Vatican City, May 16, 2019 / 11:23 am (CNA).- A Vatican court has decided not to initiate canonical charges against a former Vatican official, after an investigation into allegations he made sexual advances toward a woman in the confessional several years ago.
Fr. Hermann Geissler, 53, is a member of Familia spiritualis Opus (FSO), informally known as “Das Werk.”
Geissler's community announced May 17 that five judges of the Vatican’s supreme tribunal decided this week that Geissler would not be tried for “a delict of solicitation to a sin against the sixth commandment in the context of confession.”
A preliminary investigation into the matter, as specified by canon 1717 of the Code of Canon Law, was carried out by the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
Most likely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Pope Francis requested the Signatura undertake the process instead of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the Vatican office usually charged with reviewing allegations of this kind.
Geissler, who maintained his innocence throughout the process, stepped down from his position within the CDF Jan. 29, where he had been an official since 1993. From 2009 he had been the head of the congregation’s teaching office.
A statement released Jan. 29 said that Geissler “affirms that the accusation made against him is untrue, and asks that the canonical process already initiated continue. He also reserves the right for possible civil legal action.”
Geissler, an Austrian, is also a prominent scholar of Bl. Cardinal Henry Newman.
The accusations against him became public at the end of September, when a (now-former) member of “Das Werk,” Doris Wagner, claimed in a lengthy piece in the German newspaper DIE ZIET that she had been sexually harassed in the confessional by a member of the religious community she then belonged to, identified in the article as “Hermann G.”
Wagner again spoke of the accusations last November, saying at a conference in Rome that she had received unwanted sexual advances and been “groomed” for sex by “a priest working to this day as capo ufficio at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith,” according to La Croix International.
The solicitation of a sin against the sixth commandment within the context of confession is considered in the Church law to be a “grave delict,” or offense, for which a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state.
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Vatican City, Sep 7, 2018 / 04:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God needs Christians to be his hands and feet on earth, and to speak out about injustice wherever it happens, especially when hidden by silence, the pope said in an interview published Friday.
Pope Francis addresses international diplomats to the Holy See on Jan. 9, 2023, in the Vatican’s Blessing Hall. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jan 9, 2023 / 06:28 am (CNA).
The global community is engaged in a “third world war” marked by heightened fear, conflict, and risk of nuclear violence, but a recommitment to “truth, justice, solidarity and freedom” can provide a pathway to peace, Pope Francis told international diplomats Monday.
Citing the ongoing war in Ukraine, but also drawing on conflicts in places such as Syria, West Africa, Ethiopia, Israel, Myanmar, and the Korean Peninsula, the Holy Father said this global struggle is being “fought piecemeal,” but is nonetheless interconnected.
“Today the third world war is taking place in a globalized world where conflicts involve only certain areas of the planet direct, but in fact involve them all,” said Pope Francis, speaking in the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
The pope made these remarks as part of his annual address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See. Pope Francis characterized this speech as “a call for peace in a world that is witnessing heightened divisions and war.”
Pope Francis addresses diplomats to the Holy See in the Blessing Hall at the Vatican on Jan. 9, 2023. Vatican Media
As part of this heightening of tensions, the Pope warned about the increased threat of nuclear warfare, drawing particular concern to the stall in negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal. He told the gathered diplomats that the possession of nuclear weapons is “immoral” and called for an end to a mentality that pursues conflict deterrence through the development of ever-more lethal means of warfare.
“There is a need to change this way of thinking and move toward an integral disarmament, since no peace is possible when instruments of death are proliferating,” the pope said.
In proposing a path towards global peace, the Holy Father drew heavily from Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), the papal encyclical promulgated by St. John XXIII in 1962. Pope Francis said the conditions which prompted the “good Pope” to issue Pacem in Terris 60 years ago bear a striking similarity to the state of the world today.
In particular, the Holy Father drew from what John XXIII described as the “four fundamental goods” necessary for peace: truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom, values that “serve as the pillars that regulate relationships between individuals and political communities alike.”
Regarding “peace in truth,” the Holy Father underscored the “primary duty” of governments to protect the right to life at every stage of human life.
