Damned Pervert Priests - and other assorted Holy Scumbags

[Istvan]

An organization - ANY organization - that is knowingly complicit in sexual abuse and kidnapping IS a 'bad' organization, by definition.

Boru

Absolutely. The most distressing thing about the revelations that came to light during the investigations of the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal was that at no point in the decades-long process of shuttling abuser priests from parish to parish and covering up their crimes did anyone in the organization question whether the safety of children should be a consideration in the high command's decision making. As another poster remarked above, it must have long been an open secret in predator circles that being a Catholic priest carries a lot less risk than being a grade-school janitor or Cub Scout troop leader.

Full disclosure, the parish I attended had three, count-em-three, priests on the abuser database. I remember two of them very well and even served as an altar boy with these creeps in the early 80s. At the time I had no idea any such thing was going on, but I was one of the older kids in the bunch and hence probably not the easiest target. And I'll say right now that my uncle who was a well-respected priest for many years was never accused of any wrongdoing.

So along with capitulating to the Nazis and causing an AIDS catastrophe in Africa, the Catholic Church's history of child abuse makes it so that if I never have to set foot in a Catholic Church again, I'll die a happy man.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I grew up in the Church and nothing like that ever happened to me or anyone I knew. Just saying.
I know some people aren't as fortunate.
It puzzles me that these people who do that stuff would be affiliated with any church.
It's like, if you want to do bad things, why bother pretending about some religious whatever?

(Bold mine)

It's for protection. If you want to be a loan shark, you join the Mafia. If you want to diddle little kids, the Catholic Church will cover for you.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Two alleged abuse survivors win first challenge against Australian Catholic church’s legal tactics

Earlier this year, two survivors, one of whom is dying, were blocked from suing the Armidale diocese over abuse they allege they suffered from alleged prolific paedophile priest David Joseph Perrett.

The two men, both Indigenous, alleged they were abused during camping trips from an Aboriginal mission in the mid-1970s.

Police investigated their allegations and found enough evidence to charge Perrett, but he died in 2020 while awaiting trial for more than 100 offences relating to the abuse of almost 40 young children.

His death also prompted the church to seek and obtain a permanent stay – or a permanent halt to proceedings – which stopped the pair’s civil proceedings by arguing the passage of time and loss of witnesses left it unable to have a fair trial.

A Guardian Australia investigation this year found such tactics have been commonly adopted by the church in cases where perpetrators have died, either to defeat active claims before the courts or to low-ball survivors in settlement negotiations.

The approach ignores the significant barriers that cause decades-long delays in abuse cases. It also causes profound harm to an already vulnerable group.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec...al-tactics

[Nay_Sayer]

I grew up in the Church and nothing like that ever happened to me or anyone I knew. Just saying.
I know some people aren't as fortunate.
It puzzles me that these people who do that stuff would be affiliated with any church.
It's like, if you want to do bad things, why bother pretending about some religious whatever?

(Bold mine)

It's for protection. If you want to be a loan shark, you join the Mafia. If you want to diddle little kids, the Catholic Church will cover for you.

Boru

The difference between the Mafia and the Church is one is a highly organized group of thugs under the order of an untouchable figurehead who uses manipulative tactics and threats of violence to ensure total compliance from their victims and the other is the Italian Mafia.

[Fake Messiah]

I grew up in the Church and nothing like that ever happened to me or anyone I knew. Just saying.

So if the Catholic Church didn't fuck you up who did?

[Fake Messiah]

US archbishop secretly backed bid to free priest convicted of raping child

As he reached the end of his 41-year life, Kevin Portier had endured child rape at the hands of a southern Louisiana Catholic priest for whom he had served as an altar boy.

But one of Portier’s harshest ordeals came within his final two years alive. Representatives of the church that he had been raised to believe in approached him at his home, at his job and at a relative’s funeral to ask him to lend his support to efforts to secure an early release for his rapist, Robert Melancon.

