The official papal biographer has said that Cardinal Schönborn’s latest verbal attack on Cardinal Sodano is without precedent and shows how much tensions exist within the Church hierarchy about the sexual abuse scandals. On the website called Catholic Culture, one can read about the row between the Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, once the Vatican secretary of state and now dean of the College of Cardinals.
Schönborn alleges that it was not the present pope, Benedict XVI, who blocked investigations into the case of Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, but the then-secretary of state Sodano.
He said to a small group of journalists that it had been Benedict (then Ratzinger) who pushed for a probe into abuse allegations concerning Groër, and that Sodano's interference had led to the cover-up.
Andrea Tornielli, the papal biographer, has now stated that Schönborn’s remarks, first reported by the Catholic news agency Kathpress, were “without precedent,” and that they are a clear sign of the “nervous tensions” in the Church hierarchy.
In an Associated Press report, Schönborn is quoted as having also said, "The days of cover up are over," perhaps the strongest and clearest words concerning the many scandals that rock the church by a highly placed cleric.
While it looks, at first, simply as if the Austrian cardinal is coming to the defense of the present pope, some digging shows that it may also be a case of someone smartly positioning himself for becoming the future pope, the man to bring a fresh wind to the Roman Catholic Church, the man to break with the code of silence.
It can be no coincidence that Schoenborn has made such interesting statements as, "A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone simply indulges in promiscuity," when talking about homosexuality, while he's also admitted that the church is in need of a new and different perspective on divorce and remarriage.
On the cardinal's own website, one can read the following most interesting sentence:
Cardinal Schönborn's on-going contributions in intellectual, spiritual, and political arenas will aid the Church in accomplishing her mission to "make all things new" in Christ (Rev. 21:5).SIC: DJCom