Pope to resign (first in 600 years)

[seemslikeadream]

This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

Two Popes, One Secretary
FEB 27 2013 @ 12:15PM


The damage Benedict XVI has done to the Catholic church and the papacy may be far from over. All I can say about yesterday’s developments is that they seem potentially disastrous and also indicative to me of something truly weird going on underneath all of this.

Benedict XVI has claimed that his almost unprecedented resignation came about simply because of his physical infirmity in the face of what appears to be a growing vortex of sexual and financial scandal inside the Vatican. He said he would quietly disappear to serve the church through prayer and meditation. But we now realize he’s going nowhere. He’s staying in the Vatican’s walls, and retaining the honorific “His Holiness.” He will keep white robes. His full title will be Pope Emeritus. Far from wearing clerical black, returning to the title of Bishop of Rome, and disappearing into a monastery in Bavaria, he’s going to be a shadow Pope in the Vatican. And this, we are told, was his decision:

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Benedict himself had made the decision in consultation with others, settling on “Your Holiness Benedict XVI” and either emeritus pope or emeritus Roman pontiff. Lombardi said he didn’t know why Benedict had decided to drop his other main title: bishop of Rome.

If you were trying to avoid any hint of meddling, of a Deng Xiao Peng-type figure pulling strings behind the scenes, you would not be doing this. The only thing the Pope will give up, apparently, are his red Prada shoes. He has some fabulous brown leather artisanal ones to replace them. But this is what really made me sit up straight, so to speak:

Benedict’s trusted secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, will be serving both pontiffs — living with Benedict at the monastery inside the Vatican and keeping his day job as prefect of the new pope’s household. Asked about the potential conflicts, Lombardi was defensive, saying the decisions had been clearly reasoned and were likely chosen for the sake of simplicity. “I believe it was well thought out,” he said.

So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement? I wrote a while back about Gänswein’s intense relationship with Ratzinger, while noting Colm Toibin’s review of Angelo Quattrochi’s exploration of Benedict, “Is The Pope Gay?”. Here’s Toibin getting to some interesting stuff:

Gänswein is remarkably handsome, a cross between George Clooney and Hugh Grant, but, in a way, more beautiful than either. In a radio interview Gänswein described a day in his life and the life of Ratzinger, now that he is pope:
The pope’s day begins with the seven o’clock Mass, then he says prayers with his breviary, followed by a period of silent contemplation before our Lord. Then we have breakfast together, and so I begin the day’s work by going through the correspondence. Then I exchange ideas with the Holy Father, then I accompany him to the ‘Second Loggia’ for the private midday audiences. Then we have lunch together; after the meal we go for a little walk before taking a nap. In the afternoon I again take care of the correspondence. I take the most important stuff which needs his signature to the Holy Father.

When asked if he felt nervous in the presence of the Holy Father, Gänswein replied that he sometimes did and added: ‘But it is also true that the fact of meeting each other and being together on a daily basis creates a sense of “familiarity”, which makes you feel less nervous. But obviously I know who the Holy Father is and so I know how to behave appropriately. There are always some situations, however, when the heart beats a little stronger than usual.’

This man – clearly in some kind of love with Ratzinger (and vice-versa) will now be working for the new Pope as secretary in the day and spending the nights with the Pope Emeritus. This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

(Photo: the Pope’s personal secretary Georg Ganswein adjusts Pope Benedict XVI’s cloak during the weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square on September 26, 2012 in Vatican City, Vatican. By Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

[seemslikeadream]

Monday, 04 March 2013 17:05
The Catholic Church's Worldwide Sexual Abuse Scandal and Cover-Up

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Strategies used by the Church to cover up its worldwide sexual abuse scandal included: the Vatican's refusal to cooperate with civil authorities; officially sanctioned priest shifting; the destruction of evidence; punishing whistle-blowers and rewarding enablers; and, blaming the victims.

Last week, the eyes of the world were on Pope Benedict XVI – who apparently expects to be known as Pope Emeritus – as he left the Vatican by helicopter to spend the final hours of what many would characterize as his scandal-dogged papacy, at the papal summer retreat. According to The New York Times, "Onlookers in St. Peter's Square cheered, church bells rang and Romans stood on rooftops to wave flags as he flew by."

To the thousands of survivors of the Roman Catholic Church's worldwide sexual abuse scandals, however, there was little to cheer about.

A Philadelphia Grand Jury report put the long-lived scandal in unambiguous terms: By sexual abuse, "We mean rape. Boys who were raped orally, boys who were raped anally, girls who were raped vaginally. But even those victims whose physical abuse did not include actual rape – those who were subjected to fondling, to masturbation, to pornography – suffered psychological abuse that scarred their lives and sapped the faith in which they had been raised."

