CITTA' DEL VATICANO - Radio Vaticana oggi ha lanciato un attacco contro il New York Times per i suoi articoli sul Papa ritenuti inattendibili e imprecisi. La Radio ha tratto le sue informazioni dal memoriale di padre Thomas Brundage, vicario giudiziale dell'arcidiocesi di Milwauke dal 1995 al 2003 e dunque presidente del collegio giudicante che avvio' il processo contro il prete pedofilo Lawrence Murphy, morto nel 1998. "Padre Brundage - riferisce l'emittente - accusa il quotidiano di aver fatto una ricostruzione assolutamente imprecisa e sciatta della vicenda, fondandosi tra l'altro sulle menzogne di mons. Rembert Weakland". (RCD)
mercoledì 31 marzo 2010
Berlusconi's bounce
A surprisingly good result for Italy's prime minister
Mar 30th 2010 | ROME | From The Economist online
REGIONAL elections on March 28th-29th made several things clear about today’s Italy. The first was that it is not France. Defying predictions, the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, did not get a trouncing at the polls of the kind President Nicolas Sarkozy suffered recently.
Of the 13 regions at stake, Mr Berlusconi’s conservative People of Freedom (PdL) movement took six, regaining four of them from the left. This was a strong performance for the prime minister. The opposition had everything in its favour: a string of sex scandals involving Mr Berlusconi last year; a display, in late February, of extraordinary ineptitude by the PdL when it failed to deliver its list of candidates on time in Lazio, the region that includes Rome, and an economic crisis that last year slashed GDP by 5.1% and destroyed more than 400,000 jobs. One poll conducted two weeks before the election had predicted the left holding all but one of the 11 regions that it won in 2005.
The Democratic Party (PD), Italy’s biggest opposition group, did at least narrow the gap with the PdL. Partial results suggested the distance between the parties could be as little as 1%, compared with more than 4% at the 2008 general election. And the left could claim that its vote was eroded in at least one marginal region by the Five-Star Movement, a new outfit led by Beppe Grillo, an anti-Berlusconi comedian and blogger. Mr Grillo’s party had an impressive first outing, winning almost 7% in the left’s heartland of Emilia-Romagna.
Yet this was a disappointing result for the left. It lost four of its 11 governorships, and might well have lost another, Puglia, had the right there held together. In Campania, the region around Naples, the opposition’s share of the vote plunged from 62% to 43%—a damning judgment on ten years of left-wing administration. The left also failed to hold Lazio, despite fielding a strong candidate: Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner.
What went wrong? The mainstream opposition is clearly still incapable of capitalising on the dissatisfaction felt towards the government by many parts of the electorate, particularly the young. Instead of supporting the PD or the smaller, feistier Italy of Principles (IDV) movement, many voters stayed at home. Only 64% bothered to vote, almost 8% fewer than five years ago. And contrary to expectations, the right was not the only victim of the low turnout.
The other explanation for the turnaround is even more disquieting for the left. Two weeks before voting, Mr Berlusconi took to the hustings, and his personal charisma may have tilted the balance. The prime minister was not slow to draw conclusions, reportedly telling aides that in Lazio he had wrought a “sort of miracle”.
But there is a cloud on Mr Berlusconi's horizon: the success of his ally, Umberto Bossi, whose populist, xenophobic Northern League was the one undisputed victor of these elections. The party won 13% of the vote, up from 8% at the general election, and took the governorships of two northern regions, Veneto and Piedmont. Mr Bossi promptly announced he would press for greater financial autonomy for the north as the price of his continued support. This is unlikely to be the last demand he will make of the prime minister.
As for Mr Berlusconi, he will doubtless see the result as a mandate for his continued attempts to curb the criminal prosecutors who have pursued him since before he entered politics 16 years ago. He may also view the outcome as legitimising his aspiration to a presidential style of government. How far he gets down either of these roads may now depend less on the opposition than on Mr Bossi.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15810534
Berlusconi has got one thing right: his finance minister
Bronwen Maddox
Giulio Tremonti took Italy out of crisis and voters should thank his boss
From The Times - March 31, 2010
(Bronwen Maddox is Chief Foreign Commentator of The Times)
I t’s been years since I thought I could write a word in favour of Silvio Berlusconi. The girls, swimming pools full of them; the suffocating control of Italy’s media; the endless speeches about reform that never happens. I’d long concluded that Italy would be better without a Prime Minister who had become the story rather than the agent of change.
