Vatican arrests cleric, laywoman suspected of leaking secret documents
Latest Novus Ordo news...
Philip Pullella
Two members of a commission Pope Francis set up to study reforms, including a high-ranking Holy See official, have been arrested on suspicion of leaking confidential documents, the Vatican said on Monday.
It was one of the biggest internal scandals to hit Francis' papacy so far and was reminiscent of the "Vatileaks" furor that preceded the resignation of former Pope Benedict in 2013.
It was one of the biggest internal scandals to hit Francis' papacy so far and was reminiscent of the "Vatileaks" furor that preceded the resignation of former Pope Benedict in 2013.
Spanish Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, number two at the Vatican's Prefecture for Economic Affairs, and Italian laywoman Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations expert, were arrested over the weekend, a Vatican statement said.Vallejo Balda, 54, was believed to be the highest-ranking member of the Vatican's central bureaucracy, known as the Curia, ever to have been arrested.
Chaouqui, 33, whose sexy photo of herself on her Facebook page raised Vatican eyebrows when she was appointed to the commission in 2013, was released on Monday after she agreed to cooperate with the investigation, it said.
The Vatican said the leaks represented a "serious betrayal of the trust bestowed by the pope", without providing any details. There was no immediate comment from Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui, or their lawyers.
Both were members of a commission that Francis set up shortly after his election to advise him on economic and bureaucratic reforms in the Curia.
The committee completed its work last year and handed its report to the pope, who subsequently made some changes in Vatican administration, including the establishment of a new economic ministry.
The twin arrests came just days before two Italian authors were due to release books that their publishers say will reveal new evidence of scandals in the Vatican and alleged conspiracies by the old guard to undermine Francis' reform efforts.
SHADES OF "VATILEAKS"
They were the first such arrests since Paolo Gabriele, Benedict's butler, was arrested in 2012 for stealing documents from the pope's desk and leaking them.
Those leaks included letters to the pope from Vatican officials complaining to the former pope about alleged corruption in the Holy See.
One of the two books due to be released on Wednesday is "Merchants in the Temple", by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose 2012 book "His Holiness", was based on the leaked documents he received from Gabriele.
Gabriele was convicted and served several months in the Vatican jail before Benedict pardoned him and he was released. He is now working in a Vatican-run hospital.
The other book, called "Avarice," is by Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi.
The Vatican said its police had been investigating the disappearance of documents for the past few months.
The statement accused the two Italian authors of trying to reap advantages from receiving stolen documents, saying this was "a gravely illegal act".
Such books "generate confusing and partial, tendentious interpretations", the statement said. It added that the Vatican might ask Italian authorities to take unspecified action against the two authors.
It was the third time this year that the Vatican has had to deal with leaks.
In June, the pope's
landmark encyclical on the environment was leaked before publication
and last month a private letter from 13 conservative cardinals
complaining about a meeting of bishops on family issues was published by
an Italian magazine.
Gay priest: The Church makes the lives of gay people ‘hell’
ROME — A former Vatican official, who was stripped of his post early this month after acknowledging publicly that he was gay and in a relationship, has renewed his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church, accusing it of homophobia.
The official, the Rev. Krzysztof Charamsa, made public an Oct. 3 letter he had sent to Pope Francis in which he denounced the Church, saying that it had made the lives of gay and transgender people “a hell.” He wrote that the Church had persecuted gay Catholics and had caused them and their families “immeasurable suffering.”
“Be merciful — at least leave us in peace, let the civil states make our lives more humane,” Charamsa wrote in the letter, which he released Wednesday. (Note: The full text of the letter is below.)
The Vatican declined to comment.
Charamsa, 43, a former official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has made such assertions before. Earlier this month, on the eve of the synod, the Church’s assembly of bishops from around the world, he announced in the Italian and Polish news media, and then at a news conference in a restaurant in central Rome, that he was gay and had a partner.
He spoke of the “often paranoid homophobia” in the Church and contended that many Church officials were gay.
His diocese in Poland then suspended him indefinitely from his functions as a priest, urging him to return to the “true teaching of the Church and Christ’s priesthood,” a reference to Roman Catholic priests’ vow of celibacy.
