She is protesting against the Dominican Republic's government for not sharing profits from a gold mine.

"It's a shame that naturally rich communities live in poverty and whose basic needs go unmet.

"Our communities are among the poorest in the northern region," said Sr Luisa Suarez.

The community wants the Republic's president Danilo Medina and Congress share US$28.3M of the profits the government gets from Barrick Gold.

The Dominican Republic's environment law orders to share 5% of net profits from mining with local communities.

The funds are then invested in development projects and mitigation of impacts.

Suarez said the community and farmers organizations form part of the campaign.

Their role is to ensure each peso of that 5% is used to develop projects and not end up in the hands of corrupt politicians "as in other occasions."

Until 2014 the government had failed to hand over more than RD$1.3 billion (US$28.3 million) to the mine's surrounding towns.

"What's ours isn't a pittance. It's all of it.

"It's 5%. And it's ours now," Suarez said.

Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold's 60% production share in the mine last year was 572,000 ounces of gold at $597 per ounce.

Barrick's share this year is forecast at 600,000-650,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs of $570-$620 per ounce.

Source

• Dominican Today
• Protestbarrick.net
• The MotleyFool
• Barrick
• Image: www.protestbarrick.net

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois took exception to what he called "hateful" attacks against openly gay ambassador James "Wally" Brewster.

Earlier this month, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, 79, said Mr Brewster should "focus on housework", since he is the wife to a man.

This comment came after Mr Brewster criticised corruption in the Dominican Republic.

The ambassador also accused police officers of threatening and assaulting several US investors who were attending a conference.

Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez also used an anti-gay slur with reference to Mr Brewster and accused him of promoting a gay rights agenda on Dominican soil.

The cardinal also reportedly organised a protest against Mr Brewster.

Senator Durbin, who is Catholic and the number two Democrat in the US Senate, is a long time friend of Mr Brewster.

In a letter to Pope Francis, the senator described the cardinal's words and actions as "hateful", "personal" and "mean-spirited".

"The Church's teachings on gay marriage are well known, but the Church also teaches us to show tolerance for those with different sexual orientations," Senator Durbin wrote.

"The intolerant public statements of Cardinal Rodriguez are inconsistent with that clearly stated value."

"Since your selection as pope, you have shared a message of compassion, tolerance and love," Senator Durbin added.

The senator said he distinctly remembered when Francis spoke to a joint session of Congress in September and "reminded us of our responsibility to defend and preserve the dignity" of fellow citizens in pursuing the common good.

"I accept that challenge and I am calling on you to ask nothing less of the hierarchy of the Church," Mr Durbin wrote.

The senator urged Francis to ensure that Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez treats Mr Brewster with respect.

Sources

• Associated Press
• Chicago Tribune
• Associated Press
• Image: El Nacional

His is the first trial in the Holy See's criminal court of a senior official on charges of paedophilia and possession of child pornography.

Wesołowski, a former archbishop, was the nuncio to the Dominican Republic.

There, he is alleged to have paid teenage boys for sex.

The trial of the 66-year-old Pole was suspended on Saturday and postponed until a later date, yet to be announced.

No further details of his medical condition were given by the Vatican.

Pope Francis recalled Wesołowski to Rome in August, 2013, after he was made aware of the claims against him.

Wesolowski has since been defrocked.

Continue reading

Former Archbishop Josef Wesolowski is the first high-ranking official to face Vatican criminal charges for sexually abusing young people.

He had already been laicised in June after a canonical trial.

On Tuesday, the Vatican City State's separate criminal court opened a preliminary hearing into his case.

A Vatican spokesman said the decision to place Wesolowski under house arrest, rather than hold him in a police cell, was taken on account of his health.

Wesolowski presented documentation as to his health condition at the preliminary hearing.

The Vatican has a few small detention rooms inside its police barracks, but no long-term facilities.

A Vatican spokesman said the arrest reflected Pope Francis's wish "that such a grave and delicate case be handled without delay, with the just and necessary rigour".

The Holy See recalled the Polish-born Wesolowski in August, 2013, after the Archbishop of Santo Domingo told Pope Francis about rumours that Wesolowski had sexually abused teenage boys.

Dominican authorities opened an investigation, but declined initially to press charges since the Vatican had said Wesolowski enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

Poland also opened an investigation.

A Santo Domingo court, though, took the first steps toward possibly charging him last month after the Vatican said he had lost his immunity when he was defrocked and could be prosecuted elsewhere.

Wesolowski could face jail time if found guilty by the Vatican criminal court, which has jurisdiction over crimes committed within the tiny Vatican City State or by any of the Holy See's diplomatic personnel.

The Vatican had faced criticism that it had shielded him by recalling him last year.

Many countries do likewise with diplomatic personnel facing possible criminal charges abroad.

Pope Francis has said no prelate, whether a priest or a cardinal, has any privileges when it comes to sex abuse.