Aftershocks from the decades-long sexual abuse scandal continue to reverberate, even as cardinals gather to choose the next pope. As the Times reported, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's senior Roman Catholic cleric, "said he would not participate in the conclave, after having been accused of 'inappropriate acts' with several priests, charges that he denies." Other cardinals, including some from the United States have also come under fire.

By this time in history, you'd have to either have been in a multi-decade coma or living in a cave somewhere not to be at least somewhat aware of the Church's worldwide sexual abuse scandal. Culpability for trying to keep it under wraps may in fact go as deep as the Vatican itself.

While many of us have heard survivors of predatory priests step forward and courageously tell their stories, the testimonies are still shocking.

"Fighting for the Future: Adult Survivors Work to Protect Children & End the Culture of Clergy Sexual Abuse" a report submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), provided a snapshot of some of heart-wrenching testimony that surfaced in front of a Philadelphia Grand Jury:


A girl, 11 years old, was raped by her priest and became pregnant. The priest took her in for an abortion.
A 5th-grader was molested by her priest inside the confessional booth.
A teenage girl was groped by her priest while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital bed. The priest stopped only when the girl was able to ring for a nurse.
A boy was repeatedly molested in his own school auditorium, where his priest/teacher bent the boy over and rubbed his genitals against the boy until the priest ejaculated.
A priest, no longer satisfied with mere pederasty, regularly began forcing sex on two boys at once in his bed.
A boy woke up intoxicated in a priest's bed to find the Father sucking on his penis while three other priests watched and masturbated themselves.
A priest offered money to boys in exchange for sadomasochism – directing them to place him in bondage, to "break" him, to make him their "slave," and to defecate so that he could lick excrement from them.
A 12-year-old, who was raped and sodomized by his priest, tried to commit suicide, and remains institutionalized in a mental hospital as an adult.
A priest told a 12-year-old boy that his mother knew of and had agreed to the priest's repeated rape of her son.
A boy who told his father about the abuse his younger brother was suffering was beaten to the point of unconsciousness. "Priests don't do that," said the father as he punished his son for what he thought was a vicious lie against the clergy.
"Fighting for the Future" pointed out the worldwide scope of the scandal: "The revelations of sexual violence by clergy ... in recent years in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, the United States and elsewhere demonstrate that the rates of abuse in any one country or diocese are not an anomaly but part of a much larger pattern and practice. In light of these revelations, some observers have estimated that the number of victims of sexual violence occurring between the years 1981-2005 is likely approaching 100,000, and will likely be far greater as more situations continue to come to light in Latin America and Africa."

While the scope of the problem is huge, so too has been the Church-sanctioned cover-up; its refusal to cooperate with civil authorities, and the rampant reassignment of priests accused of sexual misconduct. "The vast majority of the priests who committed acts of sexual violence against children and vulnerable adults have faced no punishment or criminal sanction for their actions; many continue to work, and have privileged access to future victims because of their status as a member of the Catholic clergy," the report noted.

"The high-level officials of the Church who failed to prevent and punish these criminal actions, and too often facilitated or enabled the acts of sexual violence described herein have, to date, enjoyed absolute impunity as well."'

Under the heading, "The Policies and Practices of the Holy See Have Helped to Perpetuate the Crimes," the report discusses five ways the church resisted accountability and taking responsibility:

The Vatican leadership's "refusal to cooperate with civil authorities.
The "practice of 'priest shifting,' meaning bishops, cardinals or other high-ranking officials have transferred known offenders to other locations where they continued to have access to children or vulnerable adults and who officials knew continued to commit rape and other acts of sexual violence."
The "destruction of evidence and the obstruction of justice."
The "rewarding of those members of the clergy who remained quiet or assisted in cover-ups, while punishing the whistle-blowers, i.e., those who sought to prevent other children from being hurt and to have offender priests investigated and held accountable for the crimes they committed."
"Blaming the victims."
The conclave to pick the next pope is assembling. There is, as has been the case when a new pope is chosen, much speculation about who might be the next to wear the papal vestments and wield papal power.

In late February, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued its report, and according to a joint press release, "the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has summoned the Vatican to report on its record of ensuring children are protected from sexual violence and safeguarding children's well-being and dignity, the first time the Holy See will have been called to account for its actions on these issues before an international body with authority."

Pope Benedict XVI has retired, but he's not going off the grid. Now that he's no longer popeing, isn't it time to put him on record and find out what he knew about the Church's sexual assault scandal and when did he know it? Given the Vatican's nearly impenetrable wall of silence, it is doubtful that will ever happen.

Church probes Italian priest for burning pope photo during mass

By David Edwards
Monday, March 4, 2013 9:34 EST

The Catholic church is investigating an Italian priest after he shocked parishioners by burning a photo of former Pope Benedict XVI during mass on Sunday.

According to the Italian publication La Repubblica, 67-year-old Father Andrea Maggi told churchgoers at Santo Stefano church in Castelvittorio that he had used a candle to set the pope’s photo on fire because a “shepherd never leaves his flock.”

