Re: San­dusky, Penn State and The Catholic Church

No doubt this D.A. could have revealed a lot, if he was still alive:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/ncaafootball/questions-on-sandusky-wrapped-in-2005-gricar-mystery.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

“One of the ques­tions sur­round­ing the sex-abuse case against Jer­ry San­dusky is why a for­mer dis­trict attor­ney chose not to pros­e­cute the then-Penn State assis­tant coach in 1998 after reports sur­faced that he had inap­pro­pri­ate inter­ac­tions with a boy.
The answer is unknow­able because of an unsolved mys­tery: What hap­pened to Ray Gricar, the Cen­tre Coun­ty, Pa., dis­trict attor­ney?
Gricar went miss­ing in April 2005. The murky cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his dis­ap­pear­ance — an aban­doned car, a lap­top recov­ered months lat­er in a riv­er with­out a hard dri­ve, his body was nev­er found —
(snip)
“No one got a bye with Ray,” said Antho­ny De Boef, who worked as an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney under Gricar for five years. “He didn’t care who you were; he had a job to do.”

De Boef said Gricar did not share any infor­ma­tion with him about the case in 1998, which involved San­dusky alleged­ly show­er­ing with an 11-year-old boy. Gricar, he said, reviewed the police reports in pri­vate includ­ing, pre­sum­ably, notes or record­ings of two con­ver­sa­tions that the police heard between San­dusky and the boy’s moth­er. But Gricar had a rep­u­ta­tion for thor­ough­ness, and if he thought he had enough to charge San­dusky, he would have, De Boef and oth­er lawyers said.

Still, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Gricar’s dis­ap­pear­ance prompt many ques­tions.

On April 15, 2005, Gricar, then 59, took the day off. At about 11:30 a.m., he called his girl­friend, Patri­cia For­ni­co­la, to say he was tak­ing a dri­ve on Route 192. About 12 hours lat­er, she report­ed him miss­ing.

The next day, Gricar’s Mini Coop­er was found in a park­ing lot in Lewis­burg, about 50 miles from his home in Belle­fonte. Gricar’s cell­phone was in the car, but not his lap­top, wal­let or keys, which were nev­er recov­ered. Months lat­er, the lap­top was found in the Susque­han­na Riv­er with­out its hard dri­ve, which was dis­cov­ered lat­er. It was too dam­aged to yield any infor­ma­tion. On the fourth anniver­sary of his dis­ap­pear­ance, inves­ti­ga­tors revealed that a search of his home com­put­er yield­ed a his­to­ry of Inter­net search­es for phras­es like “how to wreck a hard dri­ve,” accord­ing to a report at the time in The Cen­tre Dai­ly Times.
——————

The Catholic Min­istry at Penn State:

http://www.stvincentmonks.com/PSU

Cam­pus Min­istry at Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty

“The Bene­dic­tine Monks who run the Penn State Catholic Cam­pus Min­istry assist the 10,000 Catholic stu­dents and employ­ees at Penn State in nur­tur­ing their faith through dai­ly and week­end litur­gies, retreats, ser­vice and social jus­tice projects, prayer and faith shar­ing groups and orga­ni­za­tions such as the New­man Catholic Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion.
For those prepar­ing to join the Church, Cam­pus Min­istry pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about the faith in the com­pa­ny of a warm and sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty through the Rite of Chris­t­ian Ini­ti­a­tion for Adults. In addi­tion, Catholics dis­cern­ing a reli­gious voca­tion have the sup­port and guid­ance of ordained cler­gy and pro­fes­sion­al staff.
—————
‑pic­tured in the above page is this: “A glimpse at the future ‑The Suzanne Poh­land Pater­no Catholic Stu­dent Faith Cen­ter at Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty”

Find­ing a SNAP-approved pope: requires more secre­cy than you might expect:

Wash­ing­ton Post
Col­lege of Car­di­nals impos­es media black­out

By Jason Horowitz, Updat­ed: Wednes­day, March 6, 10:48 AM

VATICAN CITY — The Col­lege of Car­di­nals that will elect the next pope cut off for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the news media on Wednes­day after their pri­vate delib­er­a­tions emerged in the Ital­ian press, rais­ing the specter of a leak­ing scan­dal that cast a pall over the last year in office of Pope Bene­dict XVI.

“Con­cern was expressed in the Gen­er­al Con­gre­ga­tion about leaks of con­fi­den­tial pro­ceed­ings report­ed in Ital­ian news­pa­pers,” said Sis­ter Mary Ann Walsh, direc­tor of media rela­tions for the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops, who has orga­nized news con­fer­ences with Amer­i­can car­di­nals in recent days. “As a pre­cau­tion, the car­di­nals have agreed not to do inter­views.”

The deci­sion, com­mu­ni­cat­ed only an hour before a sched­uled news con­fer­ence with Amer­i­can car­di­nals on Wednes­day after­noon, marked a quick end to a brief peri­od of open­ness on the part of the Amer­i­cans, who had said they hoped to keep reporters as informed as pos­si­ble with­out break­ing vows of secre­cy.

The Vat­i­can declined to spec­i­fy who in the col­lege expressed oppo­si­tion to the news brief­in­gs, say­ing only that as the car­di­nals pre­pare for the con­clave that will elect the next pon­tiff, “they real­ize the impor­tance of keep­ing things among them­selves,” said the Rev. Tom Rosi­ca, a Vat­i­can spokesman.

A report Wednes­day by Italy’s most author­i­ta­tive Vat­i­can reporter, La Stampa’s Andrea Torniel­li, dis­closed details of the car­di­nals’ pri­vate delib­er­a­tions, includ­ing the rev­e­la­tion that they had called for reforms of the Roman Curia, the bureau­cra­cy that gov­erns the Catholic Church, and had asked for more infor­ma­tion about the leak­ing of papal cor­re­spon­dence, a scan­dal known as VatiLeaks that engulfed the Vat­i­can last year. Torniel­li also report­ed that embat­tled Car­di­nal Roger Maho­ny of Los Ange­les had spo­ken, that car­di­nals called for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the pope and the heads of the var­i­ous church depart­ments, and that some car­di­nals want­ed to extend the pre­lim­i­nary talks into next week.

Accord­ing to Vat­i­can offi­cials and experts, the media black­out might be more than a crack­down in reac­tion to the leak. It could also have a polit­i­cal dimen­sion. One Vat­i­can offi­cial speak­ing on back­ground said that Ital­ian car­di­nals, some of whom stand to ben­e­fit most from a quick con­clave, had expressed mis­giv­ings about the Amer­i­can news con­fer­ences, dur­ing which U.S. prelates artic­u­lat­ed what they were look­ing for in a pope. They often described cri­te­ria that did not match the char­ac­ter­is­tics of car­di­nals in the curia. The Amer­i­can car­di­nals also repeat­ed­ly said they want­ed more time to lis­ten to their col­leagues and get to know one anoth­er, a posi­tion that Vat­i­can experts said dimin­ished the chances and pow­er of bet­ter-known Roman offi­cials, many of them Ital­ian, who would gain from a speed­i­er process.

...

Vat­i­can experts instead inter­pret­ed the delay as they did the ten­sion over talk­ing to the media — as anoth­er polit­i­cal pow­er strug­gle between offi­cials in the Roman Curia and out­siders.

“Some peo­ple in the curia want­ed an ear­ly elec­tion because it would ben­e­fit the front-run­ners, and it would ben­e­fit the cur­ial car­di­nals who already know every­body in the Col­lege of Car­di­nals,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and author of the book, “Inside the Vat­i­can.”

“Who does it hurt?” he asked. “The unknown can­di­date who would make a great pope, the younger car­di­nals; they are going to be depen­dent on the cur­ial offi­cials.”

...

The Vat­i­can said Wednes­day there was no con­nec­tion between extend­ed pre­lim­i­nary meet­ings and a short con­clave. “We should resist the link,” Rosi­ca said.

News that the Amer­i­cans had can­celed their news con­fer­ences, which had become a dai­ly rit­u­al here, streamed into the smart­phones of reporters dur­ing the dai­ly Vat­i­can brief­ing. It was the first thing reporters asked Lom­bar­di about when he opened the floor to ques­tions, reflect­ing the incon­ve­nient sto­ry lines that can emerge for the Vat­i­can in what is essen­tial­ly a news­less envi­ron­ment.

It is a vac­u­um that crit­ics of the church have rushed to fill. Ear­li­er Wednes­day, the Sur­vivors Net­work of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), an orga­ni­za­tion that sup­ports vic­tims of sex abuse by cler­ics, held a well-attend­ed news con­fer­ence in which it released a list of a “dirty dozen” car­di­nals it con­sid­ers unac­cept­able lead­ers of the church based on their past han­dling of the child sex-abuse cri­sis. Among them were car­di­nals often men­tioned as prime can­di­dates for the pon­tif­i­cate, includ­ing car­di­nals Tim­o­thy Dolan of New York, O’Malley of Boston, Leonar­do San­dri of Argenti­na, Peter Turk­son of Ghana, Ange­lo Sco­la of Italy and Marc Ouel­let of Cana­da.

“It real­ly isn’t up to SNAP to decide who should or should not par­tic­i­pate in the con­clave,” said Rosi­ca.

One Vat­i­can insid­er close to the church hier­ar­chy ques­tioned the wis­dom of a media black­out, sug­gest­ing that the church was only cre­at­ing a headache for itself.

...

Con­sid­er­ing that the fall­out over the sex abuse scan­dals is pre­sumed to be a fac­tor in the Pope’s res­ig­na­tion, this seems ill-advised:

Vat­i­can: Vic­tim group wrong to crit­i­cize car­di­nals
| March 13, 2013 | Updat­ed: March 13, 2013 11:29am

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A church sex abuse vic­tims group is act­ing out of “neg­a­tive prej­u­dices” when demand­ing some car­di­nals with­draw from the papal elec­tion, the Vat­i­can spokesman said Wednes­day.

The Rev. Fed­eri­co Lom­bar­di said at a news brief­ing that the crit­i­cisms raised by the Sur­vivors Net­work of those Abused by Priests are “well known” and car­di­nals already have respond­ed.

The Sur­vivors Net­work has said Car­di­nal Roger Maho­ny should with­draw from the con­clave because con­fi­den­tial church files released last month showed the retired Los Ange­les arch­bish­op was among church offi­cials who had shield­ed abu­sive priests and failed to pro­tect chil­dren.

Maho­ny has apol­o­gized repeat­ed­ly for how he respond­ed to abuse claims. His suc­ces­sor in Los Ange­les, Arch­bish­op Jose Gomez, stripped Maho­ny of his pub­lic duties. But the car­di­nal has said Vat­i­can offi­cials told him to par­tic­i­pate in the con­clave, which began Tues­day.

“We are con­vinced that there are opti­mal rea­sons to believe these car­di­nals should be held in esteem and should enter in the con­clave, and they have all the right to be present in the con­clave,” Lom­bar­di said at a news brief­ing on the sec­ond day of the con­clave. “We don’t believe they should be incon­ve­nienced or put under pres­sure by the con­sid­er­a­tions made by SNAP which are, by my read­ing, informed by very neg­a­tive prej­u­dices.”

...