A former Australian archbishop, the most senior Catholic cleric in the world convicted of concealing child sex abuse, was spared jail on Tuesday when he was ordered to serve his one-year sentence at home.

Newcastle Court Magistrate Robert Stone allowed Philip Wilson, 67, to serve his detention at home after an assessment by prison authorities due to a range of health issues, including heart disease, faced by the former archbishop.

Wilson was ordered to begin serving his detention on Tuesday in New South Wales state and would be eligible for parole in February 2019, the court said, without disclosing the address of where he would be held.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. Television showed Wilson being driven away from the court in Newcastle, about 170 km (105 miles) north of Sydney. It said he would be staying at his sister’s house.

Wilson has said he planned to appeal against his conviction for failing to disclose to police abuse by a priest, Father James Fletcher, after being told about it in 1976 by two victims.

An angry victim of Fletcher who was not involved in the case against Wilson confronted the former archbishop outside the court, pressing him to apologise and saying the appeal process would prolong the pain suffered by abuse victims.

“Where is the contrition from former Archbishop Wilson? His Grace, as somebody just said upstairs, has shown no grace,” abuse survivor Peter Gogarty said outside the court.

“This man said two weeks ago he was resigning as the Archbishop of Adelaide because of the hurt done to people like me, but I am still here and still hurting,” he said.

Wilson resigned as archbishop of Adelaide in July, two months after being convicted. He wanted to hold on to the position until he completed his appeal but came under pressure from Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, fellow clerics and abuse victims to quit.

Pope Francis named Bishop Greg O’Kelly to run the Archdiocese of Adelaide until a new archbishop has been appointed.

“Bishop O’Kelly said he was keeping Archbishop Wilson in his prayers as he formally commences this stage in his life, while also remembering the victims and survivors of abuse in the church,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

Wilson would be staying at a relative’s home, it said.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the country’s top Catholic body that Wilson once led, had no immediate comment.

Pope Francis recognised on Monday measures that Chile’s bishops said they would take to assist prosecutors investigating allegations of sex abuse that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, including that they would work to reach an agreement with prosecutors on an exchange of information.

The pontiff wrote in a letter released to media on Monday by the Chilean Church that the steps taken at a conclave last week were “realistic and concrete” and that he was confident they would make a “decisive” difference.

After a week-long leadership conclave, the bishops asked for forgiveness, saying in a statement on Friday that they had failed to aid and accompany victims who had suffered “grave sins and injustices committed by priests and clergy.”

Fernando Ramos, secretary-general of the Episcopal Conference, said last Friday that they also wanted “to reach an agreement [with prosecutors] to assure a fluid exchange of information, one that meets our standards, as well as the requirements of the Public Ministry.”

Chilean law enforcement is investigating 38 accusations of sexual abuse against 73 bishops, clerics and lay workers, involving 104 victims.

“I was impressed by the reflection, discernment and decisions that were made,” the pope wrote. “But what struck me most was the example of a unified episcopal community. Thank you for this edifying example.”

Chilean prosecutors said last week that they had asked the government to submit a formal request to the Vatican for information about nine clergymen and lay workers who have been accused of sexual abuse of children.

“We will make public every prior investigation into alleged sexual abuse of children that has occurred in our jurisdictions. We will ask the same of officials at all religious congregations,” Santiago Silva, president of the Episcopal Conference, told reporters last week.

The Roman Catholic Church formally changed its teaching on Thursday to declare the death penalty inadmissible whatever the circumstance, a move likely to be criticised in countries where capital punishment is legal.

The 1.2 billion-member Catholic Church had for centuries allowed the death penalty in extreme cases, but the position began to change under Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.

The Vatican said the change to its universal catechism, a summary of Church teaching, reflected Pope Francis’ total opposition to capital punishment.

According to the new entry in the catechism: “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

The Church was working “with determination” for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, the new teaching says.

The new provision is likely to run into stiff opposition from conservative Catholics in the United States and other countries where capital punishment is legal and many believers support it.

