Pope says those who hid sex abuse by priests ‘are guilty’

Updated 29 September 2015
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Pope says those who hid sex abuse by priests ‘are guilty’

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Monday unambiguously said Church officials who covered up sexual abuse “are guilty” of wrongdoing, as he returned home after a triumphant trip to the United States where he held emotional talks with child abuse survivors.
In one of his strongest comments to date on a scandal that has dogged the Church for decades, Francis said abuse by priests was “nearly a sacrilege” and “those who have hidden (such acts) are guilty — including some bishops.”
“Sexual abuse is everywhere,” the pontiff told reporters on his flight back to Rome. “But when a priest carries out abuse, it’s very serious because his calling is to help a child grow... toward the love of God,” he said.
The remarks capped an outspoken press conference aboard the papal plane, during which the famously modest pontiff also downplayed the notion of being a “star” after electrifying adoring crowds in the United States and Cuba with his message of humility and reconciliation.
Francis said his job was to be “the servant of the servants of God... It’s a bit different from a star!“
Throughout the nine-day trip, huge crowds lined the streets everywhere the 78-year-old went in Cuba, Washington, New York and Philadelphia.
Francis became the first pope to address the US Congress, calling on elected leaders to take responsibility for crafting a fairer economic system, confronting global warming, restricting the arms trade and abolishing the death penalty.
In New York, he led a multi-faith prayer for world peace at Ground Zero, testament to the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, a place that he said “speaks so powerfully of the mystery of evil.”
In Philadelphia, the Vatican said more than one million people poured into the streets for his farewell mass — more than double the number who turned out for a service led by John Paul II in 1979.
The rare criticism that Francis did elicit was the omission — from his public agenda at least — of a meeting with victims of paedophile priests, but on Sunday he met privately with five adults who were abused as children.
“God weeps,” the pope told a gathering of bishops afterwards, pledging to hold those responsible accountable.
“I remain overwhelmed with shame that men entrusted with the tender care of children violated these little ones and caused grievous harm. I am profoundly sorry.”
He told reporters Monday he had spoken “openly” with the abuse survivors, and that he did not judge those who could not find it in their hearts to forgive their perpetrators.
Around 6,400 Catholic clergy have been accused of abusing minors in the United States between 1950 and 1980, although campaigners fear the number could be higher.
Activists welcomed what they called a long-awaited admission by Francis that the Church had covered up abuse but said only actions, not words, would make a difference.
“After 30 years of public scandal in the US over predator priests and complicit bishops, finally a Catholic official is admitting that ‘princes of the Church’ covered up heinous crimes,” said Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests.
“Francis must publicly and promptly punish bishops who are protecting predators now. And he must order bishops to do the same with their own staff and clerics who are protecting predators now.”
Francis’s relatively reform-minded approach to social issues — a refusal to judge gays and lesbians including priests — and his love for the most vulnerable have struck a chord across the US racial and socioeconomic divide.
But he said Monday that divorce would remain off-limits for Catholics, ahead of a synod on the family starting Sunday and following a reform that streamlined the process for couples to obtain annulments.
An annulment “is not a divorce, because marriage is indissoluble when it is a sacrament — and the Church cannot change that: this is doctrine.”
The pope attracted non-Catholics, Christians of other denominations and followers of other faiths at all his US stops.
But it was when meeting the disadvantaged — immigrant schoolchildren in New York, the homeless in Washington and prisoners in Philadelphia — that the Argentinian pontiff seemed most animated.
Manuel Portillo, 54, a Guatemalan immigrant who has lived in Philadelphia for 22 years, said he had never seen such enthusiasm in the city.
“I followed every step of the pope’s visit, and I think he made fantastic remarks on Cuba and immigration,” he said.


London mayor Khan wins historic third term as Tories routed in local polls

Updated 3 sec ago
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London mayor Khan wins historic third term as Tories routed in local polls

Khan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital away from Labour for the first time since 2016
In the West Midlands, where Tory incumbent Andy Street is bidding for his own third term, votes were reportedly being recounted and too close to call

