4812-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

Dam it all: More than half of the world’s long rivers are blocked by infrastucture

By Rachel Ramirez on May 9, 2019

It hasn’t even been a week since the U.N. released a depressing report on biodiversity, and now, a new study in Nature shows that 63 percent of the world’s longest (at least 620 miles) rivers are impeded by human-built infrastructures such as dams and reservoirs. Dam(n).

Rivers are a key source of food and water for agriculture, energy, and humanity. They’re critical to many cultures and communities and home to a plethora of species like salmon and trout. They also bolster ecosystems by restoring groundwater and serve as a buffer against drought.

But with the increasing demand for more water, energy generation, and flood management, the construction of dams, levees, reservoirs, and other river-obstructive infrastructures is becoming ubiquitous.

“Free-flowing rivers are important for humans and the environment alike, yet economic development around the world is making them increasingly rare,” lead author Günther Grill of McGill University said in a statement. Here are a few gloomy statistics from the study.

There are 60,000 large dams and more than 3,7000 hydropower damscurrently planned or are under construction worldwide.
The longest uninterrupted rivers are restricted to remote regionsin the Arctic, the Amazon and Congo basins.
The last two uninterrupted long rivers in Southeast Asia are critical sources of food for fisheries that provide over 1.2 million tonnes of catch each year.
While Asia is flowing with dam installations, the Amazon, Balkans, China, and the Himalayas are facing a huge increase in hydropower construction. Other countries such as India, Brazil and China are also planning and building infrastructure that will harm rivers through dredging and building dams.

Rivers are vital to our ecosystems. But hydropower is a difficult balancing act in a planet where there’s a desperate need for more clean energy.

There’s one bit of good news. Carmel River in California is seeing a big recovery of fish populations after a centuries-old dam was removed. The demolition is considered the largest dam removal in California history. And four years later the dam went down, species such as trout and lampreys are rebounding and other tributaries are reviving.

“We don’t want to do the touchdown dance yet, but so far things are looking good,” Tommy Williams, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Mercury News. “It’s just amazing how fast these systems come back. Everything is playing out like we thought.”

(GRIST)

Here’s a surprising article from February of this year that apparently didn’t get a lot of attention at the time. It can be difficult to process for some, but keep in mind that all the things being exposed now have been going on for quite a long while already. We have to know where we’ve been in order to change our experience. The Light shines on everything now.

February 6, 2019, bbc.com

Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves.

He said in that case his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests.

It is thought to be the first time that Pope Francis has acknowledged the sexual abuse of nuns by the clergy.

He said the Church was attempting to address the problem but said it was “still going on.”

Last November, the Catholic Church’s global organization for nuns denounced the “culture of silence and secrecy” that prevented them from speaking out.

The Pope’s comments come amid long-running cases of sexual abuse of children and young men by priests at the Church.

What did Pope Francis say?

Speaking to reporters while on a historic tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, the pontiff admitted that the Church had an issue, and the roots lay in society “seeing women as second class.”

He said that priests and bishops had abused nuns, but said the Church was aware of the “scandal” and was “working on it”, adding that a number of clerics had been suspended.

“It’s a path that we’ve been on,” he said.

“Pope Benedict had the courage to dissolve a female congregation which was at a certain level, because this slavery of women had entered it – slavery, even to the point of sexual slavery – on the part of clerics or the founder.”

Pope Francis said sexual abuse of nuns was an ongoing problem, but happened largely in “certain congregations, predominantly new ones.”

“I think it’s still taking place because it’s not as though the moment you become aware of something it goes away.”

Where is the abuse said to have taken place?

The female congregation dissolved in 2005 under Pope Benedict was the Community of St Jean, which was based in France, Alessandro Gisotti of the Vatican press office told CBS News.

In 2013, the Community of St Jean admitted that priests had behaved “in ways that went against chastity” with several women in the order, according to the French Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix.

In a separate case in India last year, a bishop was arrested over allegations that he raped a nun 13 times between 2014 and 2016.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who headed the diocese in Jalandhar in the northern state of Punjab, has denied the accusations.

In Chile, reports of abuse of nuns carried out by priests led the Vatican to launch an investigation last year. The women were reportedly removed from the order after highlighting the abuse.

Last year, the Associated Press news agency reported cases of abuse in Italy and Africa.

