Posted on 12/10/2020 6:06:39 PM PST by marshmallow
CNA Staff, Dec 8, 2020 / 09:20 am MT (CNA).- St. John Paul II’s “highest priority” was combating clerical abuse and protecting young people, a Catholic archbishop said Monday in response to what he called “unprecedented attacks” on the Polish pope.
In a Dec. 7 statement, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, defended John Paul II’s legacy in the wake of the McCarrick Report, which unleashed criticism of the pope who appointed McCarrick as archbishop of Washington in 2000 and made him a cardinal a year later.
“On the 100th anniversary of the birth of St. John Paul II, we are witnessing unprecedented attacks on his person. The pretext is the alleged failure of the Pope to disclose and punish the clergy -- perpetrators of sexual abuse against minors,” Gądecki said.
“People who thoroughly research the history of the pontificate of the Holy Father know very well that the issues of protecting children and youth and counteracting any abuses by the clergy were the Holy Father’s highest priority.”
“It was he who saw the future of the Church in the young, and therefore he was the first to introduce the Church’s legal regulations to protect the weakest, and thus initiated the process of detecting sexual crimes and punishing clergymen who perpetrate them.”
The archbishop of Poznań reiterated points that he had made in a statement days after the publication of the McCarrick Report, arguing that the disgraced ex-cardinal “cynically deceived” the pope and that American bishops had passed incomplete information about McCarrick to the Vatican.
He thanked Pope Francis for publishing the report and for his comment in the document that “John Paul II was a man so morally strict, of such moral rectitude, that he would never have permitted a rotten candidacy to move.....
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
JPII is still my Pope.
I thought highly of him in the 1980s and 1990s. I don’t care now. Bigger things to worry about.
No mention of JP II’s defense and protection of the pervert Marcial Maciel?
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