© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis talks to Cardinal Angelo Sodano as they arrive to attend a meeting at the Vatican February 13, 2015. REUTERS/Tony Gentile
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a controversial Vatican power broker for more than a quarter of a century who is accused of covering up one of the Church’s most notorious sex abusers Catholic, passed away at the age of 94.
Sodano, who had been ill for a while and died on Friday night, was secretary of state under two popes – John Paul II and Benedict XVI – holding the number two position in the Vatican’s hierarchy for 16 years from 1990 to 2006.
It is widely believed that Sodano, along with John Paul’s secretary, then Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, ran the Church during the late Pope’s last years as his health declined due to Parkinson’s and diseases. other. John Paul passed away in 2005.
In a series of articles for the National Catholic Reporter in 2010, author Jason Berry, a leading expert on the Church’s sex abuse crisis, wrote how Sodano blocked the Vatican from investigating Father Marcial Maciel, the order’s founder. The Legion of Christ is disgraced.
After John Paul’s death, Pope Benedict stepped up his investigation of Maciel and removed him in 2006, when the Vatican admitted that allegations that had been set aside for decades were true.
The cult-style Legion of Christ, whose rule forbade criticizing the founder or questioning his motives, later admitted that Maciel, who died in 2008, lived a double life as a pedophile, promiscuous and drug addict.
Sodano has repeatedly denied allegations that he knew about Maciel’s double life and that he covered it up for him. Maciel, a conservative seen as a bulwark against liberalism in the Church, is known for giving generous financial gifts to the Vatican.
In 2010, four years after Pope Benedict replaced Sodano as secretary of state, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna accused Sodano of blocking a full investigation into former Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer.
Groer resigned as Archbishop of Vienna in 1995 following allegations that he had sexually abused young seminarians in the past. He died in 2003 and never admitted guilt or faced charges.
Sodano also denied those allegations.
In 2010, victims of clerical sexual abuse condemned Sodano for saying at a public Easter address that abuse was mostly “petty gossip”.
Ordained a priest in 1950, Sodano entered the diplomatic service a few years later. He served at the Vatican’s embassies in Ecuador, Uruguay, and Chile before being called back to the Vatican to assume high-level administrative roles, including the number two position.
Vatican insiders said that even after his retirement, Sodano, who continued to live in the Vatican, had significant influence over the careers of Vatican officials for the remainder of his pontificate. Benedict’s emperor. Benedict resigned in 2013.
