Rome, Apr.6 (ANI): Pope Benedict XVI has come under fire for his handling of growing accusations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
The latest concern dominating talk in the Vatican is that of an Indian priest in Minnesota who continues to work at a Catholic school in India, despite being charged in 2007 with sexually assaulting at least one teenage girl, reports the Christian Science Monitor.hough the masses and processions leading up to Easter Sunday went forward as they have for centuries, they did so amid the emergence of sex abuse cases both old and new.
Critics have charged that Pope Benedict XVI, at best, failed to deal with abusive priests. At worst, they say, he presided over a church that systematically shielded abusers from the law.
The newest case erupted today, when an attorney representing a girl who says she was abused by a priest in Minnesota charged that the Vatican declined to investigate Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, a priest, after repeated warnings from other church officials in 2005 and 2006.
US authorities in 2007 formally charged Rev. Palanivel Jeyapaul with sexually assaulting a teenage girl, but he has continued to work at a Catholic school in southern India.
It’s highly unlikely that Pope Benedict will resign his office in response to the abuse scandals – it’s been almost 600 years since the last pope stepped down. But his character and personal beliefs will be crucial as he seeks to guide a church that claims one billion adherents through what the National Catholic Reporter in the United States calls the church’s “largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.”
His defenders say the pope’s image is unfair. They say he’s taken the problem of sexual abuse by priests seriously. Vincent Twomey, a former student of the pope’s, paints a picture of a gentle, professorial figure with a fierce intellect rather than a fierce temper. (ANI)
Palin e-mails show infighting with staff
Washington, July 2 (ANI): The tension between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and top McCain campaign aides in the closing days of presidential campaign is elucidated in a profile in the new issue of Vanity Fair.
Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day, offer a rare look at just how frustrated the then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy.
The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.
CBS News’ Scott Conroy and special contributor Shushannah Walshe, who are writing a book about Palin, reveal how the mutual frustrations went even further than what has been disclosed so far.
The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin’s relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla.
The AIP’s platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party’s 2008 convention.
On the morning of October 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, “The Palins And The Fringe”.
While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP, CBS News reported.
The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.
Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line “Todd” to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message.
Schmidt hit “reply to all” less than five minutes after Palin’s e-mail was sent. “Ignore it,” he wrote. “He was a member of the AIP? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves America.” (ANI)