In the final document produced by the bishops at the synod, which was presented to Francis for his consideration, the bishops reiterated the Church’s position that gays should be respected, avoiding “any mark of unjust discrimination.” But the bishops reiterated that same-sex marriage was not acceptable and had no “remote” founding in God’s plan on marriage and the family.
Charamsa, who is working on a book about his years at the Vatican, said Wednesday that the synod had taken a step backward on gay and transgender issues.
“The homophobic closure of the synod on gays resuscitated my passion for this battle to bring the Church into the modern era,” he said in an interview on Skype from Barcelona, Spain, where he lives with his partner. “That’s why I made my letter to the Holy Father public, in the hope he can go beyond the synod on the issue.”
While criticizing the synod’s final document for repeating stereotypes on homosexuality, Charamsa singled out the words of Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, who had told the bishops, “What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today.”
“That’s why I renew my appeal to the Holy Father,” Charamsa said in the interview. “No one publicly said a word against those defamatory sentences. What kind of respect does that show to us all?”
Charamsa said that the Church should provide marriage equality for all Catholics and revise its teaching on homosexuality. “If the Church can’t make a serious, scientific reflection on homosexuality and include it in its teachings,” he said, “even the Holy Father’s openings and warm words on gays are empty.”
Francis appears to have a more open-minded approach on homosexuality than his predecessors. He famously said he did not judge people based on their sexual orientation, and during his recent trip to the United States, he met privately with a former student who is gay and was accompanied by his partner.
Unlike Charamsa, some gay activists say they view the synod’s results more hopefully, citing what they see as positive aspects of the final document.
“Bishops write that families with members with homosexual tendencies need a particular care, and that, in the Church language, opens to consider same-sex families, as their members are homosexuals or lesbians,” said Andrea Rubera, a spokesman in Rome for the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, an international network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Catholic associations.
“We need to work with, and not against, the Church,” he added.
But Charamsa rejected any compromise, saying that by ignoring gays, lesbians, and transgender people, the Church is asking the faithful to believe that the Earth is still flat.
Asked whether he would like to marry his partner, Charamsa said, “I see no difficulty in a priest to be married, and that’s regardless of their sexual orientation.”
The following is the full text of a letter addressed to Pope Francis on Oct. 3 by Polish Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, a former Vatican official who publicly revealed that he’s gay and in a long-term relationship on the eve of a Synod of Bishops in Rome in which discussion of how the Church relates to gays and lesbians was expected to be a major topic of conversation. Crux translated the letter from Italian.
Holy Father, Dear Francis,
I have always loved the Church of Christ.
Today, as a baptized person, as a priest and a theologian who’s wanted to serve the Church with my entire life, I turn to you, my superior and pastor of this Church.
After a long and painful period of inner discernment and prayer, before God and with full consciousness of the gravity of the moment, I’ve made the decision to publicly refuse the violence of the Church with regard to people who are homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual, transsexual and intersexual.
Being myself a man with a homosexual orientation, I can’t continue any more to tolerate the homophobic hatred of the Church – the exclusion, marginalization and stigmatization of people who, like me, are continually offended in their dignity and human rights, rights which are denied and struck down by this violent Church and its individual faithful.
Today I stand on the side of courageous homosexual people, who for centuries have been humiliated by the fanatical Church. I no longer accept a salvation that gratuitously excludes a part of humanity. We homosexuals don’t need the compassion that the Church promises us. We’re neither the enemies of the Church or of the family, which is the false and offensive image that Church has succeeding in creating about us. We desperately seek only to be respected in our dignity and our rights. If the Church is so obtuse, so incapable of reflection, so behind the times in terms of the conscience of humanity, as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini put it so well, if it can’t come up with an adequate welcome for this innocent people, it should at least stop pressuring states and nations that want to respect the human right of homosexual people to a civil marriage.
[Note: Martini, a former Archbishop of Milan frequently mentioned during his lifetime as a papal candidate, died in 2012. In his final interview, Martini said he believed the Catholic Church was “200 years behind the times”.]
