In the Pacific, a ‘Dumping Ground’ for Priests Accused or Convicted of Abuse
Pope Francis will be welcomed by children bearing flowers, a 21-gun salute and a candlelight vigil after he lands in Papua New Guinea on Friday. It will be the first papal visit in three decades to the Pacific Islands, a deeply Christian region — but one that has played a little-known role in the clergy abuse scandal that has stained the Roman Catholic Church.
Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries moved to Papua New Guinea after they had allegedly sexually abused children, or had been found to do so, in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.
These men were part of a larger pattern: At least 24 other priests and missionaries left New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States for Pacific Island countries like Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa under similar circumstances. In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew that these men had been accused or convicted of abuse before they transferred to the Pacific, according to church records and survivor accounts, shielding them from scrutiny.
It has been widely documented that the church has protected scores of priests from the authorities by shuffling them to other places, sometimes in other countries. But what sets these cases apart is the remoteness of the islands the men ended up in, making it harder for the authorities to pursue them. The relocations also gave the men access to vulnerable communities where priests were considered beyond reproach.
Notably, at least three of these men, according to government inquiries and news media reports, went on to abuse new victims in the Pacific.
The pope’s next stop is East Timor. In 2022, the Vatican punished Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a hero of the nation’s independence movement, over allegations that he had raped and abused teenage boys decades ago in East Timor.
Michelle Mulvihill, a former nun and adviser to the Australian Catholic Church, has long accused Catholic organizations of using the Pacific Islands as a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.
“We’re moving pedophiles and pederasts into the poorest countries in the world,” Ms. Mulvihill said after being told of The Times’s findings. The church “used them to discard those people who they didn’t want to confront.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/world...abuse.html
Pope Francis will be welcomed by children bearing flowers, a 21-gun salute and a candlelight vigil after he lands in Papua New Guinea on Friday. It will be the first papal visit in three decades to the Pacific Islands, a deeply Christian region — but one that has played a little-known role in the clergy abuse scandal that has stained the Roman Catholic Church.
Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries moved to Papua New Guinea after they had allegedly sexually abused children, or had been found to do so, in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.
These men were part of a larger pattern: At least 24 other priests and missionaries left New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States for Pacific Island countries like Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa under similar circumstances. In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew that these men had been accused or convicted of abuse before they transferred to the Pacific, according to church records and survivor accounts, shielding them from scrutiny.
It has been widely documented that the church has protected scores of priests from the authorities by shuffling them to other places, sometimes in other countries. But what sets these cases apart is the remoteness of the islands the men ended up in, making it harder for the authorities to pursue them. The relocations also gave the men access to vulnerable communities where priests were considered beyond reproach.
Notably, at least three of these men, according to government inquiries and news media reports, went on to abuse new victims in the Pacific.
The pope’s next stop is East Timor. In 2022, the Vatican punished Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a hero of the nation’s independence movement, over allegations that he had raped and abused teenage boys decades ago in East Timor.
Michelle Mulvihill, a former nun and adviser to the Australian Catholic Church, has long accused Catholic organizations of using the Pacific Islands as a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.
“We’re moving pedophiles and pederasts into the poorest countries in the world,” Ms. Mulvihill said after being told of The Times’s findings. The church “used them to discard those people who they didn’t want to confront.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/world...abuse.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
