Pat Buchanan: A Cancer On The Papacy

"Priests who prey on parochial school children and altar boys are not only sinners, they are criminal predators who belong in penitentiary cells not parish rectories…."
Patrick J. Buchanan
Aug. 31, 2018

This summer, the sex scandal that has bedeviled the Catholic Church went critical.

First came the stunning revelation that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington and friend to presidents, had for decades been a predator-priest who preyed on seminarians and abused altar boys, and whose depravity was widely known and covered up.

Came then the report of a Pennsylvania grand jury that investigated six dioceses and found that some 300 priests had abused 1,000 children over the last 70 years.

The bishop of Pittsburgh, Donald Wuerl, now cardinal archbishop of Washington, defrocked some of these corrupt priests, but reassigned others to new parishes where new outrages were committed.

This weekend brought the most stunning accusation.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Vatican envoy to the United States under Pope Benedict XVI, charged that Pope Francis had been told of McCarrick's abuses, done nothing to sanction him, and that, as "zero tolerance" of sexual abuse is Francis' own policy, the pope should resign.

In his 11-page letter of accusations, Vigano further charged that there is a powerful "homosexual current" among the Vatican prelates closest to the pope.

Read More