Let the Church focus on its own religious marriage and make its heterosexuals happy, who right now don’t seem all that happy behind the prison walls of the cold doctrinal rigidity of the Church! But stop spreading hate against those who want to live their own love in peace on this earth! A Church incapable of dialogue with humanity should be quiet, if it’s not capable of using reason!
I thank you for some of your words and gestures as pontiff with regard to some homosexual people. But your words will have value only and exclusively when all the violent and offensive declarations of the Holy Office about homosexual people are cancelled, as well as the obscene instruction of Benedict XVI that prohibits admission to the priesthood for homosexual people. In the meantime, the clergy, which is full of homosexuals and at the same violently homophobic, should be consistent with this diabolical instruction: All the gay cardinals, the gay bishops and gay priests – including fantastic gay priests, as they are – should have the courage to abandon a Church that’s inhuman, insensitive, unjust and violent.
[Note: The “Holy Office” is a reference to the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The instruction under Pope Benedict XVI to which Charamsa refers appeared in 2005 and was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is responsible for supervising seminaries.]
I stand with homosexual people to be at their service and to help them wake up this dormant Church, which is Pharisaical and hypocritical, locked into its cold and inhuman doctrine without mercy or charity, a homophobic Church that knows only how to hate the other because he or she isn’t heterosexual. It knows how to persecute and destroy the loves of thousands of gays who are spiritual people, open to the transcendent and sensitive to the divine. They’re treated as excluded lepers by the Church, as if human beings choose their own sexual orientation, heterosexual or homosexual.
I stand with this people that’s oppressed and persecuted by the Church. I stand with that people as a Polish priest representing a particularly hateful Church, which is presently led by pastors without hearts or brains, for whom one can only ask forgiveness and show the proper compassion. Some of them are with you in the synod, with their language of hate lacking any human sensitivity, interested only in how to pressure democratic governments and get them to submit, how to steal more and more from the common good, and how to deny fundamental rights to free people.
I’ve lived a long period of discernment and inner struggle in order to reach the full awareness that I will no longer accept this hatred of exclusion: If the salvation the Church has to offer does not respect the nature of homosexual people, I refuse that salvation. I refuse it in the name of God, who created us and loves us as we are.
I reflected a long time about this decision, in part because I know how violent the Church is toward anyone who leaves it. I’m afraid of how violent the Church could be towards my family, which has no responsibility at all for my decision. I’m especially worried for my mother, a woman of unbreakable faith, who’s not to blame for my decisions. I know the risks she runs in this violent and uncaring Church, to which she’s unreservedly dedicated her entire life. Catholics can be people without hearts, without mercy, without any human feeling, following the logic of collective responsibility for individual decisions and destroying the lives of the innocent. In Poland, Catholics are true maestros of hatred, of stigmatization and exclusion of others, of homophobia. My mother does not deserve any offense from this inhuman Polish church!
“I want mercy from you, not sacrifices!” [Note: This is a quote from the Old Testament, Hosea 6:6]. God does not want human nature to be sacrificed. God respects the mystery of created human nature, yet the Church hates everything about human nature that’s different from its project of power and dominion over people and their sexuality. The church serves only the heterosexual part of humanity, and does not want to reflect calmly and rationally on the nature of homosexual people.
Holy Father, the challenge facing the Synod of Bishops, the major part of which is intellectually dormant and has never experienced the smell of the sheep, is not only the faithful who are divorced and remarried, but also those of us who are sexual minorities who have the right to live our love in dignity, a love which the Church is stubbornly killing. [Pope Francis has said he wants pastors who “carry the smell of their sheep,” meaning who are close to ordinary people.] We have the right to a family life, even if the Church doesn’t want to bless it. We exist and will continue to exist, even if the Church reduces us and keeps reducing us to nothing, as it still does with faithful who are divorced and happily remarried.
In order not to upset your happy journey of heterosexual salvation, which is different from us, many of those of us who are sexual minorities have already withdrawn from your Church. Absolutely do not pity us! Have pity only on yourselves, the hypocrites and Pharisees over whom you’re presiding in the synod. But please, have mercy! Have just a touch of mercy! Have mercy: At least leave us in peace, allowing civil states to make our life more human, while you with your Church have succeeded in making our lives as homosexuals and lesbians nothing but a Hell.
