The whole sad affair of Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, intolerably emeritus of Orán in Argentina and now a convicted criminal sex offender sentenced to four years and six months in prison for assaulting two of his own seminarians, dramatically illustrates major failures of leadership. It also evinces general cultural brokenness – in the Church and in society – with which we fail to grapple in any real sense.
A brief rehearsal of the L’Affaire Zanchetta’s salient particulars is in order.
Pope Francis had word – backed by evidence – of Bishop Zanchetta’s misbehavior in 2015. He heard more serious allegations, again supported by significant evidence, and received at least semi-official complaints in 2017. Only after receiving those did Francis accept Zanchetta’s resignation.
Francis allowed Zanchetta to resign his see for “health reasons” and sent him to a trusty Jesuit confrère for psychological evaluation and treatment. Francis then created a post for Zanchetta inside the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See — APSA, roughly the Vatican’s central bank — which oversees the Vatican’s real-estate and financial holdings. It bears mention that Francis was aware of Zanchetta’s gravely ambiguous financial management in Orán at the time he created the post for Zanchetta, the specifics of which reportedly involve a failure to report income from the sale of some Church property.
Pope Francis knew Zanchetta from their days together in the bishops’ conference of Argentina, where Zanchetta was executive undersecretary during the tenure of then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as president from 2005-2011.
That is all bad enough, one supposes, but there is more. The Press Office of the Holy See denied that Bishop Zanchetta had any complaints of sexual misconduct against him until the autumn of 2018, a claim that could avoid a charge of mendacity only by very careful parsing.
Francis suspended Bishop Zanchetta from his APSA job, but had him on retreat with the rest of the Roman Curia shortly thereafter.
Later in 2019, Crux reported that Bishop Zanchetta had obtained permission – from the judge presiding over his trial on charges of criminal sexual misbehavior in Argentina – to travel to Rome. Zanchetta obtained that permission on the strength of a letter from the sostituto of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See – roughly the papal chief-of-staff and the number three man in the curia – Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who wrote to say that Zanchetta needed to perform his “daily work” at the Vatican, despite the Holy See’s promise in a January 4 statement that Zanchetta would “abstain from work” while under investigation.
A protracted game of “Where in the World Is Bishop Zanchetta?” ensued, as he made his way back and forth, home and again, from Argentina to the Vatican, apparently, until the criminal trial got underway last month in Argentina – apparently without documents prosecutors had requested from the Vatican – and ended in Zanchetta’s conviction.
That the leadership failures are found at the summit of Church governance only intensifies the drama of them. Pope Francis knew about Bishop Zanchetta in 2015 – knew more than enough to remove him and order an investigation – but first decided to take the prelate’s word over the evidence, and then decided to protect the Churchman rather than expose him to justice. Even after it became impossible to keep Zanchetta entirely beyond the reach of the secular arm, Francis made sure that the machinery of Vatican government would go great lengths toward insulating him – and the Vatican, and the pope himself – from the consequences.
While all this was unfolding, it met with something of a collective, terrified shrug – both in the Vatican and in Argentina – and has remained mostly a Catholic “inside baseball” story, despite significant coverage in the mainstream press. The world cares little for the Church, and Catholics in the world are careless of her, too. There is a sense in which things were ever thus, and a deep sense in which they must ever be thus, but it is also true that Catholics are ill-equipped and unwilling to push back against the business where and how pushing is needed.
The more engaged Catholics apparently prefer to shout at each other about which way a priest should face while celebrating Mass, rather than harness their considerable energies and bring them to bear on problems of governance. Doctrine is important, as the prayer of the Church is important – even supremely so – but the Church is indefectible and doctrine has a way of working itself out. By definition, governance does not. This cannot end but in disaster.
The big question is: What if any other bishop on Earth had done what Francis has done?
Francis himself has an ad hoc approach to bishops accused of malfeasance, despite his signature reforms – chiefly As a loving mother and Vos estis lux mundi – ostensibly designed to bring order to precisely these matters, but tending in their inconstant application rather to increase the disorder in ecclesiastical affairs.
The hierarchy’s collective refusal to acknowledge the failures of leadership, coupled with our continued refusal to see the brokenness of culture for what it is, together make meaningful reform of the society that is the Church impossible. These failures and refusals have already crippled the Church in her ability to give Gospel witness. They will, if not addressed, lead to the serious harm and even collapse of the Church’s institutions.
