Zanchetta Update...

 Gustavo Zanchetta — remember him?

Zanchetta was an associate of Francis before he was elected Pope in 2013: he was executive undersecretary of the Argentine episcopal conference which was headed by none other than Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) himself.

Now he is where he really belongs: behind bars!  

Zanchetta was so close to the Pope that he was one of the very first Argentines whom Francis promoted to bishop, on his own initiative, bypassing all canonical procedure, on July 23, 2013, at the head of the diocese of Orán, in the north of the country.

On July 29, 2017, Zanchetta suddenly disappeared, without any farewell Mass and without saying goodbye to his priests and faithful. He only made it known, from an unspecified location, that he had health problems that needed urgent care elsewhere and that he had just returned to Rome, where he had placed his mandate back in the hands of Pope Francis. Who very promptly, on August 1, accepted his resignation.

Zanchetta was for a brief time the guest of the bishop of the diocese of Corrientes, 500 miles to the south, one Andrés Stanovnik, the same bishop who had ordained him. He then reappeared in Spain, in Madrid, apparently in good health.

Curiously, the capital of Spain is the destination where Pope Francis had, two years before in 2015, sent the Chilean bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid - before promoting him as bishop of Osorno against the opinion of the higher-ups of the Chilean Church and of the nunciature - for a month of spiritual exercises preached by the famous Spanish Jesuit Germán Arana, one of the pope’s most influential advisors in many episcopal appointments, and in this case a tenacious defender of the innocence of Baros, who had already been hit with very weighty accusations of sexual abuse.

The fact is that Zanchetta’s trip to Madrid was also the prelude to his promotion by the Pope, who on December 19, 2017 called him to the Vatican to do nothing less than manage the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, APSA, in a new and tailor-made role of “assessor.”

When news reports of the investigation into Bishop Zanchetta’s conduct emerged in early January 2019, the Press Office of the Holy See issued a statement saying Zanchetta had resigned his See because he could not govern the clergy, and that the accusations of sexual misconduct were not lodged until the Fall of 2018. “At the time of his resignation [in 2017],” Press Office Director Alessandro Gisotti said in the statement, “there had been accusations of authoritarianism against [Zanchetta], but there had been no accusation of sexual abuse against him.”

This turned out to be a lie.

Later, it emerged that Orán’s former Vicar General, Fr Juan José Manzano, sent evidence of Bishop Zanchetta’s behaviour to the Vatican in 2015 and 2017.

Fr Manzano told the Associated Press, “In 2015, we just sent a ‘digital support’ with selfie photos of the previous bishop [Zanchetta] in obscene or out of place behaviour that seemed inappropriate and dangerous.” Fr Manzano explained, “It was an alarm that we made to the Holy See via some friendly bishops.”

“The nunciature didn’t intervene directly,” Fr Manzano told the AP, but the Holy Father summoned Zanchetta and he justified himself saying that his cellphone had been hacked, and that there were people who were out to damage the image of the Pope.”

They're out to get him, see!!

Argentina’s El Tribuno de Salta newspaper later published documents showing the first complaint — in 2015 — reported that Zanchetta had naked images of himself masturbating, and gay porn involving young people engaged in homosexual sexual activity on his cell phone. Sounds like perfect Bishop material in the pontificate of the Pope of Confusion.

The documents published by El Tribuno also contain statements from the rector of Oran’s seminary, to the effect that he was so concerned over Bishop Zanchetta’s behaviour that he informed the nunciature in 2016 that his first-year students — who had classes in the bishop’s residence — required “urgent measures” for their protection.

That 2016 complaint lists “strange behaviours” including, “watching [seminarians] at night, walking through their rooms late at night with a flashlight, or asking for massages, or going into their rooms and sitting on their beds, or encouraging them to drink alcoholic beverages, or [showing] certain preferences for some more handsome (Sp. Agraciados, literally “graceful”) [seminarians].”

Zanchetta has now been convicted for the sexual abuse of seminarians sending shock waves through the Argentine Catholic Church, and the Vatican.

Bishop Zanchetta was sentenced to four years and six months in prison on Friday after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two former adult seminarians. If he serves his full prison term, the bishop will have spent longer in jail than he did as Bishop of Oran - reports The Pillar.

The report continues:

The conviction also raises questions about the credibility of Pope Francis, a close friend of Zanchetta, on handling abuse allegations. It could well cast a shadow over the pope’s signature reform effort, Vos estis lux mundi, promulgated in the wake of the Theodore McCarrick scandal.

Bishop Zanchetta was sentenced to four years and six months in prison on Friday after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two former adult seminarians. If he serves his full prison term, the bishop will have spent longer in jail than he did as Bishop of Oran.

While the court focused on his brief tenure leading the diocese, scrutiny is now likely to fall on the years Zanchetta spent in Rome, under the patronage of Pope Francis, who promoted Zanchetta to bishop in one of his first acts as pope, and who created a job for Zanchetta in the Vatican after the bishop resigned from his diocese under a cloud of suspicion.
Francis did order a preliminary investigation into Zanchetta, and announced that there would be a canonical trial at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2019, the results of neither process have been made public, or shared with the Argentine authorities, despite papal policies explicitly aimed at transparency in such cases. In fact, it’s not even clear what canonical charges Zanchetta is actually facing, or has faced.

Francis has a decidedly mixed record on addressing serious clerical sexual misconduct, abuse, and cover-up.

Continue reading at The Pillar

The good people over at Complicit Clergy have drawn up this useful timeline:

The Zanchetta Timeline

• July 2013: Francis makes his friend Zanchetta, 49, Orán Bishop, against the advice of his councillors. Zanchetta presented himself in Orán as a “friend of Francis.”
• December 2014: Zanchetta refuses to submit to an alcohol and drug control by police while driving in Salta.
• September 2015: Zanchetta’s secretary finds homosex porn on Zanchetta’s phone. Francis summons Zanchetta.
• April 2016: Five priests write to the Nuncio accusing Zanchetta for homosexual abuses.
• July 2017: Zanchetta leaves Orán for “health problems.”
• August 2017: Francis asks Zanchetta to resign.
• December 2017: Francis employs Zanchetta at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) although he is also accused of embezzling. He lives in Santa Marta with Francis.
• December 2018-January 2019: Argentinean media write that in 2014-2015, Zanchetta abused between 9-10 Orán seminarians.
• January 2019: Zanchetta is suspended from his Vatican position. The CDF begins a canonical process about which nothing is known.
• November 2019: Failing to contact Zanchetta, prosecutors issue an international arrest warrant. He returns to Argentina.
• June 2020: Francis reinstates Zanchetta at APSA while dismissing bishops for being Catholic.
• 2021: Zanchetta is suspended at APSA after criminal prosecution is decided against him.
• July 2021: Zanchetta’s position at APSA ends. He returns to Argentina.
• March 2022: Zanchetta convicted of sexual abuse.