ROME - According to the latest count by the Chilean national prosecutor’s office, some 221 priests and 8 bishops are being investigated up and down the country on charges of sexual abuse and cover-up, all due to allegations made from the year 2000 to date.

While I was researching America magazine for this unrelated piece on Brett Kavanaugh and the Jesuits, I ran across this little-noted news item in John Allen's Crux Now:

The news itself is dramatic, given that similar sex scandals have occurred in the U.S., Germany and Poland.

But what stands out here is what's buried: The bad priests who abused minors were social justice warriors, lefties waving the banner of human rights, in this case, against the Augusto Pinochet regime of the 1970s, calling conservatives bad guys, and ignoring the atrocities of the Cuban, Chilean and North Korean communists that led to the establishment of the military government, which by the way, eventually moved without violence to a democracy. Deep in its piece, Crux reported this:

One of these cases is that of Cristian Precht, who twice was found guilty by the Vatican of sexually abusing minors. The first time, following a decision made by Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati and contradicting his own judicial vicar who wanted a life sentence, Precht was suspended from ministry for five years and then readmitted in 2017.Earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Santiago, led by Ezzati, announced that Francis had decreed, “with no possibility of appeal,” the “removal from clerical state ex officio et pro bono Ecclesiae” of Precht. A hero for many within the Chilean Church for confronting the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Precht to this day remains a divisive figure, and despite the evidence against him, there are those in Chile who defend him and who accuse Francis of being part of a vendetta against a more “liberal” faction of the Church. Among these are Precht’s legal team, with his lawyer, Luciano Fouillioux, claiming that the canonical process against the former priest is a “criminal act against a historic member where he’s been denied the right to defend himself after the years that he spent defending other Chileans.” And that is the crux of the matter for many: Precht spent decades waving the flag of human rights, and, according to a Chilean source, many today struggle to reconcile the man who saved many from Pinochet with the “sexual predator” who abused three minors in a school run by the Marist Brothers in Santiago, and many more in other places- both minors and adults- according to the original allegations, which led to him being suspended in 2012.

Without fighting the 1970s all over again, it goes to show that leftwingery is an impressive mantle for scoundrels. Guys like Precht got all sorts of accolades from the left for years for their preening against Chile's military government as the ultimate in wicked (just like Castro said), painting it as bad (it was not all bad) and themselves as bigtime virtue-signallers. Yet all along, they were perverts targetting little boys. And Pope Francis initially defended them, saying their accusers were liars. (He has since apologized after an outcry.) But it raises the question of whether he defending them because they were lefties.

Is pedophilia o.k. if lefties who challenge military regimes are the ones doing it? It sure looked that way at least until pressure was brought on the Vatican.

As someone who has had Virtus training in the Catholic Church to prevent bad things happening to children, I do know that pedophiles are pretty well known for their slyness in fooling people. It's quite possible some of these priests were of this stripe. But in this particular case, what's disgusting is that the pervert priest, Precht, still has actual defenders who say his pedophilia is excused by his leftwing social justice warrioring, as the article notes.

Maybe it shows that when faith goes, leftwing social justice warrioring is an acceptable substitute, a last refuge of the scoundrel.

Because Pope Francis was calling the charges baseless at first, something he recanted and apologized for. Was the Pope fooled by Precht's social justice warrioring and the similar lefty activities of the accused, or worse still, protecting it? Maybe that's what needs to be looked at as the Catholic Church attempts to clean up after its scandals. There should be no 'indulgences' for perverts for social justice warrioring.