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Ah! At last. Chris Altieri’s as usual has the answer. Tasteless humor aside, my only response to this article is that Altieri in his summation is absolutely correct.
My entree in this debate is encapsulated in Altieri’s, “Francis himself has an ad hoc approach to bishops accused of malfeasance, despite his signature reforms – chiefly As a loving mother and Vos estis lux mundi – ostensibly designed to bring order to precisely these matters, but tending in their inconstant application rather to increase the disorder in ecclesiastical affairs”. His powerful judgment [assessment?] suggests why an obviously intelligent man continues on this destructive path?
Is it due to an intelligence that is well aware of the consequences ascribed by Altieri?
Your wording of Altieri’s “powerful judgment (assessment)” suggests a simple answer to poor leadership…Clearly, sometimes the best thing to do when the leader is lost is to give the horse its head.
Which is to say, that this expedient is what bottoms-up synodality is all about. Leading from behind. So, broken-rein Germania gallops along! The problem, then, in the synodal process is the absence, anywhere, of the pedestrian distinction between the horse’s head and the horse’s “ass-essment.”
Then he should seize the opportunity and quit while he’s behind.
Altieri’s comments are spot on. We’ve had enough. It’s time for a big change.
What would we think if anyone else at any work place would protect a man who has repeatedly abused several men and still is promoted by his boss? Who has been found guilty of embezzlement. And still being treated with approval.
Talk about the” Emperor who was naked.”
This immoral behaviour must not be tolerated in the church. Those who will not repent need to put out of the church, without exception. The church is not a retreat for unbecoming sexual practices. Church discipline is needed and it begins with confession. If we care for our brother we will speak the truth in love. We are all called to be holy just as we are all called to confession.
May we be receptive to the word of the Lord and try to lead one to repentance through our prayers.
The years 2013-22 have taught that the culture preferred by the Pontiff Francis and most Cardinals and most Bishops is one of toxic and pathological abuse, and that the culture of “the faithful” they seem to prefer, and indeed many laity seem to prefer for themselves, is a culture of an infantalized, deferent and sleep-walking laity whose main function is pretending that the Church leadership is not ugly and not abusive and not apostate and not untrustworthy.
Besides the Zanchetta affair, there is the horrendous csse of the “Rev.” Julio Grassi of Argentina, another Argentinian sex abuser, serving 15 years in prison for sexually abusing minors, who was protected by Pontiff Francis when he was the President of the Argentine Bishops Conference.
I will post a video of a woman journalist from Argentina confronting Pontiff Francis about this.
This case is believed to be the reason Pontiff Francis will not visit Argentina, because the faithful there will confront him for his multi-million dollar defense of Grassi, which amounted to a smear campaign against Grassi’s accusers.
It would alarm devout Catholic people to know the long and repulsive pattern of behavior of Pontiff Francis in defending and liberating and resurrecting sex abusers snd coverup artists, from the very moment he was elected, standing out on the balcony of St. Peters Square with the sex coverup Cardinal Godfreed Danneels of Belgium, who hust 3 years prior in 2010 had been forced to retire in disgrace under Pope B16, when newspapers in Belgium revesled thst Danneels had covered up the pederasty if Bishop Roger Vanguelwhe, a friend of Danneels, eho had rsped his own little nephew. The world knew all about this, including Danneels friend Cardinal Bergoglio, and Bergoglio brazenly restored the monster Danneels to power, and put Danneels in the steering committee for…get this…the “Synod on The Family.”
This bishops of the world, especially in Europe and North and South America, seem to be what Governor Keating observed when he publicly resigned from the Review Board on the US “(homosexual) Sex Abuse of Minors” Crisis – the Bishops are they are a cult of mafiosi, and their code is “OMERTÀ” (silence).
From Damian Thompson, the Pontiff Francis denying he knows anything about defending Rev. Julio Grassi of Argentina.
https://mobile.twitter.com/holysmoke
And while we’re talking about malfeasance among the Church’s uppermost hierarchy, perhaps someone could inform us of the status of the criminal case against the former Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington DC.
Really folks? This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with leadership. For them, doing the will of God is not even an afterthought much less a consideration.