That is still my view. But I have to admit two points. First, many Italians back him. Yesterday his conservative coalition won four regions from the opposition in local elections, despite predictions that it would lose. There is no choice but to credit some of that to the “Mediterranean man” factor, as Italian pundits call it. Voters forgive or even admire him for behaviour that would disqualify him from British politics, never mind the puritanical US.
His spokesman says, baldly: “Divorce happens to many people, even nice ones,” glossing over the provocations that led Veronica Lario, Mr Berlusconi’s wife, to file for this particular divorce.
But a bigger reason for voters’ indulgence is that Italy has fared surprisingly well in the global financial turmoil. Let me be more precise — it is not that Mr Berlusconi has run the economy well, but that he appointed Giulio Tremonti as Finance Minister in May 2008 and had the wit to keep him in place. Mr Tremonti, a good candidate for Europe’s best finance minister, has turned a near-disastrous position into a survivable one.
Italy had seemed to be heading for the position of Greece: unable to trim its huge public sector or to persuade people to pay more tax, hemmed in by debt and in serious danger of showing that a country which had adopted the euro could crash out of the currency bloc. Asked how craftsmen in northern Italy would compete against cheap Chinese handbags and shoes, ministers would say weakly: “But we make nicer ones.”
No longer. Italy has navigated the two years without collapse in finances or huge panic about its debt. Mr Tremonti resisted Mr Berlusconi’s pressure to cut taxes or to launch a big stimulus. Did that make Italy a free rider on those countries who did these things? Sure, but Mr Tremonti was right that Italy couldn’t afford it. Its debt, at 115 per cent of gross domestic product, has been higher than Greece’s. But its budget deficit — the gap between government spending and income — is less than half of Greece’s, at less than 6 per cent of GDP.
Still not a breeze — and ministers have no good answer to the Chinese handbags question. Nor has Mr Berlusconi’s team begun to tackle desperately needed reforms. But Mr Tremonti has done enough to take Italy out of crisis. For that — but that alone — voters are justified in thanking Mr Tremonti’s boss.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article7081887.ece
domenica 28 marzo 2010
Pope Benedict XVI
By 
Overview
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected the Catholic church's 265th pope on April 19, 2005, after the death of the popular and long-serving Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI.
At 78, the German-born Benedict XVI was one of the oldest popes ever elected. His age and closeness to John Paul -- he served under him for more than two decades as guardian of church orthodoxy -- raised the question whether he would be only a transitional figure.
But the bookish and shy Benedict has to many experts proven himself no mere caretaker of the 2,000-year-old office, even if there is strong debate in the church about his vision.
The pope has had his share of difficulties, most recently, in a widening sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in Europe and the United States. Pope Benedict is facing accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer.
In 2006 he enraged many Muslims, when he quoted a Byzantine emperor who called Islam "evil and inhuman,'' and in January 2009 he sparked outrage across Europe when he revoked the excommunication of schismatic bishops who had denied central elements of the Holocaust.
On Oct. 20, 2009, in a bold move expected to cause confusion within Anglican and Catholic parishes alike, the pope approved the Vatican's decision to make it easier for Anglicans to convert. Many Anglicans have been uncomfortable with the Church of England's acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops
Before becoming pope, Benedict had expressed his ideas with force over many years in dozens of books and lectures.
Central to those ideas is how the Catholic church -- and religious belief generally -- finds its place in a modern, secular society. His own answer has been to rein in what he sees as the excesses in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, which were aimed at bringing the church closer to ordinary Catholic life. He encourages a church of the most orthodox believers -- the better, he believes, to ensure the church's survival in what he believes is a hostile culture as mass attendance has declined steeply in developed countries.
His many critics in the church call his approach narrow and regressive, removing it from life as it is actually lived and stifling a debate they say would move the church forward as it grapples with a global role in a multicultural world.
In general, the pope's actions in office have tended more toward pleasing the church's conservative wing, easing restrictions on saying the Latin mass and restating his contentious belief that Catholicism is the only "true" church.
Fallout from Abuse Scandals
Benedict's central goals of fortifying the church and fighting secularism in Europe have been threatened by hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse by priests surfacing throughout Europe and the United States.
Benedict himself was drawn into an abuse scandal in his native Germany. A senior church official in early 2010 acknowledged that a German archdiocese had made "serious mistakes" in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.
