Uncategorized
Ending the silence on sex abuse: Vatican holds summit
VATICAN CITY — If Pope Francis needed a concrete example to justify summoning church leaders from around the globe to Rome for a tutorial on clergy sex abuse, Sister Bernardine Pemii has it.
The nun, who recently completed a course on child protection policies at Rome’s Jesuit university, has been advising her bishop in Ghana on an abuse case, instructing him to invite the victim to his office to hear her story before opening an investigation. If Pemii hadn’t stepped in?
“It would have been covered. There would have been complete silence,” Pemii told The Associated Press recently. “And nothing would have happened. Nobody would have listened to the victim.”
Francis is convening this week’s summit at the Vatican to prevent
History’s first Latin American pope has made many of the same mistakes. As archbishop in Buenos Aires, he went out of his way to defend a famous street priest who was later convicted of abuse. He took a handful of measures early on in his papacy that undermined progress the Vatican had made in taking a hard line against rapists.
These include the pontiff seriously and publicly botching a well-known case of
The pope has now done an about-face and is bringing the rest of the church leadership along with him at the extraordinary summit that starts Thursday. The meeting will bring together some 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences, religious orders and Vatican offices for four days of lectures and workshops on preventing sex abuse in their churches, tending to victims, and investigating abuse when it does occur.
The Vatican isn’t expecting any miracles, and the pope himself has called for expectations to be “deflated.” But organizers say the meeting nevertheless marks a turning point in the way the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem, with Francis’ own conversion last year a key point of departure.
“I have been impressed by the humility of the Holy Father,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican sex crimes investigator who helped set Francis straight on Chile. “He’s ready to say ‘I got that wrong. We’re not going to do it again. We’re going to do it right.'”
“I think that gives us great hope,” Scicluna said.
But the challenges are daunting as the message trickles down slowly.
Just this week, the online research group BishopAccountability released statistics from eight of the largest Catholic countries in the world, with the bishops from only one country — the U.S. — committing to a policy to permanently remove any priest who has sexually abused a child.
Bishops in some countries, including Brazil, don’t even have a published policy to speak of. In Italy, the president of the bishops’ conference met with victims for the first time last week — after summit organizers demanded it.
“I want to say that something important is going to come out of the week, but based on research we’ve done, I believe this church is nowhere close to enacting the reforms it must make to stop this epidemic,” said BishopAccountability’s Anne Barret Doyle.
Survivor Phil Saviano, who was crucial to the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose that first revealed the extent of the abuse and
“I really didn’t expect to hear them complimenting the news media and thanking you for helping them to come to better understanding of the nature of this problem that is so deeply entrenched within the Catholic Church,” Saviano told reporters.
Saviano is joining about a dozen abuse survivors, many of them activists, who are meeting with summit organizers Wednesday. A different group of survivors will join the bishops themselves, offering testimonies during daily prayers.
The message, said Chilean survivor Cruz, who organized the meeting with the committee members, is that bishops must listen to survivors and apply true zero tolerance at home.
“Those who have covered up, there is the door,” Cruz told AP.
While survivors are being well represented at the summit, women as a whole are not.
Of the 190 participants, 10 are religious sisters representing orders in the summit, and three women will address the meeting. Other than that, the meeting is by men and for men — the hierarchy of the church.
On the sidelines of the summit, women’s groups are demanding a greater voice and speaking out about the sexual abuse of adult women and religious sisters in the church — a scandal that has recently come to light after Francis acknowledged it was a problem.
“I do not have much hope for this meeting and we were already warned by Pope Francis not to have hope,” said Virginia Saldanha, secretary of the Indian Women Theologians Forum. “I see that it is the people … that have to raise voices, voices that can bring about change.”
___
AP producer Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Uncategorized
Border Patrol Agent Lashes Out At Biden-Harris Admin, Calling Job ‘Migrant Concierge Service’ Amid Border Crisis
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies.
A Border Patrol agent criticized the recent changes in his role under the Biden-Harris administration, condemning it as transforming into a “migrant concierge service,” according to The New York Post Friday.
