There have been many horrendous examples of Roman Catholic priests in the Maritimes sexually abusing children in their care over many decades. In 2003, the Pope appointed Raymond Lahey as bishop for a diocese in Nova Scotia, who as part of his appointment negotiated a $15,000,000 settlement in a class action brought by people who had been sexually abused by priests in that diocese since 1950. In addition to many allegations of ongoing sexual assault, the victims pleaded that “the church, under instructions from the Pope, had a policy to keep sex-abuse allegations against priests secret, with ex-communication as the penalty.” The settlement of the lawsuit was ratified by the Court three weeks ago:
Usually when it comes to sentencing, a convicted person will express remorse so as to try to get a lesser sentence. It’s not often that you have the expression of remorse prior to the crime.
Too bad he ended up in Canada rather than a missionary to the Papua Sambia.
The most recent news indicates that Bishop Lahey was a known consumer of child-porn back in the days of the Hughes inquiry about at the Mount Cashel orphanage.
That raises a HUGE new question. Did the Pope(or presumably those who advised the Pope) in re: Lahey’s appointment knowingly, or worse, deliberately, put the wolf in charge of the fold? I’m leaning towards no because of the rules threatening excommunication for repeating such charges. Odds are there was this huge culture of head-in-sand going on and the Vatican wouldn’t have known about Lahey, but that downgrades it to negligent ignorance versus whatever it would be if a pedophile was put in charge of handling this situation.
Enjoy,
Steven
Really. This is one of those “if I had written it as a screenplay it would have been rejected as unbelievable” scenarios. Where do they find these winners? For an entity that is all het up about “avoiding scandal” thay’re sure ineffective at it.