“I don’t know what the real deal is,” Portier wrote in a fall 2017 email seeking answers from leaders of his local diocese, who didn’t realize until later that the people lobbying for Melancon’s release were actually church officials about 60 miles away in New Orleans. “And [it] doesn’t matter. All that matters now is I will not be lied to by the Catholic church.”

It’s unclear whether Portier, before his death in the spring of 2019, ever learned exactly who was trying to engineer an early release from prison for Melancon. But records that the Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans has fought to keep hidden show the city’s archbishop Gregory Aymond – while not even being in charge of him – furtively sanctioned legal maneuvers that, if successful, would have prematurely freed Melancon from what Portier considered to be a just punishment.

The records in question make clear that the effort to free Melancon involved overtures by affiliates of the archdiocese of New Orleans to the highest levels of government: to the warden of the prison where the convicted rapist was incarcerated, to the director of Louisiana’s department of corrections, and to the state’s governor himself.

The saga of Portier’s pain vividly demonstrates how actions undertaken by the archdiocese of New Orleans in private often do not match its public pledges of empathy for survivors of its decades-old clerical abuse crisis.

The US’s second-oldest Catholic archdiocese, under Aymond’s leadership, declared bankruptcy in 2020, saying it was the most fair way for the organization to make whole hundreds of people abused by its clerics while allowing the church to continue carrying out its intended mission of sharing the gospel.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023...lic-church

[Fake Messiah]

Charity founder of ‘Kivotos’ and his wife charged with embezzlement

The founder and former head of children’s charity “Kivotos tou Kosmou” (Ark of the World), Father Antonios Papanikolaou and his wife were charged with financial misconduct on Thursday.

Following months of investigation into the financial management of the organization, prosecutor Ioannis Sevis has indicted Father Antonios and his wife Stamatia Georganti on charges of financial infidelity, embezzlement and money laundering.

Father Antonios and other staff members at the children’s charity are also charged with sexual abuse of minors and other financial crimes.

According to the charges, the wife allegedly committed infidelity and embezzlement, while the cleric is accused of moral complicity. Both face money laundering allegations.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/122849...ezzlement/


Here is an earlier news about them


Half-naked father Antonios bathes with children

Archbishop of Athens and All Hellas Jerome, followed by Greek law enforcement agencies, ordered an investigation into allegations of abuse related to the children’s charity “Kivotos tou Kosmou”, which is run by a representative of the Greek Orthodox clergy, Father Antonios Papanikolaou. What became known in just a couple of weeks shocked the Greek public.

Recall that the scandal that shakes and shocks Greece with constant new revelations erupted at the end of November this year, when the media reported on sexual and physical abuse of minors in a “charitable” organization and even forced, according to one of the minors “get an abortion” when she got pregnant.

Now 20 years old, the girl decided to make a confession that, being a minor, she spent 4 or 5 months locked up in one of the Kivotos premises. She was forbidden to communicate with anyone. And when her belly “grew”, they took her to the clinic to the doctors to find out what was wrong with her, and after learning about the pregnancy, they forced her to have an abortion.

Among other things, it turned out that endless streams of money literally poured into the pockets of Father Antonios, which he, with all the breadth of his soul, disposed of for the benefit of … “his beloved.”

https://en.rua.gr/2022/12/08/half-naked-...-children/

[zebo-the-fat]

TB Joshua: Megachurch leader raped and tortured worshippers

Evidence of widespread abuse and torture by the founder of one of the world's biggest Christian evangelical churches has been uncovered by the BBC.
Dozens of ex-Synagogue Church of all Nations members - five British - allege atrocities, including rape and forced abortions, by Nigeria's late TB Joshua.
The allegations of abuse in a secretive Lagos compound span almost 20 years

The BBC's findings over a two-year investigation include:

Dozens of eyewitness accounts of physical violence or torture carried out by Joshua, including instances of child abuse and people being whipped and chained
Numerous women who say they were sexually assaulted by Joshua, with a number claiming they were repeatedly raped for years inside the compound
Multiple allegations of forced abortions inside the church following the alleged rapes by Joshua, including one woman who says she had five terminations
Multiple first-hand accounts detailing how Joshua faked his "miracle healings", which were broadcast to millions of people around the world

