Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby divideandconquer » Sun Mar 19, 2017 12:31 pm

slomo » Fri Mar 17, 2017 6:42 pm wrote:
divideandconquer » 17 Mar 2017 04:48 wrote:This link posts some of the artist that was selected to pain the mural's work (TRIGGERING)


So what I am seeing now is a conflation of homosexuality with "demonic". That seems to be the perspective of author Maureen Mullarkey. Admittedly, Cinalli's work reveals an obsession with, shall we say, the lower chakras, exactly the kind of thing you don't want in a space that is supposed to be spiritually uplifting. But my reading of her subtext isn't that she exclusively objects to the profane materiality of the artist's work, rather she objects to the artist's homosexuality (and, via guilt-by-association, Archbishop Paglia's potential homosexuality). Again, it's easy to find evidence within the gay community of the kind of hedonism that could be characterized as demonic, but there now seems to be a desire to conflate homosexuality in general with evil.

Reflecting back over the last 4 months, I see that in Pizzagate as well. Sure, some of the players are shady AF, and there are hints of real-world abuses, but the lasting memetic content seems to be that gay = pedophile. While it's true that some PG "researchers" are in fact primarily or exclusively concerned about elites' abuses of children, a great many of them seem rather to be morbidly focused on the scandalous details of abuse, especially as they may pertain to those fag pedifiles. Certainly, most of them seem to be ignoring the potential culpability of current members of our administration, making PG a seemingly partisan exercise after all.

So now the whole national vibe feels like a coup by Opus Dei.


I think it's all a part of the "terror dialectics" that they use to divide and conquer. At the same time that the ruling class/globalists/powers that be seem to be promoting gay or LGBT rights and acceptance at every turn, they are simultaneously throwing these people under the proverbial bus. The homosexuality-is-evil subtext is blatant to anyone who dares to look beyond the outward appearance of this so-called push for equality.

Another wedge vehicle being driven home to divide us are recent laws cropping up across the nation that appear to be anti-family. Apparently thought police at both the national and state levels of government are pushing a militant LGBT agenda to absurd, divisive heights, in effect driving a wedge between both gay and straight populations. The public education agenda is derisively teaching openly gay lifestyle choices in schools to children from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. There are laws in California that allow a student 12 or older to be taken off campus without parental permission to reeducation centers where they are “reeducated,” instilled with politically correct brainwashing of proper LGBT orientation and attitude.

Sounds very much like Hillary’s “fun camps” to reeducate adults who aren’t quite lapping up her official politically correct adult programming agenda. It’s one thing to uphold antidiscrimination laws protecting Americans of all persuasions and lifestyles which are obviously important, but it’s another to aggressively indoctrinate and brainwash youth [or adults] about individual sexual preference and alternative lifestyle choices especially at such young impressionable ages. This appears to be yet another nationalized ploy to dictate another divisive wedge between people rather than inclusively bring them together. It also is a longtime subversively globalist agenda to weaken the family bond and family structure


In other words, in my humble opinion, I think they are setting up the LGBT population to be one of their scapegoats. As more and more people struggle to survive; lose their quality of life; lose their children to a demoralized, dehumanized and debased world, they will look for someone to blame.

"Look what happened to our world when the gays came out of the closet, got their equal rights!"

I mean, is it any coincidence that the emergence of pedophilia scandals--from the Catholic Church to the boy-scouts to Jerry Sandusky to Pizzagate--and gay rights/mainstreaming of LGBT population occurred right around the same time? And that the exposed pedophilia involved mostly men and boys?

They need us to be at each others throats; they need scapegoat populations, so we don't see who our real enemy is.

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect."


How the New World Order “Globalists” Are Dividing Americans
'I see clearly that man in this world deceives himself by admiring and esteeming things which are not, and neither sees nor esteems the things which are.' — St. Catherine of Genoa
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby liminalOyster » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:44 am

This Secret Catholic Exorcist Cult in Brazil Is Making a Deal with the Devil
The Vatican is looking into a group of exorcists who apparently made a pact with Satan on climate change and the death of Pope Francis.


Barbie Latza Nadeau
BARBIE LATZA NADEAU
06.18.17 12:00 AM ET
http://www.thedailybeast.com/this-secre ... -the-devil

ROME—Plinio Correa de Oliveira is almost as peculiar in death as he was in life. Dr. Plinio, as he is still known by his devout followers, was a right-wing Catholic figure who founded the ultra conservative Tradition, Family and Property Association, known in Catholic circles as the TFP.
In the early 1960s, he famously came to Rome to protest the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to modernize the Catholic Church in a changing era. He called such attempts at renewal “a point in history as sad as the death of our Lord” and handed out propaganda with similar sentiments.

In death, Dr. Plinio is said to be in close contact with Satan, who supposedly can be channeled by Brazilian exorcists. He also apparently rules the so-called afterlife to such an extent that his followers are convinced he controls climate change and is working toward the death of Pope Francis, according to Andrea Tornielli, who writes the Vatican Insider blog, and has published a series of articles outlining this saga worthy of a Dan Brown bestseller.

By getting rid of Pope Francis, some of the doctor’s followers believe, the way would be open for the Catholic Church to elect a more conservative leader in line with their more traditional practices.

After Dr. Plinio died in 1995, the TFP broke into two groups. One retains the TFP name and supports the recent claims of dubia or doubts launched against Pope Francis, which are supported by American Cardinal Raymond Burke. The other group, known as the Heralds of the Gospel, was founded by Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias and allegedly takes part in cult worship.

The extent of Plinio’s supernatural proclaimed by Dias (or at least the extent to which his followers exalt him for that perceived power) is the subject of a new inquiry by the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, according to Tornielli.

Specifically, Dr. Plinio’s followers led by Dias are said to be using rogue exorcism practices in which they actually communicate with the devil possessing people rather than chasing him out, as the standard accepted practice in Catholic exorcisms dictates.

According to Catholic sociologist Massimo Introvigne, who has studied Dr. Plinio’s life work, the Heralds of the Gospel form “a sort of secret and extravagant cult,” with its trinity composed of “Plinio Correa de Oliveira, his mother Donna Lucilia, and Monsignor Clá Días himself.”
And that sort of devil worship is understandably a problem for the Catholic Church. On June 12, Clá Dias resigned as head and founder of the Herald of Gospels, although Tornielli says he will stay on in what appears to be a consultant-like role.

"In leaving this assignment I cannot—as I do not wish—before God, to renounce my father's mission,” Dias wrote in his resignation letter, according to Tornielli. “And therefore I will continue to be available to each one, as God made me a living model and guardian of this charism given to me by the Holy Spirit.”


Particularly damning for the cult-like group is a series of videos on the internet that show exorcisms using practices not authorized by the Catholic Church. They include purported conversations between the exorcists and the devil, which is a no-no in standard exorcism procedures. (Yes, exorcism as such remains a staple of the faith and authorized practitioners are not only recognized but recommended by Pope Francis.)

“Woe to the exorcist if he loses himself behind curious questions, which the ritual expressly forbids, or if he lets himself be led into a discussion with the devil as he is the master of lies,” Tornielli says, quoting the words of the Church’s most famous exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth.

