Sexual abuse in Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz archdiocese

Last updated

Sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz in Argentina is a major chapter in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in various Western jurisdictions.

Contents

Earlier Vatican investigation

In 1994, archbishop Edgardo Gabriel Storni (6 April 1936 – 20 February 2012) was subject to an investigation ordered by the Vatican, led by Monsignor José María Arancibia, after allegations of sexual abuse on 47 young seminarians, who were questioned, together with some of their family members, by Arancibia and a psychologist, at the home of Monsignor Estanislao Karlic in Paraná. Soon after the scandal broke out, in February 1995 Storni employed his contacts with then-Apostolic Nuncio Ubaldo Calabressi to arrange a trip to the Vatican. There he was received and ratified in his post by Pope John Paul II. The investigation was set aside.

Book on the affairs

In 2002 the book Our Holy Mother, by journalist Olga Wornat, was presented at the Santa Fe Book Fair. The book recounted the history of the accusations against Storni, and mentions an episode of threats against a priest, José Guntern, who had written a letter to the archbishop asking for him to resign on account of his misconduct (sexual activity with a seminarist). According to Guntern, he was taken practically by force to Storni's house and forced to recant and stay silent.

Political climate

The political climate had changed. While Storni has close relations with members of the local elite, the Catholic Church had been shaken by the wave of abuse allegations in the United States. Storni travelled to Rome on 28 August 2002 where he met the Pope and several other Argentine bishops.

Episcopal resignation

Storni resigned his post on 1 October 2002 stating that this did not signify guilt. He returned to Argentina and went to live at Los Leones, a large farm and horse ranch owned by Eduardo González Kess near Llambí Campbell, 60 km away from Santa Fe's capital. He then moved to a secluded ecclesiastic residence in La Falda, Córdoba; since he was formally still a bishop, he received a pension paid by the state, as per the financial support of the Church mandated by the Argentine Constitution.

Conviction and annulment

In 2009, Storni was sentenced to eight years in prison, the minimum term, for sexually abusing seminarian Rubén Descalzo in 1992. [1] Because Storni was over the age of 70, the sentence was served under house arrest at a church property in Cordoba. In 2011, the Criminal Chamber of the Province of Santa Fe ordered the annulment of the judgement.

Another Bishop charged

On July 15, 2020, it was revealed that Santa Fe Archbishop Sergio Fenoy was criminally charged for attempting to supplant another sex abuse investigation. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Catholic Church sexual abuse cases Sexual abuse and pedophilia claims within the Catholic Church

There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.

Theodore McCarrick 20th- and 21st-century American Catholic, former cardinal and laicized Bishop

Theodore Edgar McCarrick is a laicized American bishop and former cardinal of the Catholic Church. Ordained a priest in 1958, he became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977, then became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he was Archbishop of Newark. He was created a cardinal in February 2001 and served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Following credible allegations of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians, he was removed from public ministry in June 2018, became the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals because of claims of sexual abuse in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.

Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders is a document published in November 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education, one of the top-level offices of the Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador

The Archdiocese of San Salvador is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. Its archepiscopal see is the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, and the surrounding region.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz Catholic ecclesiastical territory

The Latin Rite Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz (Latin: Archidioecesis Sanctae Fidei Verae Crucis in Argentina and is a metropolitan diocese. Its suffragan sees include Rafaela and Reconquista.

Michael Joseph Bransfield is a disgraced American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Bransfield served as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia from 2005 to 2018.

Monsignor Vicente Faustino Zazpe Zarategi was an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Argentina.

This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.

The sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne was investigated by the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese, Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, examining how allegations of sexual abuse of children in the diocese were dealt with by the church and state. The investigation was led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, The Cloyne Report, and published in July 2011. The inquiry was ordered to look at child protection practices in the diocese and how it dealt with complaints against 19 priests made from 1996.

Sexual abuse cases of Marcial Maciel

Marcial Maciel was the founding leader of the Legion of Christ, based in Mexico, and its general director from 1941 to January 2005. The scandal was related to accusations that since the 1970s the prominent Mexican Roman Catholic priest had sexually abused many minors and fathered six children by three women. Described as a charismatic leader and the "greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church", he was successful in recruiting seminarians at a time of declining priestly vocations. Maciel was the "highest ranking priest ever disciplined because of sexual abuse allegations."

There have been many lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the United States of America.

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referenda to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion rights in 2018.

The ecclesiastical response to Catholic sexual abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the Church's child sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic Church's response to the scandal can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent.

The media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the pederastic priest scandal.

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. Italy is an exceptional case as the 1929 Lateran Treaty gave the Vatican legal autonomy from Italy, giving the clergy recourse to Vatican rather than Italian law.

The Murphy Report is the brief name of the report of a Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. It was released in 2009 by Judge Yvonne Murphy, only a few months after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Seán Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Roman Catholic religious institutes.

The Curial response to Catholic sexual abuse cases was a significant part of the Church's response to Catholic sexual abuse cases.

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Latin America is a significant part of the series of Catholic sex abuse cases.

The sexual abuse of minors by clergy of the Catholic Church in Chile and the failure of Church officials to respond and take responsibility attracted worldwide attention as a critical failure of Pope Francis and the Church as a whole to address the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Among a number of cases, that of Father Fernando Karadima, which became public in 2010, raised questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country's highest-ranking Catholic prelates.

Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church Summit in the Vatican City

The Vatican sexual abuse summit, officially the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church, was a four-day Catholic Church summit meeting in Vatican City that ran from 21 to 24 February 2019, convened by Pope Francis to discuss preventing sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.

References

  1. "Argentine sex abuse bishop jailed". 2009-12-30. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  2. "Argentine bishops face charges for accepting sex-abuse complaints | News Headlines".