Sources

• Associated Press
• BBC
• Image: BBC

In legal matters in countries covering four continents - India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia - clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts:

• Two priests in India have been charged with murdering the rector of a seminary in Karnataka, in southwest India.
• A former papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic has been defrocked by the Vatican for child abuse and will face criminal charges.
• A bishop in Australia has been charged with sexually abusing an adolescent 45 years ago, and
• A priest in Sicily has been charged with seeking sexual favours from refugees he was supposed to be helping.

 
Significantly, the Vatican's Polish-born former nuncio to the Dominican Republic, Josef Wesolowski, was canonically convicted in record time last Friday.

He has two months to lodge an appeal against the conviction but has still to face criminal charges that carry a jail sentence.

And in Australia, where a currently serving bishop has stepped aside after he was charged on Monday with allegedly abusing an adolescent in 1969, another senior cleric will face charges following a detailed inquiry into clerical sexual abuse over many decades in the Diocese of Maitland Newcastle.

The trial, conviction and proposed sentence - expulsion from the clergy - of the Polish nuncio is a sign that Pope Francis' "zero tolerance" policy towards clerics found to have abused children is at work.

And the hastening speed with which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is dealing with cases - more than 4,000 since 2008 - is in marked contrast to the approach in the Vatican that prevailed until that year.

For example, it took 20 years and the efforts of two successive bishops in the Australian Diocese of Wollongong to defrock a convicted pedophile priest.

While it will be a long time until trust and confidence in the canonical processes are restored, the evidence of recent times is that the Vatican is out to "make good".

In fact, the Vatican has been dragged kicking and screaming to its present position.

It has been shamed into action after inquiries in many countries have shown how negligent Church authorities have been in the protection provided for children in the care of Catholic institutions.

The Vatican now claims it has "streamlined" and sped up processes that used to take decades.

The rule of law in secular societies - in the United States, Europe and Australia in particular - has forced Roman authorities to act outside their comfort zones and be subject to law enforcement and legal processes that they previously had thought themselves to be above.

The Catholic Church is being held accountable in ways it has never been before.

The rule of law is one thing.

Police, courts of law and governments that legislate on codes of conduct and mandatory reporting procedures relate to the public accountability the Church cannot avoid where there are effective police forces and independent judicial processes.

But the rule of law will flounder and eventually deliver far less than it should if there is not something else. The necessary values underpinning institutions that manage the rule of law also have to work.

Without transparency, accountability and a readiness to recognize that public trust is much more important for the Church than just about anything else, the reforms of legal procedures inside the Church and a willingness to see justice done according to the rule of law will fail.

All institutions forfeit the trust of the public unless they are nourished by such values. And this is where the Catholic Church still has a lot to learn about the lasting and corrupting effect of the absence of these values.

In business and government where the rule of law applies, it is taken for granted that the failure to be transparent, putting obstacles in the course of justice, to declare a personal interest, failure to act on certain facts or worse, the covering up of knowledge of misdeeds, all bring with them the expectation that leaders, ministers and the corporate executives involved will resign.

They may not have been guilty of any offense. But their credibility is gone and so are they.

Not so in the Church

The most notorious instance is the flight of the then-archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, to the protection of the Vatican.

If he had remained in the United States, he would have faced charges over his cover-ups of sex-abusing clerics while he was archbishop. But he was able to thrive in Rome as a person of exceptional influence and apparently credible public standing.

Regrettably, the phenomenon is much wider and reaches even to the circle surrounding the present pope in the person of a member of his council of cardinals charged with reforming the Curia.

Last year, Pope Francis named Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, the most powerful defender of a child-abusing priest who was eventually convicted in a Vatican process, as one of eight cardinals on the commission advising him on Vatican reforms.

Errázuriz refused to act on a victim's allegations in 2003, telling the priest not to worry, according to news accounts and legal testimony.

The cardinal is yet to acknowledge and confess his failure to address the sexual abuse of adolescent boys by a popular member of his diocesan clergy.

His credibility, or lack of it, rests on this failure. But is anything ever done about it in the Church?

And so it goes throughout the clergy where unless someone is charged with an offense, no recognition is given to those failures of vigilance that do most to undermine the confidence of even committed Catholics in the operations of the Church.

Yes, by all means let us cooperate fully with civil authorities, as is now happening more. Yes, by all means fix the rusty wheel that Canon Law is.

But without the values to underpin the operation of the law - without transparency, accountability and the declaration of interest - the reform will be at best half-done.

Jesuit Fr Michael Kelly is executive director of ucanews.com. Article reproduced with permission.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the order against Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, a former apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic.

The order against Polish-born Wesołowski is thought to be the first such move taken against a papal ambassador for sexual abuse.

The archbishop will have two months to prepare an appeal against the ruling.