Zachary Apotheker, who joined the force in 2020, voiced his frustration over the shift in his duties under the Biden administration from intercepting drug traffickers and apprehending illegal entrants to what he now sees as aiding migrant entry, in an interview with the NYP. Apotheker highlighted concerns about security and vetting under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that over 8 million migrants have crossed the southern border since January 2021, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.
“I don’t want to bring people into the country. That’s not what I signed up to do,” Apotheker told NYP. Apotheker’s distress is further compounded by over 1.7 million illegal migrants who have evaded capture since Jan. 2021, as he shared encounters with victims of migrant-committed crimes, naming individuals and emphasizing the personal toll on him.
Border Patrol agent sounds off on job under Harris-Biden administration: ‘Not what I signed up to do’ https://t.co/ELqWSRIKLu pic.twitter.com/HAKH2ZEuzT
— New York Post (@nypost) September 13, 2024
“I’m an apolitical person and I just want to do my job and protect this country,” the agent said, the NYP reported. “When I see people from another country coming here, getting resources beyond what the American citizen can get, that’s where I have to draw the line. And then they’re going out and committing crimes and we’re still not removing them and American citizens are being killed, women are being raped.”
Apotheker and multiple Border Patrol sources have raised concerns to the NYP about the inadequate documentation for unaccompanied migrant children under 14, including missing biometric data, complicating their safe relocation to families or sponsors in the U.S. He highlighted a backlog in the immigration system, noting that 291,000 migrant children have been released in the U.S. without court dates, with an additional 32,000 failing to appear for their scheduled hearings.
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies. “However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to be worse,” he warned.
The White House and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Uncategorized
Rumored deal with Bloc Quebec party could keep Trudeau Liberals in power, stave off election
From LifeSiteNews
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country”
The possibility of an early Canadian election may not come to fruition after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet hinted that an alliance between the separatist party and the Liberals under Justin Trudeau could become a reality.
Rumors began to swirl that a Bloc-Liberal deal could happen after Bloc House leader Alain Therrien said Sunday that the party’s “objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier.”
“We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure,” he said, as reported by the Canadian Press.
Therrien made the comments in light of the possibility of a federal election taking place before fall 2025 after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals last week.
Late last month, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to pull his support for Trudeau’s Liberals so that an election could be held.
Therrien also noted that the NDP pulling its support of the Trudeau Liberals has created a “window of opportunity” that his party may exploit. The Canadian Press reported that a person close to the Bloc party said directly that the NDP had in essence handed the party the balance of power.
As it stands now, the Bloc has 32 seats to the NDP’s 24, which is more than enough to prop up the Liberals, who have 154 seats.
As for Blanchet, he told the media on Monday that he was feeling “good” about his party’s newfound power. He then took a shot at Poilievre, saying he is more or less like Trudeau. “There are plenty of issues on which (Poilievre’s) in the same position as Justin Trudeau,” Blanchet said.
“Show us that you’re different, Justin Trudeau, apart from being against abortion, then we’ll see what you have to offer,” he said.
“If the Liberals don’t get into the frame of mind to let us make some very clear gains for Quebec, they’d better pump up the tires on their election truck right away.”
While most Conservative MPs are pro-life, Poilievre supports abortion and has a poor track record when it comes to life and family issues, with Campaign Life Coalition having given him a “red light” rating.
News of a possible Bloc-Liberal deal to keep Trudeau in power drew the immediate ire of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country,” she wrote Monday on X. “If the Liberals go down this path, we need an election to be called immediately.”
On Tuesday, Blanchet responded to Smith’s comments to reporters by saying he found her remarks “funny,” adding that “Canadians are suddenly very interested in us.”
As for Trudeau, his woes continue to mount. LifeSiteNews recently reported how national elections campaign director for Canada’s federal Liberal Party announced he was stepping down because, according to sources close to the party, he does not think Trudeau can win a fourth consecutive election.
Recent polls show that the Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority government in a landslide in an election held today. Singh’s NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals would lose a massive number of seats.
