Month: February 2019

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier came under fire over a congratulatory telegram sent to Iran on the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, with a Jewish community leader on Monday joining a chorus of criticism.

Taking aim at Steinmeier for failing to include criticisms of the Islamic regime in the message, Josef Schuster, who heads Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said that “routine diplomacy appears to have overtaken critical thinking”.

“It is incomprehensible that sensitivity was missing in the topic of Iran in the president’s office,” Schuster told Bild daily.

“If it was necessary to send congratulations on this anniversary, then the president should have at least found some clear words criticizing the regime,” he added.

Human Rights Watch’s director for Germany, Wenzel Michalski, has also called the message “shocking.”

The foreign policy chief of the business-friendly FDP party, Frank Mueller-Rosentritt, said the telegram must have felt like a “resounding slap in the face for our friends in Israel who are exposed to constant threats of annihilation by Iran”.

The telegram has not been made public by the president’s office. But Bild last week quoted excerpts of the message, which it said included Steinmeier’s promise to do all in his power to implement the nuclear deal on limiting Tehran’s atomic program.

The newspaper said however that there was no mention of Tehran’s backing of Hamas and Hezbollah in the message.

At the government’s weekly briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Rainer Breul said there had been a “misunderstanding.”

“To our knowledge, the president did not send congratulations for the anniversary of the Islamic revolution. His congratulations were on the occasion of Iran’s national day celebrations. Both days fall on the same day.

“It is common practice for states that have diplomatic relations to send congratulations on national day celebrations,” Breul said on Friday.
…

A comedian who is leading Ukraine’s presidential election race has urged his supporters to propose candidates for top government jobs.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who plays the nation’s president in a popular TV series, called on his backers to suggest candidates for prime minister, foreign and defense ministers and other top officials. Zelenskiy said in a video message Monday that Ukrainians have grown sick of presidents naming their friends to key positions.

Opinion polls have shown Zelenskiy ahead of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the runup to the March 31 vote.

Zelenskiy’s popularity has been driven both by his TV star status and by public dismay with current leaders. Ukraine has seen economic troubles and a sharp drop in living standards after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

 
…

After nearly two years of bitter talks on the departure of Britain from the European Union, there’s now even disagreement between the two on when Brexit should actually take place.

While EU Council President Donald Tusk said Monday that it would be “rational” for the March 29 Brexit date to be extended, British Prime Minister Theresa May reiterated her opposition to any delay.

Tusk warned that the chances of a withdrawal agreement being concluded in time are receding, and with businesses fearing a chaotic and costly cliff-edge departure, sticking by the planned Brexit date would be too risky.

“I believe that in the situation we are in, an extension would be a rational solution,” Tusk told reporters at an EU-Arab League summit in Egypt, acknowledging that he and British Prime Minister Theresa May had discussed prolonging the negotiations.

He said “all the 27 (member states) will show maximum understanding and goodwill” to make possible such a postponement — a decision that would require a unanimous vote from them.

May insisted she could deliver on the set date, however massive the challenge.

“It is within our grasp to leave with a deal on 29th of March and I think that that is where all of our energies should be focused,” May said.

She said that “any delay is a delay. It doesn’t address the issue. It doesn’t resolve the issue.”

May met several EU leaders separately over two days at the summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

She held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as she sought elusive changes to the U.K.-EU divorce agreement.

And Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned her against “sleepwalking” into a chaotic Brexit next month and that it was time for Britain to step up and clinch a deal.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable. And I think your best friends have to warn you for that,” Rutte told the BBC. “Wake up. This is real.”

Britain’s Parliament has rejected the deal once, and May has over a month to get it approved by lawmakers before the U.K.’s scheduled departure day.

May says a new vote won’t be held this week and could come as late as March 12.

U.K. lawmakers’ objections to the Brexit deal center on a provision for the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU in order to remove the need for checks along the Irish border until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.

May wants to change the deal to reassure British lawmakers that the backstop would only apply temporarily.

But EU leaders insist that the legally binding Brexit withdrawal agreement, which took a year and a half to negotiate, can’t be reopened.

A group of British lawmakers will try this week to force the government to delay Brexit rather than see the country crash out of the bloc without a deal. They want Parliament to vote Wednesday to extend the negotiating process.