Wesolowski was removed from his Dominican Republic post last August with little explanation.

The Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, reported allegations against Wesolowski to Pope Francis.

News accounts at the time gave accounts of paying for sex with minors and being connected to a Polish priest accused of sexually assaulting at least 14 underage boys.

The Vatican said at the time it would co-operate with Dominican authorities.

The CDF statement does not declare Wesolowski guilty of any specific crime.

It states that the first part of a canonical process against him has been finished and that he has been dismissed from the clerical state.

The Holy See also announced that the archbishop faces criminal charges in the Vatican courts.

Proceedings will reportedly start after the conclusion of any appeal against the laicisation order.

Wesolowski could risk extradition to the Dominican Republic, if he is found guilty in a criminal trial.

A CDF statement noted that Wesołowski has been at liberty in Rome since he was recalled, saying the archbishop has had a "relative freedom of movement".

"Taking into account the sentence now pronounced by the dicastery . . . there will be taken against the former nuncio all measures appropriate to the seriousness of the case," the statement noted.

Laicisation means the archbishop can no longer perform priestly duties or present himself as a priest.

Authorities in the Dominican Republic are investigating Wesołowski, who was appointed as nuncio to the country in 2008, but they have yet to announce any charges.

Investigations in Poland are also continuing.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• The Independent
• Image: Not in Honduras

Bishop Victor Masalles, an auxiliary of the Santo Domingo archdiocese in the Dominican Republic said that he recently saw Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski "walking along the Via della Scrofa".

Prosecutors in the Dominican Republic say they have convincing evidence that Wesolowki molested young men.

He has also been accused of abuse in his native Poland.

The former nuncio to the Dominican Republic was recalled to Rome last year.

The Vatican has promised to cooperate with Dominican and Polish prosecutors.

It has stated that as a citizen of the Vatican city-state, Archbishop Wesolowski is also subject to criminal prosecution there.

But Bishop Masalles said that the Vatican's failure to clarify the status of the former nuncio is damaging.

"The silence of the Church has injured the People of God," he said.

Speaking to a United Nations committee in May, Archbishop SilvanoTomasi confirmed previous Vatican statements about Wesolowski.

The former nuncio is the subject of a canonical investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as a criminal investigation by the Vatican police and court.

Weslowski is widely believed to be one of the three bishops that Pope Francis has said were being investigated in connection with abuse investigations.

On his flight back from the Holy Land in May, the Pope told reporters "three bishops are under investigation" for misdeeds related to the sexual abuse of minors and that "one has already been condemned and his penalty is being studied".

One of the bishops thought to be among the three alluded to by the Pope has been cleared of abuse allegations.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith concluded that Bishop Cristian Contreras Molina of San Felipe in Chile was innocent of abuse accusations against him.

The local district attorney's office in Chile has also closed its investigation.

Bishop Molina said the accusations were a slander.

Paraphrasing Pope Francis' words, he added that "there is no place in the Church for priests who abuse minors".

Sources

• Catholic World News
• The Catholic Register
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Catholic News Agency

A special prosecutor had been appointed to investigate Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, who has been ambassador to Santo Domingo for nearly six years.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the Holy See had started a probe of Wesolowski and that he had been recalled "in the last few weeks," specifically over the pedophilia accusations.

"He has been relieved of his duties and the Holy See has begun an investigation," Lombardi said.

The attorney general of the Dominican Republic said his office is investigating what he termed "rumors" of abuse against Wesolowski.

Francisco Dominguez Brito said his office had received no formal complaints of abuse and was responding to media reports.

The whereabouts of the 65-year-old Wesolowski are unknown.

Sources

Reuters/NBC News

AP/ABC News

AP/Fox News

Image: AP/NBC News

Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez made his views known to President Leonel Fernandez during a two-hour meeting as the president approached the end of his term of office.

In the island nation of only 10 million people, more than 1000 women have been killed in the past five years — an average of more than one every two days.

In the majority of cases, the perpetrators were intimate partners of the victims.

Of the 62,000 cases of violence against women reported in 2010, only 4 per cent went to trial. The cases ranged from extreme sexual violence involving young girls to women being stabbed to death.

Cardinal López Rodríguez, accompanied by Archbishop Ramon de la Rosa y Carpio, of Santiago de los Caballeros, told the outgoing president there should be a review of social structures and exemplary punishment for offenders.

He attributed the problem of violence against women to such factors as lack of education and "machismo". A by-word for ultra-masculinity, machismo has come to be regarded as a natural attribute of "tough men" who often dominate women with unprovoked aggression and violence as a way of life.

For the majority of women, escape can be very difficult. The dependence of many on male partners for financial and emotional support often means they continue to suffer in silence. Those who dare to speak out often face the spectre of being left on their own, risking further backlash and reprisals.

Sources:

Fides

Al Jazeera

Image: Al Jazeera