“I’m doing this because he has not been a Pope, he has abandoned us,” Maggi allegedly said.


The priest went on to compare Benedict to Captain Francesco Schettino, the Italian cruise ship captain who was accused of abandoning his ship last year after it ran aground off the Tuscan coast.

“I thought to myself, ‘Are you the Pope or are you Captain Schettino of the Concordia who abandoned his ship?’” Maggi recalled to La Repubblica, according to a translation provided by the Daily Mail. “If eight years was enough of being Pope, he didn’t need to accept it. He created 90 cardinals, he wasn’t some novice or ingenue, who didn’t know what they were getting into.”

Sky News on Monday reported that church officials had launched an investigation into Maggi’s actions.

“This was an abominable action,” Bishop Alberto Maria Careggio insisted. “I’m mortified by the actions of Father Andrea who in the past has always been a very generous and sensible priest. I’m arranging a meeting with him as soon as possible.”

Pope Benedict XVI announced last month that he would become the first pope in over 700 years to resign of his own free will.

[JackRiddler]

"This is not... the Vatican... (Noooooo!) This is not, sha na na na, sha na na na naaaa..."

[RocketMan]

The Toibin article referenced in the Sullivan piece is astoundingly good, and beautifully written.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n16/colm-toibi ... flutterers

A couple of selections:

There are very good reasons why homosexuals have been traditionally attracted to the priesthood. I know these reasons because I, as someone ‘confused about my sexuality’, had to confront and entertain the idea that I should join the priesthood. In 1971, aged 16, I gave up my Easter break so I could attend a workshop for boys who believed they had a vocation.

Some of the reasons why gay men became priests are obvious and simple; others are not. Becoming a priest, first of all, seemed to solve the problem of not wanting others to know that you were queer. As a priest, you could be celibate, or unmarried, and everyone would understand the reasons. It was because you had a vocation; you had been called by God, had been specially chosen by him. For other boys, the idea of never having sex with a woman was something they could not even entertain. For you, such sex was problematic; thus you had no blueprint for an easy future. The prospect, on the other hand, of making a vow in holiness never to have sex with a woman offered you relief. The idea that you might want to have sex with men, that you might be ‘that way inclined’, as they used to say, was not even mentioned, not once, during that workshop in which everything under the sun was discussed.

That you were gay was something you managed to know about yourself and not know at the same time. I am almost certain, for example, that when I was warned by a priest at school that a boy who had parted his hair in the middle had by this act given a sign that he was homosexual (the only time the term was mentioned in those years), the priest himself had no clear and open idea that he himself liked teenage boys. (He would spend time in jail more than 20 years later for abusing teenage boys.) He would have had a way, learned for good reasons in adolescence, of keeping some of his actions and desires secret from himself. His sense of power and entitlement would also have meant that such crimes as he committed would most likely not see the light of day. The priesthood had, as far as he was concerned, solved his problems for him.

This is almost an aspect of the Catholic religion itself, this business of knowing and not knowing something all at the same time, keeping an illusion separate from the truth. We knew that the bread and wine, for example, were literally and actually changed into the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the priest at Mass, and, at the same time, we must have known that this was not the case, that, really, they remained just bread and wine.

In January this year, for example, the carabinieri in Rome recorded an exchange in which Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman to his Holiness (a name for ushers in the Vatican who are expected to ‘distinguish themselves for the good of souls and the glory of the name of the Lord’), a man who was also a senior adviser to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, spoke to a Vatican chorister on the telephone. They discussed a seminarian. Balducci is said to have asked: ‘Listen, have you spoken with the seminarian by any chance?’ The chorister replied that he was ‘probably at Mass or something’. Later, the chorister called again to recommend ‘a colleague, a friend’ of the seminarian because the latter was unavailable. He said the colleague is ‘better, taller, a bit taller than you’. Later, he asked: ‘Can I send [him] around straight away?’ and inquired where Balducci was. Balducci replied: ‘Up at the seminary … where the cardinal lives.’ The chorister replied: ‘He could get there within half an hour … the time it takes to catch a taxi and get there.’ The transcripts also implied that over a period of around five months in 2008, the chorister procured for Balducci at least ten contacts with, among others, ‘two black Cuban lads’, a former male model from Naples, and a rugby player from Rome.

In July this year two undercover journalists from the magazine Panorama, which is owned by Berlusconi, witnessed priests in Rome having gay sex and visiting gay clubs and bars. John Hooper in the Guardian reported that the diocese of Rome, in response, urged gay clerics to leave both the closet and the priesthood. It said: ‘Consistency would require that they come into the open,’ but they ‘ought not to have become priests’. Hooper went on:


One priest, a Frenchman in his thirties identified as Father Paul, attended a party at which there were two male prostitutes, then said Mass the following morning before driving them to the airport, Panorama reported. A photo on its website claimed to show the priest in his dog collar but without his trousers with a gay man who acted as decoy for the magazine. In other shots, priests were shown apparently kissing Panorama’s collaborator.