In one passage from a video seen by The Daily Beast, Dias asks one of his minions to read from a transcript that was purportedly jotted down by an observer at one of the rogue exorcisms encompassing what appears to be dialogue between the exorcist and Satan.
The conversation was stilted, as one might expect with the struggle for the possessed person’s soul, but the gist was that Plinio was randomly “breaking people's computers so that they can’t go on the internet” and that he is changing the climate and was “therefore the author of the climate change, and the increase of heat. It is Plinio who does everything,” according to the devil as channeled through the exorcist. Then, the devil predicts that a meteorite will crash into the Atlantic ocean. “North America will disappear,” he warns.

The devil then turns to the fate of Pope Francis, which Tornielli was able to transcribe and translate from the somewhat distorted video. “The Vatican? It's mine, mine!” the devil says to the exorcist, according to Tornielli’s transcript. “The pope does whatever I want, he's stupid! He obeys me in everything. He is my glory, he is willing to do everything for me. He serves me.”

Then the devil, again as channeled by the exorcist for the Heralds of the Gospel, predicts that the pope will perish, not during a voyage, but at the Vatican. “The pope will die falling,” the exorcist’s transcript says quite clearly.

While much of the Heralds of the Gospel work seems, well, fanciful at best, the Vatican’s investigation is very serious. The Vatican could censure the group or strip it of the blessings of the Catholic Church, which would likely not actually stop them, but instead just push them farther underground. Or it could try to corral them back into the fold and hope they stop having sympathy for the devil.
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby identity » Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:52 pm

Slomo: So what I am seeing now is a conflation of homosexuality with "demonic".


From a question asked today at ask.metafilter:

My boyfriend of nearly two years recently came out to his ultra-conservative, kind-of-crazy Catholic parents. They are convinced he is possessed by a demon king and is going to hell. [snip...] On his last visit, his mom told him point-blank that he is possessed by the evil demon king Asmodeus and that he will go to hell if he doesn't do something about it and his demon-driven sexuality.


First time I ever hear of this evil demon king, even though I was baptized and confirmed in the RCC! Was I asleep when the sermon about him was delivered???
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004,
in a published letter to Nature
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby cptmarginal » Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:34 am

The Vatican has suspended its first audit by a major accounting firm in a move that raises new questions about the Catholic church’s commitment to cleaning up its finances. The Vatican’s chief spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said the audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers had been halted pending an analysis of “certain aspects” of the auditing arrangement.

The surprise decision has exposed a deep rift between the church’s old guard – a powerful Italian bureaucracy resistant to greater transparency – and supporters of financial reform, led by the Australian cardinal George Pell. Pell, a controversial senior figure, was handpicked by Pope Francis to lead the drive for reform.

The Holy See’s finances have long been seen as a mystery, with Pell himself acknowledging in 2014 that “hundreds of millions of euros” had been discovered “tucked away” and off the city-state’s balance sheets.


Now:

George Pell takes leave from Vatican to fight sexual abuse charges in Australia

In the statement, Pell offered up a robust defence of his actions and claimed he was a victim of a witch hunt.

“There has been relentless character assassination for months ... I am looking forward finally to having my day in court, I am innocent of these charges, they are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me,” Pell told reporters at a televised press conference.


How very robust :lol:

Image

George Pell profile: the pope's Australian hardman faces the fight of his life

Thursday 29 June 2017 07.09 EDT

David Marr on the long and often controversial career of a ‘bright kid’ who rose from rural Australia to the highest reaches of the Catholic church


A bright kid from an Australian bush town, George Pell kept his nose clean as he rose through the ranks to become chief of the Vatican’s finances. Despite a notably hard heart he was always a valuable asset to the church as a fearless conservative ideologue and a fine administrator.

Young Pell was plucked from Australia to train in Rome and at Oxford for the big career that was always beckoning. He returned to serve briefly and unhappily in a remote parish on the Murray before being brought into the heart of the diocese of Ballarat which in those years was a hell of child abuse.

Pell swears he saw little or nothing in those years.

Strange that the career of a man who would climb so far and so fast was marked early on by such a want of curiosity. He would explain to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse: “It was a sad story and of not much interest to me.”

He sat on a committee that transferred Father Gerard Ridsdale from parish to parish. The crimes of this vicious paedophile were notorious in Ballarat, known to the bishop and familiar to other members of the committee. But by his own account, Pell never asked why this priest was always on the move.

Pell was a big man who awed the faithful and impressed politicians. Even in Ballarat he began to display an almost magical ability to extract money from governments. This was to stand him in excellent stead in his Australian career.

So did his decision to put behind him his early enthusiasm for Vatican II. He was just the kind of energetic and worldly priest the new Polish pope admired. The mission of John Paul II was to restore the majesty of the church through fearless orthodoxy. Pell would berate his colleagues for being “frightened to put forward the hard teachings of Christ.”

But John Paul II came with a blind spot that would cause the church immense harm: he was not the least engaged by the scandal of child abuse that broke over his church in the 1980s. The message from Rome was unambiguous: no ambitious priest could build a career by hounding paedophiles from the ranks.

Rome first made Pell head of the Melbourne seminary – where he saw off its more liberal elements – and then appointed him an auxiliary bishop in that huge archdiocese in 1987. He would later be accused of failing to purge paedophile priests from parishes and schools. He has always put his inaction down to lack of knowledge and lack of authority.

In the last years of the old century, Pell’s parallel career in Rome flourished. He was the first Australian ever to join the church’s key ideological body, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the decade of Pell’s membership, the congregation banned books, silenced theologians, excommunicated Marxists and found fresh ways of excoriating homosexuality.

Rome made him archbishop of Melbourne at the age of 55. Melbourne was his parish. He was always comfortable among the powerful. Now he could demonstrate his immense capacity as an administrator.

Key to Pell’s success in every post he has held in the church is his determination to hire the best professionals, particularly the best accountants and lawyers. They didn’t have to be Catholics. They could be Jews or gay or divorced. That didn’t matter. They had to be the best.

Pell hired a skilled team to run the Melbourne Response. For nearly a decade the Australian bishops had been dithering over what the church should do for victims of abuse. Just as they were about to launch the scheme called Towards Healing, Pell broke away and set up his own Melbourne scheme. This earned him the enmity of his fellow bishops but allowed him to boast that he was one of the first bishops in the world to address the needs of the abused.

The Melbourne Response saved the church hundreds of millions of dollars, giving small sums to victims and most of the time compelling them to remain quiet about their fate and their settlements.

Melbourne made Pell a national figure for the first time. He earned a certain celebrity for his pugnacious moral declarations. This was Archbishop Pell on boys at Catholic schools driven to suicide by homophobia: “It is another reason to be discouraging people going in that direction. Homosexual activity is a much greater health hazard than smoking.”

Not until he became the Archbishop of Sydney in 2001 was there ever a suggestion he might, himself, have abused children. In 2002 he stood aside for some months while a church-appointed commission investigated allegations which, in the end, a retired Victorian supreme court judge found to be not proven.

Pell became a cardinal a year after returning to work. He personally instructed legal teams fighting victims’ claims for compensation to play hardball. Victims who accepted even meagre compensation were usually gagged. One case fought to the finish under Pell’s direction established the principle that victims have no claim against church assets held in property trusts.

