Catholic Church

I am outraged and disgusted by the Catholic Church and the lack of comment from the Vatican about the recent discoveries of Child graves at Residential school sites, run by the Church. While I am outraged and disgusted, I am not surprised as the Catholic Church has a history of violence, abuse and cover ups going back centuries. The Catholic Church is an Organization that has used fear of damnation, fire and brimstone to influence and control its faithful.

Over 1,200 children that we know of found in unmarked graves around residential schools rings to me of someone trying to cover up a crime. This was a crime that went on for decades, where the Canadian government participated in providing children to predators; children who were stripped from their families and community.

Many know of the abuses that have come to light in recent years surrounding the Catholic Church and Priests who were known to be sexual predators of children. How those Priests were not removed, but moved to new locations where they would once again feed off children. Imagine a Residential school full of scared young children; really it is an ideal hunting ground for a Predator. Literally they could act with impunity as no one followed up it appears. If a child died, well they just buried them in an unmarked grave and moved on to the next victim. There was no better place for a sexual predator to act on their urges than a Residential School and it would not surprise me if some Priests took on an assignment at one because of the ease and access to children.

In researching my blog, I wanted to know how many Catholic Priests have gone to jail for sexual abuse of children? According to a 2009 study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, only 3% of Priests accused had been convicted and only 2% had received any prison sentence. We are not talking about a couple of hundred priests being accused we are talking that in the US alone there are allegations against nearly 6,700 Priests for child sexual abuse, some that go back decades. We know from survivors of these Residential schools that sexual abuse was occurring and those involved with the abuse did so with relative impunity.

The Catholic Church runs more like a corporation than a church, with holdings, property and investments in the tens of billions. The operating budget for the Catholic Church is estimated at $170 billion per year. The Vatican has its own bank, an investment arm, real estate, bonds, property worldwide, priceless art and the list goes on. So it has always been in their best interest to keep these things hidden and quiet as it can. Pretty hard to do when you have over 6,000 employees being accused of sexual abuse and also when paying settlements totaling hundreds of millions to victims in the US.

So when I see on the news that Catholic Churches are being burnt to the ground I understand it. Since this came to light the Pontiff, his royal exaltedness in a ridiculous hat, the Pope, has not said “Bupkis”. Local Archdiocese have apologized, but nothing from those at the top who in my opinion bare the ultimate responsibility. The Catholic Church had known for years and years of the behavior of many of its Priests and Clergy. Instead of dealing with it, the Church ignored it by covering up incidents and moving those accused to new assignments. Some probably ended up at Residential Schools.

Yet the Catholic Church and the Pontiff will not apologize for their role in the Residential School System and the deaths of thousands of indigenous children. They have tried to avoid paying any reparations to survivors and when asked why no apology from the head guy in the ridiculous hat, the answer from the Church was that Pope Francis “felt he could not personally respond”. What utter BS but I am not surprised as the Catholic Church has always put its own financial and political agenda ahead of serving the people that the all mighty expects them to serve.

This is a Church that for 300 years lead crusades against Muslims and Jews and upon capturing a city, would kill all the inhabitants: men, women and children. Then of course the Papal decree of Pope Innocent VIII who declared witches as real and started burning heretics and “witches” at the stake. Most of these witches were of course women. That whole commandment of thou shalt not kill, was interpreted as more of a suggestion during these times.

Then there were the Inquisitions where the church took upon themselves to condemn everything from, Protestantism, Judaism, blasphemy, immorality, love magic (what?) and anything else the Church could think of, literally. People were tortured till they confessed and if they did not, they were burned at the stake, in short a person accused was F@#$ked!

So here we have an Organization with a long history of violence and abuse that the Canadian government thought would be good to run residential schools, which in itself was a stupid idea. What’s more the Canadian government would pay them to do so.

This whole situation was messed up from the start and doomed given who was running things and their motivations. The Church however must be held accountable even if it happened decades ago. If a company polluted a waterway decades ago under a different President and CEO, they are not off the hook today to clean up the mess they left, so why should the Catholic Church?

Priests and Clergy that participated in the Residential school system need to be investigated and those who are still alive and either covered up or participated in any abuse that occurred need to be held accountable. As for the Catholic Church, the Canadian government should seize assets from the church sufficient to repay every dollar the Canadian Government gave the Catholic Church to run the schools, plus interest. The government should then hand those assets over to the Indigenous communities to help them recover and heal from this tragedy.

Finally, the Canadian government should insist upon the Pope issuing a formal apology to the First Nations of Canada. If he fails to do so, then the Canadian government should level sanctions against all high ranking Catholics at the Vatican, like we would against any foreign national who has acted against the interest of Canada and Canadians.

Let us all be clear. A crime was committed, a cover up occurred and those institutions that were responsible need to be held accountable. Time for PM Photo Op to stand up and demand an apology from the Pope or PM Photo Op should stop pretending to lead this country.