Donie's daily news Ireland BLOG

Pope Francis determined to change the culture of the Catholic Church

 

Pope Francis has said he was determined to reform the “Vatican-centric” and “narcissistic” Catholic Church, as the Vatican bank published its accounts for the first time

Six months into his papacy, the South American pope is showing increasing determination to change the culture of secrecy, skullduggery and nepotism at the heart of the Holy See.

He attacked what he called the “courtier” culture in the tiny sovereign state, which he likened to leprosy.

In some of the most strongly-worded remarks of his papacy, he said: “Leaders of the Church have often been Narcissuses, gratified and sickeningly excited by their courtiers. The court (around the Pope) is the leprosy of the papacy.”

Francis also admitted that he briefly considered not accepting his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years when chosen in March.

“My head was completely empty and a great anxiety came over me. To make it go away and relax I closed my eyes and every thought went away, even that of not accepting, which the liturgical procedures permitted,” he said.

He made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with La Repubblica, which the Italian newspaper carried on its front page.

It coincided with the start of a three-day, closed-door meeting with a special commission of eight cardinals, whom the Argentinian Pope has appointed to help advise him on reforming the administration of the Vatican.

The Holy See’s “Vatican-centric vision neglects the world that surrounds it,” the 76-year-old pontiff said. “I do not share this vision and will do everything to change it,” he added.

One of the main targets of the Pope’s push for greater transparency and accountability is the Vatican bank, which for the first time in its history published its accounts on Tuesday.

The bank, founded in 1942 and officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, revealed that its earnings for 2012 were 86.6 million euros – more than four times higher than in 2011.

The massive increase was largely due to a sharp rise in the value of Italian government debt that the bank holds – a result of measures taken by the European Central Bank and the appointment in Nov 2011 of Mario Monti as technocrat prime minister of Italy.

A team of forensic accounting experts from Promontory Financial Group, a US-based regulatory compliance consulting firm, has been systematically screening the 19,000 accounts held by the bank in search of money laundering and other crimes.

With 7,000 accounts now checked, around 900 individuals and institutions have been told to close their accounts and move their money elsewhere after investigators ruled that they did not conform to new, more stringent rules on depositors.

They were not necessarily guilty of money laundering, fraud or other financial crimes, the Vatican bank’s spokesman said.

“They may have committed zero legal wrongdoing but for statutory reasons have been excluded,” Max Hohenberg told The Daily Telegraph.

“For instance, there might be an account held by the widow of a former employee – she would no longer be eligible to bank with us, but she has done nothing wrong. These people are being informed that the relationship is being terminated.”

As part of the review, accounts held at the bank by the Iranian, Iraqi and Indonesian embassies to the Vatican will also reportedly be shut down after investigators noted a series of suspiciously large cash withdrawals and deposits, raising fears of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The biggest transactions amounted to 500,000 euros, with one embassy giving the vague explanation that it was for “refurbishment.”

Mr Hohenberg would not confirm the closure of the accounts. “We make no secret of the fact that diplomats accredited to the Holy See can have an account at the bank, but we do not comment on individual clients,” he said.

HSE failed in child rape-claim case, says Emily Logan Ombudsman

  

OMBUDSMAN FOR CHILDREN SAYS HSE LABELLING OF MOTHER AS ‘DIFFICULT’ LAY BEHIND FAILURES

In a report published today, Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan said the HSE failed to allocate a social worker and did not arrange an early face-to-face meeting with the child, which contributed to the fact that no HSE interview ultimately took place.

The HSE failed to provide timely support and therapeutic services over several years to a child who made multiple allegations of rape, the Ombudsman for Children has found.

In a report published today, Emily Logan said the HSE failed to allocate a social worker and did not arrange an early face-to-face meeting with the child, which contributed to the fact that no HSE interview ultimately took place.

Such failure may amount to negligence, the Ombudsman stated.

The 11-year-old girl alleged multiple instances of severe child abuse between December 2006 and July 2007, including repeated instances of violent rape combined with death threats and assault with a knife.

Ms Logan said the HSE cited an unfilled vacancy for its non-allocation of a social worker, and did not prioritise the child because she was not living in close proximity to the abuser. When the girl requested she be seen by a woman examiner – rather than a male – the HSE took a further two months to find one.

