal terms—a fraudulent conveyance. At first, they got a bankruptcy judge to agree that it was, then a U.S. District judge—Rudolph T. Randa—came out in July of 2013 and said the deal was kosher, citing the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Obviously, liberal minds were appalled: here’s thinkprogress.com:

Randa concludes that the church has a constitutional right to shield its funds. By raising his opinion to constitutional status, Randa effectively strips Congress of its ability to correct his sweeping interpretation of the law.  

(Oh, by the way, Randa’s parents and many relatives are buried in Milwaukee Catholic cemeteries—but that wasn’t, he felt, a cause for recusing himself…)

OK—so we’ve gotten up to last summer. Today? Well, the archdiocese came up two days ago with a plan to pay 4 million bucks to the 125 victims that it admits were abused. Right—so where is this relatively trivial sum coming from? Here’s Yahoo News:

The archdiocese will raise $2 million in a loan from a cemetery trust fund created under New York Cardinal and former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Yup, Dear Reader, the archdiocese is proposing to pay two million dollars out of the same fund into which they had transferred 57 million dollars seven years earlier.

It is a brazen as it is depraved. And both the depravity and the brazenness have been taken to astronomical, never-before-heard-of, proportions.

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….

The Priest Who Couldn't Be Bought (Not Part 2)

Well, I had thought to write the second part of The Priest Who Couldn’t Be Bought, the moving tale of a Polish priest, Wojciech Gil, who along with his fellow Pole and papal nuncio, Jozef Wesolowski, took on the drug lords of a narcotic-drenched Dominican Republic. They fought nails and teeth (strange how all the expressions get turned around in Spanish)—Gil increasing the number of altar boys from eight to 180—how dare you snigger out there! No shame!—and giving them money and cell phones and, oh, even trips to his native Poland. Wow—that’s a priest!

So in part 1, I had tidily gotten Wojciech Gil through his childhood, through the seminary (actually, that took about a sentence) and then to Santo Domingo and up the road to the little town of Juncalito, where he will spend the next eight years, and will be, by all accounts, well-received and loved by the residents.

There was just a little problem…

I spent yesterday afternoon watching YouTube clips about the case. There was the deacon, who spoke admiringly about the man, who described the house where Gil lived as being open to anyone, 24 / 7, where Gil was always prepared to listen, to make a good cup of coffee—Juncalito is in the prime coffee region of the Dominican Republic—and where….

But wait…

Because there was also, on several clips, the shocking photo of women’s panties and other accouterments not commonly associated with a priest’s wardrobe. Oh, and what about the reports that Gil could be found, with friends, completely sloshed—there was always vodka, his preferred tipple, whisky and gin in the house.

There was a clip of the collective luto, or grief of mourning, of the community. And then the clip of the fifteen year-old boy who had been abused for three years. And in addition to the gifts, there were the threats as well—there was a photo in the clip showing Wesolowski’s gun on his belt. Yup—the priest was packing.

So who was this guy? Had he been abused as a kid? What was going on in Poland, in those years when Wesolowski was growing up? Well, I knew that Gil was 38 or 39—a conscientious blogger would look that up—so he would have been born in the mid-70s. Which would have put him in his mid-teens by the time the Solidarity movement finally toppled the communist regime. What had that been like?

Then there was the interesting question—what was the power of the Catholic Church in those years? And what was the power of the church after democracy had been restored? I had a dim notion that the church ruled with a medieval hand—authoritarian and unchallenged. But was that true?

So it was time to zip over to Poland via the Internet and here’s what I found, on the first page of a Google search:

Paedophilia is caused by divorce, says Poland's top Catholic bishop as he blames parents for not bringing up children properly

•   Archbishop Jozef Michalik says child abusers are 'looking for love'

•   Claims divorce can be as harmful to children as paedophilia

•   Catholic church in Poland has been hit with paedophile priest allegations

Right—you know I had to read that one, so I did, and here’s Michalik’s tangy twist on orthodox thinking. These priests are not predators. The children, you see, come from broken homes—that’s the divorce part—and come seeking comfort and succor to a father figure—that’s the priest—and so things sometimes get out of hand. So it’s not all the priests’ fault: the children are partly to blame too—as well as those damned divorcing parents.