The archdiocese said a priest, who was accused of molesting boys, was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties before committing further abuse and being prosecuted and convicted. Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, had approved the priest's transfer for therapy. The priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has a trail of accusations against him that suggest a pattern of abuse of over two decades.
Experts said the scandal has cast a shadow over the Vatican and could undermine Benedict's moral authority. As head of the Vatican's main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he led Vatican investigations into abuse for four years before assuming the papacy in 2005.
In another case, documents emerged in March 2010 that top Vatican officials, including the future pope, did not defrock an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit,
The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.
The abuse scandals have put to the test a Vatican culture of protecting its own even in the face of crimes against civil and canon law.
Old-School Intellectual
Benedict, an old-school European intellectual, does not fit seamlessly into the American model of conservatism, though American conservatives are among his strong supporters, heartened by his opposition to abortion, divorce and "anything-goes" multiculturalism. For instance, Benedict opposed the war in Iraq, rejects the death penalty, denounces the excesses of capitalism and focuses strongly on helping the poor and immigrants.
Beyond the liberal-conservative debate, Benedict has worked to reunite Roman Catholics with Orthodox Christians, divided for 1,000 years, and open formal relations with China. He also speaks out often on the plight of Christian minorities in Muslim countries, as Christians disappear from the lands where the faith began.
Despite his quiet demeanor, Benedict has not shrunk from controversy even outside the church. In 2006, he enflamed Muslims in a speech in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor as calling Islam "evil and inhuman." The pope later apologized, saying that his words were misunderstood and pledging a focused interfaith dialogue with Muslims, which began in 2008.
A new controversy erupted in January 2009, after the pope revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, a Briton. Bishop Richardson, in an interview broadcast on a Swedish television channel, had denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers and said he believed that no more than 300,000 Jews died in the Holocaust rather than the accepted figure of 6 million.
Global outrage was immediate. In a rare criticism from the head of a government, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called on the pope to clarify his position on the Holocaust, saying his previous remarks had not been sufficient.
Responding to the reaction, on Feb. 5, 2009, the Vatican called on the bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust. On Feb. 12, the pope, trying to defuse the controversy, said that "any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable," especially if it comes from a clergyman.
In late February 2009, Bishop Williamson apologized to the pope, the church and "survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich." But he did not address the substance of his views on the Holocaust or disavow his remarks. The Vatican said that the apology was not sufficient.
The following month, the pope sent a letter to bishops worldwide explaining why he revoked Bishop Williamson's excommunication and admitting mistakes in how the Vatican handled the case. In the letter, the pope said that he had considered his action "a modest act of mercy" but that it suddenly appeared something totally different -- "as the denial of reconciliation between Christians and Jews."
Critical of the Global Economy
In May, the pope traveled to the Mideast, arriving in Jordan before traveling to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Vatican officials said the pope was eager to make the trip, given his age, 82.
But his first day in Israel seemed to underscore the tensions in the region rather than ease them. After the pope visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and offered the "deep compassion" of the Roman Catholic Church for Hitler's victims, Jewish leaders expressed disappointment that the pontiff, who is German, had not mentioned Germany or the Nazis.
Later, at an interfaith meeting where the pope urged greater dialogue, Sheik Taysir Tamimi, the chief justice of the Palestinian Islamic courts, veered from the program and accused Israel of taking innocent lives.
In July 2009, after more than two years in preparation, Benedict released "Caritas in Veritate," or "Charity in Truth," his third encyclical since he became pope in 2005. In it, the pope called for a radical rethinking of the global economy, criticizing a growing divide between rich and poor and urging the establishment of a "true world political authority" to oversee the economy and work for the "common good."
He criticized the current economic system, "where the pernicious effects of sin are evident," and urged financiers in particular to "rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity."
Reportedly delayed to take into consideration the financial crisis, it was released by the Vatican on the eve of the Group of 8 industrialized nations summit meeting in July 2009.
In many ways, the document was a puzzling cross between an anti-globalization tract and a government white paper, another signal that the Vatican does not comfortably fit into traditional political categories of right and left.
Benedict also called for "greater social responsibility" on the part of business. "Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty," he wrote.
Benedict approved the Vatican's decision in October 2009 to reach out to disaffected Anglicans. The move creates a formal structure to oversee conversions that had previously been evaluated on a case-by-case basis, including those of married Anglican priests, who are permitted to remain married after they convert to Catholicism. Under the new regime, former Anglicans who become Catholic can preserve some liturgical elements of the Anglican Mass.