Rather, this is about the absolute corruption of both power and what little was left of purity and holiness in Saint Peter’s house.
Put one and One together –
Pope Francis knew Zanchetta from their days together in the bishops’ conference of Argentina, where Zanchetta was executive undersecretary during the tenure of then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as president from 2005-2011, if not before.
Bergoglio and Zanchetta appear to have been an item for more than a decade, spread over two continents and several clerical assignments.
Think about it. Under previous pontiffs, each would have taken swift and decisive action to neutralize the problem, bring the perpetrators to justice and write a motu propio reassuring the faithful that such crimes will never be tolerated.
Now, as we watch the complete abandonment and subsequent collapse of the physical Church of Rome, and if ever i had the opportunity to stand before this pope, i would say, “You have put your own selfish interests ahead of the needs of your flock. You have supported and defended the wolves that ravage and scatter us, then you brutally punish the faithful for trying to adhere to Tradition. You are no shepherd. All of the fruit that you have produced is rotten to the core. Pope Francis, I am ashamed of you.”
Great article!
One wonders how many of the Cardinals who voted to elect Bergolio, are having buyer’s remorse. Probably not many. As long as their “religion” is the existential threat of climate change, open borders, and endemic racism, Zanchetta and McCarrick are mere “conservative” distractions to the real work of their church. I doubt if the word “accountability” is in Pope Francis dictionary or DNA.
Yet most of the Cardinals who will vote in the next Conclave were elevated by Francis. It is possible the only lessons learned will be better insight into which obfuscation strategies were ineffectual. Good possibility one of those German Bishops will someday be Francis II.
“The more engaged Catholics apparently prefer to shout at each other about which way a priest should face while celebrating Mass, rather than harness their considerable energies and bring them to bear on problems of governance”
The case can be made that it is precisely the ill-conceived change in the Liturgy of the Roman Mass that has bred the sort of Catholic who doesn’t believe 80 percent of what the Church actually teaches…the sort of Catholic who simply shrugs at the criminality and sin in the Vatican.
“The hierarchy’s collective refusal to acknowledge the failures of leadership, coupled with our continued refusal to see the brokenness of culture for what it is, together make meaningful reform of the society that is the Church impossible. These failures and refusals have already crippled the Church in her ability to give Gospel witness. They will, if not addressed, lead to the serious harm and even collapse of the Church’s institutions.”
The brokenness of ecclesial culture is tied to clericalism which has a theological foundation in Latin ecclesiology. Protesting “This doesn’t involve infallibility” doesn’t solve it.
can it be any clearer the Holy Spirit upholds the Church???
otherwise its leaders would have completely destroyed it
Sounds like a replay of the fall of the House of Eli.
Ironic that the alleged events are related to a seminary named after St Pope John X111 – who was allowed the human weakness of trusting those around, in believing the humiliating lies against St.Padre Pio — God allowing same , in His far fetched mercy in having foreseen our times …
a time when it is easy to foster lies , easy to manipulate digital images .. civil courts too having made many mistakes ..
https://www.catholicexorcism.org/post/exorcist-diary-175-demons-from-television
The Holy Father likely also not discounting how persons could have come under the demonic influences through even not so bad media, as in the above exorcist report – becoming a person quite unlike one whom the Holy Father had been familiar with ..
The heroic virtue of the Holy Father as one who has abstained from T.V , in vow to Our Lady of Mount Carmel – being prepared and called by The Spirit to bring the spiritual warfare help needed for the fallen – such a discerned need for help could have been the reason for the alleged for being at the Vatican ‘for daily work’ – as training for the ‘daily Bread ‘ of Holy Will , with intent that once free such a recovered person can be the source of healing for others ..including as help for those in fearful hideouts , pointing only at ( imaginary ) mountains of despair to many a follower, missing out the Sun Rise beyond the hills .. thus having chosen to be sort of in the class of the ‘oligarchs’, like the Pharisees, loving places of honor, wanting to be seen as very holy ..despising/ envying those who are in the good hearted path of holiness and humility in letting the brokenness be seen ,to bring forth the compassion and hope for all the needy , from The Church as a whole – calling on the Holy Spirit .. trusting in what He alone can do ..
May same bring the deep trust in true freedom in far away lands as well – of Love that is patient , kind ..