Jessica Kaimu, from Namibia, says her ordeal lasted more than five years. She says she was 17 when Joshua first raped her, and that subsequent instances of rape by TB Joshua led to her having five forced abortions while there.
"These were backdoor type… medical treatments that we were going through… it could have killed us," she told the BBC.
Other interviewees say they were stripped and beaten with electrical cables and horse whips, and routinely denied sleep.
On his death in June 2021, TB Joshua was hailed as one of the most influential pastors in African history. Rising from poverty, he built an evangelical empire that counted dozens of political leaders, celebrities and international footballers among his associates.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67749215

[zebo-the-fat]

TB Joshua: Megachurch leader raped and tortured worshippers

Evidence of widespread abuse and torture by the founder of one of the world's biggest Christian evangelical churches has been uncovered by the BBC.
Dozens of ex-Synagogue Church of all Nations members - five British - allege atrocities, including rape and forced abortions, by Nigeria's late TB Joshua.
The allegations of abuse in a secretive Lagos compound span almost 20 years

The BBC's findings over a two-year investigation include:

   Dozens of eyewitness accounts of physical violence or torture carried out by Joshua, including instances of child abuse and people being whipped and chained
   Numerous women who say they were sexually assaulted by Joshua, with a number claiming they were repeatedly raped for years inside the compound
   Multiple allegations of forced abortions inside the church following the alleged rapes by Joshua, including one woman who says she had five terminations
   Multiple first-hand accounts detailing how Joshua faked his "miracle healings", which were broadcast to millions of people around the world

Jessica Kaimu, from Namibia, says her ordeal lasted more than five years. She says she was 17 when Joshua first raped her, and that subsequent instances of rape by TB Joshua led to her having five forced abortions while there.
"These were backdoor type… medical treatments that we were going through… it could have killed us," she told the BBC.
Other interviewees say they were stripped and beaten with electrical cables and horse whips, and routinely denied sleep.
On his death in June 2021, TB Joshua was hailed as one of the most influential pastors in African history. Rising from poverty, he built an evangelical empire that counted dozens of political leaders, celebrities and international footballers among his associates.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67749215

Update...

TB Joshua exposé: How the disgraced pastor faked his miracles

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67944614

[Fake Messiah]

US Catholics must rally for the removal of the Pope’s pervy prefect

Every time you think news out of the Vatican can’t get any weirder as we approach the end of the Francis papacy, another high-ranking, well-connected cleric asks for his beer to be held.

This week, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, came under fire over the discovery of a hardcore erotica book he authored in the late 1990s while serving as a priest in his native Argentina. Fernandez, who was handpicked by fellow Argentine Pope Francis for the lofty position in 2023, is commonly considered the second-most powerful figure in the Vatican and a potential papal successor.

To be clear, the book, titled Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality, is not the exquisitely sensual religious poetry of St. John of the Cross. It is pure smut. And perhaps worse for a man of Fernandez’s distinction, it’s second-rate smut: unimaginative, misogynistic, and downright creepy.

In one passage, Fernandez quotes a 15th-century Islamic theologian who once said, “Praise be to Allah, who establishes penises as hard and straight as spears to wage war on vaginas.”

In another, he examines the differences in pornography preferences between men and women: “A woman … is less attracted than a man to watching photos containing violent sexual scenes, orgies images, etc. This does not mean that she feels less aroused by hardcore pornography, but rather that she enjoys and values this less.”

In another chapter, Fernandez writes: “Let’s not forget that women have rich venous plexus around the vagina, which maintains good blood flow after orgasm. That’s why she’s usually insatiable. She needs to release the pelvic congestion, and when this doesn’t happen, after orgasm she may want more.”

I can’t even bring myself to describe the chapter that features a sexual encounter between Jesus and a 16-year-old girl.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini...fernandez/