Vatican City, Mar 1, 2019 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- There was a moment during the final press conference of this month’s Vatican abuse summit that, for many observers, symbolizes a theme that ran throughout the […]
Ottawa, Canada, Mar 1, 2019 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Luigi Ventura, apostolic nuncio to France, has been accused of sexual misconduct against an adult male while he was nuncio in Canada. The Vatican diplomat is already under investigation for alleged sexual assault in Paris.
Christian Vachon emailed the nunciature to France Feb. 22 to file a complaint against Ventura. Vachon says that during a banquet held July 26, 2008 at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, about 20 miles northest of Quebec, Ventura touched his buttocks at least twice. At the time, Vachon was 32.
“I believe that the ‘modus operandi’ of Archbishop Ventura has left a doubt in the conscience of the victim as to whether he was truly a victim of touch,” Vachon’s email to the nunciature read, according to Présence, a French Canadian religious news service.
Ventura, 74, was apostolic nuncio to Canada from 2001 to 2009.
In 2008, Vachon part of the pastoral team at the basilica, and was discerning religious life. He told Présence he was asked to be a server at the head table: “The people could not see, because it was in the back of the room. We were thus facing the guests. No one could witness it.”
He said Ventura touched his buttocks while he was serving him, and he thought at first it might have been inadvertent, but a second time he felt the nuncio’s hands “grazing my buttocks.”
Vachon said Ventura tried to speak with him during the meal, but he was too shocked and scandalized to engage with him. He says he told a colleague what had happened, without identifying the nuncio. He has also, in recent years, told his wife.
In the wake of the new wave of clergy sex abuse scandal, he shared his experience, again without identifying Ventura, on an online forum in December 2018.
“Has a crime been commited? I am not able to say yes. It is immoral, out of place, undignified for his function,” Vachon told Présence.
Vachon informed both the Canadian nunciature and Bishop Serge Poitras of Timmins, a former secretary to Ventura, of his claims about the nuncio. Archbishop Luigi Bonazzi, the present apostolic nuncio to Canada, phoned Vachon the same day to discuss his claims.
Vachon said he did not inform the nunciature earlier because “it was the equivalent of complaining directly to [his] aggressor,” and he didn’t inform the police because it is a “he said-he said” situation.
Bonazzi told Présence that Vachon’s allegations are the only ones the Canadian nunciature has received against Ventura.
French daily Le Monde reported Feb. 15 that Ventura is being investigated by Parisian authorities after he was accused late last month of having inappropriately touched a young male staffer of Paris City Hall.
The alleged assault is said to have taken place in Paris’ City Hall Jan. 17, during a reception for the annual New Year address of Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Ventura was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Brescia in 1969. He entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1978 and was stationed in Brazil, Bolivia, and the UK. From 1984 to 1995 he was appointed to serve at the Secretariat of State in the Section for Relations with States.
After his episcopal consecration in 1995, Ventura served as nuncio to Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chile, and Canada. He was appointed apostolic nuncio to France in September 2009.
Washington D.C., Mar 1, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Pro-life and pro-abortion advocates have responded to a bill introduced Thursday which would transform radically health care in the United States and provide government funding for abortion services throu… […]
Karachi, Pakistan, Mar 1, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Before Sister Ruth Pfau arrived in Pakistan in the 1960s, life for leprosy victims in the country was filled with suffering and ostracization. In addition to the discomfort of the disfiguring disease itself, victims would often be isolated from society by others who feared catching the illness.
But the work of Sister Pfau – a German-born Catholic missionary who devoted her life to eradicating leprosy in Pakistan – transformed the lives of thousands of victims, making such an impact in the country that she became known as the “Mother Teresa of Pakistan.”
“It was due to her endless struggle that Pakistan defeated leprosy,” the German Consulate in Karachi said on Facebook after Sr. Pfau’s death in 2017.
Sr. Pfau was born in Leipzig in 1929, but her childhood home was destroyed by bombing during World War II. After the war, her family escaped the communist regime in East Germany and moved to West Germany, where Sr. Pfau studied medicine.
After joining the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, Sr. Pfau was sent to India to join a mission in 1960. On her way there, she was held up due to visa issues for some time in Karachi, where she first encountered leprosy, an infectious disease that causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage in the arms, legs, and skin areas around the body.