What have women in the Church said?

Just days ago the Vatican’s women’s magazine, Women Church World, condemned the abuse, saying in some cases nuns were forced to abort priests’ children – something Catholicism forbids.

The magazine’s editor, Lucetta Scaraffia, said Pope Francis’s acknowledgement of the abuse “can be of some help”, but warned that the Church needs to act.

“If the Church continues to close its eyes to the scandal… the condition of oppression of women in the church will never change,” she wrote.

The magazine said the #MeToo movement meant more women were now coming forward with their stories.

Last year, French website Le Parisien reported the case of “Christelle” (in French), a former nun whose name was changed to preserve anonymity.

Christelle said she had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest of her congregation in France between 2010 and 2011.

“His gestures became more and more inappropriate,” she said, adding: “But he kept going… until the day he raped me.

Thanks to reader, Monty, for this encouraging update. This law basically gives a year for Dioceses to have a system in place.

By Associated Press/NBCNews.com, May 9, 2019

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-issues-groundbreaking-law-requiring-priests-nuns-report-sex-n1003651

The law mandates that the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters inform church authorities when they have “well-founded motives to believe” abuse has occurred.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking law Thursday requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by their superiors to church authorities, in an important new effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for failing to protect their flocks.

The new church law provides whistle-blower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses around the world to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. And it outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.

It’s the latest effort by Francis to respond to the global eruption of the sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has devastated the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy and his own papacy. And it provides a new legal framework for U.S. bishops to use as they prepare to adopt accountability measures next month to respond to the scandal there.

“We have said for years that priests must conform to certain strict rules, so why shouldn’t bishops and others in the hierarchy do the same?” said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican office for bishops. “It’s not just a law, but a profound responsibility.”

The law makes the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters mandated reporters. That means they are required to inform church authorities when they learn or have “well-founded motives to believe” that a cleric or sister has engaged in sexual abuse of a minor, sexual misconduct with an adult, possession of child pornography — or that a superior has covered up any of those crimes.

The law doesn’t require them to report to police. The Vatican has long argued that doing so could endanger the church in places where Catholics are a persecuted minority. But it does for the first time put into universal church law that they must obey civil reporting requirements where they live, and that their obligation to report to the church in no way interferes with that.

If it is implemented fully, the Vatican could well see an avalanche of abuse and cover-up reports in the coming years. Since the law is procedural and not criminal in nature, it can be applied retroactively, meaning priests and nuns are now required to report even old cases of sexual wrongdoing and cover-ups — and enjoy whistleblower protections for doing so.

Previously such reporting was left up to the conscience of individual priests and nuns. Now it is church law. There are no punitive measures foreseen if they fail to report, and similarly there are no sanctions foreseen if dioceses, for example, fail to comply. But bishops and religious superiors could be accused of cover-up or negligence if they fail to implement the provisions, or retaliate against priests and nuns who make reports.

The law defines the crimes that must be reported as: performing sexual acts with a minor or vulnerable person; forcing an adult “by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts,” and the production, possession or distribution of child pornography. Cover-up is defined as “actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid” civil or canonical investigations.

Ouellet said the inclusion of sex crimes involving adults was a clear reference to cases of sexual abuse of nuns and seminarians by their superiors — a scandal that has exploded in recent months following reports, including by The Associated Press and the Vatican’s own women’s magazine, of sisters being sexually assaulted by priests.

In another legal first for the Vatican, the pope mandated that victims reporting abuse must be welcomed, listened to and supported by the hierarchy, as well as offered spiritual, medical and psychological assistance. It doesn’t mandate financial reparations, however.

But the key point of the law is to decree that the church’s own priests and nuns are mandated reporters and require every diocese around the world create an accessible, confidential reporting system to receive claims of sexual abuse and cover-up. The other key element outlines the preliminary investigation procedures to be used when the accused predator is a member of the church hierarchy.

Victims and their advocates have long complained that bishops and religious superiors have escaped justice for having engaged in sexual misconduct themselves, or failed to protect their flocks from predator priests. Bishops and religious superiors are accountable only to the pope, and only a handful have ever been sanctioned or removed for sex abuse or cover-up, and usually only after particularly egregious misbehavior became public.