Australia remains, as a result, the only country in the common-law world where the Catholic church cannot usefully be sued. There is no money available. Again, this was of immense financial benefit to the church.

Pell exercised authority in Australia as few church leaders had before him. Politicians were attentive. He raised huge sums. He could call Rome to his aid at any time. He chose bishops. He wrote columns for the popular press. He brought to the work of the church his unique brand of high conservatism and tough administration.

Though priests and religious were, by this time, trooping off to prison in alarming numbers, Pell opposed all calls for a royal commission into the scandal of child abuse in the church. Police began complaining of interference by the church in their work. Shocking evidence emerged in Ireland. Australian politicians began to buckle. Try as he might, Pell could no longer hold the line.

Julia Gillard, then prime minister of Australia, appointed the royal commission in November 2012. Pell appeared stunned at the press conference he called that afternoon to promise full cooperation but defend his faith. He said: “We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic church. We object to it being exaggerated; we object to being described as the only cab on the rank.”

Pell gave evidence many times to the commission learning, slowly at first, to answer questions in ways cardinals are rarely asked to do: by a secular lawyer, usually a woman, with the power to compel answers.

He was no slouch in the witness box but some of his stumbles became famous. Perhaps the worst was the time he compared the church to trucking companies and abusive priests to drivers who assault hitchhikers they pick up along the road. “I don’t think it appropriate for the … leadership of that company be held responsible.”

That notion was met with mirth and disbelief.

One afternoon he departed the witness box for a vast farewell mass in his cathedral on the eve of his flight to Rome to take up a new post created by Pope Francis. Pell was to become the third ranking figure at the Vatican as cardinal-prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. His departure from Sydney was widely welcomed in the church in Australia.

Pell was born for the huge job he took up in Rome at the age of 73. He brought to it all his formidable administrative skills. He engaged the finest professionals in Europe to audit Vatican institutions. Within months he reported finding millions of hidden euros. It wasn’t to last. His opponents in Rome soon succeeded in reining in his commission.

When the royal commission asked him to return to give evidence again last year, his doctors declared him unfit to fly. He stared down Tim Minchin’s song Come Home Cardinal Pell (2,027,229 hits) and gave evidence from a hotel ballroom in Rome in the presence of dozens of survivors of abuse who flew to the Eternal City for the occasion.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Australian press had begun cautiously reporting police investigations into new allegations of abuse by Pell dating back many years. Pell has denied all of these allegations.

No figure in the church as senior as Pell has ever been charged with sex abuse. After the police announcement in Melbourne, the Vatican machinery moved seamlessly. The pope expressed support. The cardinal stood aside from his many church offices. He made it unequivocally clear that he will return to Australia to appear in that most unlikely forum, a Melbourne magistrate’s court.

He said: “I am looking forward finally to having my day in court.”






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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Jan 16, 2018 9:55 am

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope ... SKBN1F51BZ

January 16, 2018 / 7:07 AM / Updated 15 minutes ago

Pope, in Chile, expresses 'pain and shame' over Church sex abuse scandal

Philip Pullella, Dave Sherwood

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Pope Francis expressed his “pain and shame” on Tuesday over a sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Chile, seeking forgiveness for a crisis that has scarred its credibility and left many faithful sceptical of reform.

“Here I feel bound to express my pain and shame at the irreparable damage caused to children by some ministers of the Church,” he said in the presidential palace, drawing sustained applause from his listeners.

Francis was making his first official address of the trip in the presence of President Michelle Bachelet, other Chilean top officials, cardinals, bishops and foreign diplomats.

“I am one with my brother bishops, for it is right to ask for forgiveness and make every effort to support the victims, even as we commit ourselves to ensuring that such things do not happen again,” he said.

Catholics have been upset with Francis’ 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to head the small diocese of Osorno in south-central Chile. Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, Father Fernando Karadima, whom a Vatican investigation found guilty in 2011 of abusing teenage boys over many years. Karadima has denied the allegations and Barros said he was unaware of any wrongdoing.

But the scandal has gripped Chile, and, along with growing secularization, has hurt the standing of the Church that had been praised for defending human rights during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

A poll by Santiago-based think tank Latinobarometro this month showed that the number of Chileans calling themselves Catholics fell to 45 percent last year, from 74 percent in 1995.

A group opposed to the visit posted on Twitter: “No more abuse, no more cover-ups, no more hypocrisy.”

At least eight Catholic churches have been attacked in Chile over the past week, including one with a homemade bomb where unidentified vandals left a pamphlet reading: “Pope Francis, the next bomb will be in your robe.”

No one was injured in the attacks and no one has claimed responsibility.

ANTI-POPE GRAFFITI

Hours after the pope arrived, two churches were attacked and burned to the ground almost simultaneously in a small village near Temuco that the pope had planned to visit on Wednesday.

A church in the capital was also attacked during the night, causing minor damage. Vandals burned Chilean and Vatican flags at the site and tossed pamphlets with threats against the pope.

Graffiti on one church in the capital read ”Burn pope and “pope accomplice.”

But the welcome most Chileans have given the pope has been warm, with thousands of mostly young people lining the streets of the capital and hundreds of thousands attending a Mass in a Santiago park.

Francis read the speech in the Moneda palace, which Pinochet’s forces bombed from the air and with ground artillery on Sept. 11, 1973 while democratically elected President Salvatore Allende was inside.

The pope referred to that dark period, saying the country had “faced moments of turmoil, at times painful.” He praised the consolidation of democracy but said more had to be done to help the unemployed and native people.

Bachelet told the pope: “How wonderful to be able to tell you that today Chile has changed ... we strengthened our democracy, with more tolerance, more freedom and more transparency.”

Chile, with a population of about 17.4 million, is the world’s top copper producer, the fifth-largest economy in Latin America and one of the region’s most stable.

After a private meeting with Bachelet, Francis said Mass for tens of thousands of people in the capital’s sprawling Parque O‘Higgins.
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:04 am

From December:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-vatic ... ey-problem

The Vatican’s Dirty Money Problem

Image

Barbie Latza Nadeau 12.12.17 1:06 PM ET

ROME—In 2015, the Council of Europe’s financial-evaluation arm Moneyval laid down the law for the Vatican Bank, telling the rather unholy financiers who had been accused of abetting money laundering for years that it isn’t enough to just smoke out suspicious account holders and freeze assets. Instead they said the Vatican Bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, needed to start actually prosecuting criminal cases.

Two years later, thousands of accounts have been closed or frozen, but Moneyval still isn’t happy. According to its 209-page December 2017 progress report, the Vatican gets good marks for not funding terrorism and for flagging potential illegal behavior. But the holy bank fails once again to actually hold anyone accountable for what are clearly crimes such as “fraud, including serious tax evasion, misappropriation and corruption,” according to the report.

More curious still, a week before the highly anticipated report was released, the IOR Deputy Director Giulio Mattietti was fired with no advance warning and escorted from his office out of fear he might remove files from his desk.