Labour lawmaker Yvette Cooper, one of those behind the move, said it was irresponsible of the government that just a few weeks before Brexit “we still don’t know what kind of Brexit we are going to have and we’re not even going to have a vote on it until two weeks before that final deadline.”

“I don’t see how businesses can plan, I don’t see how public services can plan and I think it’s just deeply damaging,” Cooper told the BBC.
…

Thousands gathered in central Moscow on Sunday to mark the fourth anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov’s murder.

Although the events were approved by Moscow authorities, police limited access to the northern edge of the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge just outside the Kremlin, where for years a makeshift memorial comprising of plaques, photos, flowers and candles has marked the spot of the 55-year-old’s assassination by gunshot.

It was on the evening of February 27, 2015, when Nemtsov was walking across the bridge when a car stopped alongside him. A gunman emerged from the vehicle and fired multiple shots from a range of several feet, striking Nemtsov in the head, heart, liver and stomach, killing him instantly.

The attack come just hours after the activist had publicly called for a rally to protest Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the days leading up to his assassination, he had said he was preparing to release a damning report entitled “Putin. War” that would undercut Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial that the Kremlin had troops on the ground in eastern Ukraine.

In the center of Moscow, as in other cities across Russia, thousands took to the streets with placards in Russian and English with statements such as “Killed for freedom,” “Are you going to kill us too?” and “Putin is a liar.” Although five men were convicted of Nemtsov’s killing, supporters say those who commissioned the hit have evaded justice.

According to Evan Gershkovich of The Moscow Times, many placards visible at the rally touched on a litany of grievances frequently invoked by the Russia’s anti-Kremlin community — from a 2018 movie theater blaze that killed scores of Siberian children to arrests over political commentary on social media threads. 

“For many demonstrators, the rally … was ultimately less about [Nemtsov’s] death as much as it was about keeping his spirit of opposition alive,” he wrote.

“This is a march in opposition to Vladimir Putin,” one of the event’s organizers, politician Ilya Yashin, said in a video prior to the march. “This is a march for a free and democratic Russia.”

According to the “White counter,” an independent activists group that specializes in assessing rally turnout, the Moscow event drew and estimated 10,600 people

Moscow police reported about 6,000 participants.

The march route, which was coordinated with city officials, didn’t include a stop at Nemtsov’s memorial, but participants planned on walking there to deposit flowers after the rally concluded. They were met by steel slat barriers and police officers, some donning riot gear, who said access to the bridge was restricted.

Attempting to approach the bridge from Red Square, one VOA reporter was told access to the bridge was closed. When asked why the bridge was blocked, the officer gestured to step back. “Be on your way,” he said, point away from the bridge.

Riot control vehicles were visible in an area alongside the bridge.

“For some reason, they decided to make access to the bridge as difficult as possible,” said one protester named Vladimir, who has attended a number of annual Nemtsov memorial rallies. “Maybe they did it hoping that people won’t reach the place. But who wants to come will come. The state, apparently, has decided people will suffer before coming and pay their respect to Boris Nemtsov.”

“At first, we tried to reach the bridge from one entrance. It was closed. Then we tried to go through another one,” added Vladimir, who withheld his last name. “It’s not the first year they are doing this. It’s been expected, there’s nothing new.”

Andrew, who hadn’t planned on attempting to reach the site of the memorial in order to lay flowers there,  made a last-minute effort — and with success.

“[Police] a little bit fenced the place around, and I asked, ‘can I pass?’, and they said ‘yes, you can.’ And then the next behind me tried to pass through, too, but they said, “the passageway is closed.’

“It’s somehow a bit incomprehensible,” Andrew added. “A week ago, I was here, and I could pass. They don’t want people to come here. They’re ruining the memorial here every time flowers are laid. They are afraid.”

Later in the afternoon, police opened one point of access to the memorial — this time from Red Square, where marchers could walk through a gangway cordoned by crowd-control fencing with officers regulating pedestrian access in a seemingly arbitrary way.

Several prominent opposition politicians, including Alexei Navalny, attended the march.

Reports on Ekho Moskvy radio said similar rallies were being held in at least 20 Russian cities. In St. Petersburg, radio reports said, municipal officials denied permits for several memorial events.