Well, to no one’s surprise, the archbishop came out the next day, and what he said was—hold on tightly to your seat, here—that he had been misinterpreted, his words twisted and indeed wrenched out of context. Of course he hadn’t meant that kids were responsible for the abuse, or were wantonly tempting those good men of the cloth on.

So that got me thinking. I’ve been to the Dominican Republic just once, but it was abundantly clear—it’s poor, but it is very, very Latin. The men are drinking beer and smoking and listening to bachata and trying to get into any girl’s pants, and the music is blasting everywhere, and the chickens are running around everywhere, and there is—paradoxically—a strange undercurrent of danger underneath all the seemingly loose and hot and casual enjoyment of life. The wrong look at the wrong girl? A gun will flash, blood on the floor, Mamita wailing as she grinds her face into the blood-soaked shirt of her son; she raises her head to scream at God, and her hands and face are smeared with her child’s blood.

Or this….

Pablito sees his chance, and takes the deal Julito has offered him—cut out the middle man, Carlitos. What does Carlitos do, anyway? It’s Pablito out there, making the deliveries, and everyone knows him, trusts him. And for a few weeks it’s fine, until Carlitos puts the screws on the otherrunners. And if Carlitos lets that pendejo, that bastard get away with that?! Replay Mamita on the floor, from the paragraph above.

Then there was the interesting question of the 41 or 42 year-old man who is claiming that he was sexually abused here in Puerto Rico. The archdiocese offered $25,000, the guy wanted a million bucks. So that made me think—um, fifteen years old?

Time for some political incorrectness. At age fifteen, your body is awash in testosterone—if you’re a boy—and you are thinking more or less constantly about sex. In fact, a good number of 15-year olds are having sex. And we are not living The Bells of St. Mary’s, or whatever that 1950’s film was.

At this point, a group of kids who were probably 15-years old passed me, each one of them talking loudly and profanely, wearing gangster clothes, addressing each other as cabrón—which if you don’t know what that is, good for you! So the priest abuses a six-year old? Cut his balls off. But I’m a little unsure about a 15-year old.

Especially in a Latin country, where—as Mr. Fernández insists—it is part of the cultural responsibility of the older brother to explain to the younger brother that:

 1.     all priests are gay
2.     don’t let any one of them touch you
3.     if he does, tell me, and I’ll beat the shit out of him

See?

Well, all of this had taken most of the afternoon, since I was also absolutely riveted by a clip of the archbishop of San Juan, who looked anguished and also, I felt, deeply culpable. In fact, guilty as sin. And where was the post of the day, the tidy conclusion to The Priest Who Couldn’t Be Bought?

Stay tuned, Dar Reader—but it may take a while.

You don’t write a novel in a day…..

The Priest Who Couldn't Be Bought (Part 1)

It’s the stuff of movies.

He was a man of God, a man with a mission, a man who stood firm against the narco-traffickers who were using children—“children!” he exploded, when he first heard of it—to act as runners in the drug trade. As they grew up, they rose in the organizations, gradually working the puntos de drogas, picking up the drugs from the cigarette boats (so-called because they were low, to escape detection by radar, and resembled a box of cigarettes) as they skimmed over the emerald waters of the placid Caribbean.

He was in another world, a world far away from his native Poland, from his town 200 miles south of Warsaw, a town where his family had lived for generations, and where each day, his mother would rise at 5:30, dress hurriedly to the sound of church bells, and start her day by attending mass at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

The church—how much had he loved the church! The scent of incense, the swishing of the priest’s cassock as he waddled to the altar, the altar boys lighting candles, their eyes raised in adoration at Father Jozef. The mothers at mass were surging with pride. One day, vowed little Wojciech, it would be he standing at the altar, helping the priest, smelling the incense, feeling the heat of his mother's love as she watched her beloved boy.

There was never any question of it. Did anyone doubt that this quiet, solitude-loving boy had a vocation? He was as much a fixture in the church as the altar itself. And what an exciting time to be Polish, as the whole world fell in love with the first Polish pope, who had stood up to the Communists and won, who travelled the world so that the multitudes could roar the approval and love! He entered the seminary as you and I enter our homes.