Mattietti was hired in 2007 by Paolo Cipriani, the former head of the bank who resigned under pressure a few months after Pope Francis was elected in 2013, after a Vatican accountant nicknamed “Monsignor 500” for his penchant for 500-euro notes, was arrested for trying to smuggle $26 million to Switzerland. Mattietti’s removal followed the sacking of a lower-level IOR employee days earlier. The Vatican gives no official reason for either of the firings beyond “reforms,” but a source close to the bank says the bank employees who were let go may have been whistleblowers who were alerting officials outside the bank about continuing impropriety.

In fact, despite apparently precise record keeping on the part of IOR, Moneyval evaluators still found 69 actions involving 38 customers that were not in accordance with money laundering and fraud standards set forth by the Council of Europe. None of those suspect cases were prosecuted to the fullest extent under the law, and instead Moneyval investigators point to vague records that imply that the cases were closed.

“Eight money-laundering investigations have been closed formally without any charges, while six additional investigations have been concluded without an indictment for any offense and their formal closure has been requested,” the report states.

And that is a problem.

The report specifically points to the recent Vatican tribunal case in which the chairman of the Vatican’s children’s hospital was accused of serious financial crimes using around a half million euros in funds meant for sick children to renovate a penthouse apartment for the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The cardinal was never under investigation, but the hospital’s former president and treasurer were tried in a Vatican court for using funds they funneled through the Vatican Bank.

Moneyval is calling foul on the judicial outcome. The chairman was given a suspended sentence and the treasurer was acquitted even though the money clearly was misappropriated. “An immediate custodial sentence was not imposed on the former chairman of the foundation. He received a one-year suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation for five years,” the report notes, adding the fact that there was “no application for restitution or compensation to the foundation.” That means the half-million that was criminally mishandled will never go to the sick children for whom it originally was intended.

In this case, Moneyval evaluators have advised the Vatican’s “promoter of justice,” or chief prosecutor, to “impose a fine, as foreseen by the law, in addition to the custodial sentence” essentially demanding that the chairman spend his year in prison.

The Moneyval report also outlines a case in which a Vatican Bank customer who was “a foreign citizen” and not a Vatican resident, withdrew more than $3 million from his private IOR account and deposited that money into three separate safety deposit boxes kept in the bank, which was a practice apparently used by Mother Teresa and others who had big sums of money but who lacked the paperwork to move it around legally.

The Moneyval report says that the cash was then subsequently “gradually withdrawn from the safety boxes and transferred to a third country without declarations.” In 2014, the Vatican Bank reported the case and suspended access to the safety boxes, the contents of which, by then, had been depleted. An unnamed foreign country then opened its own investigation into the deposit of the same sum ($3 million) that had apparently come from the Vatican Bank account.

The Vatican tribunal originally levied a sanction of more than $250,000 on the customer, but in a secret hearing in June of this year, the Vatican promoter of justice apparently reduced the fine by more than half. “The appeal against the administrative sanction was heard by the Vatican Tribunal in June 2017, when the fine, was reduced considerably,” according to the Moneyval report. Moneyval then leaned on the Vatican’s promoter of justice to reopen the case and consider reinstituting the original fine for apparent money laundering but found that “So far there has been no indictment in this case.”

The evaluators went further to suggest the promoter of justice is actually complicit in keeping cases out of its courts. “While this review cannot form a view on the quality of the evidence adduced in financial-crime cases that have so far come before the Tribunal, the success rate of the promoter before the tribunal so far is not encouraging,” the evaluators state. “It is noted that persons have been discharged by the tribunal. That is the tribunal’s prerogative, having heard the evidence in the case. However, if the promoter is dissatisfied with evidential decisions of the tribunal or decisions of the tribunal to convict on lesser charges than those brought by his office, he is encouraged to be proactive in appealing those decisions in appropriate cases.”

The bank once had more than 30,000 account holders, including several religious entities and private citizens who maintained accounts worth millions at the hallowed institution, which is tucked safely within the sovereign state of Vatican City. The bank has since closed several high-profile accounts, including many held by diplomatic missions and the consulates to Syria, Iran, and Iraq who moved millions of euros around through “vague cash transactions,” but it has never been able to shake its troubled past.

Last June the Vatican’s prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, Cardinal George Pell was sent back to Australia to face child sex-abuse charges in early 2018, leaving a notable gap in the pope’s efforts to reform the church’s troubled finances, which had been a priority since his election in 2013.

The Vatican had little to say after the recent Moneyval report. “The Holy See is committed to taking the necessary actions in the relevant areas to further strengthen its efforts to combat and prevent financial crimes,” was the only official word from the Vatican press office. Just shortly after he was elected, Pope Francis threatened to close the bank for good after widespread allegations that it was involved in corrupt practices including money laundering. No doubt he has been second-guessing the decision to keep it open ever since.


This was somewhat interesting to see, as well:

Pope condemns 'cancer' of cliques in Christmas message to staff
Pope Francis has rebuked Vatican colleagues in a Christmas message, denouncing the “cancer” of cliques and how bureaucrats can become corrupted by ambition and vanity.

“Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Egyptian sphinxes with a toothbrush,” Francis told cardinals, bishops and priests who work for him on Thursday. “You need patience, dedication and delicacy.”
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Tue Jan 16, 2018 11:49 am

“Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Egyptian sphinxes with a toothbrush,” Francis told cardinals, bishops and priests who work for him on Thursday. “You need patience, dedication and delicacy.”


So far that approach hasn't really worked anywhere, has it? Rampaging through the halls of corruption, flipping tables and shit, worked for Jesus. So I've heard, anyway. :twisted:
Don't believe anything they say.
And at the same time,
Don't believe that they say anything without a reason.
---Immanuel Kant
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby chump » Tue May 22, 2018 7:32 pm


http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/comment ... ver-chile/

Pope Francis now faces a terrible dilemma over Chile

by Christopher Altieri
posted Monday, 21 May 2018


Image
Whether or not he accepts the bishops' resignations, the problem will not go away

With their resignation en masse late last week, the bishops of Chile have put Pope Francis between a rock and a hard place. Basically, he has three options: accept all of them; accept some of them; accept none of them.

If he accepts them all, he leaves the Church in Chile headless, while owning utterly every awful thing that may yet emerge as the crisis unfolds – there is a great deal more in the way of awful things that must come out, if the Church in the country is to recover – and the Chilean crisis is far from over.

If he accepts some, his every decision will be scrutinised, and he is bound to make mistakes – and if he takes his time and does it right, as he ought to, the Church will remain paralysed in the meantime and the evil men he has heretofore at least tacitly (though not always tacitly) supported will have time and opportunity to maneuver. A few – like bishops Juan Barros of Osorno, Horacio Valenzuela of Talca, and Tomislav Koljatic of Linares – are no-brainers. These men were protégés of the disgraced celebrity paedophile priest, Fernando Karadima: they were just the sort of men abusers seek systematically to insinuate into power structures for their own protection and advancement. Others are not.

If he accepts none of them, he will have to try some of them. Those trials will presumably take place under the procedural rules laid out in the Apostolic Letter motu proprio, As a Loving Mother, though the dispositions given in that letter remain essentially untried. There will be a learning curve. There will also need to be significant investment in the Vatican court system, which is already overloaded, underfunded, and not exactly bursting at the seams with enthusiasm for the work. Confidence in the ability of the Vatican to administer justice is therefore also very low, indeed.

