Category Archives: News

news as it is happening-ish

Pope_Francis_2013

An interview that credits Pope Francis as saying about 2% of Roman Catholic clerics are paedophiles stirred controversy Sunday, as the Vatican sought to raise questions about the article’s accuracy and others called on the pope to take more action on the issue.

The interview by Eugenio Scalfari, published Sunday, quotes the pope as calling the rash of sex abuse scandals “a leprosy in our home” and saying the pedophiles include “priests and even bishops and cardinals,” according to a CBS News translation. “And others, even more numerous, know about it but keep quiet, they punish without saying the reason why. I find this state of things untenable and it is my intention to confront it with the severity it requires.”

The Vatican has pushed back on some points. According to Vatican officials, Scalfari does not record his conversations with the pope nor transcribe them word for word. News.va, an official Vatican news source, cited Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi as saying Scalfari quotes Francis from memory alone, and that the pope does not review the results before publication.

Any excuse.

Did Pope Francis really say 2% of Catholic clergy are paedophiles? (Lauren Raab, LA Times)

Pic: Wikipedia

waters

In today’s Sunday Independent, author and journalist John Waters writes about his experience of Pantigate west of the Shannon and wonders if teh gays would be treated differently in relation to the Croke Park gigs.

Nobody I met had ever tweeted anything, or cared one whit what some drag queen had said about me, or what had happened afterwards.

Most had registered nothing of it, and those who had were even more perplexed – one woman even thinking that someone had accused me of being a homosexual.

On the issue of Garth Brooks in Croke Park, he poses the question:

Ask yourself this: if the performer in question was Elton John, would the same objections be raised?


Searching for the soul of the ‘true’ Ireland … (John Waters, Sunday Independent)

00072747[l-r John Brown, Dana Rosemary Scallon, Damien Scallon]

Ms [Rosemary]  Scallon said she would find treatment for her brother, [prosecution barrister Claire] Howell told the jury. The singer then told the mother that Mr [John] Brown had been cured after he had seen a priest and they agreed not to tell the child’s father.

Dana told child’s mother her sex abuse accused brother would be ‘cured’ by priest, court hears (Shane Hickey, Irish Independent)


Dana Scallon’s brother appears in court after being accused of sexual abuse (Daily Express)

Meanwhile,

Dana calls out Enda Kenny on American TV.

Previously: Arrested Development

File pic: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland