Louisiana Voice

Some readers may be aware that I am currently editing for publication a book about wrongful convictions in Louisiana. Appropriately titled 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana, the book examines 101 cases in which persons were convicted and sentenced to prison terms for crimes they did not commit. In many of the cases, the individuals spent decades behind bars, their lives literally ripped away from them before being exonerated.

Why were they finally exonerated after all that time? In most cases, an organization called the Innocence Project of New Orleans took up their causes and found exculpatory evidence that prosecutors and/or police had withheld from the defense at their trials – evidence beneficial to the accused, but never revealed.

Why would a prosecutor or a law enforcement officer go to such lengths to convict an innocent person while leaving the guilty perpetrator free to inflict more harm on society?

Simply put, some of those in positions of authority are just plain evil.

The same could be said of certain religious leaders, which brings up a second book I am in the process of writing. No title has been selected as yet, but I can say it is a work of historical fiction about child sex trafficking.

Historical fiction, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is a work that draws on actual events, even citing some of them in the context of telling a fictional story. Figuring prominently in this work are leaders of both Protestant and Catholic churches.

When a minister engages in sexual relations with a child, it’s not only illegal, but it’s sick. But in many of the cases involving Protestant ministers (when the activity is discovered) it is the underage girl, the victim, who must stand before the congregation and apologize for tempting the good reverend.

In the Catholic Church, the victim is most often a pubescent boy and before the national scandal broke wide open, beginning in 1984 in Lafayette, the Catholic hierarchy reacted by requiring the victim, the pre-teen boy, to “confess his sins” as an act of contrition in order to obtain absolution.

Since 1984, the church has been forced by a rash of lawsuits from Boston to Los Angeles and points between, including, of course, New Orleans, to face the ugly truth: Too many degenerate priests have too easy access to too many young boys.

The consequences have been steep: more than $5 billion – and counting – in damages paid out to victims That figure could double given recent lookback laws that have given victims more time to file claims through litigation.

That’s why I kinda raised my eyebrows in skepticism recently when I read story in the right-wing GATEWAY PUNDIT that said the Vatican is “teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.”

The thing that really sparked my disbelief was the reason cited for the so-called financial crisis.

“Donations from churches and individual believers have dwindled as traditionalists express frustration with the Vatican’s drift toward secular progressivism,” the article said, adding that donations have dropped because many Catholics were unhappy with the “progressive reforms” of Pope Francis.

First of all, no one knows within light years what the true financial condition of the Roman Catholic Church is because the Vatican’s ledger is a closely-held secret. The best-guess estimate is around $73 billion in assets, including churches, cathedrals, monasteries, schools, convents, museums, embassies, 177 million acres of land, including farms and forests, throughout the world, gold, works of art and stockholdings which alone are estimated at $1.6 billion in value.

The Vatican is a sovereign country with its own bank and they ain’t talking. For more on this subject, I suggest you read the outstanding Jason Berry book Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.

The New Orleans Archdiocese alone owns more than $1 billion in property, including real estate, jewelry and other holdings.

But my point here is that while donations may be down, and while the Vatican may well have had an operating deficit of $87 million in 2023, representing a $5.3 million increase from the 2022 deficit, progressive reforms had little to do with the drop in donations – or at least a lesser impact than reported.

Conversely, I would suggest the Catholic Church’s refusal to face the reality of sex abuse of children by its priests and the protection of those priests by bishops and archbishops was a bigger factor in the fiscal difficulties.

And just how were the offending priests protected? Simple. As soon as complaints started about a priest, he would be moved to another parish – where he could continue sexually abusing children – different children. At worst, the priest would be shipped off to some nice rehab center for a while until the furor died down and upon completion of said rehab, he would again be reassigned to a different parish.

Pull from parish, reassign, repeat.