LONDON: London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan on Saturday secured a record third term, dealing the Conservatives another damaging defeat in their worst local election results in recent memory months before an expected general election.
Khan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital away from Labour for the first time since 2016.
The first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when first elected then, he had been widely expected to win as Labour surge nationally and the Conservatives suffer in the polls.
In the end, he saw his margin of victory increase compared to the last contest in 2021.
It adds to a dismal set of results for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as his Tories finished a humiliating third in local council tallies after losing nearly 500 seats in voting Thursday across England.
With Labour making huge gains, the beleaguered leader’s Conservatives lost crunch mayoral races in Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire as well as the capital and elsewhere.
In the West Midlands, where Tory incumbent Andy Street is bidding for his own third term, votes were reportedly being recounted and too close to call.
An unexpected Tory defeat there could leave Sunak with only one notable success: its mayor winning a third term in Tees Valley, northeast England — albeit with a vastly reduced majority.
Writing in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Sunak conceded “voters are frustrated” but insisted “Labour is not winning in places they admit they need for a majority.”
“We Conservatives have everything to fight for,” Sunak argued.
Labour, out of power since 2010 and trounced by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives at the last general election in 2019, also emphatically snatched a parliamentary seat from the Conservatives.
It seized on winning the Blackpool South constituency and other successes to demand a national vote.
“Let’s turn the page on decline and usher in national renewal with Labour,” party leader Keir Starmer told supporters Saturday in the East Midlands, where the party won the mayoral race.
Sunak must order a general election be held by January 28 next year at the latest, and has said he is planning on a poll in the second half of 2024.
Labour has enjoyed double-digit poll leads for all of Sunak’s 18 months in charge, as previous Tory scandals, a cost-of-living crisis and various other issues dent the ruling party’s standing.
On Thursday, they were defending nearly 1,000 council seats, many secured in 2021 when they led nationwide polls before the implosion of Johnson’s premiership and his successor Liz Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure.
With almost all those results in by Saturday afternoon, they had lost close to half and finished third behind the smaller centrist opposition Liberal Democrats.
If replicated in a nationwide contest, the tallies suggested Labour would win 34 percent of the vote, with the Tories trailing by nine points, according to the BBC.
Sky News’ projection for a general election using the results predicted Labour will be the largest party but short of an overall majority.
Its by-election scalp in Blackpool — on a mammoth 26-percent swing — was the Conservatives’ 11th such loss in this parliament, the most by any government since the late 1960s.
Speculation has been rife in Westminster that restive Tory lawmakers could use the dire local election results to try to replace him. But that prospect seems to have failed to materialize.
However, it was not all good news for Labour.
The party lost control of one local authority, and suffered some councillor losses to independents elsewhere, due to what analysts said was its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Polling expert John Curtice assessed there were concerning signs for the opposition.
“These were more elections in which the impetus to defeat the Conservatives was greater than the level of enthusiasm for Labour,” he noted in the i newspaper.
“Electorally, it is still far from clear that Sir Keir Starmer is the heir to (Tony) Blair.”

A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza

Updated 58 min 43 sec ago
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A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza

  • Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge
  • Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe

PARIS: A well-known British-Palestinian surgeon who volunteered in Gaza hospitals said he was denied entry to France on Saturday to speak at a French Senate meeting about the Israel-Hamas war. Authorities wouldn’t give a reason for the decision.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge, who had invited him to speak at the Senate.
‘’It’s a disgrace,’’ she posted on X.
Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe. Germany denied him entry last month, and France and Germany are part of Europe’s border-free Schengen zone. He posted Saturday that he was being sent back to London.
The French Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, local police and the Paris airport authority would not comment on what happened or give an explanation.
Abu Sitta had been invited by France’s left-wing Ecologists group in the Senate to speak at a colloquium Saturday about the situation in Gaza, according to the Senate press service. The gathering included testimony from medics, journalists and international legal experts with Gaza-related experience.
Last month Abu Sitta was denied entry to Germany to take part in a pro-Palestinian conference. He said he was stopped at passport control, held for several hours and then told he had to return to the UK He said airport police told him he was refused entry due to “the safety of the people at the conference and public order.”
Abu Sitta, who recently volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, has worked during multiple conflicts in the Palestinian territories, beginning in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising. He has also worked in other conflict zones, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
France has seen tensions related to the Mideast conflict almost daily since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas incursion into Israel. In recent days and weeks police have cleared out students at French campuses holding demonstrations and sit-ins similar to those in the United States.