When the HSE finally arranged to interview the child, she insisted on her mother attending – against health service protocols which dictate she should be interviewed alone.

The Ombudsman cited a lack of flexibility in this area, saying solutions could be found such as placing parent and child in separate rooms divided by glass.

In the event, the HSE “very much blamed the mother for this interview not happening”. The mother subsequently sought psychiatric intervention privately which “to this day” is the only form of therapeutic intervention the girl had received.

Ms Logan said that, although the HSE denied it, central to the mismanagement of the case was its labelling of the girl’s mother “difficult and challenging”.

“It’s my view that this was an impediment to the child being interviewed and having access to therapeutic support. It’s not acceptable to say this child’s parent is difficult, which means we can’t work with her… They allowed the dispute to get in the way of the service the child should have received.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions decided in June 2010 not to prosecute in the case.

Asked whether the absence of the HSE interview contributed to the decision, Ms Logan said she didn’t have the authority to comment on prosecutions. But “there are many cases where there has not been a prosecution; that does not mean the abuse did not take place”.

Eurozone unemployment rate in August making a slow recovery

 12% 

The eurozone unemployment rate was flat in August after easing in July for the first time in two years, showing the nascent economic recovery was starting to have a positive impact on the labour market.

The unemployment rate in the 17 countries using the euro was 12pc of the labour force for a second month in a row, just below the record 12.1pc in June and May, the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said on Tuesday.

The July rate was revised to 12.0 percent from the previously reported 12.1pc. Analysts polled by Reuters expected unemployment at 12.1pc.

But in absolute numbers, the number of people out of work still edged marginally lower to 19.178 million in August from 19.183 million in July.

The eurozone has started to emerge in the second quarter from its longest recession since its creation in 1999 and European policymakers had made the job creation their top priority for restoring sound growth.

Spain and Greece were the countries where unemployment was highest, above 25pc, and economists d not expected it to fall below 20pc in the near term.

Italy, in political turmoil threatening the survival of the shaky government led by Prime Minister Enrico Letta, saw its unemployment rate inch up to 12.2pc in August from 12.1pc in July.

Unemployment in Europe’s largest economy Germany, waiting for a new government to be formed after elections in September, stood 5.2pc, the second lowest in the eurozone after Austria which had with 4.9pc.

Scientists say that bowel cancer screening is extremely effective

   

Scientists have found ‘irrefutable’ evidence that screening for bowel cancer is an extremely effective health initiative.

According to Prof Philippe Autier of the International Prevention Research Institute in France, this type of screening is extremely effective at reducing mortality from the disease.

Bowel (colorectal) cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in Ireland. More than 2,200 people are diagnosed with the disease here every year. It is also the second biggest cancer killer here.

Bowel Screen is Ireland’s recently introduced bowel cancer screening programme. Initially it will offer home testing kits to men and women aged between 60 and 69, however over time, the programme will be expanded to include people aged between 55 and 74.

According to Prof Autier, he and his team ‘saw quite clearly that the greater proportions of men and women who were screened, the greater the reductions in mortality’.

“Reduced death rates from colorectal cancer were not noticeable in countries where screening was low, even though healthcare services in those countries were similar to those in countries where screening was more widespread,” he noted.

PROF. AUTIER INSISTED THAT ‘THE EVIDENCE COULD NOT BE CLEARER’.

“It is therefore very disappointing that national differences in the availability of colorectal cancer screening programmes are still so pronounced,” Prof Autier said.

He and his team believe there are a number of reasons why screening rates differ from country to country in Europe.

“First, many countries still do not have a national colorectal cancer screening programme. Second, the acceptability of screening methods is often low, sometimes due to cultural differences between countries. There is also the question of the availability of qualified personnel. In some countries, there are insufficient gastroenterologists available to perform endoscopy,” he pointed out.

He said that his team would like to investiagte the cost-effectiveness of colorectal cancer screening, as they believe it ‘has the potential to bring about economic gains associated with averted colorectal cancer cases and deaths’.

These gains, they insisted, would more than pay for the costs of screening.