Your Church should only apologize and then keep quiet forever! Or, it should convert during its path in the synod and start to think about that part of the Church and of humanity made up of homosexual believers, whom you denigrate, offend and stigmatize, humiliating and excluding them as if they were lepers.
I pray for you, knowing that you’re a man of God, but I will do everything I can to help homosexual people wake the Catholic Church from its inhuman sleep, which by now has reached bestial limits of intolerability.
Yours,
Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa
Adjunct Secretary of the International Theological Commission
Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome
Rome, 3 October A.D., 2015
http://www.cruxnow.com/life/2015/10/30/gay-priest-the-church-makes-the-lives-of-gay-people-hell/
Canada's Bishops Join With Other Christians, Muslims and Jews in Euthanasia Statement
Advocate for palliative care, respect for the dignity of the human person, human solidarity and psychological, spiritual and emotional support as the ethical and moral response in end-of-life care
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) and The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) released a joint statement on euthanasia and assisted suicide on Thursday.The Declaration on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide has been endorsed by over 30 Christian denominations together with over 20 Jewish and Muslim leaders from across Canada. In light of the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling in R. v. Carter, the joint statement advocates for palliative care, respect for the dignity of the human person, human solidarity and psychological, spiritual and emotional support as the ethical and moral response in end-of-life care.
The declaration states that "The recent Supreme Court of Canada decision has brought this issue to the forefront of public discussion and compels each of us as Canadians to reflect upon our personal and societal response to those who need our compassion and care." Addressing the underlying importance of human dignity, the signatories affirm that "the sanctity of all human life, and the equal and inviolable dignity of every human being ... is not exclusively a religious belief, although for us it has a significant religious meaning." The signatories emphasize that "reverence for human life must be "the basis and reason for our compassion, responsibility and commitment in caring for all humans, our brothers and sisters, when they are suffering and in pain... to work to alleviate human suffering in every form but never by intentionally eliminating those who suffer."
The joint statement insists that Canada's "health care systems must maintain a life-affirming ethos. Medical professionals are trained to restore and enhance life," as "any action intended to end human life is morally and ethically wrong." The signatories to the Declaration urge "federal, provincial and territorial legislators to enact and uphold laws that enhance human solidarity by promoting the rights to life and security for all people; to make good-quality home care and palliative care accessible in all jurisdictions; and to implement regulations and policies that ensure respect for the freedom of conscience of all health-care workers and administrators who will not and cannot accept suicide or euthanasia as a medical solution to pain and suffering."
The speakers at the news conference for the presentation of the statement included the following representatives: Ms. Julia Beazley, Policy Analyst, EFC; Rabbi Dr. Reuven P. Bulka, C.M., Congregation Machzikei Hadas, Ottawa; Dr. Aileen Van Ginkel, Vice President, Ministry Services, EFC; Sister Nuala Kenny, SC, OC, MD, FRCP, a pediatrician and former Deputy Minister of Health in the province of Nova Scotia, also speaking on behalf of the CCCB; Imam Samy Metwally Ottawa Main Mosque/Ottawa Muslim Association; and the Most Rev. Terrence Prendergast, S.J., Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa and CCCB representative.
The Declaration and its list of signatories can be viewed at the following website: www.euthanasiadeclaration.ca.
Catholic and Lutheran Joint declaration
October 30, 2015
WASHINGTON—Drawing on 50 years of national and international
dialogue, Lutherans and Catholics together have issued the “Declaration
on the Way: Church, Ministry and Eucharist,” a unique ecumenical
document that marks a pathway toward greater visible unity between
Catholics and Lutherans. The October 30 release of the document comes on
the eve of the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting the 95 Theses,
which sparked the Protestant Reformation.“Pope Francis in his recent visit to the United States emphasized again and again the need for and importance of dialogue. This Declaration on the Way represents in concrete form an opportunity for Lutherans and Catholics to join together now in a unifying manner on a way finally to full communion,” said Bishop Denis J. Madden, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Catholic co-chair of the task force creating the declaration.
