This is not what I gathered from the transatlantic press conference. However Clerical Whispers seems to assume that the Pope has already found Mr. Magister's accusations against Ricca well-founded and that this is just one more example of the CURIA letting his Holiness down by white-washing Ricca's biography.....
With Bergoglio as well this seems to be the case. With the advantages and risks that every monocratic authority runs. During his first months as pope, the most serious mishap into which Francis has stumbled has been the appointment of the prelate of the IOR, the Vatican "bank," in the person of Monsignor Battista Ricca. An appointment strongly backed by the pope himself, entirely in the dark about the scandalous past of this figure, every documented trace of which was made to disappear.
In cases of this kind, when he sees that the curia is bringing him harm rather than help, Pope Francis feels even more driven to do it himself.
After "L'Espresso" uncovered the scandal on the basis of indisputable testimonies and documents that disappeared in Rome but were kept at the Vatican nunciature in Montevideo, the pope wanted to verify the truth himself. He put his his "segretariola" into action to tell him about and deliver to him all of the evidence in the case. In the interview on the return flight from Rio, his harshest words were directed against the "lobbies," remarking twice that "there was nothing" about the scandal in the "preliminary" investigation on Ricca that they had shown him in the curia....
[UPDATE] the following is from the IOR's Website....Ricca still seems ensconced]]
Msgr. Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca
Appointed ad interim
Appointed ad interim
Msgr. Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca has been with the Section for Relations with States of the Secretariat of State since 2009. He worked at the Section for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State between 2005 and 2009, prior to which he served the Nunciatures of Congo, Algeria, Colombia, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Trinidad & Tobago from 1989 to 2005.
Msgr. Ricca studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy from 1985 to 1989. He was ordained as a priest in Brescia in 1980, and was Parochial Vicar in that city until 1985.
Msgr. Ricca was born in Brescia on 22 January 1956.
UPDATE!!!
ReplyDeleteMy entire post is wrongheaded. Ricca remains to this day! The Holy Father, without refuting any of Ricca's pederasty, has decided to double-down with his who-am-I-to-judge. If Pope Francis would at least say he doesn't believe the story about MSGR Ricca caught in an elevator with a teenage male prostitute, then I could understand. Holy Father seems to want us to swallow his decision and adopt the attitude that such clerics who have used their positions to get 'lucky' and then are caught red-handed should be trusted without question when they suddenly claim to have had a come-to-Jesus conversion.