Public relations maneuver: With his own history of secrecy and cover-up, Bergoglio Renames Vatican Secret Archives

by William Mahoney, Ph.D.  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  October 29, 2019                   

Former seminary professor: 'Just another PR move'

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - With his own history of secrecy and cover-up, Pope Francis is renaming the Vatican Secret Archives to sound more inviting.

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Secrecy and Cover-Up

Church Militant spoke with a priest and former seminary professor who preferred to remain anonymous.

"Although Pope Francis renamed the Vatican Secret Archives, it would be foolish for the faithful to imagine the files kept in these archives will be readily available to the public, any more than the actual conversations of participants in the recent Amazonian Synod were made public," he said.

Father then talked about this renaming as a public relations maneuver, especially in light of the pope's own history of silence and secrecy: 

Francis' renaming of the archives with a less negative name is just that, nothing more. Same flavor, different name. New and improved? Hardly! The same flavored vanilla ice cream, but with a less banal name. It's now Superduper Vanilla!  It’s highly improbable that Pope Francis, the pope who has remained silent on Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò's open letter for more than a year, will readily divulge anything of importance in internal letters, emails and phone calls. This is just another PR move by a pontiff sorely in need of some good PR.   

In an interview with The Washington Post published June 10, Abp. Viganò revealed that Pope Francis did not act on his knowledge of the Vatican's young seminarians being sexually abused — indicative of a cover-up history extending back to Francis' time as a bishop in Argentina.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) was archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998-2013 and president of the Argentine bishops' conference from 2005-2011. 

When Church officials in Europe and the United States began addressing the the clergy sex abuse crisis, Bergoglio stayed silent about the crisis in Argentina, never releasing lists of accused priests, apologies to victims or policies for handling abuse during his tenure.

One of the more gruesome clergy sex abuse cover-ups that the pope has failed to address involved the molestation and rape of deaf and mute children at different locations of the Provolo Institute in Argentina (La Plata and Mendoza) and Italy (Verona).

Regarding this case, Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said: "The Church failed them abysmally. The pope ignored them, the police responded. It's a clear example of the tragedy that keeps playing out."

One of those pedophile priests, Fr. Eliseo Pirmati, was seen freely wandering the streets of Verona, Italy, in mid-June.

To date, the pope has done nothing about Pirmati and countless other clergy sex abusers.