FrancisMercy: Card. Burke sent to island of Guam, 12,155 km from Rome
Antipope Francis sends "conservative" Cardinal packing....Francis is an antipope and has no jurisdiction to do so...when will these Cardinals come out and just say it!
The Holy See announced Cardinal Burke's appointment as judge overseeing a "tribunal of the first instance" on the day His Eminence arrived on Guam, Wednesday February. 15. A report in the Guam Daily Post indicates that Cardinal Burke has been working in his role as judge since at least February 3rd 2017.
The Guam Daily Post reports:
A tribunal from the Vatican, which will be
led by a cardinal, is scheduled to hold a secret hearing on Guam this
week to speak to at least one of the victims accusing Archbishop Anthony
Apuron of sexual abuse.
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, a canon lawyer
and former head of the Vatican’s supreme court, signed a decree on Feb.
3, 2017, requesting that one of Apuron’s accusers, Roland Sondia,
appear personally before Burke later this week on Guam.
The cardinal wrote the decree “in fulfilling the office of judge.”
Sondia was being summoned “for the purpose of giving testimony” in the Apuron case, according to the decree.
A Vatican equivalent of prosecutor and an
advocate for the accused will also hear the accuser’s testimony,
according to the decree.
The Vatican case concerning Apuron had a
protocol number that may indicate the case involving Apuron was opened
in 2008, although it was unclear if the sex-abuse allegations were filed
with the Vatican that early. The case is before a Vatican office that
deals with “faith and morals.”
Burke further wrote that he will be
talking to some of Apuron’s accusers after he was delegated by Cardinal
Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith. The head of the congregation is the Pope’s designee, and the
congregation’s role is “to promote and safeguard doctrine regarding
faith and morals throughout the Catholic world,” according to
Vatican.va.
A second document dated Feb. 6, 2017,
called Sondia to a hearing before a “tribunal” that will hear his
testimony in a “confidential” process and “under pontifical secret.”
The call for Sondia to appear at this
hearing was sent after “as this tribunal has been informed of your
readiness in the above-titled case regarding accusations against His
Excellency, the Most Reverend Anthony Sablan Apuron.” The “citation” for
Sondia to appear before the tribunal on Guam referred to the same case
protocol number from 2008.
Comment
Is it usual for the Holy See to appoint a retired Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura to act as a judge in a trial of the first instance on a remote island in the pacific ocean? Granted the case is very serious, involving as it does allegations of child sexual abuse against an archbishop.
Guam is 12,155 km from Rome.
