Dollars and the old clerical flaws: does Leo XIV have questions to answer?

Now the questions start. Millions enjoyed the choice of Cardinal Robert Prevost to be the new Pope – how could they not, given the ghastliness of the dead Pope Francis? – but now journalists are scratching more at the new Pope’s history and asking questions.

It is emotionally unpleasant. People just want to like the new and charming Pope. But the questions hint that maybe Leo XIV has the same flaws, the same scandalous flaws, as so many of the recent Church leaders. Number one flaw, did the new Pope cover up evidence of child abuse by clergy?

On May 21 the MailOnline published a story in which a defrocked priest accused the new Pope of turning a blind eye to the Church’s sexual abuse scandal in Chicago when he served as the head of the Midwest Province of the Church’s Augustinian order.

The significance of this is that the story is not from some fringe pack of reporters. The MailOnline is the biggest English-language website in the world. It is reported to have 21 million visitors a month. Journalist executives insist on getting a news story right. The news bosses are vicious to reporters when they edit a story, pushing and questioning until they are sure the reporter has all the facts correct.

How do I know this? I’ve written for the MailOnline. I know the routine. An unpleasant form of news editing, but an effective one. (I am reminded of a line stencilled on the editor’s wall in the Bill Murray film about a news bureau, The French Dispatch: “No crying”.)

Now the MailOnline has come out with this story, which their reporter followed after the defrocked priest, James M. Ray, gave an interview to a Chicago newspaper.

When this allegedly bent priest, on a list of Archdiocesan accused sexual offenders, needed a place to live where he could be closely monitored, the only offer came from the Augustinians, of which Prevost was the province’s head. Ray claimed it was Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, who gave him the final approval to move into the friary. Problem with the friary was that it was near a Catholic primary school, even though Ray had a history of abusing children.

The story goes on to denials and related stories, but it raises questions about the new Pope’s judgement, and on who actually put the pervert priest into lodgings near a school.

Other questions arise, too, in other places on just how this American Cardinal managed to be chosen Pope. For this question, look to a May 18 online interview with Steve Bannon.

Bannon is a broadcaster, former staffer at the White House in President Trump’s first term, and blindingly energetic backer of patriotic nationalism and Christianity. (How do I know this? I used to write for Bannon, too. I get around.)

Bannon was talking to Sean Spicer, who was White House press secretary in Trump’s first term. Bannon said that ten days before the Conclave, he was on the Piers Morgan Uncensored show (3.65 million subscribers on YouTube) and forecast that Prevost would be chosen as Pope.

How could he guess that? Bannon said that the finances of the Vatican were so dire – funding fell by 50 per cent under Pope Francis, with even the Vatican pension in a $2bn hole – that, “They need American money.”

“This thing was baked by the Curia. Rigged,” he said. Even the Cardinals said, “Hey, we don’t even know the guy.”

Bannon is right on the reaction to Leo XIV. Already American Catholics who may have been put off by the hard-left outlook of Pope Francis are getting misty-eyed over a Pope some call “Chicago Bob”. Even though Chicago Bob has spent most of his life in Peru, where he is a citizen.

But to other strange and wicked things. When Prevost was named as Pope, I asked Henry Sire, a veteran correspondent who has written for us from Rome, to dig into the new Pope’s background and tell Brussels Signal what he found.

We were so disturbed by the allegations that we have hesitated until now to publish them. But here some of the accusations. Allegations, yes, but they are questions being raised about the Pope’s background.

Sire told us: “I am far from suggesting that, in character, Pope Leo bears any resemblance to his predecessor, but he comes to the papacy under the shadow of a serious scandal: not a an obscure rumour propagated by one or two overheated journalists, but a scandal that has been gathering pace in Peru over the last two years.

“The substance of the accusations against the then Cardinal Prevost was set out in an article by Riccardo Cascioli published in La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on 16 September 2024. While these are mere accusations, whose veracity I am not assuming, they describe a complex picture of clerical cover-up which does not look as if it could have been invented from nothing.”

Sire goes on with details of allegations on the cover-up of abuse of children in Peru, though these allegations are not directed at Prevost.

What is the truth in all this? The chance is that the popularity of the new Pope will stop journalists from digging. That would be wrong. Keep digging. No crying.