A member of the clergy quoted by the magazine put the proportion of gay priests in the Italian capital at ‘98 per cent’. The Rome diocese insisted the vast majority of priests in the city were ‘models of morality for all’, while adding that the number of gay clergyman was ‘small, but not to be written off as isolated cases’. A review eight years ago of research on the American Church concluded that between a quarter and a half of seminarians and priests there were homosexual.

A former Italian MP and gay activist, Franco Grillini, said: ‘If all the gays in the Catholic Church were to leave it at once – something we would very much like – they would cause it serious operational problems.’

Another well-known spokesman for the gay community, Aurelio Mancuso, condemned Panorama’s investigation as a ‘horrible political and cultural operation’, but agreed that if priests in Rome were to follow the advice given to them in yesterday’s statement, it would ‘paralyse’ the diocese.

[stefano]

So apparently Benedict considered it very urgent, before leaving, to name a new head of the Vatican Bank (the position held by the late Roberto Calvi who was found swinging under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982).
___________
Vatican Names German Lawyer to as New Head of Embattled Bank

The Vatican appointed a German lawyer and financial adviser to lead its bank, nine months after its previous head was ousted amid a money laundering probe.

Ernst von Freyberg, 54, a member of the religious order of the Knights of Malta, is founder of a Frankfurt-based financial advisory company currently called DC Advisory Partners. Von Freyberg was among 40 candidates and appointed by a commission of cardinals with the consent of the pope, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said at a press briefing in Rome.
[...]
The Vatican bank, which is formally called the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, had been under the interim leadership of its vice chairman since the board of directors ousted former head Ettore Gotti Tedeschi in May last year for “failing to carry out various duties of primary importance,” according to a May 24 statement by Lombardi.
[...]
The bank, which was set up in 1942 and reports directly to the pope, has stepped up efforts to improve supervision and it’s now under the scrutiny of European authorities in a bid to be added to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s list of financially transparent countries.
[...]
The institute is no stranger to scandal. It was implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. The bank’s former Chairman Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in June of that year. The Vatican paid $240 million to compensate Ambrosiano’s account holders without admitting any wrongdoing.
_______________
Apparently the sacking of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was the result of machinations by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who seems to have had a hand in Benedict's resignation? Bertone is an Italian and a Salesian (the Salesians do a lot of charity work with children, and quite a few of them have molested children). Bertone was also Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously the Inquisition, in the 1990s under Benedict, then still a cardinal of course. He is currently the Camerlengo, making him the acting Pope while the position is vacant.

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^ thanks

this thread needs to be linked here Cardinal 'claimed pope to die'

Mr Tedeschi reportedly gave copies of the documents to his closest confidantes and told them: “If I am killed, the reason for my death is in here. I’ve seen things in the Vatican that would frighten anyone.” One of the documents was reportedly titled “internal enemies” and contained the names of senior clergy and powerful Italian politicians. Appointed in 2009, the 67-year-old banker was sacked as head of the Vatican’s bank on May 24 – the day after the Pope’s butler was arrested on suspicion of stealing confidential letters from Benedict’s desk and leaking them to journalists.

Die...as in getting ready to quit




Pope Leaves Financial Disarray in His Wake

At the Vatican, the Most Secretive Nonprofit Bank in the World

WRITTEN BY RICK COHEN CREATED ON THURSDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2013 15:05
Share on email Share on print Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on pinterest_share Share on google_plusone_share More Sharing Services


February 15, 2013; Source: Washington Post

Until the first-ever press visit to the Vatican bank last year, it was “the most secret building in the ‘city of secrets,’” according to John Hooper of the Guardian. It was also the “most secret bank in the world” in the estimation of former U.S. Treasury official Avi Jorisch. The Vatican bank, otherwise known as the Institute for Works of Religion, has 33,000 accounts with about $8.3 billion in assets, operates in 100 countries, and offers the option of conducting financial transactions in Latin, even at ATMs. With its surpluses devoted entirely to religion and charity, it may well be the largest nonprofit bank in the world and it is certainly the most secretive. Some have questioned whether the bank may even have been one of the factors behind Pope Benedict XVI’s stunning decision to retire at the end of the month.

The Vatican bank has been involved in numerous mysteries and scandals since it was established in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to handle the Vatican’s finances. For instance, Roberto Calvi, sometimes referred to as “God’s banker,” was found dead in 1982, hanging from a bridge in London. That homicide case remains a mystery. On the scandal front, the Vatican bank was recently in the news following the arrest of an Italian priest and a Ferrari-driving lawyer who have been charged with defrauding insurance companies and using the Vatican bank to hide the loot.