Last summer, the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick epitomized the trend: McCarrick rose to the heights of the Catholic hierarchy even though he had credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him that the Vatican had received. Francis ultimately defrocked McCarrick earlier this year after a U.S. church investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adult seminarians.

The new procedures call for any claim of sexual misconduct or cover-up against a bishop, religious superior or eastern rite patriarch to be reported to the Holy See and the metropolitan bishop, who is a regular diocesan bishop also responsible for a broader geographic area than his dioceses alone.

Unless the metropolitan bishop finds the claim “manifestly unfounded,” he must immediately ask permission from the Vatican to open a preliminary investigation and must hear back from Rome within 30 days — a remarkably fast turnaround for the lethargic Holy See. The metropolitan then has an initial 90 days to conduct the investigation, though extensions are possible.

The law makes clear he can use lay experts to help, a key provision that is already used in many dioceses to give bishops expert advice on handling cases from people with law enforcement or medical backgrounds.

Once the investigation is completed, the metropolitan sends the results to the Vatican for a decision on how to proceed. The new law effectively stops there; existing procedures are in place for further investigation and possible sanction of bishops, though legal experts have said those procedures too require an overhaul since they are far from clear or efficient.

The new law does, however, require Vatican offices to share information throughout the process, since an untold number of cases have fallen through the cracks thanks to the silo-like nature of the Holy See bureaucracy, where each congregation zealously guards its own turf and files.

The law is a clear outgrowth of years of pressure building on the Vatican to hold bishops accountable; the tipping point apparently came with the 2018 McCarrick scandal, coupled with the eruption of the abuse crisis in Chile and criminal trials against cardinals in Australia and France.

With a wretched 2018 behind him, Francis convened church leaders to a summit at the Vatican in February to try to emphasize to the global church that sex abuse and cover-ups aren’t just a Western problem, but a problem for the universal church.

He called for concrete action to combat it, and the new law is a clear first step imposing new global reporting and investigation procedures.

The use of the metropolitan bishop to conduct the preliminary investigation was first publicly proposed by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November. Cupich elaborated on it when he addressed the February abuse summit and the procedures are likely then to form a key legal framework for U.S. bishops when they meet in Baltimore June 11-13 to adopt accountability procedures.

