Quotes From Popes
Bergoglio in 2014 on pedophilia: "The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No-one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked."
Bergoglio in 2014 on pedophilia: "The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No-one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked."
Quote:The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the Holy See should open its files on members of the clergy who had "concealed their crimes" so that they could be held accountable by the authorities.
Pope Francis has set up a commission to investigate sex crimes committed by priests and to care for victims, but so far he has made very few public comments about the scandals that have rocked the Church in recent years.
The leader of an Italian group representing victims of clerical sex abuse claimed there had been little action from the Vatican and said there had been no "big changes" under Pope Francis.
Francesco Zanardi of Rete L'Abuso, told the BBC: "The cases of child abuse by priests continue to happen, all around Italy, and of the cases that we've denounced we have seen no results."
"The Pope may make this statement, but then the Vatican doesn't reply to the UN or impose the obligation that bishops should denounce accused priests in the courts and not deal with the cases internally."
The founder of the US-based website, BishopAccountability.org, Terence McKiernan, was more direct in his criticism, complaining that the Pope had not merely failed to apologise to the children who had been abused but had not even expressed sorrow.
"It is astonishing, at this late date, that Pope Francis would recycle such tired and defensive rhetoric," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26448075
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"