Pete Cobus contributed reporting from Moscow. Some information from Reuters.
…

A poster at the National Rally’s headquarters outside Paris shows a smiling Marine Le Pen standing alongside Italy’s interior minister and League leader Matteo Salvini. “Everywhere in Europe,” reads the tagline, “our ideas are coming to power.”

The message is more than aspirational. As campaigning heats up for May European Parliament elections, experts predict the two far-right leaders and those of other nationalist movements may score strongly, with potentially sweeping consequences for the European Union.

“Complacency will be very dangerous with these elections,” said analyst Susi Dennison, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who estimates that “anti-European” parties could grab up to one-third or more of the vote. “The idea of change, that the political system is broken, is a very powerful one among European voters.”

Le Pen also sees a potential sea change, calling the upcoming vote a “historic turning point.”

“The European Union is dead,” the National Rally leader said during a recent interview with Anglophone journalists. “Long live Europe.”

If she proves right, the elections will consolidate a trend that has put Euro-skeptics into governments in Hungary, Italy, Austria and Poland, further weakening a union already shaken by internal divisions and Britain’s upcoming departure.

In France, the National Rally has rebounded from a stinging defeat in presidential and parliamentary elections two years ago, to become the country’s leading opposition force. Since taking control of the party her father founded in the 1970s, 50-year-old Le Pen has fundamentally revamped its pugnacious image and rhetoric — including a name tweak last year from its original moniker, the National Front.

From outsider to almost-mainstream

From once-shunned political outsider, the National Rally is now almost mainstream, surfing on the implosion of France’s center-right and center-left in 2017, and a shift in voter support to the political margins.

In a nod to its success, the conservative Les Republicains party has controversially borrowed some of its hardline rhetoric, notably on immigration.

Le Pen has also capitalized on the plummeting support for President Emmanuel Macron and his reformist agenda, seen with the weeks of “yellow vest” protests.

“Instead of offering an alternative to chaos,” she said of the president, “the French got both chaos and Macron.”

For the EU elections, she has tapped 23-year-old loyalist Jordan Bardella to head the party’s list and bolster its appeal to younger voters. Recent polls have shown the National Rally neck-and-neck with Macron’s Republic on the Move, although a survey released Friday found slipping support for the Le Pen’s party.

Still, it has traditionally fared well in EU Parliament elections, coming in first in the last 2014 vote, with nearly a quarter of the vote. Today, Le Pen is banking on a broader win.

“I think Europe is moving toward the return of nation-states, and we’re part of this great political movement supporting this,” she said. “Our goal is to turn the EU into a cooperation among nations, and not this kind of European super state.”

Eroding support for pro-EU parties

An EU Parliament forecast released last week appears to bolster her prediction. While parliament’s top two blocs, the Christian Democrats and Socialists will retain their primacy, it finds their overall share of membership and support is expected to erode.

Meanwhile, nationalist parties including Italy’s League and Le Pen’s National Rally are expected to grow sizably, with the latter predicted to gain six parliamentary seats to reach 21 in total.

Launching their European parliament campaign in Rome last October, Le Pen and Italy’s Salvini predicted a win by nationalist parties would bring “common sense” to Europe, and blasted key EU officials, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, as “enemies of the people.”  

Like other European populist leaders, both have sought counsel from Steve Bannon, an EU skeptic and former political advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, who founded a Brussels-based initiative called The Movement.

Europe’s populists are riding on citizen ambivalence and outright antipathy to a bloc many consider too soft on immigration and overly focused on bureaucracy. Recent Eurobarometer surveys show that while two-thirds of Europeans believe their country has benefited from being part of the EU — a 35-year high — only four in 10 have a positive image or trust in it.

A strong showing by euro-skeptic parties could have significant repercussions for the EU, she said, giving them greater influence and access to key posts, including in the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body.

“The challenge for EU institutions and pro-EU politicians going into this elections, is to find issues on which Europe can deliver that will mobilize voters” such as climate change, she added.

Exploiting weaknesses

Nationalist parties also have weaknesses that pro-European ones can exploit, Dennison said, including differences on how to handle immigration. And while some populist parties are calling for nothing less than the EU’s demise, others want to reform, not break it.

In France, the National Rally’s prospects may be complicated by the yellow vest protest movement. Some yellow vests are eyeing an EU Parliament run, but the movement is leaderless and disorganized, and the idea of turning grassroots action into a political force is controversial.