According to Anthony Faiola, writing for the Washington Post, Pope Benedict has been trying to insert a dollop of transparency into the workings of the Vatican bank without huge success. For a time last month, the government of Italy barred Italian banks from business transactions with the Vatican due to the Vatican’s lack of financial transparency. Because of Italy’s membership in the European Union, it really cut the Vatican and its bank off from doing business with other banks throughout the EU. As a result, until the Vatican found a non-EU financial institution in Switzerland to work through, the Vatican lost access to credit card processing at its tourist sites like the Sistine Chapel.

To his credit, Pope Benedict XVI tried to insert some sunshine into the bank’s operations, but he reportedly ran into a political wall. When the former president of the bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was fired by the bank, he ominously alleged, according to Faiola, that his dismissal was a result of his getting “too close to the truth.” In one of the last major governmental decisions before he will leave the papacy, Pope Benedict has approved the decision of the College of Cardinals to fill the top Vatican bank post with Ernst von Freyberg, a German lawyer, member of the Knights of Malta, and the founder of a family foundation (Freyberg Stiftung) which supports Catholic groups in Germany, Austria, and France.

According to Faiola, “Vatican observers believe a steady barrage of scandals — not the least of those over financial transparency — took a toll on a formidable theologian, who came to the throne of St. Peter on a mission to reinvigorate the church,” and that this contributed to the Pope’s decision to resign. Faiola says that Italian prosecutors investigating financial crimes encounter the bank’s “haughty resistance to European Union laws” and routinely find their communications unanswered or rejected. In 2010, Benedict issued a papal letter forbidding money laundering and established an independent Vatican watchdog, the Financial Intelligence Authority. Nonetheless, the bank’s dismissal of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi may point to elements of the secrecy of the Vatican that even the Pope himself couldn’t successfully undo.—Rick Cohen

Head of firm that built warships for Hitler to run Vatican bank
The Vatican faced embarrassment Friday after appointing as the new head of its bank a German Catholic who is chairman of a company that makes warships.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, left, said Mr von Freyburg was a committed Roman Catholic Photo: AP
By Nick Squires, Rome9:43PM GMT 15 Feb 2013
Filling the vacant post was one of the last major acts of Benedict XVI's papacy but there was dismay when it was revealed to be Ernst von Freyberg, the chairman of a Hamburg shipyard that makes frigates and destroyers.
Worse from a public relations perspective, his company, Blohm+Voss Group, was a major producer of battleships and U-boats for Hitler's regime.
On the eve of the Second World War the firm produced the Bismarck, the battleship that sank HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, but which was eventually sunk by the British fleet in May 1941.
The shipyard also built a state yacht for Hitler and aircraft for the Luftwaffe.
During the First World War the company produced the Scharnhorst, an armoured cruiser that took on a Royal Navy squadron at the Battle of Coronel and was then hunted down by British battlecruisers at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914.

Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Mr von Freyburg was a committed Roman Catholic, a member of the Knights of St John of Malta chivalric order that was founded during the Crusades, and had been chosen from among 40 candidates.
He initially claimed that Blohm+Voss was involved only in civil engineering projects, but later released a statement acknowledging that the company made warships, and was currently building four frigates for the German navy.
The Vatican bank – formerly known as the Institute for Religious Works – has been leaderless since its former head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was unceremoniously sacked last May, for reasons which are still murky.

[seemslikeadream]

The Vatican has been reining in the progressive leadership of American nuns, creating a political test of wills over the future of a faith with one billion adherents worldwide as it braces for an historic papal transition. Described as a modern ‘Inquisition,’ this punitive campaign against the nuns lands on the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and raises fundamental questions about the mission of a global church and the role of nuns who were inspired by Vatican II in taking the social justice gospel directly to the world’s poor.


Vatican's looming 'Inquisition' reveals a fractured Catholic Church
As Pope Benedict XVI steps down and briefly leaves an empty seat, a conflict over spiritual mission and real estate will pause to await the next pope.
Costa, Calif.

“Dan Ward was my mentor at St. John’s in Collegeville [Minnesota] in the 1980s,” explains Wall. “He taught me everything I know.”

In the late 1990s Wall, who was mentored by Ward in the seminary in the 1980s, grew disillusioned after serving at five consecutive Minnesota parishes, cleaning up after priests who abused youths or diverted parish funds to personal use. Wall left the priesthood, moved west and since 2002 has worked as a researcher and expert witness for lawyers representing clergy abuse victims. That role has occasionally put him across the table from Ward in his defense work for clergy perpetrators. Wall, married with a daughter in grade-school, accepts the reversal of roles with Ward as a professional matter. Like the nuns at Holy Wisdom, he moved beyond the church, becoming, in turn, an Episcopalian, then a Methodist, and a Buddhist. But the church he left still permeates his life.

