Pope Francis Is Right About The Criticism of Bishop Barros!

[JimofPennsylvan]

For the last few days whenever I picked-up a major newspaper I saw an article criticizing the Pope of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, for chastising people in Chile that are engaged in labeling Chilean Bishop Juan Barros as culpable for Reverend Fernando Karadima's sexual molestation of children. Pope Francis spoke out that if the Bishop's critics don't have proof that the Bishop knew of the molestation they should stop the criticism they should stop ruining this good man's reputation. Pope Francis is absolutely right in speaking out the way he did here these people are obstructing this man from doing his important work for the Church as a Bishop operating on a basis that is unfair and unjust toward the Bishop. Based on these critics' logic or rationale all the good priests that worked with the Founder, Reverend Marcial Maciel, of The Legionaries of Christ, the inspirational Catholic Priest Order, knew of the priest's behavior of having sexual relations with people! Based on these critics logic or rationale all the good people that worked with Father Bruce Ritter Founder of Covenant House an organization that established homeless shelters for runaways and street kids of international renown knew of the founder's sexual relationship with children. Obviously these premises are wrong they are based on supposition good people don't make harmful accusations against another based on supposition they require proof. Critics that want to say how could he have not known forget that, in part, it is human nature when someone does an extraordinary good thing one tends to idolize that person and one tends to consider it unfathomonable that this person could do an extremely bad thing. Back when Father Bruce Ritter founded Covenant House I was a regular contributer to his charity when one read his fund raising letters they were so moving they left one with the impression this man is a living saint it was completely incomprensible that a person that wrote such letters could do such an extremely bad thing as having sexual relations with children but an investigation of the evidence indicated otherwise. These critics are engaging in guilt by association and that is wrong!



These people should take to heart that grave harm can come from wrongful accusations like this that cannot be taken back and see this lesson as displayed in the life of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was a Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Chicago, in his time Cardinal Bernadin was one of the leaders of the American Catholic Church he was one of those Cardinals that when an issue came up in America and the media wanted to know the American Catholic Church hierarchy's point of view they would ask him and he was a great unifier Bishop in the American Catholic Church. Then what transpired is that a man made accusations that when he was younger the Cardinal sexually molested him well the media acted like this was one hundred percent true and the Cardinal reputatation was destroyed and in the process from the stress Cardinal Bernadin lost his physical health; well as it eventually turned out the accusations were completely false and the accuser acknowledged such but the Cardinal never regained his physical health, his vigor and his leadership skills and died a few years later. Pope Francis doesn't deserve criticism for his remarks here he deserves an acknowledgement that he is absolutely right!