Francis is facing down opposition from traditionalists and Vatican bureaucrats

THE Pacific island of Guam is more than 12,000km from Vatican City. Yet it was in this far-flung American territory that last month the two most contentious issues facing Pope Francis'the scandal of clerical sex abuse and a rebellion by traditionalists'intertwined. Cardinal Raymond Burke spent two days on Guam presiding at the church trial of Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who is accused of molesting altar boys. The archbishop is the highest-ranking Catholic cleric to be tried on sex-abuse charges. The proceedings could last years. Cardinal Burke, an arch-conservative, is the pope's most outspoken critic.The defiance of papal authority by a minority of senior Catholic clergy has become more brazen in recent months than at any time since the 1970s, when the late Archbishop Marcel Franois Lefebvre refused to disband his arch-traditionalist Society of St Pius X. Last month Vatican officials received in their e-mail what appeared to be a digital version of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. On opening it they found a perfect facsimile ridiculing the man Catholics are told is God's representative on Earth. The...Continue reading
Click here to read full news..