Steeped in corruption

Early on Friday morning, Roberto Formigoni, the former great white hope of Italian Catholics, arrived at the prison in Bollate to begin serving five years and more of a prison sentence. He took to prison with him, Italian media reported, two sackfuls of b

His dogged fight against charges of corruption had failed at all levels of the court, up to and including the Court of Appeal. The few media outlets in Malta who bothered to report this missed out on the charges, as did those few voices on the Left who remembered Formigni’s help to PN administrations. Formigoni was found guilty of having, as Governor of Lombardy, steered millions to the San Raffaele institution, and in return he was given villas, cars, and money.

I remember when we were invited to meet Minister John Dalli (just a few days before he stopped being Minister of Health) at Palazzo Ferreria and waiting for an audience with the minister, we found Fr Charles Vella. Somewhat facetiously, I told him about that day’s news, how San Raffaele, in free-fall, had run out of money preluding accusations of impropriety. Fr Charles’s response was vituperative: “You are so negative.”

Of course, Fr Charles was one conduit from Milan and its new money empires which persuaded Louis Galea and Eddie Fenech Adami to choose the San Raffaele template for what was to be the new hospital for Malta. We all know what came later – huge delays, cost overruns, changes in political direction. Ultimately, the San Raffaele template was set aside.

In the past week, this news has been eclipsed by the terrible upheaval taking place in the Vatican where Pope Francis has convened representatives of the bishops’ conferences to discuss paedophilia and associated crimes among the clergy.

To clarify the context, I could find nothing better than a long reportage by Jason Berry on the National Catholic Register ( https://www.ncronline.org/news/ accountability/francis-must-fixcover-culture-john-paul-ii-enabled?fbclid=IwAR0DWsyqHyXI aVXvCbT_IfiYd5gP8z4S3n7VCX Qo-_fAsdHRBum5-ya88Qo). It is a reportage in three parts which chronicles how this problem was allowed to become so big because of inaction or worse by key figures, especially Pope John Paul II, now newly canonized.

The articles are too long to summarize but I will select a few cases.

In 1995, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Austria, whom the Pope had personally selected as a bishop (impressed by his piety at a Marian shrine), resigned as archbishop of Vienna after he accused of making advances to former Benedictine seminarians. Groër went unpunished.

In 1998, eight former Legionaries of Christ (including a Florida diocesan priest) filed abuse charges from their years as teenage seminarians against the founder, Fr Marcial Maciel