Last year, 53 countries issued death sentences and 23 of them executed at least 993 people, according to Amnesty International, with most executions in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.

In the United States, 23 people were executed, a slight increase from 2016 but a low number compared to historical trends, Amnesty said, adding that it was the only country in the Americas that carried out executions.

Capital punishment is banned in most of Europe, with Belarus the only European country that carried out executions last year, Amnesty said. By the end of last year, 106 countries worldwide had banned the death penalty.

Recourse to the death penalty, following a fair trial, had long been “an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good,” the new catechism says.

“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” it says, adding: “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

In a letter to bishops, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which enacted the change, said it was aimed at encouraging “the creation of conditions that allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect”.

Two special envoys sent by Pope Francis to investigate a child sex abuse scandal in Chile were meeting priests and church workers at a university in the Chilean capital last month when aides rushed into the room with an alarming development: police and prosecutors were about to start raiding church offices.

The envoys were 90 minutes into a seminar on how to investigate allegations of sex abuse committed by fellow clergy following revelations that hundreds of children might have been molested. For decades, the Roman Catholic Church in Chile quietly investigated such allegations without alerting police, but it now stands accused, even by Pope Francis himself, of a cover-up that allowed abusers to operate with impunity.

One of the clergymen listening to the envoys was Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, the legal adviser to Santiago’s archbishop. The aides rushed to his side and told him, ‘”Father, go to the (church offices) because there’s going to be a raid”,’ Ortiz later recounted.

Police and prosecutors were staging simultaneous raids on church offices less than a mile away from the university and outside the capital, looking for evidence of sex crimes the Church had not reported to police.

The surprise sweeps, ordered by Emiliano Arias, a provincial prosecutor, marked the start of what experts who track sex crimes in the Roman Catholic Church say is one of the most aggressive investigations ever undertaken by a judicial authority anywhere in the world.

Since that cold June afternoon there have been five more raids on church offices to seize documents, phones, tablets and computers, leaving the Vatican scrambling to respond to a rapidly unfolding scandal that is the worst image crisis of Francis’ papacy, now in its sixth year.

Leading the charge against the Church is Arias, 45, who is experienced in fighting organised crime and has a showman’s fondness for taking television news crews on the raids.

Arias told Reuters in an exclusive interview that documents seized by his team contained 30 cases of alleged abuse dating back to 2007 that the Church had not reported to the police. While Reuters was allowed to film his investigators poring through seized documents, he declined to give details from the files because he said they named victims of abuse.

He also alleged that some local Church officials had tried to destroy documents but that his team – made up of two prosecutors, three lawyers and a unit of specialist sex crime police – had salvaged them. He declined to say who had tried to destroy them or how they had tried to get rid of them.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm those assertions.

Víctor Villa Castro, head of communications for the Santiago archbishopric, said he could not comment on any cases under investigation by Arias.

“We would however say that we have no knowledge of the destruction of documents, nor the covering-up of crimes,” he said. “The victims are the first, and most important, in this and we will cooperate with the civil authorities in any way that can help to get to the truth of these matters.”

Arias says he wants to arrest both those who perpetrated the abuse and those who he says helped to cover it up. He arrested Oscar Munoz, a top aide to Santiago’s archbishop, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, after seizing church documents in which Munoz confessed to sex crimes. Munoz’s lawyer has acknowledged that some of the accusations in the documents are true but says he will challenge some others.

Arias last week named Ezzati, the most senior Roman Catholic in Chile, as a suspect, accusing him of covering up his aide’s alleged abuses. Ezzati has denied any wrongdoing and promised to cooperate.

Arias said he launched the raids after Church officials in Rancagua, the capital of O’Higgins region, told him he would have to make a formal petition to the Vatican to obtain information he was seeking because it was protected by ‘pontifical secret.’

A spokesman for the Rancagua archbishop’s office said they were told to do this by the Vatican and insisted they were cooperating fully with civil authorities. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment.