In short, none of those is a good option – and one gets the impression the Chilean bishops knew exactly what they were doing when they left their letters with the Pope.
Even if one were to accept some or all the resignations as a quick and dirty stopgap, and immediately move to study the structural reform that everyone agrees is needed, the fact remains that there is virtually no agreement on what that structural reform ought to look like. If it is to have the popular support it will need in order to be even minimally credible from the outset, whatever emerges from the study of the reform question cannot be the result of the top-down approach that Francis has taken to every problem he has really tried to address.

With the Old Guard in place, consultation will be tainted. With the Old Guard removed, there will be no one to direct and moderate the consultation, which must involve the whole People of God in Chile — the Christian faithful of every age and sex and state of life in the Church — if it is to have any hope of success. With the Old Guard replaced, there will likely be too many figures too new to the halls of influence in the Church and unacquainted with the deep grammar of ecclesiastical power to be reliable partners.

One possible workaround could be a sort of ecclesiastical receivership: An Apostolic Visitation with a broad mandate, to work with Apostolic Administrators appointed at the diocesan level. That alternative has its own inherent difficulties and potential pitfalls, most of which must be the subject of another essay. One thing, however, does bear mention here and now. Usually the appointment of new bishops is accomplished through a process that begins with the proposal from the Apostolic Nuncio of three candidates for a given see. In Chile, the Apostolic Nuncio is Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, whose role in the Barros Affair and in the broader Chilean crisis has received much critical attention and deserves much more and much closer scrutiny.

In all this, however, there is one outstanding consideration, one giant red elephant in the room: Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, whose alleged mishandling of abuse — including alleged active coverup for Karadima — and position of trust and confidence as a member of the Pope’s hand-picked inner circle, have placed him at the very centre of the ongoing controversy.

The Archbishop emeritus of Santiago de Chile, Cardinal Errázuriz is also a member of Pope Francis’s “C9” Council of Cardinal Advisers. Since he already has emeritus status, he did not submit a resignation along with the other bishops, and since the C9 is an extra-juridical “kitchen cabinet” of Pope’s men, he technically has no position from which to resign. That does not mean he may not be declared persona non grata. Even if he cannot be juridically removed or punished — and that is a big “if” — there is also no reason he needs to keep his red hat.

That he has faced nothing harsher than a “no vacancy” sign put out for him at the Casa Santa Marta is unsatisfactory to many victims.

“In my view,” abuse survivor Marie Collins told the Catholic Herald, “[Cardinal Errázuriz] should have been removed immediately from this position [on the C9] when the Pope received the details.” Collins was a founding member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and served on the advisory body for three years, before resigning in frustration at the lack of progress (and even active resistance) within the Vatican. “Not clearly sanctioning him in any way would be indefensible,” she said, “and send the message that his cover-up and attitude are to be tolerated because of his position as a cardinal.”
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:02 am

Pope Francis urges action on 'endless fields' of plastic in the world's oceans
"We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic," Pope Francis said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope ... ns-n905711



‘He’s a priest. I trusted him’: One of the 1,000 victims of alleged Pennsylvania clergy abuse tells his story
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41242


The Vigano Statement
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41262



Pope Benedict, in retired seclusion, looms in the opposition to Pope Francis

Stefano PitrelliROME —
September 2 at 12:39 PM
Ever since Pope Benedict XVI became the first pontiff in six centuries to abdicate the papacy, transitioning to a life of near seclusion in a Vatican City monastery, there have been questions about how the notion of two living popes would impact the Roman Catholic Church.

The events of last week offer something of an answer.

Although many people hoped to hear from Benedict amid new allegations that a coverup of sexual misconduct reached the highest levels of the church, he has established that an ex-pope should maintain a vow of silence about church matters — even during crises and even though he is particularly well positioned to affirm or knock down the accusations.

Some Vatican watchers and insiders say the mere fact of Benedict’s 2013 abdication has made the modern papacy more vulnerable, emboldening voices of dissent. They say it’s hard to imagine a letter like the one released last week by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, provoking Pope Francis with a call to resign, without Benedict having created the possibility that modern popes might give up their seats before death.

Try as he might to stay out of the fray, Benedict has been used as a symbol of resistance for a segment of traditionalists who oppose elements of Francis’s reformist papacy and see Benedict’s vision of Catholicism as more aligned with theirs.

“He won’t stop the [Francis] revolution, but his presence reminds you — me, everyone — that another way is possible,” said Marcello Pera, a friend of Benedict and former president of the Italian Senate.

Once known as “God’s Rottweiler,” Benedict was not embraced by Catholics worldwide during his eight-year pontificate. But he won admiration among those who respected the depth of his academic work and his conviction that church teachings shouldn’t bend with the times.

At 91, Benedict still largely resembles the firm theologian who stepped down five years ago, when he leaned into a microphone, offered a brief message in Latin and shocked the Roman Catholic Church. He still dresses in papal white. He chose not to revert to his given name, Joseph Ratzinger. Friends say he is frail — he moves with the help of a walker — but he is mentally sharp. In a letter earlier this year to the Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, he said he was “on a pilgrimage toward Home.”

Some historians say that, for all of Benedict’s theological work, it is his resignation that will most come to define his legacy. Before his abdication, no pope since Gregory XII in 1415 had been willing to step down. Pope Paul VI had at least considered it, according to a book collecting his letters and documents. But Paul VI, who died in 1978, feared that doing so could open future popes to factional fighting, according to an essay by Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest. Pope John Paul II reportedly prepared a letter of resignation to submit in the event of a debilitating condition; he never used it. Instead, his physical faculties declined painfully and publicly as he dealt with Parkinson’s disease.

In 2013, after eight years as pope, Benedict upended the rules of the modern papacy. He said he was aware of the “seriousness of this act.” He cited deterioration of his “mind and body.” Some close to Benedict have said he feared becoming an incapacitated leader like John Paul II, with whom he worked closely for years. But rumors have lingered about other contributing factors, including the possibility of blackmail or pressure relating to scandals within the Vatican bureaucracy. Benedict in 2014 wrote to an Italian website, Vatican Insider, saying speculation about his resignation was “simply absurd.”

Officially, papal resignations are only valid if or when performed “freely.”

It will take years still to fully account for the ramifications of Benedict’s resignation, but Andrea Tornielli, a veteran Vatican journalist at La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, said even the visual has been striking and disorienting — with two men in papal white inside the Vatican walls.

“It’s kind of a duplication of the image,” Tornielli said. “It’s a total novelty in the history of the church.”

Benedict has sought to relinquish his public life. He receives occasional visitors in his home, where he lives with a cat, is surrounded by books and has a view from the window of St. Peter’s dome. He goes on afternoon walks in the Vatican garden. Official photos occasionally show him meeting with Francis. He has attended public mass infrequently.

Elio Guerriero, a Benedict biographer who has known the pope emeritus since the 1980s, says he is content in his quiet daily life.

“His outlook has become sweeter and more affectionate,” Guerriero said.

Those who have visited Benedict since he abdicated say he has also tried to avoid fostering insurrection. Four years ago, after a hint that Francis might adopt a more relaxed stance on Communion for divorced Catholics, a small group of cardinals asked Benedict to intervene, according to the mainstream Italian daily La Repubblica. Benedict told them that he wasn’t the pope and shouldn’t be involved — and afterward privately alerted Francis.