“When you look at the larger crisis,” continues Wall, “you ask yourself: Why go after the nuns when they’re a dying group, in terms of numbers, yet these women have been more faithful to church than the clerics have? It makes no sense. But that’s where Dan Ward has been righteous — he is extremely well-read with a work ethic that will run you over. The only reason you go after the nuns is because a bishop wants to know where that property is going.”

When the Benedictine Sisters fazed out of existence, they did so without giving the bishop of Madison the opportunity to take title to their property and grounds. Ward orchestrated their end run. Ward also assisted nuns in Sacramento, Calif., in the selling of a school that sparked a huge controversy, according to a spokesman for Bishop Jaime Soto.

A RECYCLED CITY ON THE HILL

Many sisters interviewed for this report suspect — though none can prove — that Madison Bishop Robert Morlino protested to the Vatican about Ward’s role. That they say would explain why the Doctrinal Assessment singled out his group, Resource Center for Religious Institute, for its association with the LCWR.

At the Diocese of Madison, spokesman Brent King responded to an email asking if Morlino had reported Ward’s work to Rome.

He said, “The Diocese of Madison has said everything it plans to say publicly at this time with regards to Holy Wisdom Monastery. We would have no public comment about Fr. Dan Ward.”

What Morlino has said, in warning Catholics about Holy Wisdom Monastery, is relatively mild. He accused the community of “indifferentism...the belief that not one religion or philosophy is superior to another.”

He said that the Holy Wisdom community “may not share an authentic view of the Catholic Church’s approach to inter-religious dialogue.”

But the bishop has no real power over the group.

In moving out of a Romanist idea of church, as many nuns had already done in taking a social gospel to the poor, and quietly moving leftward in their social and theological positions, the Wisconsin community followed their own vision and remade the place into their own idea of a spiritual city on the hill.

They oversaw the dismantling of the Benedict House with care so that 97 percent of its parts were responsibly recycled.

In 2009 the construction was done on a 30,000-square-foot Holy Wisdom Monastery. It has cutting-edge design as a green complex, utilizing solar energy, geothermal pumps, large energy-absorbing windows, roof gardens and storage tanks to recycle rain.

Bishop Morlino watched from the sidelines as the liturgies went well beyond the traditional Mass.

Today, women lead services and preach. Gay people in committed relationships are welcomed. Anyone at services, not just Catholics, can receive communion, in contrast with the Catholic prohibition on priests giving the Eucharist to non-Catholics.

ANOTHER TARGET OF THE ‘INQUISITION’

The investigation by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2012 took special aim at Sister Laurie Brink. Specifically, the so-called “Doctrinal Assessment” focused on a 2007 speech at an LCWR conference, which referred to some communities as “moving beyond the church,” a characterization that would apply to Holy Wisdom.

Brink is a member of Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, a Wisconsin community pledged “through the ministry of preaching and teaching...to participate in the building of a holy and just church and society.”

The Sinsinawa Dominicans are in the liberal mainstream of American nuns, a current that the April 2012 Doctrinal Assessment tried to halt, if not divert. The congregation has 500 members with missionaries in several foreign countries. The headquarters at Sinsinawa Mound, once a famous Indian site, covers 800 acres with a large motherhouse, chapel and retreat complex. A girls’ school that closed several years ago has been converted to housing for the elderly.

Cardinal Levada called Brink’s August 2, 2007 speech to an LCWR gathering “a serious source of scandal...incompatible with religious life.”

Brink’s speech enraged Levada as it provided one image after another in a verbal carousel of today’s church as deeply polarized and supportive of progressive initiatives that were threatening to hierarchs like Levada and Law. She offered sharp criticism of church leaders, who too often recycled pedophiles from one parish to the next. Without mentioning bishops by name, Brink confronts a church of inner strife. And then speaking directly to the graying mother superiors, many disappointed by a road from Vatican II to latter day betrayal by the Vatican, she tells them to think of how “to become ambassadors of Christ, initiating reconciliation.”

“Reconciliation first with our hierarchical church from which we have experienced abuse, oppression, neglect and domination. If there is to be a future for women religious that upholds our dignity...we must first be reconciled with the institutional church,” she said.

* * *

“This is not about faith — it’s about politics,” says Sister Simone Cambell of Network, the Washington, D.C. social action agency also singled out in Levada’s assessment. “All of our work as Catholic sisters is engaged with the world and that is different from living in Vatican City where that’s your only world. “The rules make a protective wall. Most Catholic sisters see engagement as way of living the gospel.”

RCRI, the group led by Father Ward, helped Network secure autonomy for property it owns, says Campbell.

Network and the Catholic Health Association supported ‘Obamacare’ as helping the poor get insurance; the bishops attacked the legislation as favoring abortion and forcing coverage of contraception. Campbell, who became an overnight sensation after speaking at the Democratic Convention, says Network labored in obscurity for years until the health care debate raised the bishops’ ire.

“What we saw with Nuns on the Bus is a huge hunger for a deeper spiritual reality that does like Jesus does, walk with people who are suffering,” says Campbell.

