Phil Lawler

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Pope Francis thanks mainstream journalists for their silence about certain scandals

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Pope Francis thanks mainstream journalists for their silence about certain scandals

The hellish relationship began with a kiss -- a strange exchange between a teen-ager preparing to become a Loyola sister and the Slovenian Jesuit who was already her confessor.

"The first time he kissed me on the mouth telling me that this was how he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist, because with me he could experience sex as an expression of God's love," said "Anna," in an interview with the Italian news agency Domini.

The young priest was Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, who was already an artist on the rise. His artistic skills brought him to the Vatican in the late 1990s, and his sacred art has been celebrated around the world. However, he has been accused of sexual and spiritual abuse of Slovenian nuns, such as "Anna," in the 1980s and '90s.

It was hard, said "Anna," to grasp the meaning of lingering hugs after confession, studies of erotic Kama Sutra art or Rupnik's request that she pose for paintings, including strategic manipulations of her clothing. This was the Jesuit guiding her spiritual life. He demanded absolute obedience, while absolving her sins.

What followed was years of abuse so bizarre that the Catholic news website The Pillar offered this warning above an English translation of the "Anna" transcript: "Graphic and disturbing content. Reader's discretion advised."

While the Catholic press has entered this minefield, "coverage of the Rupnik scandal in the mainstream media has been negligent to an astonishing degree," said Phil Lawler, who has spent more than three decades in diocesan and independent conservative Catholic publications.

"The fact that Rupnik remains a priest in good standing calls out for explanation, for which the mainstream media aren't asking," he added, reached by email.

The big question: Is the Rupnik case one of the scandals that "vaticanista" journalists have handled with a "delicacy" that was recently praised by Pope Francis?

In a first-ever group meeting with Vatican-accredited reporters, on January 22, Pope Francis praised them for avoiding "profane" and "political" molds in their work.

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Future of all those Roman (and American) churches? No need for anxiety, says pope

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Future of all those Roman (and American) churches? No need for anxiety, says pope

It's a statistic tourists in Rome often hear while gazing at centuries of glorious architecture: The eternal city contains more than 900 churches.

Other statistics will affect those holy sites in the future.

For example, a record-low 458,151 births occurred last year in Italy. The fertility rate -- currently 1.32, far below a 2.1 replacement rate -- is expected to decline again this year. Meanwhile, the number of marriages fell 6 percent, between 2016 and 2017, and religious marriages plunged 10.5 percent.

"Currently we are at a roughly terminal stage. It would not be bad if the Church, the first to pay the price, would understand this and get moving," noted demographer Roberto Volpi, quoted in the newspaper Il Foglio.

Thus, lots of Rome's 900-plus churches will be empty in the next generation or so.

That was the context of remarks by Pope Francis during a recent Pontifical Council for Culture conference, a gathering with this sobering title: "Doesn't God dwell here any more? Decommissioning places of worship and integrated management of ecclesiastical cultural heritage."

Francis stressed: "The observation that many churches, which until a few years ago were necessary, are now no longer thus, due to a lack of faithful and clergy, or a different distribution of the population between cities and rural areas, should be welcomed in the Church not with anxiety, but as a sign of the times that invites us to reflection and requires us to adapt."

The church has problems, but there are "virtuous" ways to deal with them, he said. Bishops in Europe, North America and elsewhere are learning to cope.

"Decommissioning must not be first and only solution … nor must it be carried out with the scandal of the faithful. Should it become necessary, it should be inserted in the time of ordinary pastoral planning, be proceded by adequate information and be a shared decision" involving civic and church leaders, he said.

Pope Francis appears to be advising Catholics not to worry too much as "For sale" or even "Property condemned" signs appear on lots of sanctuaries in some parts of the world, said Phil Lawler, a conservative journalist with 35 years of experience in diocesan and independent Catholic publications.

"The sentence that triggered me was when the pope said we shouldn't be ANXIOUS about all of this," he said.

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Did the terrorists who murdered Father Jacques Hamel know what they were doing?

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One after another, news reports about violence at Catholic churches in France kept stacking up.

There was a mysterious fire on a church altar in Provence. Elsewhere, someone attacked the tabernacle containing the unleavened bread used in the Mass, scattering hosts on the floor. Attackers destroyed crosses and crucifixes in graveyards.

None of this surprised the Pro Europa Christiana Federation, which collects French media reports on anti-Christian acts of this kind. In 2015 they found 810 similar attacks in France.

But the murder of Father Jacques Hamel was different. The attackers interrupted a Mass, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and references to the Islamic State. The duo forced the elderly priest to kneel at the altar, where they slit his throat in what may have been an attempted beheading.

A nun who escaped -- Sister Danielle -- told reporters: "They told me, 'you Christians, you kill us.' They forced him to his knees. … That's when the tragedy happened. They recorded themselves. They did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It's a horror."

This drama unfolded in the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, named for St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, noted Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Australia, during a "Mass In Time Of Persecution" in Sydney.

"Though we welcome the solidarity of those of other faiths, and while we recognize that this was very much an attack on France, on civilization, on all religions more generally, we cannot ignore the fact that this was also a targeted attack on our Christian faith," he said.