In 1961, Sr. Pfau travelled to India where she was trained in the treatment and management of leprosy. Afterwards, she returned to Karachi to organize and expand the Leprosy Control Program. She founded the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi, Pakistan’s first hospital dedicated to treating the disease, which today has 157 branches across the country and has treated more than 50,000 leprosy victims.
“Well if it doesn’t hit you the first time, I don’t think it will ever hit you,” she told the BBC in 2010 about her first encounter with leprosy.
“Actually the first patient who really made me decide was a young Pathan. He crawled on hands and feet into this dispensary, acting as if this was quite normal, as if someone has to crawl there through that slime and dirt on hands and feet, like a dog.”
“The most important thing is that we give them their dignity back,” she told the BBC at the time.
She was also known for rescuing children with leprosy, who had been banished to caves and cattle pens for years by their parents, who were afraid of contracting the disease themselves.
Sr. Pfau trained numerous doctors in the treatment of leprosy, and in 1996 the World Health Organization declared that leprosy had been controlled in the country. By 2016, the number of patients under treatment for leprosy in Pakistan had fallen to 531, down from 19,398 in the 1980s, according to the Karachi daily Dawn.
The nun won many honors and awards for her work, both from Pakistan and Germany. In 1979, the Pakistani government appointed her Federal Advisor on Leprosy to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
The Pakistani government also honored her with the Hilal-e-Imtiaz, one of the highest awards available to citizens, in 1979, and the Hilal-e-Pakistan in 1989. She was granted Pakistani citizenship in 1988. In 2002 she won the Ramon Magsaysay Award, regarded as Asia’s Nobel prize.
She also authored several books about her experiences, including “To Light A Candle,” which has been translated into English and “The Last Word is Love: Adventure, Medicine, War and God.”
Sr. Pfau died Aug. 10, 2017 after being hospitalized in Karachi a few days earlier due to complications related to age. She was 87 years old.
Pakistani leaders mourned her death, praising her contribution to the well-being of their nation.
Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussein called Sr. Pfau’s work unforgettable, saying, “She left her homeland and made Pakistan her home to serve humanity.” He pledged that “her great tradition to serve humanity will be continued.”
Harald Meyer-Porzky from the Ruth Pfau Foundation in Würzburg said Sr. Pfau had “given hundreds of thousands of people a life of dignity.”
Sr. Pfau’s funeral was held Aug. 19, 2017, and she was buried at the Christian cemetery in Karachi.
An earlier version of this article was published on CNA Aug. 11, 2017.
Vatican City, Mar 1, 2019 / 08:42 am (CNA).- Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin Thursday called the conviction of Cardinal George Pell in Australia “shocking and painful.”
Cardinal Pell, who formerly served as the prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, is currently in police custody awaiting sentencing on his conviction of five charges of sexual abuse of minors.
Pell’s case “is an incentive to continue in the pope’s line: to fight against this phenomenon and pay attention to the victims,” Parolin told L’Osservatore Romano Feb. 28.
An earlier statement from the Vatican press office, released on Feb. 26 underscored the Holy See’s commitment to the full judicial process playing out.
“Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.”
Cardinal Pell is appealing his conviction before Victoria County Court on five counts of child sexual abuse. He faces of maximum sentence of 50 years in prison. He expected to be sentenced in a hearing on March 13.
Last week, Victoria prosecutors dropped plans for a second trial for Pell concerning different allegations. A media gag imposed by the court ahead of that trial was subsequently lifted, allowing Australian media to report on the trial and conviction.
The gag was lifted on Feb. 26, the day after the conclusion of the Vatican’s summit on sexual abuse and the protection of minors.
Cardinal Parolin said the three-day conference emphasised “a call for transparency and an ever clearer Gospel witness,” as well as a greater awareness within the entire Church on the issue of clerical sexual abuse.
“It was moving to hear the victims,” Parolin told journalists at a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He added that the victim’s stories, in particular, “left no one feeling indifferent.”
Prior to his appointment to the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, Pell served as the Archbishop of Sydney and of Melbourne.
In October, Pope Francis removed Pell, along with Cardinal Javier Errazuriz and Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, from the C9 Council of Cardinals charged with helping the pope draft a new constitution for the Holy See’s governing structure, citing age as the reason for the removal.
Philadelphia, Pa., Mar 1, 2019 / 03:06 am (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has announced that the recently constructed tomb of St. Katharine Drexel at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul has been declared an archdiocesan shrine.
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