“The yellow vests present both a threat and an opportunity for Marine Le Pen,” said political scientist Jean Petaux, of Sciences-Po Bordeaux University, “They could offer her party a chance to enlarge its audience as the party that listens to their grievances.”

But a yellow vest list could steal votes from the National Rally, he added.  

In Le Pen’s favor is the traditionally poor turnout for EU elections in France, Petaux said, leading to a potentially significant protest vote.  

“When you have a low turnout,” he said, “it is usually those who are against who mobilize — not those who are for.”
…

Pope Francis has compared the sexual abuse of children to human sacrifice.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” Francis said Sunday.  

He was speaking at the close of the summit of the church’s top bishops and leaders, called to design a plan on how to deal with the predatory priests who have sexually abused children and adults for decades.

AFP, the French news agency, reports that the bishops were given a “roadmap” on how to stop the predatory priests that included “drawing up mandatory codes of conduct for priests, training people to spot abuse, and informing police.”

Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference warned the gathered Catholic clergy and leaders that “We do not have forever, and we dare not fail” as they go back to  their dioceses and navigate dealing with reports of abuse.

“We have shown too little mercy,” Coleridge warned, “and therefore we will receive the same.”

Worldwide sexual abuse by priests

The reports of worldwide sexual abuse by priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church.  

“We will do all in our power to make sure that the horrors of the past are not repeated,” Coleridge said.

On Saturday, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, in an extraordinary admission, said that “files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created.”

Sister Veronica Openibo, a Nigerian nun, addressed the group Saturday:  “We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a Church. We pause to pray, Lord have mercy on us.”

She told the summit; “Too often we want to keep silent until the storm has passed.  This storm will not pass by.  Our credibility is at stake.”
…

Poland’s ruling party leader has pledged more social benefits for families with children and for the elderly as he opened the right-wing party’s campaign ahead of key elections this year.

Speaking at a party convention Saturday, Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced an upgrade to the generous social program of his Law and Justice party, a policy that has kept the party on top of the political polls since it won power in 2015.

But opinion polls show the party could lose to a united opposition in the European Parliament election in May and in a vote for Poland’s national parliament in the fall. 

Kaczynski, Poland’s most powerful politician, is also facing recent allegations of soliciting a bribe and unlawful participation in business negotiations.

He urged supporters to rally for the party ahead of the elections. His speech drew applause and chants of “Jaroslaw, Jaroslaw!” from party members.

But it also drew criticism from the opposition and economists about the high cost of his promises, at a time when Poland’s health care and education systems remain strapped.

Kaczynski promised to expand family benefits to cover every child, abolish taxes for young employees and raise payouts for retirees.He promised to restore bus connections among small towns and villages that were canceled years ago as unprofitable.

He said the decisions aim to improve “the quality of life, an increase in our freedom and equality” as Poland tries to catch up with richer Western Europe.

Prime Minister Premier Mateusz Morawiecki estimated the costs of the program at up to 40 billion zlotys (9 billion euros) a year, but said he knows how to finance it.
…

Iceland’s whaling industry will be allowed to keep hunting whales for at least another five years, killing up to 2,130 baleen whales under a new quota issued by the government.

The five-year whaling policy was up for renewal when Fisheries Minister Kristjan Juliusson announced this week an annual quota of 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales for the next five years.

While many Icelanders support whale hunting, a growing number of businessmen and politicians are against it because of to the North Atlantic island nation’s dependence on tourism.

Whaling vs. tourism

Whaling, they say, is bad for business and poses a threat to the country’s reputation and the expanding international tourism that has become a mainstay of Iceland’s national economy.

The Icelandic Travel Industry Association issued a statement Friday saying the government was damaging the nation’s “great interests” and the country’s reputation to benefit a small whaling sector that is struggling to sell its products.

“Their market for whale meat is Japan, Norway and the Republic of Palau,” the tourism statement said. “Our market is the entire globe.”

Iceland’s Statistics Agency says tourism accounts for 8.6 percent of Iceland’s economic production. In 2016, tourism produced more revenue than Iceland’s fishing industry for the first time.

Quota never filled 

Iceland has four harpoon-equipped vessels, owned by three shipping companies reported to be running them at a loss or small profit. Last year, the industry killed five minke whales and 145 fin whales, according to the Directorate of Fisheries.