“Peace requires before all else the defense of life, a good that today is jeopardized not only by conflicts, hunger, and diseases, but all too often in the mother’s womb, through promotion of an alleged ‘right to abortion,’” said Pope Francis, also calling for an end to the death penalty and violence against women.
Speaking of the necessity of religious freedom for peace, the Holy Father noted widespread religious persecution against Christian minorities, but also discrimination in countries where Christianity is a majority religion.
“Religious freedom is also endangered wherever believers see their ability to express their convictions in the life of society restricted in the name of a misguided understanding of inclusiveness,” he said.
Regarding justice, the Holy Father called for a “profound rethinking” of multilateral systems such as the United Nations to make them more effective at responding to conflicts like the war in Ukraine. But he also criticized international bodies for “imposing forms of ideological colonization, especially on poorer countries” and warned of the growing risk of “ideological totalitarianism” that promotes intolerance towards those who dissent from certain positions claimed to represent ‘progress.’”
Pope Francis visits with international diplomats accredited to the Holy See on Jan. 9, 2023, at the Vatican. Vatican Media
The Holy Father also spoke of the need to deepen a sense of global solidarity, citing four areas of interconnectedness: immigration, the economy and work, and care for creation,
“The paths of peace are paths of solidarity, for no one can be saved alone. We live in a world interconnected that, in the end, the actions of each have consequences for all.”
Finally, regarding “peace in freedom,” Pope Francis warned of the “weakening of democracy” in many parts of the world, and an increase in political polarization. He said peace is only possible if “in every single community, there does not prevail that culture of oppression and aggression in which our neighbor is regarded as an enemy to attack, rather than a brother or sister to welcome and embrace.”
The Holy Father’s address to the diplomatic corps, which includes representatives of the 91 countries and entities with an embassy chancellery accredited to the Holy See, also served as an opportunity to review diplomatic highlights of the past year and expectations for the year to come.
Milestones included the signing of new bilateral accords with both the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe and with the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Holy Father also briefly mentioned the provisional agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China, first agreed to in 2018 and renewed in 2022 for an additional two years.
“It is my hope that this collaborative relationship can increase, for the benefit of the life of the Catholic Church and that of the Chinese people.”
The next significant marker on the pope’s diplomatic docket: His trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of the month as a “pilgrim of peace,” followed by a joint visit to South Sudan with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Vatican City, Oct 27, 2017 / 11:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The concern felt by both the Catholic Church and local civil leaders for the future of Europe provides an opportunity for collaboration in creating a better future, a high-level European politician said Friday.
“So if we both, political and Church, are concerned, then we surely have the capacity between us to make it better. This is what it’s about,” Mairead McGuinness, vice president of the European Parliament, said Oct. 27.
“We’re looking at ways of trying to listen, engage, move the conversation along, from a place where we’re both concerned about the future of Europe.”
She spoke to journalists on the first day of a Vatican-sponsored conference on the future of Europe, taking place in Rome Oct. 27-29.
Titled “(Re)Thinking Europe: A Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project,” the conference gathers together hundreds of high-level Church and E.U. political leaders.
Some 350 participants from 28 delegations representing all E.U. countries are in attendance, as well as academics, ambassadors, representatives of Catholic organizations and movements, as well as other Christian delegations.
Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the E.U. (TFEU) requires dialogue between the parliamentary institutions and religious and non-confessional organizations. As vice president of the European Parliament, McGuinness said it is her job to look after this dialogue.
This has been “really uplifting,” she said, “first of all to know the depth of interest among the religious communities to have this engagement. And second, we can learn a lot by just listening to those who are in leadership roles and we can learn from each other.”
In a speech to open the conference, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Holy See is not indifferent to the problems and fate of Europe “and it will always want to offer its own contribution to the idea of the people of the continent.”
We must never lose sight of the fact that the foundation of the European Union is the many beliefs of the women and men who make up the continent, he said, ensuring that all ideas for the future are steeped in reality, placing the human being at the center.
“The E.U. Project is a human project,” he said, something which can’t be forgotten as Europe searches for a way forward.
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