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I am not Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, in fact I don’t have any religious affiliation what so ever, just a free thinker that believes what is happening in the Catholic Church at the moment is shameful and something needs to be done.

Pope Benedict the Sixteenth has turned a blind eye, stalled or swept under the rug numerous child abuse cases that plagued the Church while he was a Cardinal. One case revolved around then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who resisted pleas to defrock a Oakland, California priest with a record of sexually molesting children. The Reverend in question, was Rev. Stephen Kiesle who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978. After years of back and forth between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican Benedict wrote a letter in November of 1985 stating that the arguments for removing Kiesle were of ‘grave significance’ but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. It seems that the Pope was just stalling in this case but nevertheless he should have done something, eventually Kiesle was finally defrocked in 1987 and in 2002, he was arrested on 13 counts of molestation from the ’70s. In 2004, he pleaded no contest to molesting a girl in 1995.

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Cases like this are giving people reasons calling for the Pope to resign, go to jail, or tried in court for crimes against humanity. I certainly understand their argument, after all, the pope played a known and significant role in concealing or at least stalling child molestation cases under his eye and nothing was done. Where is the accountability? If this were a pre-school, a day care center or camp people would be arrested, someone would be in jail. Teachers are arrested everyday for sexual and inappropriate behavior against students. The pope is just another citizen of the world and shouldn’t be immune to prosecution, he’s just a man. We trust clergy men with protecting, helping, teaching and guiding those who need it and for some of them to take advantage are just shameful. So I certainly understand why people are calling for the Pope’s resignation. The fact is pope’s rarely resign.

My beef with the pope is his backward thinking when it comes to social issues that affect the lives of people around the world. For example, in March of 2009 the pope proclaimed that condoms are not the answer to Africa’s fight against HIV. A continent that has been stricken with HIV/AIDS for as long as I can remember should be able take preventive steps in curbing and declining the cases of HIV/AIDS infection. To me, it just points out that the pope’s opposition to this initiative is a direct result of his religious dogma being more important than the lives of sick people. There are over 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS.  In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.

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The latest news coming out of the Vatican is that “there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia“, in other words, gays are responsible for the numerous cases of sexual abuse of children. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone who also serves as the Vatican’s Secretary of State said this to a crowd in Chile. It seems that the Vatican PR machine is in full spin mode.

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