There were hints of it, of course. A priest would be moved suddenly, sent off to a distant parish. Wojciech himself had had various priests keep their hands just a bit too long on his shoulder; gaze into his azure eyes just a bit too long. Had he done something wrong?

Later, he would know more about the filth, the corruption that had crept into his beloved church. There were the priests who organized the camping trips—just the priest himself and five or six boys. Never any parents to sleep in the tents or the cabins; why, wondered Wojciech? And a boy who had left sunny and mischievous, afraid of nothing and no one, would come back sullen and inward.

The day of his ordination, the happiest day of his life! All his family there, his mother beaming, telling Father Jozef, now so old but no less fat, how happy she was to give her son to the church.

“My child, you have made the greatest sacrifice to the Church. Wojciech may travel far, to distant lands, spending years toiling in the meanest, poorest hamlets, bringing the light of our holy church, shining the beacon of our Lord Jesus Christ. God will reward you, my dear….”

But in his first years, he had stayed in his beloved Poland, endured its winters, rejoiced in its lissome spring, and most, savored its rich food, and swum in the comfort of his native tongue. His family he saw frequently, his parishioners claimed him as their own.

“You do speak Spanish, don’t you?” asked the Monsignor.

“Hardly,” replied Wojciech.

“But you studied it in the seminary?”

The teachings of Paul, Sir Thomas Aquinas? Those he had devoured, his pursuit of Spanish was leisurely.

‘It was like being shoved into a sauna,’ he thought, as he remembered standing at the top of the runway steps, paralyzed by the heat and humidity, which the Dominicans behind him so much wanted to embrace, to frolic in. He looked out the window at a road well paved but carless. Indeed, the activity on the road was principally on its side, as streams of bikes and scooters—with several people clutching precariously atop them—whizzed by. The road was flat, but moving relentlessly to the Cordillera Central, the backbone of the island of Hispaniola. Shacks appeared now and then on the side of the road—men sat sitting on broken wooden chairs, seemingly with nothing to do. ‘Why aren’t they working the fields,’ thought Wojciech. In Poland, no man would have dared to be seen out of his house, sitting idle.

The car began to rise, to climb the foothills, to slow slightly as they passed villages—wooden shacks with rotting zinc roofs, the doors open and the barefoot, dirty children gazing out at the passing car. They passed dozens of villages; Wojciech’s heart thudded when he thought, ‘this car will stop, and I’ll get out in the infernal heat, and look around at the poverty and squalor, and that’ll be my town, until somebody tells me it’s not. My God, can I do this?’

He thought back to his homeland; the poor there did their best to hide it—keeping their clothes tidy no matter how old or how mended. They would have scorned to have junk in their yards, to be braying so blatantly their indifference to their own poverty. But these people! Their poverty was a sheet on the wash line, hung for all to see!

The car slowed, slowed more than it did merely to pass through the town. Wojciech’s stomach churned.

The church was the only thing that Wojciech could appreciate; it was erected with twin towers in the Italian style sometime in the 19^th century. The toadstools of huts had seemingly sprung up decades ago, and had refused to be eradicated.

His dislike of Padre Julio, standing to greet him in the rectory, was visceral—less a feeling than a blow. Sweat and grease and the stench of garlic oozed out of him, his eyes shifted away from Wojciech and drifted off to something more interesting—or was it an insult? A dismissal? Padre Julio spoke a greeting, not bothering to clean up his broad, coarse Dominican Spanish.

“Cerveza?” asked Wojciech, pronouncing his zeta with the Castilian th. Padre Julio snorted, and ambled off, not even bothering to show him his room. Though, it was obvious; opening one door, Wojciech saw a room strewn with clothes on the floor, an overflowing ashtray, beer cans resting where they had been tossed. The next room was hardly clean, but at least visibly unoccupied. Wojciech put his suitcase in the exact center of the bed, and began placing his shirts on hangers. They’d have to be ironed, of course, but they still had to be hung—one the right, as he had done since childhood. The pants, mostly, were permanent press, and might need just a firm hand to flatten out the wrinkles. Fortunately, the dresser was in good condition, and could receive his t-shirts in the top drawer, underwear below, socks underneath that….

Wojciech washed his face and stood facing the door. A clash of music from the several open bars slashed through the door. ‘Do I have to?’ a voice pleaded within him.

But he knew: if he didn’t face it now, he never would.