The Roman Catholic Church says the ‘pontifical secret’ provision in canon law is intended to protect the privacy of all involved in sex abuse claims. Critics say bishops have historically used it as a shield to block inquiries from civil authorities.

“We are not talking about a fraud, or a theft, we are talking about crimes against children,” Arias said in an interview in his office in Rancagua, explaining his decision not to submit the request to the Vatican and instead get a judge to approve the raids.

‘CULTURE OF ABUSE’

Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy are not new, but under Chilean law governing the separation of church and state, the Catholic Church, a powerful and politically influential institution in this conservative Andean nation, has no legal obligation to report the allegations to police.

The sex abuse scandal came to a head after Pope Francis visited in January and was initially dismissive of claims by survivors of a cover-up by top Church officials there. A backlash among advocates for abuse survivors prompted him to dispatch an investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who produced a confidential 2,300-page report on the allegations.

After receiving the report Pope Francis wrote an open letter to Chile’s faithful in May in which he decried “the culture of abuse and the system of cover up” by the Church in Chile.

He summoned all 34 of Chile’s bishops to Rome in May where they offered to resign en masse. He has so far accepted five resignations and is expected to accept more.

Arias speaks mostly without emotion during the hour-long interview until he talks about how, according to their accusers, priests convinced their victims that they were doing nothing wrong. Then he displays flashes of anger, sometimes so impassioned that he trips over his words.

“I have seen some tough cases but what shocks me about all this is the abuse of conscience – how an accused (Church worker) has entered into the soul of another person and is capable of convincing him that satisfying his desires is not even a sin,” said Arias, who describes his family as “very Catholic” but says he is lapsed.

Arias said he can prosecute senior Church officials for covering up the abuses if he can prove they knew about systematic abuse and failed to do anything to stop it, or hid evidence to prevent civil authorities from getting involved.

But first he must prosecute the abusers, said Maria Ines Horvitz, a senior lawyer at the State Defense Council of Chile, a public agency that provides legal advice to the Chilean state. And to do that he must find cases within the 10-year statute of limitations – a potential problem that has bedevilled prosecutors in other countries – or turn to the one court in Chile that still handles cases from before roughly 2000, which is backlogged.

PROSECUTORIAL ZEAL

The national public prosecutor instructed all provincial prosecutors last month to pursue sex abuse allegations more vigorously.

But Arias has gone much further than his colleagues in his zeal to bring prosecutions. He has repeatedly widened his remit, from a handful of cases to dozens, from his provincial base to the capital, and from investigating claims of abuse by 14 priests in Rancagua to the alleged complicity of Ezzati, Santiago’s archbishop, himself.

As a result of his uncovering new cases in Church documents, the national prosecutor last week authorized him to expand his investigation into other regions.

BishopAccountability.Org, which tracks allegations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, says the only comparable investigation into sex abuse in the Church was in Belgium in 2010 when police launched coordinated raids on Church offices and the home of a cardinal. That investigation did not lead to any prosecutions because of the statute of limitations.

Arias is carrying out his investigation in the absence of any public backing from the centre-right Sebastian Pinera government. Shortly before becoming president in March, Pinera criticized the Church for its “defensive” attitude to the scandal and “insufficient” investigations but has remained silent on the issue since.

A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

WHY NOW?

For decades allegations of sexual abuse by priests swirled through Chilean society, but little was done to address them. The Church was largely left to police itself.

But this year that suddenly changed.

Church watchers say several factors contributed to this watershed moment – the international attention received by several victims who went public; the pope’s initial poor handling of the claims; and the ripple effect of the global #MeToo movement.

The Church’s grip on Chile is also weakening, public opinion polling shows, even though the formerly predominately Catholic nation remains largely conservative on social issues.

The waning support for the Church was evident when the pope visited Chile in January – there were many empty seats at his public masses. This was “a turning point for Francis’ papacy”, a Vatican official said. “It is when he realized that he was listening to the wrong people about the real situation in Chile.”