The U.S. hierarchy has been under immense public pressure to hold one another accountable for sexual misconduct and cover-up stemming from both the McCarrick scandal and the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. It was apparently an open secret that McCarrick slept with seminarians, and yet his brother bishops allowed him to become their spokesman when they first adopted measures to combat child sex abuse in 2002.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/8/2019 6:06:15 PM
	Kurit Afsheen / EyeEm / Getty Images TOADALLY SCREWED The TL;DR on that report that says we’re killing off everything By Zoya Teirstein on May 6, 2019 Have you heard the news? In our relatively short time on this little blue dot, humankind has managed to put 1 million species at risk. Way to go, idiots. On Monday, the U.N. came out with another majorly depressing assessment (see previous depressing assessment: climate change is going to kill us all). And this time, it’s on biodiversity. Hundreds of experts from around the world looked at thousands of scientific studies and found that the speed with which we are ***ing up the natural world is “unprecedented,” and wrote it all up in a 1,500-page report. The authors looked at what will happen if we continue polluting, clearing forests for agricultural purposes, expanding cities and roads, overhunting, overfishing, mucking up water resources, and spreading invasive species. The report shows that we’re not just on the precipice of an extinction crisis; it’s already unfolding around us. Here are the scariest takeaways from the summary of the report’s findings (the full report isn’t coming out until later this year): 40 percent of amphibian species (frogs, toads, salamanders, newts — basically all the creatures 6-year-olds love to look at) could be wiped out. Marine mammals and corals (the kind that form reefs) aren’t in much better shape: one-third of those aquatic species are threatened. Even the daintiest of God’s creations, like ferns (and their relatives) and dragonflies, aren’t safe from humans. About 10 percent of each category could be wiped out. Nearly 40 percent of conifers, a category that includes Douglas-firs, cedars, and juniper trees, are under threat. That doesn’t bode well for lovers of Christmas trees. But Christian-Italians can breathe easy: of the 2,390 bony fishes species assessed, only around 10 percent are threatened. The Feast of the Seven Fishes is safe, for now. IPBES. Sorry, cycad fans. Which portions of the world are to blame for the global loss of biodiversity? Glad you asked. Much like the issue of climate change, the folks who are going to suffer (or are already suffering) from rapid extinctions are not* the people who contributed the most to causing the problem. High-income regions of the world use the most fertilizer, have the highest rates of domestic material consumption and gross domestic product per capita, and, of course, produce the most greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to the high-income regions, low-income nations extract the least amount of living biomass, produce the least amount of emissions, use the least amount of fertilizer, and are doing the best job at protecting key biodiversity areas (often with the aid of international funds). Here’s the cherry on top: The catastrophic problems of climate change and loss of biodiversity are occurring in tandem. Rising temperatures are only making it harder for Earth’s threatened plant and animal species to survive. If temperatures rise 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), around 5 percent of species worldwide could kick the can for climate-related reasons. What’s worse, the report says that most governments aren’t sticking to the global pacts they made to protect the international environmental commons. See? Humans (particularly the wealthy ones) have a delightful tendency to make problems that snowball into bigger problems. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t sign up for a world with a deficit of frogs and a surplus of bony fishes. (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/9/2019 6:14:00 PM
	torstenvelden / Getty Images OPINION The U.N. says 1 million species could disappear. Pacific islands have a solution. By Carlotta Leon Guerrero on May 8, 2019 Carlotta Leon Guerrero, a native of Guam, is the executive director of the Guam-based Ayuda Foundation and served in the Guam Legislature from 1994 to 2000. Since 2018 she has been a Pew Bertarelli Ocean Ambassador. Last week, a global scientific assessment found the business-as-usual approach to conservation is not delivering the critical action needed to safeguard the future health of our planet. Over the last 30 years, a growing global population has doubled the demand on our planet’s resources, according to the report, which was released by the United Nations, and nature just can’t keep up: As many as 1 million species are threatened with extinction in the coming decades. This is a threat well understood by the people of my island, the small Pacific territory of Guam. In the last few decades alone, development and invasives have led to the extinction of the Guam flying fox and several species of bird found nowhere else in the world. These were animals critical to our forest ecosystems and important to our indigenous culture, lost forever. But all is not lost. The report identified several pathways for change, including the need to expand the current network of protected areas, both on land and in the ocean, which are critically important in the context of a changing climate. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that we’ll need to protect at least 30 percent of every coastal and marine habitat by 2030 if we’re serious about conserving the natural systems that underpin our quality of life. That may sound daunting, but we have an example to follow — one that is gaining momentum across the Pacific. The Pacific Ocean is the largest habitat on the planet, greater in size than the combined landmass of every single continent. Along the edges of this far-reaching marine ecosystem lie some of the largest cities on Earth — and dotted across its great expanse are thousands of islands, small and large. These islands are populated by the descendants of the great voyagers who traversed these waters in wooden canoes, powered by nothing more than the wind in their woven sails and the knowledge passed down through chants and songs. Pacific Islanders have known for centuries that protecting parts of the ocean brings benefits to people and nature. For generations, we have set aside areas where fishing is not allowed, resulting in more fish, bigger fish, and greater biodiversity. It is considered the world’s oldest form of fisheries management. But now, our ocean is changing. Sea levels are rising, warmer waters and changing ocean chemistry are altering the intricate balance of our natural ecosystems, and plastic waste is polluting the ocean from the seabed to our coastlines. These impacts are intensified when combined with overfishing; in much of the ocean, we are removing fish faster than they are biologically able to replenish. This is particularly true of vulnerable species such as sharks. In response, Pacific leaders have acted with the same boldness that inspired our ancestors to cross the ocean. We have taken their ancestral knowledge and expanded upon it, designating vast ocean sanctuaries, which support healthy marine ecosystems and abundant fish populations, while ensuring the well-being of coastal communities. In total, more than a dozen Pacific countries and territories have committed to designating and implementing strong ocean sanctuaries that restrict all commercial fishing. These actions bolster marine biodiversity, improve neighboring fisheries, and help ocean flora and fauna better withstand the impacts of the changing climate and overfishing. The greatest biological outcomes come from fully protected areas where all forms of fishing are restricted, like in the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, which comprises 80 percent of Palau’s national waters. There are also benefits to restricting the most damaging forms of fishing, like on the other side of the ocean in Chile, where the Rapa Nui people recently agreed to restrict industrial fishing in the entirety of their biologically unique waters, and only allow traditional artisanal fishing. At the same time, a group of Island Voices ambassadors has formed, coming from Palau, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Rapa Nui. The group includes artists, educators, fishers, former government officials, and traditional voyagers, who are committed to protecting the unique identity of the Pacific and its islands and are working together to link traditional values with modern decision-making. It’s a start, but if we are going to save the rich ecological abundance of the Pacific for future generations, we will have to think even bigger, working toward protecting 30 percent of the Pacific. Today, just under 5 percent of the ocean is designated within the confines of a marine protected area, and only about half of that area is fully or strongly protected, ensuring the strongest benefits to people and nature. Much of this real estate stretches across the Pacific. We have reached the point in human history where we can impact every inch of the ocean and at every depth. In the next decade we need to ramp up the area of ocean we protect, but we must also address sustainable fishing and environmental justice in the places where we allow fishing. And this will all be for nothing if we do not reduce carbon emissions and other forms of pollution — especially plastic. It’s daunting, yes, but it’s possible: Just look at the example that has been set by the leaders in the Pacific, where a constellation of small Island nations is leading the way toward a healthy and resilient ocean for our generations to come. (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/12/2019 12:42:13 AM
	Sia Kambou / AFP / Getty Images CRY ME A RIVER Dam it all: More than half of the world’s long rivers are blocked by infrastucture By Rachel Ramirez on May 9, 2019 It hasn’t even been a week since the U.N. released a depressing report on biodiversity, and now, a new study in Nature shows that 63 percent of the world’s longest (at least 620 miles) rivers are impeded by human-built infrastructures such as dams and reservoirs. Dam(n). Rivers are a key source of food and water for agriculture, energy, and humanity. They’re critical to many cultures and communities and home to a plethora of species like salmon and trout. They also bolster ecosystems by restoring groundwater and serve as a buffer against drought. But with the increasing demand for more water, energy generation, and flood management, the construction of dams, levees, reservoirs, and other river-obstructive infrastructures is becoming ubiquitous. “Free-flowing rivers are important for humans and the environment alike, yet economic development around the world is making them increasingly rare,” lead author Günther Grill of McGill University said in a statement. Here are a few gloomy statistics from the study. There are 60,000 large dams and more than 3,7000 hydropower damscurrently planned or are under construction worldwide. The longest uninterrupted rivers are restricted to remote regionsin the Arctic, the Amazon and Congo basins. The last two uninterrupted long rivers in Southeast Asia are critical sources of food for fisheries that provide over 1.2 million tonnes of catch each year. While Asia is flowing with dam installations, the Amazon, Balkans, China, and the Himalayas are facing a huge increase in hydropower construction. Other countries such as India, Brazil and China are also planning and building infrastructure that will harm rivers through dredging and building dams. Rivers are vital to our ecosystems. But hydropower is a difficult balancing act in a planet where there’s a desperate need for more clean energy. There’s one bit of good news. Carmel River in California is seeing a big recovery of fish populations after a centuries-old dam was removed. The demolition is considered the largest dam removal in California history. And four years later the dam went down, species such as trout and lampreys are rebounding and other tributaries are reviving. “We don’t want to do the touchdown dance yet, but so far things are looking good,” Tommy Williams, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Mercury News. “It’s just amazing how fast these systems come back. Everything is playing out like we thought.” (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/12/2019 1:00:59 AM