“Five hundred years ago wars were fought over the very issues about which Lutherans and Roman Catholics have now achieved consensus,” said ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton. “Church, ministry and Eucharist have been areas of disagreement and even separation between our two churches, and we still have work to do both theologically and pastorally as we examine the questions. The declaration is so exciting because it shows us 32 important points where already we can say there are not church-dividing issues between us, and it gives us both hope and direction for the future,” she said.
At the heart of the document are 32 “Statements of Agreement” where Lutherans and Catholics already have points of convergence on topics about church, ministry and Eucharist. These agreements signal that Catholics and Lutherans are indeed ‘on the way’ to full, visible unity. As 2017 approaces, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, this witness to growing unity gives a powerful message to a world where conflict and division often seem to drown out more positive messages of hope and reconciliation The document also indicates differences still remaining between Lutherans and Catholics and indicates possible ways forward.
In October both the ELCA Conference of Bishops—an advisory body of the church—and the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) received and unanimously affirmed the 32 Agreements. ELCA bishops requested that the ELCA Church Council accept them and forward the entire document to the 2016 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, the denomination’s highest legislative body.
The document seeks reception of the Statement of Agreements from The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU). The LWF is a global communion of 145 churches in 98 countries worldwide. The ELCA is the communion’s only member church from the United States.
The conclusion invites the PCPCU and the LWF to create a process and timetable for addressing the remaining issues. It also suggests that the expansion of opportunities for Lutherans and Catholics to receive Holy Communion together would be a sign of the agreements already reached. The Declaration also seeks a commitment to deeper connection at the local level for Catholics and Lutherans.
In December 2011, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the PCPCU, proposed a declaration to seal in agreements in the areas of the church, ministry and the Eucharist. The ELCA and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded to the Cardinal’s proposal by identifying Catholic and Lutheran scholars and leaders to produce the declaration, drawing principally on the statements of international dialogue commissions sponsored by the LWF and the PCPCU and a range of regional dialogues, including those in the United States.
A significant outcome of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in the United States and internationally is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), signed in 1999 in Augsburg, Germany. With the JDDJ, the LWF and the Catholic Church agreed to a common understanding of the doctrine of justification and declared that certain 16th century condemnations of each other no longer apply.
The text of the Declaration on the Way and more information are available online: www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/lutheran/declaration-on-the-way.cfm
Religious order founded by St. John Bosco pushes masturbation and condoms in sex ed program
Washington D.C., November 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
-- The mission office of the religious order founded by St. John Bosco
has a program in place that promotes immoral and risky sexual practices
for South African youth similar to that of Planned Parenthood, a new report states.
The
Salesian Missions’ “Life Choices” program endorses masturbation, uses
emotionally unsafe role-play exercises for young people, promotes condom
and contraception use, including abortifacients, and goes so far as to
provide contact information for teens to obtain condoms and
contraception, according to The Lepanto Institute.
The
Salesian Missions are under the auspices of the Salesians, the Society
of St Francis de Sales, a religious order founded by St. John Bosco. St.
John Bosco’s vocation to the priesthood was based upon a dream he had
at an early age that inspired him to save young men through their
sanctification.
Among the components of the Salesian Mission Office’s stated purpose, according
to its website, is to raise funds for its missionaries to assist poor
youth and families in more than 130 countries, and to promote and
encourage prayer and the principles of St. John Bosco, which are reason,
kindness and religion.
Contraception,
including condom use, is against the teaching of the Catholic Church,
as is sexual activity outside the lifelong sacramental bond of matrimony
between one man and one woman.
LifeSiteNews
contacted the Salesian Mission Office for comment on the report via
phone and email, and the office responded by requesting a regular
mailing address to send a forthcoming statement. In its email reply, the
Salesian Missions said the Lepanto Institute report made “false
allegations” and made claims that have “absolutely no merit.”
LifeSiteNews
provided a mailing address, but also requested an electronic copy of
the statement, and communicated to the Salesian Missions Office that
publishing deadline constraints would not accommodate the wait for a
mailed statement, but received no further response.
LifeSiteNews later located a statement on the Mission website from Salesian Missions Director Father Mark Hyde.
Without
dealing with any specifics or naming the Lepanto Institute, Father
Hyde’s statement said, “These claims are without merit, as with many
other claims made by this organization.”
