'REVEALED: How the People's Pope shielded sexual predators in the clergy – including one priest accused of violently raping nuns'

'Truth must prevail over false piety, especially when a conclave looms. And the cold, hard truth is that in governance no less than on matters of doctrine, Francis’s pontificate was, in Cardinal Pell’s words, “a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe”.' Edward Fese, an American Catholic philosopher.

This article puts in one place the four biggest stories about the late Pope that Damian Thompson has been writing about for years.

They are examples of how the late Pope protected sex offenders and crooks in the clergy including in the College of Cardinals - the Mail should have published it while Francis was alive.

There are many, many more stories too, though with less evidence.

Francis was a bad pope and a very strange man indeed. These four scandals are only 'exposed by Damian Thompson in the sense that the world media has preferred to write well of Francis, seeing him as left-wing and progressive. Had Benedict XVI behaved like Francis he would have lived in the centre of a hurricane of media outrage.

Since his time as an archbishop Francis surrounded himself with priests against whom serious allegations of sexual or financial irregularity have been made. Why? 

Such men are beholden to him. That's one reason, I presume.

The decline (and fall?) of the Church concerns not just Catholics or even Christians. It involves the decline of Western civilisation, as economic and political analyst David Goldman recently said. He is an observant Orthodox Jew. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, gentle non-Catholic reader. It tolls for thee. 

For many years I was annoyed if people spoke of Catholic priests as child abusers and pederasts, wrongly thinking the numbers of guilty men were tiny. Most priests are good, selfless men, of course, but the numbers who are wicked are not tiny at all. 7% of priests in Australia, a Royal Commission was told, allegedly abused children between 1950 and 2010.

I wrote this on 5 July 2019.

Damian Thompson, one of my favourite journalists, resigned yesterday as editor of the Catholic Herald, the leading and until he went there very dull British Catholic weekly newspaper, which he turned into a must-read. He left voluntarily, he said, after  disagreements with the owner. 

Last night, a free man after a long time, he tweeted

"The list of suspected sex abusers and their accomplices whom Francis has protected or promoted is growing by the day. In Britain he would face questioning by police."

He was referring to a hitherto unpublished section of the recent interview given by Archbishop Viganò to the Washington Post, which yesterday was published by LifeSiteNews, in which the Archbishop said that Pope Francis ignored a file created in 2002, detailing allegations against Archbishop Peña of interference with boys, when he recently appointed him to the position of Deputy Secretary of State. 

The media have not mentioned this story. Imagine if it concerned not a liberal pope but Pope Benedict XVI. Or Donald Trump or - save the mark- Boris Johnson.

In this interview a week ago Damian Thompson criticises a lot of things that liberal Catholic bishops are doing and eviscerates the English bishops for their very muted reaction to a court decision to force a girl to have an abortion against her and her mother's wishes.

Damian Thompson has shown that Pope Francis repeatedly protected men guilty of dreadful sexual and financial crimes while he asked us to confess to 'ecological sins'.