Since commercial whale hunting resumed in Iceland in 2006, whaling companies have never killed their full quota. As a result, it’s considered unlikely that all 2,130 whales will be killed under this policy.

The International Whaling Commission imposed a ban on commercial whaling in the 1980s because of dwindling stocks. Japan in December said it was pulling out of the IWC because of its disagreement with that policy. Iceland is still a member of the IWC.
…

On the third day of an unprecedented Vatican summit on clerical sexual abuse, the head of the church in Germany, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, said there was clear evidence that files on abuse were manipulated or had been tampered with.

Marx said the church obscured sexual abuse cases and an African nun told the gathering of world bishops to acknowledge the hypocrisy and complacency that had brought it to this disgraceful and scandalous place.

Marx said there was clear evidence that files on abuse were manipulated or had been tampered with.

After bishops spent two days reflecting on the issues of responsibility and accountability, Cardinal Marx used his speech to call for more “traceability and transparency.” 

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created. Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them,” he said. “The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offenses were deliberately not complied with, but instead canceled or overridden. The rights of victims were effectively trampled underfoot, and left to the whims of individuals.”

Marx added, “A full-functional church administration is an important building block in the fight against abuse and in dealing with abuse.”

He called for limiting pontifical secrecy in cases of abuse, releasing more statistics and publishing judicial procedures.

In an earlier speech to the assembled church leaders in the Vatican’s synod hall, a prominent Nigerian nun, Sister Veronica Openibo, said the church’s focus “must not be on fear or disgrace” but rather on its mission “to serve with integrity and justice.”

She said that at the present time the church is in “a state of crisis and shame.”

“We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a church,” she said.

She spoke of all the atrocities that have been committed by members of the church and urged transparency saying that the church must no longer hide such events out of fear of making mistakes.

“Too often we want to keep silent until the storm has passed. This storm will not pass by. Our credibility as a church is at stake,” Openibo said.

Abuse survivors and demonstrators, meanwhile, held a demonstration in Rome calling for an end to the silence of the Vatican.

Pope Francis, who has come under intense pressure over the failure to deal with increasing cases of clerical sexual abuse, will close the summit on Sunday with a mass attended by all participants and a final speech.
…

The attorney for Maria Butina, the Russian women whom U.S. federal prosecutors have charged with illegal foreign lobbying, says her passport has been handed over to U.S. immigration officials to expedite her anticipated deportation to Russia.

In an interview with Russia’s state run TASS news agency, defense attorney Robert Driscoll said he hopes the U.S. judge hearing Butina’s case will announce a verdict and sentencing date within two to six weeks of her next hearing, which is scheduled for February 26.

“Our hope would be that she’ll receive a sentence that will be equivalent to the time already served and that she will be released and deported soon after that,” Driscoll is quoted as telling TASS reporters.

Even if Butina receives a time-served sentence, which would trigger her immediate release, Driscoll said he would still need to negotiate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to arrange for the deportation of a convicted felon.

According to Butina’s plea bargain with prosecutors, U.S. officials have the right to keep her in custody until she’s done cooperating.

“We think she is done with cooperation now, but we need to make sure the government agrees with that,” said Driscoll. “It depends on how long the government says they need, wherever there are any other cases that she needs to testify about.

“I’ve been talking to them in advance, obviously, trying to make that transition as smooth as possible so that we don’t have her in ICE detention for any significant length of time,” Driscoll said, adding that he’s hopeful her transition from her Virginia jail to Russia can happen in less than a week.

“We’re working that out,” he said. “ICE already has her [Butina’s] passport. We’re trying to make sure this happens as quickly as possible,” he continued.

Butina, who in December pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered Russian agent, had been held in solitary confinement for months. Driscoll also told interviewers that, after her December plea, she was moved to a minimum-security cell and has since had access to a gym, meals with other female inmates, a prison chapel, and gets to watch television shows once or twice a week.

In January, Butina’s family told VOA that they were eagerly awaiting her return to her hometown of Barnaul, Siberia.

Driscoll said he’s not sure whether Butina would return to Russia via commercial or government flight.

Pete Cobus is VOA’s acting Moscow correspondent.