Over the last two decades, as the bishops sank into a quagmire of clergy abuse cases, the nuns maintained and perhaps even intensified their focus on a social justice mission all over the world.

Sisters like Pat Farrell returned from El Salvador to help immigrants in the Midwest, and as a therapist with people who had been tortured before fleeing Central America. In Cleveland, Chris Schenk worked with parishioners who reversed a bishop’s closure orders for their parishes with appeals to the Vatican. And the Holy Wisdom sisters left the church by staying put, following a more radical, egalitarian idea of the spiritual life. Countless other women of the sister’s liberal mainstream went about their work, following the vision of Vatican II that had changed their lives, and living a resistance to the retrenchment by the hierarchy that sought to reverse the reforms ushered in by Vatican II.

“The bishops sitting in the US have on average only five years of pastoral experience,” says Simone Campbell. “They don’t know what it is to enter into people’s lives in heartbreaking situations. And when your heart hasn’t been broken you can be pretty rigid in thinking rules can’t be broken.”



GlobalPost Vatican correspondent Jason Berry, is author of “Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church,” which received Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Book Award. This Special Report is supported in part by a Knight Grant for Reporting on Religion and American Public Life, sponsored by the Knight Program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism; the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting; and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

[seemslikeadream]

Vatican admits secretly bugging its own clergy
The Vatican admitted on Thursday that it had secretly bugged clergy within the Holy See as part of the investigation into the Vatileaks scandal, which resulted in the Pope's butler being imprisoned for stealing confidential pontifical documents.

By Nick Squires, Rome5:31PM GMT 28 Feb 2013
Like much of the rest of his papacy, Benedict's last day in office was overshadowed by claims of secrecy and intrigue.
An Italian news magazine, Panorama, claimed that Vatican authorities had conducted, and are still conducting, an extensive covert surveillance programme, tapping the phone calls and intercepting the emails of cardinals and bishops in the Curia, the governing body of the Catholic Church.
The surveillance operation was to weed out Vatican insiders who may have helped Paolo Gabriele, the butler, steal and leak to the press compromising papal documents, in a scandal that rocked the Catholic Church and reportedly contributed to Benedict's decision to resign.
The Vatican confirmed that secret surveillance had indeed taken place, but on a far smaller scale than that portrayed by Panorama.
In response to a question by The Daily Telegraph at a press briefing, Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said surveillance had taken place but "not of the dimensions described".

"In the context of Vatileaks, some intercepts and checks were authorised by the Vatican magistracy," he said.
It was investigators from the Vatican magistracy who led the prosecution against Mr Gabriele in a lightning-fast trial which resulted in his conviction for aggravated theft.
He was sentenced to 18 months behind bars but spent only a few weeks in a Vatican "secure room" before receiving a pardon from Benedict just before Christmas.
Father Lombardi said the secret surveillance operation involved the wiretapping of "two or three" telephone lines, but did not specify who they belonged to.
The Vatileaks scandal exploded last year when it emerged that the Pope's personal valet had been stealing documents from the papal apartments and leaking them to journalists in what he said was an attempt to expose "evil and corruption" within the Church.
Benedict personally appointed three elderly cardinals, including a prominent member of Opus Dei, to investigate the leaks, amid suspicions that the butler had not acted alone.
Many of the documents damaged the standing of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as Secretary of State is equivalent to the Vatican's prime minister and is second in authority only to the Pope.
Federico Lombardi said surveillance had taken place but 'not of the dimensions described' (Getty)
Panorama claimed it was he who authorised the secret bugging operation but that was denied by Father Lombardi.
The surveillance operation was carried out by the Vatican Gendarmerie, the papal police force, which is headed by Domenico Giani, a former officer in the Italian intelligence services.
"For more than a year, emails, telephone conversations, meetings and discussions were meticulously placed under observation by the Gendarmerie," said Panorama's Vatican expert, Ignazio Ingrao, in what amounted to "a sort of Vatican Big Brother" operation.
"Everyone was spied on in the Vatican. In the shadow of the cupola of St Peter's Basilica, the biggest and most detailed wiretapping operation ever conducted in the sacred palaces was conducted," the magazine said.
"Even the email accounts of bishops and cardinals were sifted through and their phone lines placed under scrutiny." The three cardinals delivered the results of their investigation to the Pope in December, but the hunt for moles within the Holy See was still going on, Panorama claimed.
Father Lombardi has previously said that the investigation is still formally open.

