Pope Quietly Trimmed Sanctions for Pedophile Playboy Priest ‘Don Mercedes”

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Pope Francis is applying his belief in a merciful church to the worst of offenders. In the case of at least one pedophile priest it has come back to haunt him, but it hasn’t stopped him from moving ahead with his reform to sanctions on pedophile priests.

Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of paedophile priests, which has left many of his supporters disconcerted.

One Italian priest who received the Pope’s clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for sex crimes against children as young as 12. He was convicted of eight offenses, but there were fifteen beyond the statute of limitations and some of his victims were 10 years of age. How many are there we don’t know about?

Fr. Mauro Inzoli, 66 years, lived in a flamboyant fashion and had such a taste for flashy cars that he earned the nickname “Don Mercedes.”

The playboy priest lived a lavish lifestyle and was known for his taste in expensive cars, cigars and restaurants.

He also abused minors in the confessional. He even went so far as to teach children that sexual contact with him was legitimated by scripture and their faith.

He has agreed to pay out 25 thousand euros each to five of his minor victims. The priest faces 12 years in prison.

The Inzoli case is one of several in which Pope Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canons and lawyers and a church official told AP.

Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties, including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

Some say the Pope is following the advice of his clubby group of allies in the curia, his Cardinal friends.

The priests or their high-ranking friends appealed, using the Pope’s weakness against him — a belief in mercy that exceeds all common sense. Mercy would be better spent on the children who were victims.

One church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because the proceedings are confidential, “With all this emphasis on mercy… he is creating the environment for such initiatives,” the official said.

Pope Benedict XVI rarely granted clemency petitions and instead, launched a tough crackdown. During his papacy, he defrocked some 800 priests who raped and molested children.

Pope Benedict is still alive and the reason for pushing him out was allegedly his advanced age. He should have been allowed to remain.

Pope Francis has even ordered three long-time staffers at the congregation dismissed, two of whom worked for the discipline section that handles sex abuse cases.

In 2001, the Vatican instituted a massive reform in how it handled the cases of priests who abused children. The power to deal with these cases was taken away from the Congregation of the Clergy and the Roman Rota (the Vatican’s Court), and placed in the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Subsequently, the volume and speed with which the Catholic Church defrocked abuser priests went up. This was Pope Benedict’s legacy of trying to confront “the filth” in the Church.

Pope Francis has recently sought opinion to bring it back to where it was before Pope Benedict – reform the reform.

The Pope talks tough on child abuse but perhaps the penalties are too tough for the Pope whose style relies so heavily on mercy.

Rumors of this reform have been circulating in Rome for months. And not happily. Pope Francis and his cardinal allies have been known to interfere with CDF’s judgments on abuse cases. This intervention has become so endemic to the system that cases of priestly abuse in Rome are now known to have two sets of distinctions. The first is guilty or innocent. The second is “with cardinal friends” or “without cardinal friends.”

And indeed, Pope Francis is apparently pressing ahead with his reversion of abuse practices even though the cardinals who are favorable to this reform of reform have already brought him trouble because of their friends.

There is a disconnect between his tough talk on Pedophiles and his actions.

Pope Francis is unpopular with many conservatives but he’s not all that popular with liberals either. He’s not a liberal reformer. Moderates like him. However, there should be no ideological divide in a Pope. He is a man of God, not politics.

 

 

 

 


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