Note: I have written so much about the two Polish priests, the nuncio Jozef Wesolowski and Wojciech Gil accused of sexual abuse of minors in the Dominican Republic, that even I am tired of it. The Dominican government wants them extradited: Wesolowski is in the Vatican, which has no extradition policy; even if it did, Wesolowski is protected by diplomatic immunity. As for Gil, Polish authorities have refused to turn him over. Or as the Dominican press reports:

Más temprano las autoridades polacas informaron que no hay posibilidad de trasladar al sacerdote a República Dominicana para ser juzgado.

(“Earlier, Polish authorities announced there is no possibility to transfer the priest to the Dominican Republic to be processed.”)

Gil has claimed that the power drug lords have framed him, as he fought courageously in defense of the children who were being lured into a life of crime and violence. He pointed out that the computer on which the 500 photos of underage children engaged in sexual acts were put there by someone else—it was a shared computer.

And now, according to one account I read and now cannot find, after the denunciations of last May the village has gone silent. Why? Is everybody just tired of it? Or is someone putting screws? The drug lords? The Church?

I thought about it all over the joe of the morning, and thought, ‘well, what if?’ Jack, my newspaperman father, had been glowering—one of his talents—down at me for a while. Dig for the facts, tell ‘em straight, give both sides of the story, and then go hunt for the next story. Had I been doing that?

So here’s the other side….          

The News Out of Arecibo

News flash—things are getting seriously weird in the Diocese of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

It all started last year, when a parishioner came forward and said there was some funny business of a sexual nature in the San Martín de Porres. The priest, José Colón Otero, fought the charges nail and teeth, as we say down here, and appeared under the hot Puerto Rican sun in front of his church. What happened a few days later? Somebody vandalized his church.

What happened next? Well, here’s the word from the New Day:

Tras una pesquisa que duró cerca de tres años, El Vaticano emitió un decreto en el que expulsa del sacerdocio al cura de la Diócesis de Arecibo José Colón Otero, eje de denuncias de índole sexual y violaciones al sigilo sacramental que sacudieron la Diócesis de Arecibo y a la parroquia San Martín de Porres.

Con esto, Colón Otero se convirtió en el sexto sacerdote de la Diócesis de Arecibo en ser expulsado por El Vaticano desde el 2011.

(“After an investigation that lasted almost three years, the Vatican issued a decree in which it expelled the priest of the Diocese of Arecibo José Colón Otero, the source of accusations of sexual misconduct and violations of the sacraments which shook the Diocese of Arecibo and the parish of San Martín de Porres.

With this, Colón Otero became the sixth priest in the Diocese of Arecibo to be expelled by the Vatican since 2011.”)

Um—six priests in three years?

Well, Colón Otero isn’t taking it lying down—he has several months to appeal, and he says the Vatican cleared him of the charges of sexual misconduct. Instead, all he did was violate the confidentiality of the confessional. No big deal!

Right, so the island was absorbing all of that yesterday, and woke up to the news that the Vatican is now investigating the bishop of Arecibo, Daniel Fernández Torres, on charges of…the usual. Here is the florid response of the bishop:

Jamás imaginé que las cosas pudieran llegar hasta el punto de la calumnia y de la vil mentira, pero sé que si al mismo Jesucristo lo crucificaron y lo humillaron por ser Él mismo la Verdad, el escarnio es parte de los seguidores de Cristo”, detalló en declaraciones escritas.

(“Never in my life did I imagine that things might arrive to the point of calumny and vile lies like this, but  I know that if even Jesus Christ they crucified and humiliated for being the very Truth, the ridicule is part of the followers of Christ, detailed the bishop in written declarations.”)

So the island scratched its head and thought about that for awhile, and then the news hit at lunchtime: the bishop of a neighboring town, Rubén González of Caguas, has been asked to... well, let him explain:

“En un caso como este, a mí se me ha pedido un servicio... El servicio implica que yo dialogue con unas personas y que hable con unas personas, que dé mi parecer. Pero eso no es hacer una investigación. Estoy en búsqueda de la verdad”, manifestó.

El obispo de Caguas fue cuidadoso en hablar sobre la tarea encomendada por el Vaticano. Se limitaba a exponer que su función es solo “dar un servicio” y no “juzgar el hecho”.

