Francis expelled a Polish cardinal | Sexual abuse …

A 97-year-old Polish cardinal, Henryk gulbinowicz, was sanctioned today by the Vatican and cannot minister or wear the badge after an investigation, the nature of which has not been specified, but which, according to the media, concerns alleged sexual abuse.

The Vatican took these measures “after an investigation into the charges against Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz and after analyzing other charges against the cardinal’s past,” according to a statement from the nunciature.

The cardinal has also been stripped of his right to funeral and burial in a cathedral and will have to pay a sum of money to a foundation created by the Polish episcopate to come to the aid of victims of sexual abuse.

Made a cardinal by John Paul II on May 25, 1985, Gulbinowicz has been Archbishop Emeritus of Wroclaw (southwestern Poland) since April 2004.

Polish writer Karol Chum accused Gulbinowicz of sexually assaulting him when he was 15 and the Wroclaw prosecutor’s office sent the cardinal a notification of suspicion of having committed a crime for him in May 2019. In addition, The former cardinal is also accused of protecting a priest accused of pedophilia and of not having informed the Holy See of another priest convicted of the same crime.O.

It is third case in the higher ecclesiastical hierarchy in Poland this year.

In mid-October, the apostolic nuncio to Poland announced the resignation of the Bishop of Kalisz, Edward Janiak, on suspicion of covering up sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy. And in August, Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Gdansk, Sławoj Leszek Głódź, 75 years old.

The controversial Głódź, famous for his high lifestyle and taste for luxury, was accused last year by priests in his archdiocese of daily mental harassment. More is suspected of having remained silent on the behavior of several priests accused of pedophilia by the Polish public prosecutor’s office, including Union Solidarity Catholic chaplain, Henryk Jankowski, died in 2010.

At the same time, the Vatican confirmed today that Next Tuesday will release the so-called “McCarrick Report”, which contains the internal investigation and the process against Former American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, expelled from the priesthood by Francis in 2019 after being convicted of child sexual abuse.

On that day, the Vatican “will publish the Report on the Institutional Knowledge and the Decision-Making Process of the Holy See on Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017) that the Secretariat of State has drawn up at the request of the Pope “Papal spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

In February of last year, Francisco stripped of the clerical state, the maximum canonical sanction within the Church, to the former Archbishop of Washington who, in July 2018, renounced his cardinal title amid allegations of sexual abuse against him.

The sanction against McCarrick, 90, came after the ecclesiastical tribunal for child abuse cases by priests, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will find him guilty of violations of the Decalogue of Behaviors with adults and minors, with the aggravation of abuse of power.

With the dispossession of the clerical state and the consequent reduction to the lay state, McCarrick can no longer administer the sacraments, present himself or dress as a priest, or receive any financial allowance from church institutions.

McCarrick’s canonical conviction is therefore the result of a process of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy he committed over 50 years ago, considered one of the “delicta graviora” that the Congregation has. under its orbit.

In July 2018, McCarrick, became the first Catholic prelate in nearly 100 years to lose the title of cardinaland be forced to abstain from public ministry and live in a convent in Kansas, United States.

The pontiff himself has called for a detailed investigation into the former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, now 90 years old and denounced, after being accused of having learned of his allegations of abuse of minors and seminarians.

The McCarrick affair is one of the hottest topics in Francis’ papacy. In July 2018, the pontiff expelled McCarrick from the College of Cardinals, a decision virtually unprecedented in modern Church history.

The cardinal had been accused of sexually abusing minors and seminarians since the beginning of his religious career, nearly fifty years ago, when he was a priest in the Archdiocese of New York.

McCarrick denied the charges at any time and in a statement then showed his surprise, assuring that he had collaborated “fully” in a Vatican investigation.

Later, the former nuncio to the United States Carlo Maria Viganò, belonging to the conservative current unlike Pope Francis, accused the pontiff himself of knowing the accusations against the already ex-cardinal.

He assured that from the United States, reports had been sent to the Vatican since 2000 on the conduct of the cardinal, although he never provided documentary evidence.

In this sense, he insisted that Benedict XVI had ordered McCarrick to retire into a life of prayer and penance, but that he “continued to enjoy special consideration” on the part of Francis, who “Had entrusted him with new and important responsibilities and missions”.

The Pope assured that he was not aware of these complaints, in an interview offered in May 2019 to the Televisa network. In October 2018, Francisco ordered an investigation into these events, now included in this long-awaited and, as expected, lengthy report.