Baltimore Burns ……… In Hell!

Not all of Baltimore should burn in hell, just senior officials of the Baltimore archdiocese, who covered up the abuse of hundreds of children over more than 80 years.

I get that the Catholic Church, particularly in the western world, has trouble recruiting enough priests, but they need to be more selective in who they ordain as priests.

A four-year investigation of Baltimore’s Catholic archdiocese reveals the scope of 80 years of child sex abuse and torture and how church officials often covered it up and, in some cases, paved the way for further abuse.

Among the accounts: A deacon who admitted abusing more than 100 children. A priest who chained and whipped boys for his gratification. Another priest who, after receiving psychiatric treatment, went on to abuse 20 students at a Baltimore boys’ school.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released Wednesday its “Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.” Its nearly 500 pages tell how 156 clergy and other Church officials tormented more than 600 children and young adults, dating back to the 1940s. The Baltimore archdiocese covers Baltimore City and nine counties in Central and Western Maryland.

Spurred by the report’s publication, the General Assembly sent a bill Wednesday to Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s desk that would make it easier for survivors to sue the institutions that employed their abusers.

The report names at least 36 abusers who are not listed on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s online list of 152 priests and brothers credibly accused of abuse. Ten more abusers’ names were redacted. Other diocesan officials’ identities are redacted also, and the Catholic Church paid at least some of the legal costs for a group of people who sought to have their names shielded.

 So even in the midst of all of this, the Church is still covering up.

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Victims lobbied the attorney general’s office to start the investigation, particularly after the Pennsylvania attorney general produced a similar report in 2018. Then-Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, launched Maryland’s probe shortly thereafter. Investigators interviewed hundreds of survivors and pored over hundreds of thousands of church documents.

The abuse’s breadth and depravity is “astonishing,” the report’s authors wrote.

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Going beyond the horror of the individual cases, the report reveals the extent of the Catholic Church’s efforts to conceal the depravity within its ranks.

“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the authors wrote.

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The report called for the state legislature to amend Maryland’s civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse. Just 40 minutes after its release, the Senate passed the Child Victims Act, which would remove the statute of limitations on such lawsuits. Moore vowed to sign it.

The Maryland Catholic Conference, which represents all three dioceses operating in the state, opposed the bill at every turn and is expected to challenge it in court.

The tactics of the Maryland dioceses does not indicate to me any evidence of honest contrition, much less atonement.

It makes me nostalgic for the Borgia Popes.