Pope Francis talks with Cardinal Angelo Sodano when they arrive to attend a consistory at the Vatican on February 13, 2015. REUTERS / Tony Gentile
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VATICAN, May 28 (Reuters) – Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a controversial Vatican government broker for more than a quarter of a century accused of covering up one of the Catholic Church’s most notorious sex offenders, has died at the age of 94.
Sodano, who had been ill for some time and died Friday night, was secretary of state to two popes – John Paul II and Benedict XVI – for two years in the Vatican hierarchy for 16 years between 1990 and 2006.
It is widely believed that Sodano, along with John Paul’s secretary, then Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, ruled the Church in the last years of the late pope’s life as his health deteriorated due to Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses. John Paul died in 2005.
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In a series of revelations in the National Catholic Reporter in 2010, author Jason Berry, a leading expert on the Church’s sexual violence crisis, wrote that Sodano blocked the Vatican from investigating Father Marcial Masiel, a disgraced founder of the Legion of Christ.
After the death of John Paul, Pope Benedict stepped up Masiel’s investigations and removed him in 2006, when the Vatican acknowledged that claims that he had been removed for decades were true.
The cult Legion of Christ, whose rules forbade criticism of its founder or questioning his motives, later admitted that Masiel, who died in 2008, lived a double life as a pedophile, womanizer and drug addict. .
Sodano has repeatedly denied allegations that he knew of Masiel’s double life and that he covered it up. Masiel, a conservative seen as a bulwark against liberalism in the Church, is known to have made generous financial gifts to the Vatican.
In 2010, four years after Pope Benedict replaced Sodano as secretary of state, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna accused Sodano of blocking a full-scale investigation into former Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Greer.
Groer retired as archbishop of Vienna in 1995 after allegations that he had mistreated young seminarians in the past. He died in 2003 without pleading guilty and did not face charges.
Sodano also denied the allegations.
In 2010, victims of sexual violence by clergy condemned Sodano for saying in a public Easter address that the violence was mostly “petty gossip.”
Ordained a priest in 1950, Sodano joined the diplomatic service a few years later. He served at the Vatican’s embassies in Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile before being called back to the Vatican for senior administrative roles, including place number two.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of sexual violence by the clergy in his native Chile and now a member of the Vatican’s commission for the prevention of sexual violence, wrote on Twitter that Sodano was “a man who has done so much damage to so many people and covered up years of abuse in Chile and around the world. “
Sodano was ambassador to the Vatican in Chile between 1977 and 1988.
Vatican insiders said that even after retiring, Sodano, who continued to live in the Vatican, had a significant influence in the careers of Vatican officials until the end of the pontificate of Benedict. Benedict resigned in 2013.
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Report by Philip Pulella; Edited by Ross Russell and Daniel Wallis
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