The
statement went on to speak of the Mission’s allying with other Catholic
organizations that have also been the object of “false claims” and
“misleading attacks.”
The Salesian Mission statement addresses none of the charges, Lepanto Institute President Michael Hichborn told LifeSiteNews.
“The
Salesian Missions' statement follows the same exact formula used by
Catholic Relief Services, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development
and other social justice organizations,” Hichborn said. “Deny any
wrongdoing, assert a nebulous motive for these ‘attacks,’ completely
fail to address the facts, and then talk about the good work they do.”
Hichborn
said as well that it's completely incomprehensible for the Salesian
Missions to claim that the allegations are false, when the information
came from their own website and was verified by PEPFAR, USAID, and the
Life Choices program in South Africa that they established.
“This
is just another example of what happens to good organizations that take
government money,” stated Hichborn. “If you take the king's coin, you
will do the king's bidding. It's that simple.”
The
Salesian Missions would have done better to have admitted fault and
then promised to rectify the situation, he told LifeSiteNews, but they
can't do that as long as they want to receive government funding.
“So
now, the Salesian Missions has sullied the good works of the Salesian
Order,” he continued, “and provided yet one more example of a corrupted
Catholic charity that Catholics can't donate to in good conscience.”
Among
the charges in the Lepanto Institute report is that the U.S.
Governmental initiative PEPFAR (The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief) gave the Salesian Missions a $56,599 grant in 2007 for HIV prevention programs in Kenya.
While
the 2007 PEPFAR grant was not part of Life Choices, its award to the
Salesian Missions still resulted in the Missions providing information
on condom use.
“Salesian
Missions is supporting the USG objective of promoting HIV prevention
efforts in Kenya …” the PEPFAR report states. “The main objective is to
change social norms regarding risky sexual behavior, and the education
and dissemination of information on condoms and condom use.”
The
Salesian Missions’ Life Choices program also received funding from
PEPFAR and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) for
implementation in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.
The Lepanto report
details instances of condom promotion, explicit information on various
sexual activities, and encouragement of contraception use in the
Salesian Missions’ Life Choices program in South Africa, without mention
of Catholic teaching on sexuality or marriage.
Hichborn
told LifeSiteNews since the report was issued he has discovered
additional information showing that the Salesian Life Choices program
actually distributed more than 100,000 condoms in 2008.
The Salesian Mission website confirms its implementation of the Life Choices program in South Africa, and the website
for the Salesian Life Choices program in South Africa shows that the
Salesian Life Choices organization is operating “under the Salesian
priests and brothers.”
The Salesian Missions website states as well that with the USAID funding it has subjected 375,000 youth to the Life Choices program.
Hichborn
told LifeSiteNews he inquired with the Salesian Mission Office, sharing
the report and asking for a response, five days prior to his publishing
it.
However, in lieu of responding to him they took other action.
“The
access to the manuals on the Salesian Life Choices in South Africa
website suddenly became inaccessible after I published the report,”
Hichborn said. “This falls under the old saying that ‘only the guilty
run from the law.’”
The
fact that the Salesian Life Choices office in South Africa immediately
closed down a key portion of its website once his report was published,
speaks volumes, Hichborn told LifeSiteNews.
“Rather
than responding to me or the evidence, the Salesian Missions decided
instead to issue a blanket denial,” he said. “It would have been better
for them to respond to me to clarify matters before the report was
published.”
“The
Salesian Missions must answer the charges,” said Hichborn. “They have
an obligation to either prove the information wrong, or admit fault and
make restitution.”
He
encouraged Catholics to pray and fast for the Salesians, and to
consider contacting the Salesian Missions and the Salesian Order.
Contact:Salesian Missions
2 Lefevre Lane
New Rochelle, NY 10801-5710
Phone: 914.633.8344
Fax: 914.633.7404
info@salesianmissions.org
Salesian Society
148 E. Main St. – PO Box 639
New Rochelle, NY 10802-0639
914-636-4225
sdbsue@aol.com
Salesian Society of Canada
11991 Pierre Baillargeon Street
Montreal Québec H1E 2E5
514-648-4348
richardsylc@hotmail.com