Benedict has announced that he will travel to England in 2010. The trip will be the first official diplomatic visit, rather than pastoral visit, by a pontiff.
http://www.nytimes.com/info/pope-benedict-xvi/
sabato 27 marzo 2010
Pope May Be at Crossroads on Abuse, Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: March 25, 2010
ROME — Even as Pope Benedict XVI, faced with a sexual abuse scandal spreading across Europe, has called on victims to come forward and urged clerics to cooperate with civil justice, those strong words are running up against the complexities of his past.
“He is at a crossroads,” said Marco Politi, a veteran Italian Vaticanjournalist. “What’s extraordinary is that the scandal has reached the heart of the center of the church. Up to now it was far away — in the States, in Canada, in Brazil, in Australia. Then it came to Europe, to Ireland.
“Then it came to his motherland,” Mr. Politi added of Benedict’s native Germany. “Then it came to his diocese, and now it’s coming to the heart of the government of the church — and he has to give an answer.”
Last weekend, in a heartfelt letter to Irish Catholics reeling from reports of decades of systemic sexual abuse, Benedict apologized but did not discipline any church leaders who had covered up abuses, fueling growing anger in Ireland.
Mr. Politi said the pope in his letter had “set a very rigorous line: The search for truth, full transparency, listening to victims, punishing guilt and deference to state courts. The issue now is how he will handle the past.”
As archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, the future pope approved the transfer to Munich for psychiatric treatment of a priest who had sexually abused boys. The priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, was quickly returned to pastoral work with children. This month, a subordinate took responsibility for the decision, although internal church documents show that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was copied on a memorandum informing him of the transfer. Benedict has not addressed the issue.
In 1998, top Vatican officials, including the future pope, did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin, according to internal church documents obtained by The New York Times from lawyers who are suing church officials. The decision came after the priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger for leniency.
The Vatican has said that the abuse dated back decades and that Father Murphy’s age and ill health were reason enough not to dismiss him from the clergy.
Benedict’s defenders tend to see the crisis as an elaborate personal attack on the pope.
In an unsigned editorial on Thursday, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, criticized The Times for an article published Thursday on the abuse issue. The Italian editorial said that Benedict had always handled such cases with “transparency, purpose and severity,” and accused the news media of acting “with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.”
Yet as dioceses in Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere have opened investigations in recent weeks and set up e-mail addresses where victims can come forward, attention is growing on how the Vatican — and Benedict — will proceed.
“Now he has to decide: either he goes ahead with a policy of transparency, or he goes back to an old line, saying that these are old cases, that not punishing the perpetrators is an act of mercy,” Mr. Politi said.
After sexual abuse cases rocked the American church in 2002 and 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger developed a reputation for investigating such cases more rigorously than his more popular predecessor, John Paul II.
“I find it very paradoxical, because the polemics are against a person who not only today but also in the past consistently fought this with more vigor than anyone else,” said Sandro Magister, a longtime Vatican journalist in Italy.
Mr. Magister noted that in one high-profile case, Cardinal Ratzinger ultimately opened a previously suspended investigation into the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order.
After it emerged that Father Maciel had sexually abused seminarians and fathered several children, the Vatican ordered a rare special investigation into all Legionaries communities, seminaries, and schools worldwide, which was completed just this month. Its findings remain secret. Father Maciel died in 2008, still a priest, but having been ordered by the Vatican to live in seclusion and contemplation.
As abuse cases from the United States flooded across the future pope’s desk a decade ago, advisers said that he was struck by the depth of the crisis. On his first visit to the United States as pope in 2008, Benedict said he was “ashamed” of the sexual abuse scandal, adding, “It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general, for me personally, that this could happen.”
In Washington on that same trip, he cited the top bishop of the United States, who had said the situation was “sometimes very badly handled.”
And he met with abuse victims — something he said in his letter to Irish Catholics he would be willing to do again.
On Thursday, members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an American advocacy group, held an impromptu news conference in St. Peter’s Square, holding up pictures of Father Murphy and calling on the Vatican to take responsibility.
“They’re not holding themselves accountable, and these documents show they were very involved in the case,” said John Pilmaier, the group’s Wisconsin director.
Twenty minutes into the news conference, the Rome police told the group that it did not have a proper permit, and brought organizers in for questioning. They were detained for two and a half hours. “We’ve spent more time in police custody than most of these pedophile priests have,” Mr. Pilmaier said.