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Uncategorized
Ending the silence on sex abuse: Vatican holds summit
VATICAN CITY — If Pope Francis needed a concrete example to justify summoning church leaders from around the globe to Rome for a tutorial on clergy sex abuse, Sister Bernardine Pemii has it.
The nun, who recently completed a course on child protection policies at Rome’s Jesuit university, has been advising her bishop in Ghana on an abuse case, instructing him to invite the victim to his office to hear her story before opening an investigation. If Pemii hadn’t stepped in?
“It would have been covered. There would have been complete silence,” Pemii told The Associated Press recently. “And nothing would have happened. Nobody would have listened to the victim.”
Francis is convening this week’s summit at the Vatican to prevent
History’s first Latin American pope has made many of the same mistakes. As archbishop in Buenos Aires, he went out of his way to defend a famous street priest who was later convicted of abuse. He took a handful of measures early on in his papacy that undermined progress the Vatican had made in taking a hard line against rapists.
These include the pontiff seriously and publicly botching a well-known case of
The pope has now done an about-face and is bringing the rest of the church leadership along with him at the extraordinary summit that starts Thursday. The meeting will bring together some 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences, religious orders and Vatican offices for four days of lectures and workshops on preventing sex abuse in their churches, tending to victims, and investigating abuse when it does occur.
The Vatican isn’t expecting any miracles, and the pope himself has called for expectations to be “deflated.” But organizers say the meeting nevertheless marks a turning point in the way the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem, with Francis’ own conversion last year a key point of departure.
“I have been impressed by the humility of the Holy Father,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican sex crimes investigator who helped set Francis straight on Chile. “He’s ready to say ‘I got that wrong. We’re not going to do it again. We’re going to do it right.'”
“I think that gives us great hope,” Scicluna said.
But the challenges are daunting as the message trickles down slowly.
Just this week, the online research group BishopAccountability released statistics from eight of the largest Catholic countries in the world, with the bishops from only one country — the U.S. — committing to a policy to permanently remove any priest who has sexually abused a child.
Bishops in some countries, including Brazil, don’t even have a published policy to speak of. In Italy, the president of the bishops’ conference met with victims for the first time last week — after summit organizers demanded it.
“I want to say that something important is going to come out of the week, but based on research we’ve done, I believe this church is nowhere close to enacting the reforms it must make to stop this epidemic,” said BishopAccountability’s Anne Barret Doyle.
Survivor Phil Saviano, who was crucial to the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose that first revealed the extent of the abuse and
“I really didn’t expect to hear them complimenting the news media and thanking you for helping them to come to better understanding of the nature of this problem that is so deeply entrenched within the Catholic Church,” Saviano told reporters.
Saviano is joining about a dozen abuse survivors, many of them activists, who are meeting with summit organizers Wednesday. A different group of survivors will join the bishops themselves, offering testimonies during daily prayers.
The message, said Chilean survivor Cruz, who organized the meeting with the committee members, is that bishops must listen to survivors and apply true zero tolerance at home.
“Those who have covered up, there is the door,” Cruz told AP.
While survivors are being well represented at the summit, women as a whole are not.
Of the 190 participants, 10 are religious sisters representing orders in the summit, and three women will address the meeting. Other than that, the meeting is by men and for men — the hierarchy of the church.
On the sidelines of the summit, women’s groups are demanding a greater voice and speaking out about the sexual abuse of adult women and religious sisters in the church — a scandal that has recently come to light after Francis acknowledged it was a problem.
“I do not have much hope for this meeting and we were already warned by Pope Francis not to have hope,” said Virginia Saldanha, secretary of the Indian Women Theologians Forum. “I see that it is the people … that have to raise voices, voices that can bring about change.”
___
AP producer Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Uncategorized
Border Patrol Agent Lashes Out At Biden-Harris Admin, Calling Job ‘Migrant Concierge Service’ Amid Border Crisis
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies.
A Border Patrol agent criticized the recent changes in his role under the Biden-Harris administration, condemning it as transforming into a “migrant concierge service,” according to The New York Post Friday.