(“In a case such as this, from me they have requested a service… The service implies that I dialogue with various people and talk to various people; that I offer my opinion. But this is not the same as conducting an investigation. I’m only seeking the truth,” he maintained.

The bishop of Caguas was cautious in speaking of the task asked by the Vatican. He limited himself to saying that his function was only to ‘give a service’ and not ‘judge the fact.’”)

Um—we got the bishop of Caguas walking around talking to people and trying to figure out what went down, and that’s not an investigation?

Boys?

Oh, and by the way, where’s the archbishop, who is the highest church official on the island. Isn’t he the bishops’ supervisor, or did they change the hierarchy without letting me know? But no, he too is being a model of discretion:

Ante esta denuncia contra el obispo de Arecibo, el arzobispo de San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, prefirió guardar silencio.

“Desconozco si hay algo oficial”, fue lo primero que señaló el líder de la iglesia católica en la Isla.

Luego, expresó que “de momento, yo prefiero no opinar sobre ese tema”.

(Forget the translation—González denies knowing if there’s anything official and prefers not to comment. Raise your hands, Readers, if you believe that!)

In the movie The Queen, the Tony Blair character says about the Royal Family, “somebody has got to save these people from themselves….”

Exactly!

The Vatican Gets Tough

Wow—strong stuff.

True, the Vatican announced recently that Jozef Wesolowski, the former Papal Nuncio to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico who is the highest-ranking official in the Catholic Church to be charged with child sexual abuse, won’t be extradited either to Poland or the Dominican Republic. Why? Because he’s in the diplomatic corps of the Vatican, which doesn’t permit extradition.

This was announced a few days ago and discussed in Geneva, Switzerland, in what The Telegraph called “an unprecedented grilling” by the United Nations. Instead, he will face trial in the Vatican. And, assuming he’s found guilty, he’ll serve time there.

Very convenient, because... Dominican jails? Well, Puerto Rico got an earful about them when a journalist ventured off to the Dominican Republic and got herself into some trouble over a little cocaine deal. So the island stood on its ear for months and watched as she got tried and convicted.

I’ve tried to google “Dominican Republic jails” but guess what? The Internet is off somewhere in a meeting—presumably on how to be capricious, willful, and completely unreliable, as well as maddening—so this account of Laura Hernández is completely from memory.

But if memory serves, the Dominicans start with the presumption of guilty until proven innocent—a nice little Caribbean twist on things. And unlike the United States, which according to today’s edition of The New York Times is seeing a surge in request for Kosher meals (which are better and four times more expensive than regular prison fare), Dominican jails tend to offer a more basic experience. Which is to say that the family has to bring in the food, personal hygiene items, and pretty much everything else. And as I remember it, the floor was dirt. Nor was there a bed….

And so for a period of several years, the island was treated to pictures of Hernández, who was reliably sobbing, and the inhumane, awful treatment she was receiving. And then, one day—presumably after some pressure from the United States—Hernández was freed.

Well, Wesolowski had a habit of drinking beer—very Caribbean—and walking the Malecón—Caribbean, yes, but, in this case, an area associated with kids who provide services not encouraged by the Catholic Church. Officially, that is.

So the top guy in the church went off and told the new pope—whom we’re all in love with—that the Dominican press was about to out Wesolowski and another Polish priest. And what happened? Did the Vatican follow its own rules—which as I remember require the offending clergy to be turned over to local authorities and jurisdiction? Nope—the Polish priest returned to Poland, and Wesolowski was recalled to the Vatican. And also, if memory serves, there were rumors swirling about false travel documents.

Well, whatever the Vatican is going to do, it has acted swiftly and decisively in at least one action. And that would be? They photoshopped him out of an official picture. Here’s the Telegraph on the subject:

In the original picture, he appears smiling in the second row, wearing a dog collar, black vestments and a heavy crucifix.

But in the re-touched photograph, his head has been replaced by that of an emeritus bishop, Francisco José Arnáiz.

The Huffington Post, writing of Wesolowski, said this:

His case has raised questions about whether the Vatican, by removing him from Dominican jurisdiction, was protecting him and placing its own investigations ahead of that of authorities in the Caribbean nation.

Raised questions?

Not for me!