On the doorstep!

Just back from Italy after giving a lecture to a college at Suzzara, a small town near Mantua. 
The students were all sixteen to nineteen years old and of course were quite charming.
The teachers too were so welcoming and friendly, they said they were really happy that I had started this conversation with the students about clergy abuse and the cover ups of the vatican. Putting it firmly on their agendas. 
It seems strange to us in this country that there is anywhere that doesn't talk openly about this dreadful subject, but unfortunately  there are many places where it is never discussed, certainly never properly talked about, and where people would really prefer that it wasn't happening, or had ever happened.(Wouldn't we all!)
There is a distinct "head in the sand" attitude. 
But it IS real, it DOES still happen, and there are hundreds of thousands of clergy abuse victims worldwide, all of us getting older and many who will die before they see any real justice. (Isn't that what the vatican is waiting for?)
Italy of course is one of those places, one of the most beautiful countries in the World, and yet firmly in the grip of the power mad vatican, which has most of them in a stranglehold.
The economy is on it's knees, young people desperate for work, older people unable to retire because of the cash strapped pension schemes, and yet in Rome, right in the heart of that struggling economy, the vatican lives in obscene opulence, owning vast amounts of properties, highly corrupt, taking money  even from the poor, and flaunting their wealth in front of their poor yet devoted followers. There is even a TV channel devoted entirely to the pope! Drip drip drip feeding the PR message!
Have NO doubt when you see that smily faced pontiff waving with his theatrical displays, he is merely performing! he does.....
NOTHING!

My wonderful friends from the deaf and speech impaired Provolo institute in Verona, many of whom were  systematically and brutally abused by the priests and even the nuns, who were charged with their care, NEVER have any recognition from the vatican.
They have demonstrated, rallied, paraded, pleaded, appealed  to the government and even written to the pope...... NOTHING!!! 

I have travelled from ENGLAND TO be on many of their marches, as have my atheist friends from Oxford University!
YET those delightful students who live only about twenty miles from that institute knew NOTHING about them! I talk about them all over the world, and yet there on their very doorstep, they are never mentioned and they get  ......NOTHING!
It is, however my continuing mission to support them, empower them and tell the World about them, as well as of we other survivors.
It is even more sickening to me when two "victims" of the clergy, in their  delusion and sycophancy, pose for offensive and embarrassing PR pictures while survivors all over the World, including right under the pope's nose  are completely ignored.
Sickening that they accept money from the vatican, allowing the pope and his minions to imply that they are helping survivors! These people should know they are actually taking it from those who truly deserve recognition and they are colluding with those who continue to abuse them. 
BASTA!