Tone deaf and color blind? Catholic Church struggles to keep accused abusers out of religious art

BRUSSELS (AP) — Little brings more heavenly bliss to the faithful or otherworldly wonder to casual visitors than ethereal hymns cascading amid the columns of Catholic cathedrals. That is, unless the composer is a known molester or someone accused of sexual abuse.

A few days before the highlight of Pope Francis' visit to Belgium — a Mass at the biggest stadium in Brussels — the specially selected choir of 120 was rehearsing a brand-new closing hymn when it became known that the composer was a priest accused of molesting young women.

The hymn was hastily removed from the order of service and replaced with another composition but it was too late to reprint the official Magnificat booklet for the Mass because of the number of copies required. The name of the alleged abuser, who died two weeks ago, is right there at the bottom of page 52, next to a request for donations, with a bank account number and a QR code.

It was the latest controversy in the Belgian church's decades-long struggle to come to terms with an appalling history of sex abuse and cover-ups by its priests and clergy — a legacy Francis will confront in person when he meets with survivors of the abuse during his visit.

“I pointed it out to them,” said the Rev. Rik Deville, a retired priest who has been a torchbearer for survivors of church abuse for three decades. “What happened with the hymn is only a symptom of a much wider problem. They still cannot deal with the issue," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

For over two decades, Belgium has been facing a continual cascade of abuse reports that officially total several hundred known cases but which, advocates say, are only the tip of the iceberg: Many of the victims and perpetrators have died, or the alleged crimes have exceeded their statute of limitations.

Deville said victims in villages come face to face with such issues on a weekly basis. The Sunday Mass scandal only started to roll early this week when an abuse victim pointed out to a local bishop that he had warmly eulogized the recently deceased priest-composer who had, in fact, been an abuser.

As a result, the Bishop of Limburg, Patrick Hoogmartens, announced he wouldn’t take part in celebratory papal events. It set off the chain of events leading to the change in the Mass program.

“It is only now because it is an international event that something is done about it,” said Deville. “But such things happen on a weekly basis in parishes across the nation that victims are confronted like that. And then nothing is done about it.”

Church authorities said the hymns were chosen in coordination with the musicians who were unaware of the case, which only came to public attention after the recent death of the priest. Hundreds of churches across Belgium still have hymnbooks with his works.

Archbishop Luc Terlinden promised the church would look into it as soon as the Pope leaves.

“Every Sunday in every parish his songs are sung. So it is a wider problem. And I want to look into this as of Monday to see what we will do in the future with our policy on culprits, on facts out of respect for the victims,” Terlinden told VRT network.

Debates over what to do with art, be it music or paintings, when the artist has engaged in problematic or even criminal behavior, have confronted the church and society at large for centuries, long before “cancel culture” became a buzzword.

Few people argue that Caravaggio's religious masterpieces should be destroyed or taken down because of his criminal life: The man he killed is dead, as is he.

But in Los Angeles four years ago, the archdiocese banned the music of Catholic composer David Haas amid an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations Haas strenuously denied.

And more recently, the mosaics of one of the Catholic Church’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the Rev. Marko Rupnik, have come under scrutiny.

Rupnik's Jesuit religious order expelled him in 2023 after more than two dozen women accused him of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuses, some while he was creating the artwork. Francis reopened a church investigation amid suspicions that Rupnik had escaped punishment in Francis' Jesuit-friendly Vatican.

Rupnik hasn't responded publicly to the allegations, but his art studio has defended him and denounced what it has called a media “lynching.”

The issue about what to do with his artwork is not minor, since Rupnik's mosaics decorate the facades and altars of some of the most-visited basilicas and churches around the world, including at Lourdes, France; in Fatima, Portugal and even in the Vatican's apostolic palace.

So far, the bishop of Lourdes decided to keep the Rupnik mosaics — for now — because there was no consensus within a committee of experts he formed about what to do with them. The Knights of Columbus religious fraternity decided this summer to cover the mosaics at its shrine in Washington, and chapel in Connecticut.

But earlier this year, the head of the Vatican’s communications department created an uproar when he defended the continued use of images of Rupnik’s mosaics on the Vatican’s own news portal, Vatican News, even as a canonical investigation is underway at the Vatican's sex crimes office.

He argued, as have others, that one must separate the art from the artist.

That argument did not sit well with the pope’s top adviser on child protection and fighting clergy abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He penned a letter to the heads of all Vatican offices in June urging them to refrain from displaying Rupnik’s artwork as a gesture to abuse victims.

“Pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense,” he wrote in June. “We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Francis meets the Catholic Community in the Luxembourg's Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Luxembourg, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis meets the Catholic Community in the Luxembourg's Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Luxembourg, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis meets the Catholic Community in the Luxembourg's Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Luxembourg, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

FILE - A mosaic by ex-Jesuit artist Marko Rupnik is seen on the main facade of the Church of Our Lady of the Canadian Martyrs, June 28, 2024, in Rome. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

Pope Francis, flanked by security, tours Place de Metz in Luxembourg on the first day of Francis's four-day visit to Luxembourg and Belgium, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Pope Francis and Archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, right leave in a popemobile the Cercle-Cite convention center in Luxembourg after a meeting with the national authorities and the civil society on the first day of Francis's four-day visit to Luxembourg and Belgium, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Havana)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher Thursday as financial markets around the world rally again.

The S&P 500 was up 0.2% in afternoon trading and flirting with the possibility of setting an all-time high for the third time this week and the 42nd time this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 215 points, or 0.5%, as of 1:14 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was edging up 0.2%.

Micron Technology led the way with a jump of 14% after the maker of computer memory and storage delivered stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It pointed to sales related to artificial-intelligence technology, where a boom has helped drive some stocks to astounding heights.

Jabil climbed 10.6% after the electronics manufacturer likewise reported stronger profit and revenue than expected. It also announced a plan to buy back up to $1 billion of its stock to plow cash to its shareholders.

But drops for Exxon Mobil and other oil-and-gas companies were keeping the market's gains in check. Oil prices tumbled after The Financial Times reported through sources that Saudi Arabia is preparing to abandon its unofficial price target of $100 a barrel for crude as it prepares to increase output.

The price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude fell 2.8%, while the international standard of Brent crude fell 2.4%. That dragged Exxon Mobil’s stock down 1.4%, and it was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500. ConocoPhillips sank 2.5%.

A big winner of the AI frenzy, Super Micro Computer, was meanwhile giving back some of its huge gains after more than tripling last year. Its stock tumbled 13.9% following a report from The Wall Street Journal saying the U.S. Department of Justice is probing the seller of servers and storage systems. The company declined to comment.

A prominent investor, Hindenburg Research, published a report in August that accused the company of accounting red flags and other issues, which Supermicro CEO Charles Liang later said contained false or inaccurate statements.

In stock markets overseas, indexes were more jubilant on hopes for more moves by China to prop up the world’s second-largest economy. The country’s powerful Politburo on Thursday called for intensified efforts as China tries to meet its goals for economic growth, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

That follows a raft of announcements earlier in the week by the country’s central bank that had also sent global markets jumping. China’s economic growth has been flagging, with particular troubles in its real-estate industry, and Chinese officials appear to be making a more coordinated effort to boost it following earlier piecemeal attempts.

In the United States, meanwhile, more encouraging news came after a round of reports on Thursday suggested the world’s largest economy may be doing better than expected.

Fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in the latest signal that layoffs remain relatively low across the economy. A separate report said the overall U.S. economy grew at a 3% annual rate during the spring, as previously estimated. That’s a solid rate.

The hope on Wall Street is for a form of financial nirvana where the U.S. economy's growth can hold steady and keep profits for companies humming while the Federal Reserve continues to lower interest rates.

The Fed last week made a drastic turn in how it sets interest rates. It’s now cutting them to make things easier for the U.S. economy after keeping rates high for years in hopes of extinguishing high inflation. Lower rates not only make it less expensive to borrow money to buy a house, a car or things on credit cards, they can also give a boost to prices for all kinds of investments.

The fear is that the job market could weaken further as the cumulative effects of all the Fed's past hikes to interest rates show themselves. The Fed kept its main interest rate at a two-decade high for more than a year in hopes of slowing the U.S. economy enough to stifle inflation. U.S. employers have already begun to slow their hiring.

When they cut their main interest rate by an unusually large half of a percentage point last week, Fed officials also suggested they may cut the federal funds rate by another half of a percentage point this year.

Many traders are betting on that big of a cut at the Fed's next meeting alone in November, with another possible cut in December. If economic reports continue to come in stronger than expected, the Fed may not end up cutting as much as investors expect.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 3.79% from late Wednesday. The two-year yield, which more closely follows expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with short-term interest rates, rose to 3.61% from 3.56%.

In stock markets abroad, jumps of 4.2% in Hong Kong and 3.6% in Shanghai led the way. Indexes also climbed 2.8% in Japan, 2.3% in France and 1.7% in Germany.

South Korean stocks jumped 2.9%, led by semiconductor maker SK Hynix, which launched production of a new memory chip for artificial intelligence.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange, at rear, is shown on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

The New York Stock Exchange is shown on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A currency trader watches monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

People ride bicycles in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A person looks at an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)