“If two-thirds of eligible people in each country attend screening, we believe that we could see a considerable reduction in colorectal cancer mortality in a minimum of 10 years. National healthcare services need to put more effort into organising screening programmes and into informing people about the availability of these tests so that they can make a choice,” Prof Autier said.

He presented his findings on this topic to the 2013 European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam.

High rate of cyber-bullying (14% of Adolescents) in Ireland

  

One in seven adolescents have been the subject of cyber-bullying in the last three months and one in 11 admit to cyber-bullying others in the same time-frame, according to data presented at a major conference in Dublin today.

Dr Stephen Minton, TCD Lecturer in Psychology of Education, told the conference that levels of cyber-bullying and cyber-aggression appear similar in both boys and girls, particularly in young teenagers, and the behaviour tends to peak in adolescents around 13 years of age.

He told the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology (BSPAR) conference at Dublin Castle that
exclusion-type bullying is always more prevalent among females than males, and the physical forms of bullying are always more prevalent among males than females, but in terms of cyber-bullying, it is roughly even for most categories.

“Most of our data relates to 13-16 year olds. We can’t really say with great confidence whether kids grow out of it or not because we don’t have the hard numbers, but our experience of working with young people, working with teachers and with parents, would seem to be that this sort of thing seems to be a difficulty perhaps most associated with the early teenage years”, Dr Minton said.

He said it had been found that that conventional and non-cyber forms of bullying also peak at 13 years of age.

Dr Minton pointed out that certain social media sites had made substantial improvements in relation to cyber-bullying, but others continued to allow it and often gave the perpetrator relative anonymity.

He described the Government’s decision not to introduce legislation in this area earlier this year as ‘a mistake and a missed opportunity’.

He was addressing the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology (BSPAR) conference at Dublin Castle.

CHEMICAL TO MAKE TUPPERWARE FOUND ON MOON (Saturn’s)

 

PLASTIC FOOD BOXES BOLDLY GO WHERE NO PLASTIC FOOD BOXES HAVE GONE BEFORE (TITAN)

A NASA spacecraft sniffing the smoggy atmosphere of Titan has found traces of the chemical used to make plastic Tupperware boxes.

The robotic Cassini probe has detected propylene on Saturn’s moon – the first time this chemical has been found out in space. Titan is a thoroughly unpleasant world with a brownish atmosphere, liquid methane rain and freezing temperatures that can plummet to a frosty -180°C.

As if the place wasn’t nasty enough, space boffins now know that it is home to detectable quantities of propylene, which is a key ingredient in food containers as well as car bumpers.

NASA used Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) to scan the hazy atmosphere.

Measuring the heat radiation emitted as infrared light from the moon in a process that NASA described as being similar to “the way our hands feel the warmth of a fire”.

 This radar image, released by NASA in 2007, shows what scientists believe to be sea-size bodies of liquid, shown in blue, on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan.

The first chemical the scientists discovered using the CIRS was propylene, which was identified in small quantities at various altitudes throughout the lower levels of the soupy hydrocarbon fog found in the moon’s noxious skies.

“This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene,” said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a paper describing the findings.

“That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom – that’s polypropylene.”

Voyager 1 was the first probe to discover that Titan’s brown atmosphere was made up of hydrocarbons, which are the building-block chemicals in petrol and other fossil fuels. The moon also boasts huge lakes thought to be made of liquid methane and ethane, which would be the only bodies of standing liquid we’ve found on a moon or planet (other than Earth, of course).

The hydrocarbons in the moon’s atmosphere are formed when sunlight breaks down this methane, which also exists in the form of a gas on Titan. During a flyby in 1980, Voyager first detected propane, used to power camping stoves, and propyne, a gas that is sometimes used as a welding torch fuel.

However, fast-forwarding to today, NASA boffins wanted to use Cassini’s more sophisticated instruments to work out exactly which other molecules were present. After poring over the results, they were surprised to see propylene.

“This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene’s weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals,” said Michael Flasar, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan’s atmosphere.”

The space scientists are delighted with the discovery – as is the El Reg science desk if it means that one day astronauts travelling through space will be able to stop off on Titan to manufacture their very own plastic food containers and other stuff (if enough propylene can be found).

“I am always excited when scientists discover a molecule that has never been observed before in an atmosphere,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan’s atmosphere.”

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.