For Arias, the pope’s subsequent mea culpa that the Church had covered up abuses gave him the impetus he needed to act. “His description of what was happening in Chile was powerful and should concern us all,” he said.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops hopes that a national dialogue with Muslims can change perceptions of Islam in the United States.

In the past, efforts to foster Catholic-Muslim have succeeded at local levels. But in the face of rising Islamophobia, Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, of Springfield in Massachusetts, who chairs the committee, said a wider conversation was needed.

“As the national conversation around Islam grows increasingly fraught, coarse and driven by fear and often willful misinformation, the Catholic Church must help to model real dialogue and good will,” he said in a statement.

This national dialogue will begin at the start of 2017. In the Midwest, Catholic-Muslim dialogue began in 1996 and meets once a year. The co-chairs represent both faiths. One document produced explored how Muslims and Catholics interpret revelation.

In the Mid-Atlanic, a representative from The Islamic Circle of North America co-chairs the yearly meetings that started in 1998. Out in California, a number of Islamic Societies join the yearly dialogue which began in 1999. They co-published Friends and Not Adversaries: A Catholic-Muslim Spiritual Journey in 2003.

A 2014 directive reaffirmed a commitment to Catholic-Muslim dialogue.

How Catholics view other faiths changed following the Second Vatican Council. In 1965, the then Pope Paul VI, delivered the Nostra Aetate, Latin for ‘In Our Time’. This revolutionary document shifted the ‘default position of hostility‘ to reconciliation. For Jewish communities, the Catholic Church moved away from collective blame for Christ’s death. In 2011, Pope Benedict X further exonerated the Jewish people in a theological intervention. Such a stance hoped to end centuries of Catholic-inspired antisemitism.

The Nostra Aetate document had warm words for Muslims and their devotion to God. It spoke of difference but mentioned that:

Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

The Pew Research Center found a slight decline in Catholics in the United States. The 2014 figure stood at 20.8 per cent (down from 23.9 per cent in 2007). Muslims in the United States represent almost one per cent of the general population.

This national dialogue will compliment, not replace existing examples of Catholic-Muslim dialogue. Archbishop Blase Cupich of the Diocese of Chicago will co-chair this national initative. There’s no announcement yet on who will act as the Muslim co-chair.

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Over the summer, Pope Francis apologised for the “Many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God.”

“I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America,” the pope said.

But his decision to canonise Father Junípero Serra, on his first visit to the United States next week, has angered many groups.

An online petition against the canonisation has gained over 10,000 signatures. Many of the counter voices are descendants of those colonised. For Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, and of the Luiseño tribe, said Serra “decimated 90% of the Indian population”.

Serra (1713-1784), was an ordained Franciscan priest and professor of theology by the age of 24. By 1749, Serra accompanied other Franciscans dedicated to missionary work in Mexico. He also preached, heard confessions, and assisted at Mexico City’s College of San Fernando.

In 1767, Spain founded the first mission in California. Estimates put the Native American population at about 310,000; yet in under a century, that figure declined at a rapid rate, alongside cultural shifts.

Spain’s colonial policies fused political, social, economic and religious motives. One historian argued that “Missionization required a brutal lifestyle akin in several respects to the forced movement of black people from Africa to the American South”.

Others argued that the missions were not simple religious functions – but rather served to eradicate native cultures in a short amount of time.

To ensure survival, many tribes used partial integration with each other and Spanish culture. Others fled inland or lost their culture. Within a month of their arrival, the Spanish crushed a rebellion with guns, and it took a further two years for San Diego to witness its first baptism. Colonial authorities took a zero tolerance approach to resistance – either violent or non-violent. Upon entry to the boundaries of the mission, native Americans could not leave. Spain would send armed parties to capture runaways, and punish the recaptured.

In a legal sense, all baptised Native Americans were subject to the authority of the Franciscans. Disobedience brought public flogging, shackling or imprisonment. Religious conversion often took place at gunpoint.

