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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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Congratulations United States, you are Pope!

Edit: Sorry if that is too short but I am currently watching the livestream from Europe and am totally baffled.

He's also a Peruvian citizen who spent most of his career in Peru and gave a portion of his speech in Spanish.

He's an Augustinian, who are not (last that I knew) one of the crazily liberal orders. Not saying he doesn't have liberal notions, but I'm guessing he'll be a centrist: some of his decisions will be decried as too liberal, some as too conservative. I don't think we're going to get gay trans poly married clergypersons just yet, but he might or might not stick with some of Francis' pastoral moves on divorce etc.

He had a reputation prior to this as ‘somewhat of an empty cassock, company man through and through, tends to be a lib but is always always the most moderate of them, truly atrociously poor record of handling abuse cases’.

‘Centrist who lets the church float’ is probably about right.

truly atrociously poor record of handling abuse cases

Which seems, by the first media reports, to be a whopping two cases, one of which wasn't on him and another of which may be tied up with a dodgy society which was dissolved by Francis.

The dossier against Prevost — released by some unreliable digital outlets — claims that in April 2022, three sisters met with the bishop to report that two priests from his diocese had abused them in 2004 when they were between the ages of nine and 14. According to the accusers, Prevost told them that the Church had no means to investigate the matter, although he encouraged them to report it to civil authorities, assuring them that an investigation would be initiated within the Church once the case was reported.

The sisters claimed that Prevost referred them to the Listening Center, an institution created by the bishop just weeks earlier to help abuse victims. According to the dossier, the sisters then approached the police to file a report but were told that the case had already expired due to the statute of limitations.

The 18-page report also accuses Prevost of covering up another sexual abuse case involving a priest in Chicago, when the now Pontiff was the provincial superior of the Augustinians. The Vatican states that it has investigated these allegations as well and found no evidence to support them.

So he told the alleged victims to go to the police who then failed to prosecute on a technicality. That does not sound like "cover-up" to me.

I do wish my fellow conservative brethren in the church would stop swallowing down at a gulp media reports, do we not remember that the media wants a pliant, Zeitgeist-compatible, church and so any sniff of scandal is grist to their mill? And that people with agendas will rush to put their story forward the second any new major appointment happens?

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