	Pope admits clerical abuse of nuns including sexual slavery May 11, 2019 By Suzanne Maresca Here’s a surprising article from February of this year that apparently didn’t get a lot of attention at the time. It can be difficult to process for some, but keep in mind that all the things being exposed now have been going on for quite a long while already. We have to know where we’ve been in order to change our experience. The Light shines on everything now. February 6, 2019, bbc.com Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves. He said in that case his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests. It is thought to be the first time that Pope Francis has acknowledged the sexual abuse of nuns by the clergy. He said the Church was attempting to address the problem but said it was “still going on.” Last November, the Catholic Church’s global organization for nuns denounced the “culture of silence and secrecy” that prevented them from speaking out. The Pope’s comments come amid long-running cases of sexual abuse of children and young men by priests at the Church. What did Pope Francis say? Speaking to reporters while on a historic tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, the pontiff admitted that the Church had an issue, and the roots lay in society “seeing women as second class.” He said that priests and bishops had abused nuns, but said the Church was aware of the “scandal” and was “working on it”, adding that a number of clerics had been suspended. “It’s a path that we’ve been on,” he said. “Pope Benedict had the courage to dissolve a female congregation which was at a certain level, because this slavery of women had entered it – slavery, even to the point of sexual slavery – on the part of clerics or the founder.” Pope Francis said sexual abuse of nuns was an ongoing problem, but happened largely in “certain congregations, predominantly new ones.” “I think it’s still taking place because it’s not as though the moment you become aware of something it goes away.” Where is the abuse said to have taken place? The female congregation dissolved in 2005 under Pope Benedict was the Community of St Jean, which was based in France, Alessandro Gisotti of the Vatican press office told CBS News. In 2013, the Community of St Jean admitted that priests had behaved “in ways that went against chastity” with several women in the order, according to the French Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix. In a separate case in India last year, a bishop was arrested over allegations that he raped a nun 13 times between 2014 and 2016. Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who headed the diocese in Jalandhar in the northern state of Punjab, has denied the accusations. In Chile, reports of abuse of nuns carried out by priests led the Vatican to launch an investigation last year. The women were reportedly removed from the order after highlighting the abuse. Last year, the Associated Press news agency reported cases of abuse in Italy and Africa. What have women in the Church said? Just days ago the Vatican’s women’s magazine, Women Church World, condemned the abuse, saying in some cases nuns were forced to abort priests’ children – something Catholicism forbids. The magazine’s editor, Lucetta Scaraffia, said Pope Francis’s acknowledgement of the abuse “can be of some help”, but warned that the Church needs to act. “If the Church continues to close its eyes to the scandal… the condition of oppression of women in the church will never change,” she wrote. The magazine said the #MeToo movement meant more women were now coming forward with their stories. Last year, French website Le Parisien reported the case of “Christelle” (in French), a former nun whose name was changed to preserve anonymity. Christelle said she had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest of her congregation in France between 2010 and 2011. “His gestures became more and more inappropriate,” she said, adding: “But he kept going… until the day he raped me. “He was unable to control himself… he had a split personality.” (goldenageofgaia.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/13/2019 7:15:21 PM
	Pope Francis Issues Groundbreaking Law Requiring Priests, Nuns to Report Sex Abuse, Cover-up May 12, 2019 By Suzanne Maresca Thanks to reader, Monty, for this encouraging update. This law basically gives a year for Dioceses to have a system in place. By Associated Press/NBCNews.com, May 9, 2019 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-issues-groundbreaking-law-requiring-priests-nuns-report-sex-n1003651 The law mandates that the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters inform church authorities when they have “well-founded motives to believe” abuse has occurred. VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking law Thursday requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by their superiors to church authorities, in an important new effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for failing to protect their flocks. The new church law provides whistle-blower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses around the world to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. And it outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior. It’s the latest effort by Francis to respond to the global eruption of the sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has devastated the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy and his own papacy. And it provides a new legal framework for U.S. bishops to use as they prepare to adopt accountability measures next month to respond to the scandal there. “We have said for years that priests must conform to certain strict rules, so why shouldn’t bishops and others in the hierarchy do the same?” said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican office for bishops. “It’s not just a law, but a profound responsibility.” The law makes the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters mandated reporters. That means they are required to inform church authorities when they learn or have “well-founded motives to believe” that a cleric or sister has engaged in sexual abuse of a minor, sexual misconduct with an adult, possession of child pornography — or that a superior has covered up any of those crimes. The law doesn’t require them to report to police. The Vatican has long argued that doing so could endanger the church in places where Catholics are a persecuted minority. But it does for the first time put into universal church law