Pera, who co-wrote a book with Benedict, tells a similar story about the ex-pope’s unwillingness to talk about his successor’s moves. Pera said he visited Benedict shortly after Francis was elected and brought up his misgivings about the new pope — how he seemed more political and willing to tailor his teachings to a secular audience.

“I am worried about the church,” Pera said.

“The church is of Jesus Christ,” he remembers Benedict replying. “You shouldn’t be worried.”

Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, has said publicly that Benedict and Francis are not in a “competitive relationship.”

After the release of the Viganò letter, Gänswein did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Washington Post. He told a German publication that Benedict would not comment, now or in the future, on the letter.

Benedict’s silence in this case has been in keeping with his effort to maintain a low profile. But it’s also noteworthy because the letter specifically cites Benedict and Francis as knowing for years about the sexual misconduct of a now-disgraced prelate, Theodore McCarrick.

Viganò alleges that Benedict, in 2009 or 2010, privately levied sanctions on McCarrick — the former Archbishop of Washington and one of the most well-known figures in the U.S. church — after years of warnings about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct. The letter also said that Francis “did not take into account” those sanctions and instead made McCarrick his “trusted counselor.”

Some elements of the account do not seem to hold up. The sanctions Viganò describes supposedly banned McCarrick from travel and public meetings, but McCarrick continued to speak regularly and travel overseas.

Two acquaintances of Benedict said that he was a feeble manager as pontiff and that even if he had imposed the sanctions, he might not have had the wherewithal to enforce them.

“He never had the vocation to rule, to command,” said Vittorio Messori, a friend who met with Benedict last year. “He doesn’t know how to rule.”

Other Benedict allies go so far as to interpret the former pope’s silence as an affirmation of Viganò’s account. The letter portrays Benedict in more sympathetic terms than it does Francis and points out that, as a cardinal, Ratzinger had “repeatedly denounced the corruption” inside the church.

“It would be very easy for Pope Benedict to say, ‘There is an attack on the Holy Father, and I want to condemn this attack,’ ” said Roberto de Mattei, president of the conservative Lepanto Foundation, a critic of Francis and an acquaintance of Viganò. “Right now, one pope can speak to defend the other. But he hasn’t.”

Despite Benedict’s general silence, or perhaps because of it, some conservatives have latched on to the pope emeritus as a symbolic ally. A mix of academics, journalists and Vatican officials have regularly held conferences aimed at criticizing Francis — and sometimes praising Benedict’s teachings. Viganò spoke during at least one of those events.

In a new book, a compilation of interviews, a forward written by the former president of the Vatican Bank exalts “the greatness of our beloved Joseph Ratzinger.” Among the interviewees are two journalists who consulted with Viganò in advance of his letter’s release.

But even among the crowd that knows Benedict, there is a steady guessing game about what he is actually thinking.

Pera said he has not brought up Francis again in his meetings with Benedict, in which they have talked about philosophy and human rights. “The subject is forbidden,” he said.

“So what should I understand from this?” Pera continued. “He probably doesn’t like what is happening. But we don’t know.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu ... 85387e460a


Defending Pope Francis, Vatican Allies May Strengthen Viganò’s Hand

Sept. 2, 2018

St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Tensions have been high in the Vatican as Pope Francis finds himself under siege from conservatives in the church.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
ROME — Retaliating against a remarkable campaign from within the church to force the ouster of Pope Francis, the Vatican’s former spokesman issued a statement on Sunday night questioning the credibility of an archbishop who has accused Francis of covering up sexual misconduct.

But in seeking to defend the pope against the latest allegations, which relate not to abuse but to the pope’s own credibility, the former spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, seemed to confirm a key part of the archbishop’s claims. And the defense also offered a portrait of the pope and his top advisers as having been politically naïve.

In a letter released Friday, the archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò, challenged the notion, put forward by Vatican officials and the pope, that he had ambushed Francis in 2015 by setting up a private meeting at the Vatican’s Washington embassy with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who became a conservative celebrity by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Archbishop Viganò said in the letter that he had fully briefed Francis and his top advisers, all of whom he named, about Ms. Davis and her “conscientious objection” to promoting same-sex marriage. He received approval from them all, he said.

On Sunday, Father Lombardi issued a joint statement with the Rev. Thomas Rosica, who has also spoken for the Vatican in the past, making note of “the fact that Viganò had spoken the night before the meeting (with Kim Davis) with the pope and his collaborators and had received a consensus.”

Father Lombardi and Father Rosica nevertheless said Francis had felt “deceived” by Archbishop Viganò. Contrary to the claims of the archbishop, they said, the pope was furious over the meeting, which threatened to eclipse the entire visit to the United States by derailing his message of inclusion.

Archbishop Viganò, they assert, told them the pope had said he felt deceived about Ms. Davis. But the reason apparently had less to do with her role in the fight against gay marriage than with her own marital history.

“You never told me that she had four husbands,” the pope protested, Archbishop Viganò told them, they wrote.

Archbishop Viganò, who was the Vatican’s ambassador in the United States, or papal nuncio, declined a request for comment Sunday night.

The disagreement over what Francis did or did not know about Ms. Davis emerged after a week of turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church that began when Archbishop Viganò published a letter accusing the pope of covering up sexual abuse.


Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in Chicago in 2014.Pool photo by Charles Rex Arbogast
The archbishop claimed that Francis had known about accusations that an American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians long before they became public, but still allowed him an influential role at the Vatican.

The claim set off a rare onslaught of attacks on a sitting pope from conservative Catholics who have chafed under Francis’ reign.

In his statement Sunday, Father Lombardi argued that whether the pope knew about the meeting with Ms. Davis beforehand or not, the blame for the fiasco that followed rested with Archbishop Viganò for having put the pope in a difficult position.

The consensus about granting the meeting with Ms. Davis, Father Lombardi writes, “did not detract from the responsibility of the initiative of the meeting with Kim Davis and the consequences were mainly of Viganò himself, who had evidently desired and prepared them, and that as nuncio should have known better about this situation.”

Father Lombardi said the meeting had been “organized by the nuncio, who inserted it in the context of the pope’s many and quick greetings at his departure from the nunciature, as the Vatican Embassy in Washington is known. This certainly did not allow the pope and his collaborators to realize the significance of this meeting.”

That significance was readily apparent — and magnified — by culture warriors and opponents of same sex-marriage in the United States. They immediately pointed to it as evidence that the pope who famously said “who am I to judge” about gays was really on their side.

After the publication of Archbishop Viganò’s letter describing the pope’s approval of the meeting with Ms. Davis, the Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian litigation group that has represented elected officials who resist same-sex marriage, applauded.

“It is now clear why some officials in the Catholic Church sought to downplay or distort the truth about the private meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis,” Mathew Staver, the group’s chairman, said in a statement released on Saturday, “because it went against their narrative in which they sought to change the church’s teaching on homosexuality.”

Supporters of Pope Francis have argued that ultraconservatives in the American hierarchy and the Vatican have endangered the church by aligning themselves with politically motivated evangelical groups in the United States. They have seen the closing of evangelical ranks around Archbishop Viganò, who championed their causes in the United States, as proof of this alliance.

