Abuse Cover-Ups Will Be Corrected, Says Cardinal

[Soutane]

Abuse Cover-Ups Will Be Corrected, Says Cardinal
Italian Bishops Report 100 Prosecutions in a Decade

ROME, JUNE 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- If bishops in Italy have been responsible for covering up abuses committed by clergy in the past, these are mistakes that will be corrected, says the president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco affirmed this Friday in a press conference at the closing of the 61st General Assembly of the Italian bishops.

The issue of the abuse of minors by members of the clergy was one of the main problems addressed during the assembly.

If it is proven that there have been “cover-ups of sexual abuse in Italy,” the cardinal stated, the “judgment of the Church is known: It is something mistaken that must be corrected and surmounted.”

Pederasty is “a terrible sin and a crime that affects the whole of society, and the Church is part of society,” he stressed.

The prelate explained that in his Archdiocese of Genoa,

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[Soutane]

George Weigel to Youth: Defend Religious Freedom
Says Pro-Life Cause Is Successor to Civil Rights

MERRIMACK, New Hampshire, MAY 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Catholic intellectual and author George Weigel is urging college graduates to base themselves firmly in natural law in order to make a good defense of religious freedom in society today.

The author of Pope John Paul II’s biography “Witness to Hope” made this appeal at the May 16 graduation ceremony of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, in which he was awarded an honorary doctorate and gave the commencement address.

“One of the great challenges of the younger generation of Catholics will be to rise to the defense of religious freedom in full,” Weigel said.

“This defense must be both cultural, in the sense of arguments winsomely and persuasively made, and political, in that young Catholics must drive the sharp edge of truth into the sometimes hard soil of public policy,” he asserted.

“Religious conviction is community-forming,” the author noted, “and communities formed by religious conviction must be free, as communities and not simply as individuals, to make arguments and bring influence to bear in public life.”

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