Bergoglian cosmetic cover-up in Argentina

Ridiculous: the Church covered up for an abuser priest and now that he is in prison she forbids him to say Mass.

Caveat:  A left-wing source but fundamentally does not change the realities described

This is Juan Diego Escobar Gaviría, sentenced to 23 years for the crimes of sexual abuse and corruption of minors. The sanction imposed by a canonical investigation does not deprive him of his priestly state. For the victims' families, it is yet another fraud on the part of the Church.

Seven years after the allegations of sexual abuse and corruption of minors against the priest from Entre Ríos, Juan Diego Escobar Gaviria, which led to his conviction in two trials, the Church of Paraná announced the end of the canonical process against the priest, sanctioning him with "a total ban on the exercise of the public ministry of the priestly order". Escobar Gaviria committed abuse against five minors while he was working in the parish of the town of Lucas González, in the Department of Nogoyá.

In a text published in the provincial media and sent to the families of the victims, the Archbishop of Paraná, Juan Alberto Puiggari, a specialist in covering up and protecting criminals in cassocks, stated that "the commission of the crime of abuse against a minor has been proven with sufficient certainty", sanctioning Escobar Gaviria to "a total ban on the exercise of the public ministry of the priestly order for the same period of the sentence handed down in the secular criminal court".

Once again, the ecclesiastical hierarchy seeks to wash itself of guilt and blame with a symbolic sanction that does not modify the situation of the condemned priest. Since 2016, when the criminal case was opened, Escobar Gaviría had been banned from officiating mass in public. But as his defence lawyer summarised, "Gaviria was condemned for abuse, but the Church does not condemn him; it only sanctions him"; a new manoeuvre by the Archbishop of Paraná to try to make the Catholic Church leadership look as good as possible, beyond the suffering and damage caused to his parishioners.

Untimely transfers, religious retreats, dubious deaths, staunch defences of innocence in the face of the supposed macabre plans of those who attack the (not) holy Catholic Church, are all part of a modus operandi that, from the Vatican summits commanded by Bergoglio, is being lowered as precepts so that the "representatives of Christ on Earth" who commit crimes remain under the cloak of concealment. A task that has also been carried out by two of Bergoglio's great friends, Gustavo Zanchetta and Víctor "Tucho" Fernández, both of whom have ingratiated themselves with positions in the Vatican.

In recent years, Juan Alberto Puiggari has been accused of covering up for priests accused of sexually abusing minors. When the first conviction of Gaviria was announced, the Archbishopric of Paraná issued a statement on the painful situation it was going through because of the actions of one of its stray sheep, rejecting "this grave crime, and we are filled with shame and pain every time one of our priests is accused of perpetrating it (the abuse)". Without ever mentioning the victims, he ended by asking "God's mercy to inspire us to be instruments of purification and reconciliation in the midst of the difficulties we suffer today". It was the same archbishop who, in 2020, visited Escobar in Victoria prison, where he is serving his sentence.

Following this attempt at Bergoglian cosmetics, in the text that was sent to the denouncing families, Puiggari expressed his "personal pain" for the experience of all the families and a "renewed request for forgiveness". An empty forgiveness full of contempt, if we take into account a detail that one of the complainant mothers noticed: all the copies sent to the families had the same initials of only one of the victims as the heading.

Undoubtedly, the sexual crimes committed by bishops, priests and lay people linked to the Curia and their systematic cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy is one of the biggest headaches afflicting the Vatican. The thousands of denunciations worldwide highlight a naturalised system in which the conditions for abuse are created, the victims are silenced, the perpetrators are transferred to other places (where they continue to abuse), canonical files are opened that do not investigate anything, the facts are denied, and those who denounce are threatened and attacked. A system of which Bergoglio is a fundamental part.

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