The pope has entirely different goals.

In the days after the media tempest about the meeting, the Vatican sought to distance Francis from Ms. Davis and put the blame on Archbishop Viganò.

The Vatican press office asserted that the pope had never received Ms. Davis in a private audience and said the pope had probably not been briefed. The Vatican instead highlighted Francis’ warm meeting at the Washington Embassy with a gay former student and his partner.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi at a news conference at the Vatican in 2014.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press
The pope then summoned Archbishop Viganò to Rome for what the former ambassador has said he was assured would be a serious reprimand. Instead, he claimed in his letter, “to my great surprise, during this long meeting, the pope did not mention even once the audience with Davis!”

This is the aspect of the letter that Father Lombardi, who retired in 2016, and Father Rosica took most issue with.

They say Archbishop Viganò withheld from his account their own visit to see him on Oct. 9, 2015, in his apartment in the old residence of Santa Maria in Vatican City that “both of us were surprised to see that he had maintained.” There, they say, they sat with him in his living room.

“Viganò was clearly shaken having been summoned to Rome,” they wrote. “He told the two of us that he never intended to harm the pope with his idea to have Davis at the nunciature.”

The archbishop, they said, did not answer their inquiry about whether Ms. Davis’s visit had been arranged by the president of the American bishops conference or by the Washington Archdiocese.

Speaking in Italian — “verbatim” according to Father Rosica’s notes — Archbishop Viganò said, “The Holy Father in his paternal benevolence thanked me for his visit to the U.S.A., but also said that I had deceived him” by “bringing that woman to the nunciature.” The pope complained that he had not known of her multiple marriages, the archbishop told his visitors, they said.

They say Archbishop Viganò, who was removed by Pope Francis from Washington the following year, instructed them not to make any statements to the news media without first coordinating with his office.

“When we left him, he seemed troubled and thanked us for our visit,” the statement said.

This week, an article in The New York Times quoted a Chilean abuse survivor, Juan Carlos Cruz, as recounting that Francis had told him that Archbishop Viganò sneaked Ms. Davis into the Vatican Embassy in Washington for the private meeting. The pope told him he had not known who she was or why she was a contentious figure, Mr. Cruz said.

Mr. Cruz recalled the pope saying, “I was horrified and I fired that nuncio.”

Archbishop Viganò, in the letter published on Friday by LifeSiteNews, a conservative Catholic outlet, said Mr. Cruz’s account had prompted him to set the record straight.

“One of them is lying: either Cruz or the pope?” he wrote. “What is certain is that the pope knew very well who Davis was, and he and his close collaborators had approved the private audience.”

On Sunday, the pope’s allies seemed to confirm that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/worl ... davis.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby Cordelia » Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:18 am

Pope Says to Respond with Silence and Prayer

Fr. Matt Gworek
September 4, 2018

During his morning Mass on September 3, Pope Francis said silence and prayer are the correct responses to those who cause scandal and division in the Church. Reflecting on the gospel and the actions of Jesus, the Holy Father stated, "The truth is meek. The truth is silent. The truth is not noisy."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... 28Gqt5aFiE

http://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=84732


Taking a page from Nancy's Bible...

Pope Francis Orders Newly Ordained Bishops to ‘Just Say No to Abuse’ Amid Allegations That He Covered Up Child Sexual Abuse

September 10, 2018

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“Just say no to abuse, of power, conscience or any type,” Pope Francis said at a seminar with 74 new bishops from 34 countries, adding that to do so they must reject the clerical culture that often places clergy on a pedestal.

Pope Francis has ordered newly ordained bishops to “just say no to abuse – of power, conscience or any type” as he faces allegations that he covered up child sexual abuse.

The pontiff told the 75 bishops, hailing from 34 countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, not to work “as lone actors outside the chorus” when he addressed them at the Vatican on Saturday.

“Saying no to abuse,” he said, “means saying no with force to every form of clericalism”.

“The bishop can’t have all the gifts – the complete set of charisms – even though some think they do, poor things.”

Francis also warned the bishops against “conducting their own personal battles” and said they should instead listen to their “flock” and to priests. The remarks come after a former Vatican diplomat to the US, Carlo Maria Viganò, broke with pontifical protocol by issuing a public letter claiming Francis knew the former archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick “was a corrupt man” but covered it up.

https://blackchristiannews.com/2018/09/ ... ual-abuse/



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The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby BenDhyan » Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:44 pm

Cardinal Pell?

Why the media is unable to report on a case that has generated huge interest online

A very high-profile figure was convicted on Tuesday of a serious crime, but we are unable to report their identity due to a suppression order.

The person, whose case has attracted significant media attention, was convicted on the second attempt, after the jury in an earlier trial was unable to reach a verdict. They will be remanded when they return to court in February for sentencing.

A suppression order issued by the Victorian County Court, which applies in all Australian states and territories, has prevented any publication of the details of the case including the person's name or the charges. It was imposed after the court accepted that knowledge of the person's identity in the first trial might prejudice a further trial being held in March.

It is relatively common in cases where a person faces separate allegations in sequential trials for the first trial to be suppressed. The process is designed not to prejudice later juries.

However, in this case, the word has got out widely online and through social media.

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Google searches for the person's name surged on Wednesday, particularly in Victoria. Two of the top three search results on the suppressed name showed websites that were reporting the charges, the verdict and the identity of the person in full.


https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/why-the-media-is-unable-to-report-on-a-case-that-has-generated-huge-interest-online-20181212-p50lta.html

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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby BenDhyan » Wed Dec 12, 2018 10:45 pm

^ For balance, this dated article suggests Pell may have become an enemy...

The Destruction of Cardinal Pell

Steve Skojec July 1, 2017

Two years ago, when this story came out, I asked some friends and fellow journalists, “Is this the trigger-pull on Pell?” At the time, of course, his name wasn’t even being mentioned. But as the events unfolded that would later be referred to as “Vatileaks II,” media reports of new allegations of financial mismanagement at the Vatican left the question open of whether Pell, as the man put in place to sort things out, would be in the crosshairs.

At the time, there was already a creeping sense that Pell, during the tenure of his investigation into the Vatican bank (also known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR), had quickly become persona non grata. When he signed on to the 13 Cardinals Letter expressing concern about how the Synod was being conducted — something Francis was reported to have taken rather personally — his fall from grace accelerated.

Things were quiet for a while, particularly after Pope Francis pulled the plug on his own audit of the Vatican bank in September last year.

And then, this week, things exploded. Allegations that Pell engaged in sexual molestation decades ago originally surfaced two years ago, but have now transitioned from an investigation into formal charges. According to sources with knowledge of the Australian cardinal, the media in his home country have been hostile towards him for many years, and he isn’t well-loved by a significant portion of the clergy there. Pell’s own response has been an eagerness to finally have his day in court and fight the accusations he categorically denies. Nevertheless, in an article by Nancy Flory at The Stream, the entire affair is characterized as a “witch hunt” designed to destroy Pell’s reputation:

“Pell can never receive a fair trial,” writesThe Australian columnist Angela Shanahan. She is describing the “media witch-hunt” that has dogged Cardinal George Pell for two years. New and vague charges — of “historic sexual offenses” — were filed against Cardinal Pell yesterday morning. Cardinal Pell has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual abuse leveled against him. Still, the media in Australia have repeated claims about the Cardinal’s guilt. They’ve printed leaked information about the investigation against Pell, and claimed that charges were “imminent.” And hostile book on Cardinal Pell (Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell) came out in May.