Zachary Apotheker, who joined the force in 2020, voiced his frustration over the shift in his duties under the Biden administration from intercepting drug traffickers and apprehending illegal entrants to what he now sees as aiding migrant entry, in an interview with the NYP. Apotheker highlighted concerns about security and vetting under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that over 8 million migrants have crossed the southern border since January 2021, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.
“I don’t want to bring people into the country. That’s not what I signed up to do,” Apotheker told NYP. Apotheker’s distress is further compounded by over 1.7 million illegal migrants who have evaded capture since Jan. 2021, as he shared encounters with victims of migrant-committed crimes, naming individuals and emphasizing the personal toll on him.
Border Patrol agent sounds off on job under Harris-Biden administration: ‘Not what I signed up to do’ https://t.co/ELqWSRIKLu pic.twitter.com/HAKH2ZEuzT
— New York Post (@nypost) September 13, 2024
“I’m an apolitical person and I just want to do my job and protect this country,” the agent said, the NYP reported. “When I see people from another country coming here, getting resources beyond what the American citizen can get, that’s where I have to draw the line. And then they’re going out and committing crimes and we’re still not removing them and American citizens are being killed, women are being raped.”
Apotheker and multiple Border Patrol sources have raised concerns to the NYP about the inadequate documentation for unaccompanied migrant children under 14, including missing biometric data, complicating their safe relocation to families or sponsors in the U.S. He highlighted a backlog in the immigration system, noting that 291,000 migrant children have been released in the U.S. without court dates, with an additional 32,000 failing to appear for their scheduled hearings.
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies. “However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to be worse,” he warned.
The White House and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Uncategorized
Rumored deal with Bloc Quebec party could keep Trudeau Liberals in power, stave off election
From LifeSiteNews
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country”
The possibility of an early Canadian election may not come to fruition after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet hinted that an alliance between the separatist party and the Liberals under Justin Trudeau could become a reality.
Rumors began to swirl that a Bloc-Liberal deal could happen after Bloc House leader Alain Therrien said Sunday that the party’s “objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier.”
“We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure,” he said, as reported by the Canadian Press.
Therrien made the comments in light of the possibility of a federal election taking place before fall 2025 after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals last week.
Late last month, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to pull his support for Trudeau’s Liberals so that an election could be held.
Therrien also noted that the NDP pulling its support of the Trudeau Liberals has created a “window of opportunity” that his party may exploit. The Canadian Press reported that a person close to the Bloc party said directly that the NDP had in essence handed the party the balance of power.
As it stands now, the Bloc has 32 seats to the NDP’s 24, which is more than enough to prop up the Liberals, who have 154 seats.
As for Blanchet, he told the media on Monday that he was feeling “good” about his party’s newfound power. He then took a shot at Poilievre, saying he is more or less like Trudeau. “There are plenty of issues on which (Poilievre’s) in the same position as Justin Trudeau,” Blanchet said.
“Show us that you’re different, Justin Trudeau, apart from being against abortion, then we’ll see what you have to offer,” he said.
“If the Liberals don’t get into the frame of mind to let us make some very clear gains for Quebec, they’d better pump up the tires on their election truck right away.”
While most Conservative MPs are pro-life, Poilievre supports abortion and has a poor track record when it comes to life and family issues, with Campaign Life Coalition having given him a “red light” rating.
News of a possible Bloc-Liberal deal to keep Trudeau in power drew the immediate ire of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country,” she wrote Monday on X. “If the Liberals go down this path, we need an election to be called immediately.”
On Tuesday, Blanchet responded to Smith’s comments to reporters by saying he found her remarks “funny,” adding that “Canadians are suddenly very interested in us.”
As for Trudeau, his woes continue to mount. LifeSiteNews recently reported how national elections campaign director for Canada’s federal Liberal Party announced he was stepping down because, according to sources close to the party, he does not think Trudeau can win a fourth consecutive election.
Recent polls show that the Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority government in a landslide in an election held today. Singh’s NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals would lose a massive number of seats.
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