CAUTION: This is not for the faint of heart. A stunning video documentary of the atrocities committed at the Catholic Provolo Institute for the Deaf in Argentina has just been released. It contains interview with deaf students, who, because of the advances in hearing aid technology, are now able to speak of the terrible ordeals they endured from a number of priests at the school. It then shifts to a nursing home facility Verona, Italy, where one of the Institute's retired priests, Don Piccoli, resides and records a gripping sick-bed conversation between the former students and the elderly priest.
This is the stuff of nightmares. The gaunt priest with hands clasped and rosary around his neck, proceeds to confirm the claims presented by the accusers and, unbelievably laughs and leers and jokes about the details, dismissing them as trivialities.
A further breakdown with captured stills from the video is available at Hilary White's blog, What'sUpWithFrancisChurch, for those who don't have the stomach to watch. I could only watch about 3 minutes before I wanted to punch something.
Hilary also provides much-needed commentary on the longstanding phenomenon of "dirty old men" in the Catholic priesthood.
I’ve been covering these men a long time. Very little of any of this has been a surprise. After 20-odd years you get an ear for the kind of things they say and start to be able to anticipate the kinds of things they’ll do. You get a feel – like a psychological profiler – for the mindset, and this is it. This is the kind of dirty minded old men they all are. Some of them have more polished manners and can be trusted to be put in front of cameras. These ones usually become bishops.
And you can’t call it the fault of Vatican II. This is an old fashioned, unreconstructed Italian pervert-priest of the old school. The kind we used to just call “a dirty old man”. This is the kind of guy who went into the priesthood out of convenience in a Catholic culture – among the laity – that just shrugs and accepts it as par for the course. How old is he? He didn’t go to seminary in the ’70s. He wasn’t in a Pink Palace in a US diocese.
This isn’t VaticanTwoism. This has nothing to do with our polemical arguments.
This is just straight up moral decay of a corrupt Church, a system that provides opportunities and life-long cover to men who just like to “unload” into any nearby handy bit of flesh that happens to pass within arm’s reach
It has to come down. The whole thing – rotten to the core – has to come down. And I don’t just mean the Church.
Very sobering revelations here, and there may be worse to come.
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carmencita ago
Gilderoy, if that old bag of bones thinks a rosary around his neck will save him at the Pearly Gates, he can forget it. He should soon have a rope there instead, pulled really tight. He is one of the devil's desc
Gilderoy ago
The cognitive dissonance is absolutely horrifying. Abusing the symbols of the Faith and the power of the priesthood to perpetrate and cover their crimes is a separate grave crime in addition to the sexual abuse.
carmencita ago
I have said many times that the first ones that pedophiles groom are themselves. What we heard from this pervert is the Pedo Manifesto, imo. They hear nothing we say, this sicko thinks that the Lord Jesus will save him because he has a rosary around his neck. If this was not so sick, that would be laughable. I think it is his last attempt before he knows he will be cast into the Fires of Hell. He has spent his life raping children. Jesus will have no Mercy for this perverted pedophile.
Gilderoy ago
Watching that video is enough to make any Catholic lose his/her faith, but you are right, it has the opposite effect on me. It makes me want to turn the Church upside down and shake out all the cockroaches trying to pervert what we hold most sacred. It makes me want to fight even harder, but I understand people who are scandalized and turn away: the fight or flight response.
Vindicator ago
Good for you, Gilderoy. :-) Did you know J.R.R. Tolkein said almost exactly the same thing?
https://insidethevatican.com/news/newsflash/tolkienonabuse/
@carmencita
Gilderoy ago
Thanks for this great article! Powerful words from Tolkien:
" We must therefore either believe in Him and in what He said and take the consequences; or reject Him and take the consequences.".
Vindicator ago
Yes. :-)
carmencita ago
Yes, I agree we must make our choice to believe in him or not and suffer the consequences. They have made their choice.