 
…

The legal loopholes that have allowed Catholic bishops to escape sanction when they cover up clergy sex abuse cases may be closing.

Two U.S. cardinals have confirmed that the Vatican is working on a “clarification” to a 2016 law that was supposed to hold bishops and religious superiors accountable when they fail to protect their flocks, but it never really did.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston told a press conference Friday during Pope Francis’ sex abuse prevention summit that he had been guaranteed that the new document would “come out very soon.” Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said the document would standardize procedures within the various Vatican offices to investigate bishops and order their removal.

The new document would further clarify the law Francis issued in 2016, entitled “As a Loving Mother,” which he passed instead of creating a special tribunal section inside the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to handle abuse of office cases.

Cupich said the law had been applied in “recent cases,” but the Vatican has provided no information about how it has been implemented or how many bishops have been sanctioned as a result of it.

Bishops, religious superiors got a pass

For decades, the Vatican has been criticized by abuse victims and their advocates for having turned a blind eye to the bishops and religious superiors who failed to punish sexual predators in the priesthood. While the Vatican began cracking down on the abusers themselves under Pope Benedict XVI, the superiors who enabled the crimes and allowed abusers to continue raping children largely got a pass.

Acting on a proposal from his sex abuse advisory commission, Francis and his group of cardinal advisers agreed in 2015 to create a tribunal section within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to prosecute bishops and superiors when they botched cases. A press statement issued at the time said the pope had pledged to provide the new office with adequate staffing and resources.

But the tribunal posed a host of legal and bureaucratic issues and ran into opposition from bishops and the Vatican bureaucracy. The congregation, which handles sex abuse cases, apparently was never consulted about the feasibility of creating such a tribunal before it was announced to the press to great fanfare.

A year later, Francis issued “As a Loving Mother” that made no mention of a tribunal but merely reminded the four Vatican offices that handle bishop issues that they were also responsible for investigating and punishing negligence cases. It made clear that a negligent act or omission on handling an abuse allegation was grounds for dismissal.

​Lack of tribunal good, prosecutor says

The Vatican’s longtime sex crimes prosecutor, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, told reporters Friday that under the 2016 law, it was actually easier to remove a negligent bishop than if he were subject to a canonical trial in a tribunal where the bishop’s intent would have to be proved.

The 2016 law “looks at the objective state of the (bishops’) incapacity” to govern, whereas a tribunal would have required proof that an actual law had been broken, Scicluna said. The 2016 legislation benefits those who are claiming negligence by a bishop because “they only have to denounce an objective fact: that nothing was done,” Scicluna said.

O’Malley, who heads a commission that first proposed the tribunal, said the issue of holding bishops accountable was “uppermost in our minds right now.”

“Right now the Holy See is working on, preparing a clarification of the implementation that will come out very soon, I am guaranteed,” he said.

Investigation blueprint

Cupich, for his part, dedicated his speech to Francis’ abuse summit to how such investigations against bishops might be reported to the Vatican and then carried out once the Vatican has authorized an investigation. His proposal called for the metropolitan bishop, who has authority over other bishops in a particular geographic region, to conduct the investigation, using the help of lay experts.

“What I present here is a framework for constructing new legal structures of accountability in the church,” Cupich said, in a speech that implied that such structures are very much in the works at the Holy See.

Accountability, fairness

Speakers at Francis’ summit have proposed other changes to canon law as well to ensure accountability and fairness to victims and accused priests alike.

Linda Ghisoni, an Italian canon lawyer and undersecretary at the Vatican’s laity office, said the Holy See should change its laws concerning the “pontifical secret,” the confidentiality regulations that govern how sex abuse cases are handled internally.

Victims for years have denounced the high level of secrecy, which often prevents them from learning the outcomes or progress of their cases. Accused priests, too, have complained how they are kept in the dark about the details of their cases.

Ghisoni told the summit that a degree of confidentiality must be retained to guarantee the dignity and reputations of all involved. But she said the secrecy regulations “should allow for the development of a climate of greater transparency and trust.”
…

Spain’s long-running controversy over the legacy of its 20th century leader, the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco, is entering a new phase as the government presses ahead with plans to move his remains from a mausoleum in the hills outside Madrid.

