In the late 1990s, a local newspaper published a letter of mine regarding the crisis of the Catholic Church in Austria after the exposure of the sexual abuse scandal involving Mgr Hans Hermann Groer, the former Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna.

In my letter, I outlined some comparisons between Emperor Franz Josef’s Austria and Pope John Paul’s Vatican. This letter was published 10 years later in the Times of Malta (May 13, 2010). Here are a few excerpts:

“Emperor Franz Josef’s Austria was characterised by a culture of facades and a government in a state of denial... John Paul’s Vatican is a bureaucracy of facades and his Church is in a state of denial... John Paul has swept under the carpet grave problems and issues which he is reluctant to face or unable to solve... After Franz Josef came the finis Austriae; after Pope John Paul, le dèluge.”

And what a deluge of scandals it has been since John Paul’s death. These included the exposure of intrigues, “careerism” and “spiritual Alzheimer’s” at the Vatican, culminating in the shocking resignation of Pope Benedict; the exposure of the sexual abuse of boys by Catholic priests; cover-ups by bishops at Boston and in Chile; sexual advances on seminarians by older priests; the seduction of women by priests at the confessional; the sexual abuse of nuns by bishops and priests; and the recent bombshell from Down Under: “Disgraced Cardinal Pell behind bars for child sex crimes” (above).