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Claim contradicted by dataMUNICH, Germany (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising is asserting that the clerical sex abuse crisis is tied to a lack of women leaders in the Church — a claim countered by research from the Ruth Institute.Marx made his comments last week, reflecting on a 2018 study of clerical sexual abuse commissioned by the German bishops' conference, which showed clerical structures and a male clerical administration named as factors in the massive abuse scandal in the Church and its cover-up. "Women in leading positions in the Church — and this is precisely not a...

The Worse Than Useless “Council of Cardinals”Another Vaunted Reform Disintegrates The post-Vatican II epoch has been marked by a series of unprecedented ecclesial “reforms” hailed as the harbingers of a new “springtime” for the Church when in truth they were only signs of what Cardinal Ratzinger admitted is “a continuing process of decay that has gone on largely on the basis of appeals to the Council, and thus has discredited the Council in the eyes of many people.”So it is with the vaunted “Council of Cardinals” established by Pope Francis shortly after his election.  As Sandro Magister notes, this “Council of Eight,” which...

The widow of a former dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps has called on Pope Francis to intervene after she lost her life savings with a fund manager recommended to her by one of the Pope’s chief advisers. Martha Alegria Reichmann, the widow of Alejandro Valladares who was Honduran ambassador to the Holy See for 22 years, alleges she and her husband were advised in 2012 by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, to make the investment with London-based investor Youssry Henien.  But Henien then disappeared with all their life savings.

Prelate close to pope: Divorced/remarried can be teachers, lectors, godfathers In VaticanJohn L. Allen Jr.Mar 4, 2018 EDITORPope Francis poses with cardinal advisers during a meeting at the Vatican. From left: Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa; Italian Bishop Marcello Semeraro, secretary to the Council of Cardinals; Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias; German Cardinal Reinhard Marx; Pope Francis; Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga; Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello; U.S. Cardinal Sean O'Malley; Australian Cardinal George Pell; and Congolese Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya. (Credit: CNS/Reuters/L'Osservatore Romano.) ROME - At one level, it could be said, it probably doesn’t matter a great deal in...

Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, at a Vatican conference on Pope Saint John Paul II's encyclical "Centesimus Annus", April 15, 2016. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)Sources tell the Register the most serious claims involve Bishop Juan José Pineda, an auxiliary bishop in the Honduran cardinal’s archdiocese, to whom the cardinal is very close. One of Pope Francis’ chief advisers on Church reform has rejected allegations of financial corruption made in an Italian publication this week, but questions remain over diocesan accounting procedures, and his close ties with one of his bishops who is accused of misappropriating vast amounts of...

A top papal adviser known for his tirades against capitalism and the wealthy is under investigation by the Vatican after reports that he has been receiving over $40,000 US per month from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa and had allegedly invested amounts of over $1 million in companies in London that “later vanished into thin air.” According to Di Emiliano Fittipaldi of Italy’s L’Espresso, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras — the coordinator of the pope’s C9 council — has fallen under the scrutiny of the pope himself since the allegations have surfaced – allegations that implicate him in the...

The group of cardinals advising Pope Francis on reforming the Vatican bureaucracy spoke in their latest meeting about how to decentralize authority in the Catholic church and improve relationships between the Vatican and local bishops’ conferences. The nine member Council of Cardinals spoke in their April 24-26 meeting about how the Vatican can “be more at the service of local bishops” spokesman Greg Burke said in a short briefing Wednesday. Burke said the Council also continued its work examining the different offices of the Vatican bureaucracy, commonly known as the Roman Curia. He said they spoke specifically about the Congregation...