In addition to the protest in Rome, the group, called SNAP, demonstrated Thursday in Washington, Chicago, Milwaukee and in the northern Wisconsin town of Boulder Junction, where Father Murphy lived for many years before he died in 1998.
Mary Guentner, director of the Milwaukee chapter, who helped organize the Chicago protest, said, “The two main responses here are shock at the number of victims, and the fact that Ratzinger was heavily involved.
“What’s different here is that Archbishop Weakland did go to the Vatican,” she said, referring to a former head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. “He did not do enough. He did very little. But what we now know is that the Vatican doesn’t even listen to their own hierarchy.”
But some Catholics said Benedict was being unfairly blamed. On her way into the afternoon Mass at Our Lady of Good Hope, a Catholic parish in Milwaukee, Freida Mueller, 74, said: “I think the pope is a good man. I believe a lot of people are in this because they want to get an extra something out of the church.”
“There are people out there doing pretty disgusting things in other religions,” she added. “They’re only after the Catholic Church.”
Memo to Pope Described Transfer of Pedophile Priest
By NICHOLAS KULISH and KATRIN BENNHOLD
Published: March 25, 2010
MUNICH — The future Pope Benedict XVI was kept more closely apprised of a sexual abuse case in Germany than previous church statements have suggested, raising fresh questions about his handling of a scandal unfolding under his direct supervision before he rose to the top of the church’s hierarchy.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope and archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.
An initial statement on the matter issued earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber. But the memo, whose existence was confirmed by two church officials, shows that the future pope not only led a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the priest’s reassignment.
What part he played in the decision making, and how much interest he showed in the case of the troubled priest, who had molested multiple boys in his previous job, remains unclear. But the personnel chief who handled the matter from the beginning, the Rev. Friedrich Fahr, “always remained personally, exceptionally connected” to Cardinal Ratzinger, the church said.
The case of the German priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children. The German Archdiocese has acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made in the handling of Father Hullermann, though it attributed those mistakes to people reporting to Cardinal Ratzinger rather than to the cardinal himself.
Church officials defend Benedict by saying the memo was routine and was “unlikely to have landed on the archbishop’s desk,” according to the Rev. Lorenz Wolf, judicial vicar at the Munich Archdiocese. But Father Wolf said he could not rule out that Cardinal Ratzinger had read it.
According to Father Wolf, who spoke with Father Gruber this week at the request of The New York Times, Father Gruber, the former vicar general, said that he could not remember a detailed conversation with Cardinal Ratzinger about Father Hullermann, but that Father Gruber refused to rule out that “the name had come up.”
Benedict is well known for handling priestly abuse cases in the Vatican before he became pope. While some have criticized his role in adjudicating such cases over the past two decades, he has also won praise from victims’ advocates for taking the issue more seriously, apologizing to American victims in 2008.
The future pope’s time in Munich, in the broader sweep of his life story, has until now been viewed mostly as a steppingstone on the road to the Vatican. But this period in his career has recently come under scrutiny — particularly six decisive weeks from December 1979 to February 1980.
In that short span, a review of letters, meeting minutes and documents from personnel files shows, Father Hullermann went from disgrace and suspension from his duties in Essen to working without restrictions as a priest in Munich, despite the fact that he was described in the letter requesting his transfer as a potential “danger.”
In September 1979, the chaplain was removed from his congregation after three sets of parents told his superior, the Rev. Norbert Essink, that he had molested their sons, charges he did not deny, according to notes taken by the superior and still in Father Hullermann’s personnel file in Essen.
On Dec. 20, 1979, Munich’s personnel chief, Father Fahr, received a phone call from his counterpart in the Essen Diocese, Klaus Malangré.
There is no official record of their conversation, but in a letter to Father Fahr dated that Jan. 3, Father Malangré referred to it as part of a formal request for Father Hullermann’s transfer to Munich to see a psychiatrist there.
Sexual abuse of boys is not explicitly mentioned in the letter, but the subtext is clear. “Reports from the congregation in which he was last active made us aware that Chaplain Hullermann presented a danger that caused us to immediately withdraw him from pastoral duties,” the letter said. By pointing out that “no proceedings against Chaplain Hullermann are pending,” Father Malangré also communicated that the danger in question was serious enough that it could have merited legal consequences.He dropped another clear hint by suggesting that Father Hullermann could teach religion “at a girls’ school.”
