I can't really believe this is even a real thing but perhaps someone can explain how Pope Francis being on retreat with Bishop Zanchetta, his friend, ally & now under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct & having gay porn images on his phone is not a scandal &/or extremely toxic for the Pontiff & the faith?
The bishop is Gustavo Zanchetta, emeritus of Orán, Argentina, and currently Assessor to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) who I first reported on here.
On July 29, 2017, Zanchetta suddenly disappeared, without any farewell Mass and without saying goodbye to his priests and faithful. He only made it known, from an unspecified location, that he had health problems that needed urgent care elsewhere and that he had just returned to Rome, where he had placed his mandate back in the hands of Pope Francis. Who very promptly, on August 1, accepted his resignation.
Zanchetta was for a brief time the guest of the bishop of the diocese of Corrientes, 500 miles to the south, one Andrés Stanovnik, the same bishop who had ordained him. He then reappeared in Spain, in Madrid, apparently in good health.
Curiously, the capital of Spain is the destination where Pope Francis had, two years before in 2015, sent the Chilean bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid - before promoting him as bishop of Osorno against the opinion of the higher-ups of the Chilean Church and of the nunciature - for a month of spiritual exercises preached by the famous Spanish Jesuit Germán Arana, one of the pope’s most influential advisors in many episcopal appointments, and in this case a tenacious defender of the innocence of Baros, who had already been hit with very weighty accusations of sexual abuse.
The fact is that Zanchetta’s trip to Madrid was also the prelude to his promotion by the Pope, who on December 19, 2017 called him to the Vatican to do nothing less than manage the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, APSA, in a new and tailor-made role of “assessor.”
When news reports of the investigation into Bishop Zanchetta’s conduct emerged in early January, the Press Office of the Holy See issued a statement saying Zanchetta had resigned his see because he could not govern the clergy, and that the accusations of sexual misconduct were not lodged until the Fall of 2018. “At the time of his resignation [in 2017],” Press Office Director Alessandro Gisotti said in the statement, “there had been accusations of authoritarianism against [Zanchetta], but there had been no accusation of sexual abuse against him.”
Later, it emerged that Orán’s former Vicar General, Fr Juan José Manzano, sent evidence of Bishop Zanchetta’s behaviour to the Vatican in 2015 and 2017.
Fr Manzano told the Associated Press, “In 2015, we just sent a ‘digital support’ with selfie photos of the previous bishop [Zanchetta] in obscene or out of place behavior that seemed inappropriate and dangerous.” Fr Manzano explained, “It was an alarm that we made to the Holy See via some friendly bishops.”
“The nunciature didn’t intervene directly,” Fr Manzano told the AP, but the Holy Father summoned Zanchetta and he justified himself saying that his cellphone had been hacked, and that there were people who were out to damage the image of the Pope.”
Argentina’s El Tribuno de Salta newspaper later published documents showing the first complaint — in 2015 — reported that Zanchetta had on his cell phone naked images of himself masturbating, and gay porn involving young people engaged in homosexual sexual activity.
The documents published by El Tribuno also contain statements from the rector of Oran’s seminary, to the effect that he was so concerned over Bishop Zanchetta’s behaviour that he informed the nunciature in 2016 that his first-year students — who had classes in the bishop’s residence — required “urgent measures” for their protection.
That 2016 complaint lists “strange behaviours” including, “watching [seminarians] at night, walking through their rooms late at night with a flashlight, or asking for massages, or going into their rooms and sitting on their beds, or encouraging them to drink alcoholic beverages, or [showing] certain preferences for some more handsome (Sp. Agraciados, literally “graceful”) [seminarians].”
What a embarrassment of a wayward Papacy. Endless Cover ups for Grassi, Sucunzam, Cocopalmeiro and Zunchetta etc. in Arg..Plus Barros in Chile. Soto, Mahoney and McCarrick in the USA.. No end to this monstrosity of a Wayward Papacy.
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