that they must obey civil reporting requirements where they live, and that their obligation to report to the church in no way interferes with that. If it is implemented fully, the Vatican could well see an avalanche of abuse and cover-up reports in the coming years. Since the law is procedural and not criminal in nature, it can be applied retroactively, meaning priests and nuns are now required to report even old cases of sexual wrongdoing and cover-ups — and enjoy whistleblower protections for doing so. Previously such reporting was left up to the conscience of individual priests and nuns. Now it is church law. There are no punitive measures foreseen if they fail to report, and similarly there are no sanctions foreseen if dioceses, for example, fail to comply. But bishops and religious superiors could be accused of cover-up or negligence if they fail to implement the provisions, or retaliate against priests and nuns who make reports. The law defines the crimes that must be reported as: performing sexual acts with a minor or vulnerable person; forcing an adult “by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts,” and the production, possession or distribution of child pornography. Cover-up is defined as “actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid” civil or canonical investigations. Ouellet said the inclusion of sex crimes involving adults was a clear reference to cases of sexual abuse of nuns and seminarians by their superiors — a scandal that has exploded in recent months following reports, including by The Associated Press and the Vatican’s own women’s magazine, of sisters being sexually assaulted by priests. In another legal first for the Vatican, the pope mandated that victims reporting abuse must be welcomed, listened to and supported by the hierarchy, as well as offered spiritual, medical and psychological assistance. It doesn’t mandate financial reparations, however. But the key point of the law is to decree that the church’s own priests and nuns are mandated reporters and require every diocese around the world create an accessible, confidential reporting system to receive claims of sexual abuse and cover-up. The other key element outlines the preliminary investigation procedures to be used when the accused predator is a member of the church hierarchy. Victims and their advocates have long complained that bishops and religious superiors have escaped justice for having engaged in sexual misconduct themselves, or failed to protect their flocks from predator priests. Bishops and religious superiors are accountable only to the pope, and only a handful have ever been sanctioned or removed for sex abuse or cover-up, and usually only after particularly egregious misbehavior became public. Last summer, the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick epitomized the trend: McCarrick rose to the heights of the Catholic hierarchy even though he had credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him that the Vatican had received. Francis ultimately defrocked McCarrick earlier this year after a U.S. church investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adult seminarians. The new procedures call for any claim of sexual misconduct or cover-up against a bishop, religious superior or eastern rite patriarch to be reported to the Holy See and the metropolitan bishop, who is a regular diocesan bishop also responsible for a broader geographic area than his dioceses alone. Unless the metropolitan bishop finds the claim “manifestly unfounded,” he must immediately ask permission from the Vatican to open a preliminary investigation and must hear back from Rome within 30 days — a remarkably fast turnaround for the lethargic Holy See. The metropolitan then has an initial 90 days to conduct the investigation, though extensions are possible. The law makes clear he can use lay experts to help, a key provision that is already used in many dioceses to give bishops expert advice on handling cases from people with law enforcement or medical backgrounds. Once the investigation is completed, the metropolitan sends the results to the Vatican for a decision on how to proceed. The new law effectively stops there; existing procedures are in place for further investigation and possible sanction of bishops, though legal experts have said those procedures too require an overhaul since they are far from clear or efficient. The new law does, however, require Vatican offices to share information throughout the process, since an untold number of cases have fallen through the cracks thanks to the silo-like nature of the Holy See bureaucracy, where each congregation zealously guards its own turf and files. The law is a clear outgrowth of years of pressure building on the Vatican to hold bishops accountable; the tipping point apparently came with the 2018 McCarrick scandal, coupled with the eruption of the abuse crisis in Chile and criminal trials against cardinals in Australia and France. With a wretched 2018 behind him, Francis convened church leaders to a summit at the Vatican in February to try to emphasize to the global church that sex abuse and cover-ups aren’t just a Western problem, but a problem for the universal church. He called for concrete action to combat it, and the new law is a clear first step imposing new global reporting and investigation procedures. The use of the metropolitan bishop to conduct the preliminary investigation was first publicly proposed by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November. Cupich elaborated on it when he addressed the February abuse summit and the procedures are likely then to form a key legal framework for U.S. bishops when they meet in Baltimore June 11-13 to adopt accountability procedures. The U.S. hierarchy has been under immense public pressure to hold one another accountable for sexual misconduct and cover-up stemming from both the McCarrick scandal and the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. It was apparently an open secret that McCarrick slept with seminarians, and yet his brother bishops allowed him to become their spokesman when they first adopted measures to combat child sex abuse in 2002. The law goes into effect June 1 for an initial three years. Dioceses must establish the reporting system and confirm it is in place to the local Vatican embassy by June 1, 2020 (goldenageofgaia.com)
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