The issue has long been the cause of anguish and shame for those who see Franco as a murderous dictator whose crimes have never truly been acknowledged. The mausoleum is located in Spain’s vast Valley of the Fallen, which Franco commissioned in 1940, purportedly as a monument to reconciliation after the Spanish civil war which his Nationalist forces won at a cost of half a million lives.

The exhumation effort comes as Spain faces a constitutional crisis sparked by the Catalonia region’s efforts to break away from Spain. During the civil war in the 1930s, the area was a key stronghold for Republicans who fought against Franco until his Nationalists eventually beat them. Franco became Spain’s leader until his death in 1975. Calls to break away have been fueled by historical resentment over rule from Madrid.

Ministers have given Franco’s family until the end of the month to decide where to move the remains. 

Those who see Franco as a Spanish hero — among them retired General Juan Chicharro Ortega, president of the Francisco Franco Foundation — oppose any such relocation.

“Here in Spain there are millions of Spaniards who still admire Franco and remember what he did for Spain, especially because he won [against] Communism. Many people are very grateful to him. We don’t see any other possibility [than] that his remains remain where he is now,” Ortega told VOA.

Supporters of the exhumation argue that the dictator’s remains have no place in the Valley of the Fallen, which is supposed to honor victims on all sides of the Spanish civil war.

Should the exhumation go ahead, Franco’s relatives want his remains interred in the Cathedral of Almudena in central Madrid, where other family members are buried. The government has ruled out that location, fearing it would become a place of pilgrimage for Franco admirers in the heart of the capital. Gonzalo Berger, a historian at the Open University of Catalonia, says such a move would only exacerbate divisions.

“It would be easy to visit those remains and the worship of him would be passed to the center of Madrid, with absolutely undesirable consequences. The absolute opposite of what is intended — it would be an absolute disaster,” Berger said. He also said it will take more than exhumation for Spaniards to have closure over the past.

“At the same time, you have to deploy policies to society as a whole. It is necessary somehow to solve the problem of the disappeared, the people who are in the mass graves, the recognition of the anti-fascist combatants or those who defended the republic.”

For decades, Spain tried to forget the Franco dictatorship. Now the battle over his legacy could play into the country’s profound political crisis.
…

Accountability was the focus of the second day of a Vatican summit on sexual abuse involving members of the Catholic Church. Cardinals spoke of the need to establish robust laws and structures to ensure accountability and to involve lay experts in the process for transparency.

Cardinals attending the summit spoke of the importance of the “witness, courage and candor of victim survivors” to keep the church’s leadership focused on learning “the seriousness of child abuse, the damage that it has done, the havoc it has wreaked on people’s lives.”

At a briefing following the morning session, American Cardinal Sean O’Malley said there is nothing more urgent for the church to do than come together to address what he said is the most important part of its mission at this moment in history — “the protection of children and to redress the crimes, the suffering, the betrayals that have been inflicted on so many children and vulnerable adults.”

In addressing the gathering, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of India spoke first of his meeting with a group of victims earlier this week and said it had left a deep impression on him.

“I was numbed and could not speak,” he said. “I could sense the anger, frustration, hurt, helplessness and bitterness that they felt.”

The cardinal said bishops needed to repent and seek pardon together because they had failed in addressing sexual abuse in the church. He said no bishop could shy away from his responsibility by saying things were different in his part of the world because the problem exists everywhere.

“We are jointly responsible,” he said. “All of us in this synod hall this morning are jointly responsible to tackle the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clerics all over the world. We as a body are called to examine ourselves.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich from the United States focused on the need to design “specific institutional and legal structures for the purpose of creating genuine accountability in cases related to the misconduct of bishops and religious superiors and their mishandling of cases of child abuse.”

He stressed the importance of involving lay persons and experts in all efforts.

“It is the witness of the laity,” he said, “especially mothers and fathers with great love for the church, who have pointed out movingly and forcefully how gravely incompatible the commission, cover-up, and toleration of clergy sexual abuse is with the very meaning and essence of the Church.”

Outcome in doubt

Many doubt concrete results will emerge from the summit. Speaking in Rome Tuesday, Anne Barrett Doyle of the group Bishop Accountability said much is at stake with grieving and disillusioned Catholics all over the world as thousands have been sexually abused by clergy for decades. She said the meeting must produce a solution.

The Vatican conference ends Sunday when Pope Francis delivers a speech and holds a Mass with all participants.
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