The Catholic Church is facing a sick and shameful crisis

EVERYTHING good the Church does is marred by the Pope’s failure to respond to fresh allegations and calls for his resignation. Faithful Catholics deserve better, writes Miranda Devine.

IF YOU are a faithful Catholic it is already hard enough to defend your religion against daily vitriolic complaints that it is bigotry incarnate, deeply sexist and homophobic, a delusion for the weak-minded or a haven for paedophiles.

How bad must it be for the many good and faithful priests, including those wrongly accused of the most heinous crime of our times, child sexual abuse? For young seminarians and postulants embarking today on a life of sacrifice and love, and their parents, the times are challenging to say the least.

And this is why, when terrible crimes are uncovered in all parts of the global church — from the United States to Chile, Honduras and Australia — and the Pope refuses to answer them, his flock loses faith in his ability to lead us out of the darkness.

On Friday, Australia’s Catholic bishops released their response to the child sexual abuse Royal Commission, accepting most recommendations, other than those which trespass on the sanctity of the confessional, acknowledging “colossal failures” in the church and vowing, “Never again.”

“Too many priests, brothers, sisters and lay people in Australia failed in their duty to protect and honour the dignity of all, including, and especially, the most vulnerable — our children and our young people,” said Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Mark Coleridge.

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Mark Coleridge responded to the child abuse Royal Commission on Friday. (Pic: Peter Rae/AAP)

“There will be no cover-up; there will be no transferring of people accused of abuse; there will be no placing the reputation of the church above the safety of children.”

Amen. This is what Catholics in the pews want to hear.

And, yet, this humble and contrite response from the Australian church was overshadowed by a fresh scandal engulfing the Vatican and its Pope, who himself stands accused of covering up sexual abuse.

There are now calls for Pope Francis to resign over credible allegations from the former papal ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, that the Pope rehabilitated and empowered an American cardinal he knew to be a serial sexual predator.

What’s more, Vigano alleged that the Pope benignly presides over “homosexual networks … widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders [which] strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church.”

Similar claims of a “gay mafia” in the Vatican were made in Henry Sire’s recent best-selling book The Dictator Pope.

In his bombshell 11-page letter last month, Vigano alleged that Pope Francis had known at least since 2013 that powerful US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused young seminarians and yet he lifted sanctions against him imposed by his predecessor Pope Benedict, took his advice on papal appointments, and authorised him to travel to China as his envoy.

Pope Francis is facing fresh scandals, allegations and calls for his resignation. (Pic: Stefano Costantino/MEGA)

In July, finally, McCarrick was forced to resign as a Cardinal after a church investigation found against him over allegations he had sexually abused a minor. Another man has since come forward alleging McCarrick started molesting him when he was just 11 years old.

The claims came at the same time as a grand jury in the US state of Pennsylvania delivered a shocking report last month which found that 300 predator priests had sexually abused at least 1,000 children over seven decades.

While you wouldn’t know it reading most media reports, as with every other sex abuse scandal engulfing the Church around the world, including Australia, most of the abuse itemised in the Pennsylvania report was homosexual paederasty, with three-quarters of the victims being male, mostly teenage boys.

Seventeen per cent of the predator priests were paedophiles, abusers of prepubescent children, of which about two-thirds of the victims were male.

“Now that the corruption has reached the very top of the church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths regarding the heartbreaking case of the archbishop emeritus of Washington, DC, Theodore McCarrick,” Vigano wrote.

He accused McCarrick of: “seducing, requesting depraved acts of seminarians and priests, repeatedly and simultaneously with several people, derision of a young seminarian who tried to resist the Archbishop’s seductions in the presence of two other priests, absolution of the accomplices in these depraved acts, sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist with the same priests after committing such acts.”

Vigano claimed he told Pope Francis in 2013: “there is a dossier this thick about [McCarrick]. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests, and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.”

And yet Francis went on to make McCarrick “his trusted counsellor [and] continued to cover for him”.

When asked by reporters on his plane last week about Vigano’s allegations, Pope Francis’s reply was devastatingly inadequate: “I will not say a single word on this.” He still has not responded.

As a media darling, the Pope gets away with such evasions because of his apparent nudge-nudge wink-wink rejection of the social conservatism of his two predecessors and his open embrace of such left-wing agenda items as climate alarmism and open borders.

Equally appalling is the tin ear of the Pope’s defenders, who have dismissed Vigano as a disgruntled conservative and homophobe.

When Chicago Cardinal Blaise Cupich, a Francis appointee, was asked by an NBC reporter last week if the Pope should answer the allegations, he breezily replied:

“The Pope has a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

It’s not a rabbit hole.

Something shameful and sick is going on at the heart of the Church. Everything good the Church does is overshadowed by this crisis and every Catholic in the pews and every good priest and nun suffers shame by association.

We need an honest explanation from the Pope or his resignation.