The ‘Witch Hunt’

A few brave souls have challenged the Cardinal’s trial-by-media-innuendo. Amanda Vanstone, columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and “no fan of organized religion,” decries the media’s hysteria over Cardinal Pell. “What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages … [it] is far worse than a simple assessment of guilt. The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial,” wrote Vanstone. “Isn’t it normal to try to ensure a person can get a fair trial,” she asks, “by keeping prejudicial, untested material out of the public arena?”

One can’t help but wonder whether decades-old allegations — usually impossible to prove — will do anything but leave Pell a man with a ruined reputation. Certainly, a guilty verdict under such circumstances seems unlikely. But with headlines like “The Pope’s Pedophile?” now circulating in the mainstream press, even an complete acquittal will never restore his good name.

I’ve had people ask me if I think he’s guilty. I know far too little about the circumstances to even make an educated guess. The vicious pursuit of his destruction tends to make me reflexively sympathetic, but the truth matters here a great deal. For his sake, and the sake of the alleged victims, I hope a fair and thorough trial is possible, and that the truth will come out.

One possible consideration regarding Pell’s potential guilt relates to the managerial style of Pope Francis. As I’ve noted before, the pope seems to have a tendency to surround himself with compromised men. From Msgr. Battista Ricca (also involved with the Vatican bank reform) to Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio to Cardinal Reinhard Marx, some of Francis’ most noteworthy associates are men with skeletons in their closets that could easily be taken out and put on display if they become…inconvenient. If Pell were a man with sexual abuse in his background, it could certainly be used against him if necessary. But even if he’s as innocent as the driven snow, the very fact that such allegations already existed might have provided the leverage necessary to put him in such a delicate position. After all, Pell was allowed to look into the Pandora’s box of the Vatican finances. And it’s hard not to wonder if he discovered too much.

Recall that in January of 2015, the “ousted chairman of the Vatican bank”, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, wrote an article in the Catholic Herald in which he warned Pell that he might very well not have been properly informed of all that had gone on in the bank’s recent history — and how he believed he was let go because of his “decision to present the board with a plan that would have totally changed the role and governance of the bank.” After giving his own side of the story, Tedeschi made a set of recommendations to Pell:

I honestly think that Cardinal Pell should get to the bottom of four mysteries:

1) Who changed the Vatican’s anti-money laundering law in December 2011 and why?
2) Who really decided that I should be discharged from the lay board as chairman of the Vatican bank on May 24 2012, and why?
3) Who disregarded Benedict XVI’s decision in favour of my rehabilitation?
4) Who refused to question me about all the above facts? Who does not want to know my version of the truth and why?

It’s impossible to read that list and not see it as an indictment of willful malfeasance on the part of unknown but powerful actors within the Vatican power structure.

https://onepeterfive.com/destruction-cardinal-pell/

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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby Grizzly » Fri Dec 14, 2018 3:31 am

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“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby RocketMan » Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:01 am

I find Francis's repeated references to human sacrifice in connection with the Catholic church's ongoing child abuse scandal weird and disconcerting...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... f-children

Campaigners furious after pope's 'defensive' speech on child abuse

Francis vowed that the Roman Catholic church would “spare no effort” to bring abusers to justice and would not cover up or underestimate abuse, but a significant part of the pontiff’s closing speech focused on the prevalence of child abuse across society.

Citing data, he said that the majority of cases arose within families and that the perpetrators of abuse were “primarily parents, relatives, husbands of child brides and teachers”. He also said that online pornography and sex tourism amplified the issue.

“Our work has made us realise once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies,” he said. “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites.”
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Re: Habemus Papam! Pope Francis l

Postby cptmarginal » Tue Aug 25, 2020 2:02 pm

'What are you planning to say?' Pope quizzed whistleblower priest, book claims

By Harriet Alexander
August 20, 2020


A low-ranking parish priest who agreed to give evidence against an archbishop accused of concealing child sexual abuse was mysteriously summoned to the Vatican before he was due to testify and allegedly quizzed by the Pope about what he was planning to say in court.

As the priest emerged from the 2016 meeting, Cardinal George Pell was allegedly waiting outside. "Look what I have done for you," Cardinal Pell said, and lifted his hand for the priest to kiss his ring.

According to The Altar Boys by investigative reporter Suzanne Smith, there's no allegation Cardinal Pell intended to put pressure on Father Glen Walsh not to give evidence.

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The explosive claim about the papal meeting, contained in The Altar Boys, indicates that the pressure brought to bear on priests who betray the brotherhood extends right up to the Vatican, and has prompted calls for a police investigation.

Father Walsh was a Crown witness in the case against Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson when he met with the pontiff on February 9, 2016. Archbishop Wilson was accused of failing to report to police the allegations of two former altar boys who claimed they had been abused by a priest in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese in the 1970s. At the time he was the highest-ranking Catholic ever to be charged with concealment offences.

Father Walsh later told confidants that the Pope asked him why he was involved in a court case against an archbishop, what he was planning to say in court, and who was walking with him on the journey. Father Walsh said he did not trust the interpreter and offered scant detail.

It was the pinnacle of what Father Walsh perceived as a sustained campaign by the priesthood to get him to toe the line on child sexual abuse. He was allegedly frozen out of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese after he defied the bishop to report a fellow priest for child sexual abuse in 2004 and was not welcomed back until early 2017.

But on October 24, 2017 – a little over two weeks before the archbishop's trial was set down – Newcastle-Maitland Bishop Bill Wright told Father Walsh he had no future in the diocese, according to an email Father Walsh sent to a friend. The email didn't say that this decision was because of his giving evidence.

"[Bishop Wright] will look overseas (Third World) where I can live out my days in the service to Christ and his poor, preferably as a contemplative to a leper colony," Father Walsh wrote.

Two weeks later, before he could give evidence, Father Walsh took his own life.

Archbishop Philip Wilson was found guilty of concealment charges in May 2018 on evidence that included statements by Father Walsh, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said the book's revelations showed the need for a police inquiry into Father Walsh's death that would consider the actions of the Catholic hierarchy, including Pope Francis.

"Pope Francis must explain why he recalled Father Glen [Walsh], one of more than 400,000 priests from across the world, to the Vatican to answer questions about what his evidence would be in the criminal prosecution of Archbishop Wilson," Mr Shoebridge said.

"Given the Pope's authority over Glen, these actions can clearly be seen as an effort to intimidate him in order to protect the church."

Bob O'Toole of the Clergy Abused Network, who wants a coronial inquiry into more than 70 alumni of Newcastle's Catholic high schools who have taken their lives, said Father Walsh had been treated appallingly in the lead-up to his death.

"It's entirely inappropriate for Glen to be instructed to take a trip to the Vatican to speak to the Pope about what his evidence will entail," Mr O'Toole said.

Cardinal George Pell and Bishop Bill Wright were approached for comment.
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