Yet another Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal!

And this time, the accused is Cardinal Ricardo Seppia, advisor to the pope on... pedophile priests.

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Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

Foxes guarding the henhouses, hm?

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According to investigators, Seppia told a friend — a former seminarian and barman who is currently under investigation — that the town's malls were the best places to entice minors. In tapped phone conversations the two cursed and swore against God. The priest is charged with having attempted to kiss and touch an underage altar boy and of having exchanged cocaine for sexual intercourse with boys over 18.

So they were attempting to make little boys into literal crack whores. Words fail me.

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Seppia's defense lawyers are expected to argue that those conversations — monitored since Oct. 20, 2010 — were just words, sex games that were played by adults. It was just a game even when he claimed to have "kissed on the mouth" a 15-year-old altar boy, according to the defense.

Don't you know? Adults joke about raping little boys like, ALL THE TIME.

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The evidence amounts to at least 50 messages and phone calls. In the tapped phone conversations, the drug dealer contacted the boys and gave their phone numbers to the priest, who paid them with cocaine or 50 euros each time for sexual intercourse.

"[The investigators] made us listen to that man saying terrifying things about our children. Things so terrible that I cannot repeat them," a father of one of the boys said.

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The best part of all this? Only two weeks ago the Vatican released "new" guidelines insisting bishops, not the police, should deal with any sexual abuse allegations.

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"This document is simply meaningless words - they have been forced to act but it is not enough," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for an Italian victim-support group. "The Vatican has said it will co-operate with the authorities before, but only because it has been forced to."

Mr Rizzini pointed to a case that has recently emerged in the northern Italian city of Genoa, in which a 50-year-old priest has been arrested by police investigating a drugs and sex ring. Though Church leaders suspended Father Riccardo Seppia, there were claims the Vatican had been warned of his behaviour. Piercarlo Casassa, a retired priest, said: "I told the Church about him in 1994 but was ignored. I told them he was not the right person to have around youngsters."

Fucking A. How many times are they going to be humiliated before it gets into their heads that the pedophilia is bad, but the reason everyone hates them so much is because they deliberately lie, shift blame, and do everything in their power to deny victims justice?

Yet another reason Catholic 'Officals' should be castrated before taking office.

Braigwen wrote:

Yet another reason the Vatican should be burn to the ground Catholic 'Officals' should be castrated before taking office.

FTFY

Well. I guess this explains Ratzinger's rather bizarre statements on the issue since becoming Pope. Garbage in, garbage out.

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on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

First order of business should be turn those fuckers over to the police instead of shifting them around and/or farming them out to isolated areas. I remember one priest fondly from my childhood that ignited my passion for linguistics and I try very hard not to let my revulsion for the church color the kindness of that man. This isn't the Good Old Days when the Medicis were running the Vatican and anything went. That these old men can pretend that nothing has happened in two thousand years (or that the world outside their ivory tower hasn't changed in two thousand years) makes me so fucking angry. And on top of stagnant, misogynistic laws, they prey on the most helpless. I just wish that there was a stronger statement that I could make besides walking away from their organization.

Penguin wrote:

Well. I guess this explains Ratzinger's rather bizarre statements on the issue since becoming Pope. Garbage in, garbage out.

I would say that 'I smell a Rat.' But that would be cliche.

People like this are the very, very few who I would willingly set on fire while they're still alive.

What do you expect from a group that equates making women priests to child molestation?

Soylent Green wrote:

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on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

First order of business should be turn those fuckers over to the police instead of shifting them around and/or farming them out to isolated areas.

I really still don't understand how an organization can declare itself exempt from police investigations and then have it stick in any way.

How does that work?

The police don't agree to that, do they? And if the police do agree, can they be punished in some way to make them stop doing it?

Notanoni wrote:

Soylent Green wrote:

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on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

First order of business should be turn those fuckers over to the police instead of shifting them around and/or farming them out to isolated areas.

I really still don't understand how an organization can declare itself exempt from police investigations and then have it stick in any way.

When it is convenient to them, the Church invokes the protection under international law as a recognized state (the Holy See) to handle its own "internal affairs".

^
Does that mean bishops outside of the Vatican have diplomatic immunity or something that would prevent the Five-Oh from investigating/arresting them in accordance with whatever laws of the country the bishop is in?

Or am I completely misunderstanding what you said?

TheHermit wrote:

Foxes guarding the henhouses, hm?

Actually, I would say, "Lions guarding lambs", too keep with the Catholic theme.

This sucks. At least I got a shitty joke out of it.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

^
Does that mean bishops outside of the Vatican have diplomatic immunity or something that would prevent the Five-Oh from investigating/arresting them in accordance with whatever laws of the country the bishop is in?

Or am I completely misunderstanding what you said?

Not quite that far - more like "our authorities will handle it instead of yours".

Spotts1701 wrote:

Notanoni wrote:

Soylent Green wrote:

Quote :

on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

First order of business should be turn those fuckers over to the police instead of shifting them around and/or farming them out to isolated areas.

I really still don't understand how an organization can declare itself exempt from police investigations and then have it stick in any way.

When it is convenient to them, the Church invokes the protection under international law as a recognized state (the Holy See) to handle its own "internal affairs".

Does this mean that all priests are citizens of the Holy See and aren't subject to the laws of the countries where they work?

*still not quite getting how that would stop police investigations, since foreign tourists get arrested all the time in various countries*

Of course! Priests are fully authorised to do whatever the hell they please because they don't answer to the law. That includes lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder, etc etc.

I have no words.

This is disgusting.

Something is wrong with the church if this is still going on.

I want to vomit or something. The idea that priests can just go around saying they don't answer to the law is such a gigantic pile of bullshit.

They shuffle the pedophiles in their ranks into different parishes where no one knows what they've done so no one knows to be on the lookout and try and protect the ones who've just been outed from the police of whatever country it happened in...

And yet they punish a hospital nun who decided a woman should have an abortion because bearing the child would have killed her.

Something is wrong with this picture.

He's not the Pope's advisor on pedophily and he's not a ardinal - I guess you got the culprit mixed up with Cardinal Bagnasco, who commented about the "terrible news".

I don't know what to make of this story. Some accusations have been dropped because there is no evidence that the guy ever had actual sex with minors, although not for lack of trying. He did set up an appointment with an underage catamite, but then didn't show up. The tapped conversations make you want to grab a pitchfork, but the most were made when he was high as a kite and raving.

On the other hand, he's HIV-positive and a cocaine addict, had pedopornographic material and exchanged coke for sex when he was in the seminar. He's on isolation in the "sexual predators" section of the Marassi prison, scared out of his wits because of the chanting from the other inmates. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

Priests do not have diplomatic immunity as this case testifies - this guy was loose enough and loud enough to be a blip on the radar of the Muggle "normal" police. The first line of defense of the Catholic Church is not even shifting pedophiles between parishes; it's the attitude of the parishioners themselves. Until he was caught, Don Seppia managed to keep his two identities separate enough that his flock did not feel threatened enough to denounce him. Those who found him "shifty" sent their kids to other catechisms, but the worst Don Seppia did in his priest role was groping an altar boy, one of those "did he really just do that to me?" moments.

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“I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said.

I couldn't even click on the link, that's just sickening.

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In tapped phone conversations the two cursed and swore against God.

That's got to be some serious cognitive dissonance. Would make an interesting psychological study, if nothing else.