Afghanistan’s only female diplomat resigns in India after gold smuggling allegations

Updated 04 May 2024
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Afghanistan’s only female diplomat resigns in India after gold smuggling allegations

  • Zakia Wardak, the Afghan consul-general for Mumbai, announced her resignation on her official account on the social media platform X
  • According to Indian media reports, she has not been arrested because of her diplomatic immunity

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s diplomat in India, who was appointed before the Taliban seized power in 2021 and said she was the only woman in the country’s diplomatic service, has resigned after reports emerged of her being detained for allegedly smuggling gold.
Zakia Wardak, the Afghan consul-general for Mumbai, announced her resignation on her official account on the social media platform X on Saturday after Indian media reported last week that she was briefly detained at the city’s airport on allegations of smuggling 25 bricks of gold, each weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), from Dubai.
According to Indian media reports, she has not been arrested because of her diplomatic immunity.
In a statement, Wardak made no mention of her reported detention or gold smuggling allegations but said, “I am deeply sorry that as the only woman present in Afghanistan’s diplomatic apparatus, instead of receiving constructive support to maintain this position, I faced waves of organized attacks aimed at destroying me.”
“Over the past year, I have encountered numerous personal attacks and defamation not only directed toward myself but also toward her close family and extended relatives,” she added.
Wardak said the attacks have “severely impacted my ability to effectively operate in my role and have demonstrated the challenges faced by women in Afghan society.”
The Taliban Foreign Ministry did not immediately return calls for comment on Wardak’s resignation. It wasn’t immediately possible to confirm whether she was the country’s only female diplomat.
She was appointed consul-general of Afghanistan in Mumbai during the former government and was the first Afghan female diplomat to collaborate with the Taliban.
The Taliban — who took over Afghanistan in 2021 during the final weeks of US and NATO withdrawal from the country — have barred women from most areas of public life and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade as part of harsh measures they imposed despite initial promises of a more moderate rule.
They are also restricting women’s access to work, travel and health care if they are unmarried or don’t have a male guardian, and arresting those who don’t comply with the Taliban’s interpretation of hijab, or Islamic headscarf.


Russia puts Ukraine's Zelensky on wanted list, TASS reports

Updated 04 May 2024
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Russia puts Ukraine's Zelensky on wanted list, TASS reports

  • Russia has issued arrest warrants for a number of Ukrainian and other European politicians

MOSCOW: Russia has opened a criminal case against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and put him on a wanted list, the state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, citing the Interior Ministry's database.
The entry it cited gave no further details.
Russia has issued arrest warrants for a number of Ukrainian and other European politicians since the start of the conflict with Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian police in February put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuania's culture minister and members of the previous Latvian parliament on a wanted list for destroying Soviet-era monuments.
Russia also issued an arrest warrant for the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor who last year prepared a warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges.


A Chinese driver is praised for helping reduce casualties in a highway collapse that killed 48

Updated 04 May 2024
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A Chinese driver is praised for helping reduce casualties in a highway collapse that killed 48

  • Reacting swiftly, Wang, a former soldier, positioned his truck to block the highway, effectively stopping dozens of vehicles from advancing into danger
  • His wife got out of the truck to alert other drivers about the situation

BEIJING: A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country’s mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
Wang Xiangnan was driving Wednesday along the highway in Guangdong province, a vital economic hub in southern China. At around 2 a.m., Wang saw several vehicles moving in the opposite direction of the four-lane highway and a fellow driver soon informed him about the collapse, local media reported.
Reacting swiftly, Wang, a former soldier, positioned his truck to block the highway, effectively stopping dozens of vehicles from advancing into danger, Jiupai News quoted Wang as saying. Meanwhile, his wife got out of the truck to alert other drivers about the situation, it said.
“I didn’t think too much. I just wanted to stop the vehicles,” Wang told the Chinese news outlet.
Wang’s courageous actions not only garnered praise from Chinese social media users but also recognition from the China Worker Development Foundation.
The foundation announced Friday that in partnership with a car company it had awarded Wang 10,000 yuan ($1,414). A charity project linked to tech giant Alibaba Group Holding also gave an equal amount to Wang, newspaper Dahe Daily reported. Wang told the newspaper he would donate the money to the families of the collapse victims.
Local media also reported that another man had knelt down to prevent cars from proceeding on the highway.
The accident came after a month of heavy rains in Guangdong. Some of the 23 vehicles that plunged into the deep ravine burst in flames, sending up thick clouds of smoke.
About 30 people were hospitalized. On Saturday, one was discharged from the hospital, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The others were improving, but one remains in serious condition.
On Saturday, the Meizhou city government in Guangdong said in a statement that authorities would conduct citywide checks on expressways, railways and roads in mountainous areas. A team led by the provincial governor is investigating the cause of the collapse, Southcn.com reported.
The Chinese government had sent a vice premier to oversee recovery efforts and urged better safety measures following calls by President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Qiang, to swiftly handle the tragedy.
The dispatch of Zhang Guoqing, who is also a member of one of the ruling Communist Party’s leading bodies, illustrates the concern over a possible public backlash over the disaster, the latest in a series of deadly infrastructure failures.