Life expectancy in the Californian missions could last only for a decade. As one Friar noted, the Indians “live well free but as soon as we reduce them to a Christian and community life… they fatten, sicken, and die”.

During the Second World War, Physiologist Sherburne F. Cook studied the human cost of Spanish settlement: “From the available data we find from 1779 to 1833 there were 29,100 births and 62,600 deaths”. This indicated an ‘extremely rapid population decline‘.

Others found that: “After the missions were built, beginning in 1769, the Indians were forbidden to leave the mission boundaries. It is estimated that California’s Indian population was about 310,000 at the beginning of Spanish rule. At the close of the 19th century, their population shrunk to approximately 100,000, largely due to the inhumane conditions under which the Indians were forced to live while serving as slaves”.

The inhumane and cramped living arrangements helped turn flu and measels into epidemics. Spanish soldiers introduced syphilis to a population already weakened due to a change of diet. Though Cook avoided singling out Serra for criticism, as founder of the mission system, he bore responsibility.

Professor Deborah Miranda, at Washington and Lee University, and an Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Indian, does not consider Serra ‘evil’.  For Miranda, his complicity outweighs any positives, and for that, that is undeserving of reward.

Professor Steven Hackel of the University of California, Riverside, and the author of Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father took a more nuanced approach. Hackel argued that Serra used corporal punishment in the context of the period – noting that Serra remained paternalistic.

“Serra was not a monster,” said Robert M. Senkewicz, a professor of history at Santa Clara University.

Serra wore his contradictions like the scars of his mortifications – from whipping himself until he bled, and using a candle to scar his chest. He believed in total authority over the Native American tribes but also defended them in disputes with the Spanish military and government officials.

Others voice their opposition with monthly protests outside the Cathedral of Los Angeles.

The canonisation Mass, which will be in Spanish, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on September 23.

The post Why is Junípero Serra’s canonisation so controversial? appeared first on Religious Reader.

For more than 50 years, Catholic priests from New Zealand have sailed thousands of miles to the frozen desolation of the Antarctic.

The US National Science Foundation invites New Zealand’s Catholic Church for the summer months. A select number of priests work at the whimiscally-titled Chapel of the Snows, at the US McMurdo Station on Ross Island. They provide the spiritual succour to research staff and scientists.

But budget cuts and reduced religiosity among staff means the New Zealand diocese ends its tenure in the Antarctic.

A military chaplaincy will continue to offer spiritual care and inter-denominational services.

Father Dan Doyle, co-ordinator of the Catholic Church in Antarctica, told the Catholic Herald: “Before this digital age people felt very isolated and lonely; they were always under so much pressure, so I did a lot of counselling and peer support”. Email and Skype later replaced a 2-minute call on a ham-radio once a month.

At peak summertime, Doyle (and four other priests) assisted up to 2,000 people. That number dropped to 1,200 in a decade. In the harsh winter months, the population drops to just 150 essential personnel.

Every few weeks, they travelled 1,360km (845 miles)  to the southernmost inhabited place on Earth. At the Amundsen-Scott Base they would conduct Mass and other religious duties.

Venture into the sub-Antarctic islands, and many research centres continue to offer prayer spaces.

The first priest from New Zealand to visit Antarctica was Father Ronald O’Gorman in 1957. O’Gorman, from Christchurch, reached the McMurdo Station in a U.S. Icebreaker. He helped Navy personnel, scientists and support staff celebrate Christmas midnight Mass.

In 1947, Father William Menster (1913-2007) of Dubuque, Iowa, was the first clergyman to visit the Antarctic. Menster accompanied the fourth Byrd expedition. On January 6 1947, Menster delivered the Antarctic’s first church service. Roughly 200 men attended as Fr Menster read a prayer and blessed the six million square mile area. The blue cross of the Navy’s church pennant fluttered outside their bivouac.

Further afield, at the Argentinian Belgrano II base, is the southernmost Catholic chapel in the world. It is also made of ice.

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