On Jan. 9, Father Fahr prepared a summary of the situation for top officials at the diocese, before their weekly meeting, saying that a young chaplain needed “medical-psychotherapeutic treatment in Munich” and a place to live with “an understanding colleague.” Beyond that, it presented the priest from Essen in almost glowing terms, as a “very talented man, who could be used in a variety of ways.”
Father Fahr’s role in the case has thus far received little attention, in contrast to Father Gruber’s mea culpa.
Father Wolf, who is acting as the internal legal adviser on the Hullermann case, said in an interview this week that Father Fahr was “the filter” of all information concerning Father Hullermann. He was also, according to his obituary on the archdiocese Web site, a close friend of Cardinal Ratzinger.
A key moment came on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 1980. Cardinal Ratzinger presided that morning over the meeting of the diocesan council. His auxiliary bishops and department heads gathered in a conference room on the top floor of the bishop’s administrative offices, housed in a former monastery on a narrow lane in downtown Munich.
It was a busy day, with the deaths of five priests, the acquisition of a piece of art and pastoral care in Vietnamese for recent immigrants among the issues sharing the agenda with item 5d, the delicate matter of Father Hullermann’s future.
The minutes of the meeting include no references to the actual discussion that day, simply stating that a priest from Essen in need of psychiatric treatment required room and board in a Munich congregation. “The request is granted,” read the minutes, stipulating that Father Hullermann would live at St. John the Baptist Church in the northern part of the city.
Church officials have their own special name for the language in meeting minutes, which are internal but circulate among secretaries and other diocese staff members, said Father Wolf, who has a digitized archive of meeting minutes, including those for the Jan. 15 meeting. “It’s protocol-speak,” he said. “Those who know what it’s about understand, and those who don’t, don’t.”
Five days later, on Jan. 20, Cardinal Ratzinger’s office received a copy of the memo from his vicar general, Father Gruber, returning Father Hullermann to full duties, a spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed.
Father Hullermann resumed parish work practically on arrival in Munich, on Feb. 1, 1980. He was convicted in 1986 of molesting boys at another Bavarian parish.
This week, new accusations of sexual abuse emerged, both from his first assignment in a parish near Essen, in northern Germany, and from 1998 in the southern German town of Garching an der Alz.
Father Fahr died two years ago. A spokesman for the diocese in Essen said that Father Malangré was not available for an interview. Father Malangré, now 88, recently had an accident and was confused and unreliable as a witness when questioned in an internal inquiry into the handling of Father Hullermann’s case, said the spokesman, Ulrich Lota.
Father Gruber, who took responsibility for the decision to put Father Hullermann back into a parish, was not present at the Jan. 15 meeting, according to Father Wolf, and has not answered repeated interview requests.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/world/europe/26church.html?pagewanted=1&hp
He dropped another clear hint by suggesting that Father Hullermann could teach religion “at a girls’ school.”
On Jan. 9, Father Fahr prepared a summary of the situation for top officials at the diocese, before their weekly meeting, saying that a young chaplain needed “medical-psychotherapeutic treatment in Munich” and a place to live with “an understanding colleague.” Beyond that, it presented the priest from Essen in almost glowing terms, as a “very talented man, who could be used in a variety of ways.”
Father Fahr’s role in the case has thus far received little attention, in contrast to Father Gruber’s mea culpa.
Father Wolf, who is acting as the internal legal adviser on the Hullermann case, said in an interview this week that Father Fahr was “the filter” of all information concerning Father Hullermann. He was also, according to his obituary on the archdiocese Web site, a close friend of Cardinal Ratzinger.
A key moment came on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 1980. Cardinal Ratzinger presided that morning over the meeting of the diocesan council. His auxiliary bishops and department heads gathered in a conference room on the top floor of the bishop’s administrative offices, housed in a former monastery on a narrow lane in downtown Munich.
It was a busy day, with the deaths of five priests, the acquisition of a piece of art and pastoral care in Vietnamese for recent immigrants among the issues sharing the agenda with item 5d, the delicate matter of Father Hullermann’s future.
The minutes of the meeting include no references to the actual discussion that day, simply stating that a priest from Essen in need of psychiatric treatment required room and board in a Munich congregation. “The request is granted,” read the minutes, stipulating that Father Hullermann would live at St. John the Baptist Church in the northern part of the city.
Church officials have their own special name for the language in meeting minutes, which are internal but circulate among secretaries and other diocese staff members, said Father Wolf, who has a digitized archive of meeting minutes, including those for the Jan. 15 meeting. “It’s protocol-speak,” he said. “Those who know what it’s about understand, and those who don’t, don’t.”
Five days later, on Jan. 20, Cardinal Ratzinger’s office received a copy of the memo from his vicar general, Father Gruber, returning Father Hullermann to full duties, a spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed.
Father Hullermann resumed parish work practically on arrival in Munich, on Feb. 1, 1980. He was convicted in 1986 of molesting boys at another Bavarian parish.
This week, new accusations of sexual abuse emerged, both from his first assignment in a parish near Essen, in northern Germany, and from 1998 in the southern German town of Garching an der Alz.
Father Fahr died two years ago. A spokesman for the diocese in Essen said that Father Malangré was not available for an interview. Father Malangré, now 88, recently had an accident and was confused and unreliable as a witness when questioned in an internal inquiry into the handling of Father Hullermann’s case, said the spokesman, Ulrich Lota.
Father Gruber, who took responsibility for the decision to put Father Hullermann back into a parish, was not present at the Jan. 15 meeting, according to Father Wolf, and has not answered repeated interview requests.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/world/europe/26church.html?pagewanted=1&hp
lunedì 22 marzo 2010
Silvio Berlusconi to push for change to Italian constitution for greater powers
From The Times - March 22, 2010
Richard Owen, Rome
The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is proposing to change the constitution by referendum to give him greater powers as a “directly elected president”.
Addressing supporters of his People of Liberty (PdL) party at a rally in Rome, Mr Berlusconi said that he planned a “great, great, great reform” in the remaining three years of his term.
This would include changes to the judiciary, which he claims is biased against him, a cut in the number of MPs and senators and direct elections for a head of state with expanded powers.
The president is currently elected by Parliament, and has limited powers. Mr Berlusconi did not say whether he would be a candidate but the Italian press said that the announcement was consistent with his populist belief that “the people” supported him despite the “lies” spread by “magistrates and the press”.
PdL officials said that more than a million people attended the rally in Rome, staged under the slogan “Love always wins over envy and hatred” to the soundtrack from Star Wars.
However, police put the turnout at 150,000 — fewer than the crowds that attended a centre-left, anti-Berlusconi rally a week previously.
New opinion polls show that Mr Berlusconi’s approval rating has slipped to 44 per cent from 62 per cent when he was elected to his third term a year and a half ago.
Last week the Prime Minister addressed a half-empty hall at an election rally in Naples.
Mr Berlusconi’s standing could suffer another blow if centre-right voters abstain in elections in 13 regions next weekend after the PdL bungled the registration of its candidates in Lazio, the region around Rome. It missed the deadline because a party official went out for a sandwich.
Questions were also raised over the validity of signatures accompanying the PdL list in Mr Berlusconi’s native Lombardy region.
At first the Prime Minister turned on “idiots” in his party but later blamed the Left for “dirty tricks”.
Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said that Mr Berlusconi was increasingly “nervous” because “he knows the tide is turning against him”.
Renato Mannheimer, Italy’s top pollster, said: “The centre-right electorate is disoriented and has lost confidence in its leaders, whom they see as disorganised.”
Magistrates are investigating Mr Berlusconi for abuse of office after tapped phone conversations indicated that he had interfered to try to block his critics from appearing on talk shows and news bulletins not only on his Mediaset television network but also on programmes of RAI, the public broadcaster.
At the Rome rally, outside the Basilica of St John Lateran, Mr Berlusconi said that “leftist” judges and politicians had concocted “a laughable investigation based on the tapping of my calls.
“Do you want phone taps on everyone and everything? Do you want to be spied on in your own homes?” he asked the crowd — which roared back, “No”.
“We don’t often take to the streets but it was absolutely necessary to defend ourselves from the attacks of the Left and its magistrates,” Mr Berlusconi told his supporters.
“We are here to have our right to vote guaranteed. With you, love and freedom will win.”
Ministers and PdL regional candidates attended the Rome rally. However, Gianfranco Fini, the Speaker of the Lower House and co-founder of the party — who has distanced himself from the Prime Minister and is seen as his most likely challenger — did not take part, saying that his institutional position prevented him from doing so. He is to launch a new movement in May called Generation Italy.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7070477.ece
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