[seemslikeadream]

Catholic Church behind theft of 70,000 babies in Vietnam "Operation Babylift"


hola
rojo
morning to you
you always helped me chase demons away
don't know what I'll do without you
so Pan is the name of the plane

second to the right
straight on 'til morning
that's where I'll be waiting
second to the right
straight on 'til morning

hola
tick-tock
my time is up
Pedro says
I will forget him in days
in my new life, no room for a lost boy
boys can be so dumb sometimes

second to the right
straight on 'til morning
that's where I'll be waiting
second to the right
straight on 'til morning
straight on 'til morning

kiss Pedro for me

“saving children from communism”

WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 16-18, 2011


Where's Captain Hook in NPR's Fairy Tale?
The CIA, Cuba and Operation Peter Pan
by SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES
“Los niños nacen para ser felices.”

– José Martí

On November 19, 2011 NPR broadcast “Children Of Cuba Remember: Their Flight To America.” Reporter Greg Allen claimed the 1960-62 journey from Cuba to the United States of 14,000 plus Cuban children “was made possible because of a deal a priest in the Miami diocese [Father Bryan Walsh] … worked out with the US State Department. The agreement allowed him to sign visa waivers for children 16 or under.” Allen then interviewed several right-of-center Cuban Americans to offer “objective” perspective on the facts surrounding Operation Peter Pan.

Curiously, Allen omitted the CIA from his report, although ample evidence shows the Agency in the early 1960s conspired with the Church to spirit kids out of Cuba.

Once inside the nurturing borders of the greatest country in the world “Pedro Pan kids have done well,” Allen concluded, without explaining what “well” means. Now adult Pedro Pan kids remain “firmly opposed to any normalization of relations with the Castro regime, the regime that was responsible for breaking up their families and forcing them from their homeland.”

NPR staff might have discovered a more complex and sinister story – had they looked. The CIA refuses to release Peter Pan documents, but abundant testimony shows the Agency forging documents and spreading lies, with Father Walsh and the regional Catholic hierarchy. Their goal: separate elite children from parents (a Cuban brain drain) and generate political instability.

One Operation Peter Pan conspirator, Antonio Veciana, now living in Miami, told us how Maurice Bishop (aka CIA official David Atlee Phillips) recruited him in 1960 “to wage psychological war — to destabilize the government.” Veciana described how the Agency forged a law to make affluent Cubans believe the revolutionary government planned to usurp parental control. Bishop’s agents in Cuba spread this rumor, backed by a forged simulation of the supposed law, to members of the professional and propertied classes. The forgery “declared that parents would lose control of their kids to the state.”

Veciana recounted how “CIA agents claimed they’d stolen the document from the Cuban government.” This false document “created tremendous panic.” On October 26, 1960, CIA-controlled Swan island radio station, south of Cuba, broadcast breaking “news.” Cuba’s government, the radio asserted, planned to remove children from parents so as to indoctrinate them. Radio Swan reported another lie: the Cuban underground had obtained a copy of the forthcoming “law.”

Minimal research would have revealed that Leopoldina and Ramón Grau Alsina, niece and nephew of former Cuban President Ramón Grau San Martín, had confessed to Cuban security officials after being arrested in 1965 to having printed the false law in Havana, circulated it clandestinely and then lied to parents.

Article 3 of the apocryphal document stated: “When this law comes into effect, the custody of persons under 20 years of age will be exercised by the state via persons or organizations to which this power has been delegated.” Priests and CIA agents both recruited kids and persuaded parents to “trust us. The US government will care for them.”

The clergy circulated the phony document among their Cuban upper middle-class flock. Catholic school officials feared Castro’s rapidly expanding public instruction program would undermine their virtual educational monopoly among moneyed sectors.

In March 1960, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the Cuban government. Agency plotters designed Peter Pan to run alongside political propaganda and economic strangulation policies. These parallel tracks would weaken Castro’s government while US trainers prepared a Cuban-exile invasion force, which, in turn, would coordinate with CIA-backed urban terrorists and guerrillas.

Operation Peter Pan (recall the Disney film?) used Cuban kids and parents to further their goal: overthrowing the revolutionary government. NPR’s claim of “no evidence” of CIA involvement would have dissolved had they asked Veciana or questioned why the CIA still refuses to release its 1500 plus documents on that Operation — while de-classifying archives on the Bay of Pigs and the 1962 Missile Crisis?

Writer Alvaro Fernandez’ father Angel Fernandez Varela, recruited by the CIA in Havana, taught at the Jesuit run Colegio Belen. Before he died in Miami, wrote Alvaro, Angel told his family “he had been one of those responsible for drafting the false law that gave rise to the hysteria.”

NPR’s report doesn’t ask: who obtained the kids’ visas, airplane tickets and contacts abroad and why did KLM and Pan American Airlines issue Peter Pan kids free tickets?

Nor does NPR Allen follow up. The US government didn’t maintain contact between parents and children, nor grant visas to most of the parents that remained in Cuba. The UN High Commissioner tried to reunite parents and children, but Washington didn’t back him.

Veciana helped facilitate this dirty trick, but later mused: “Afterward I wondered: was this the right thing to do? Because we did create panic about the government, but we also separated lots of kids from their parents.”

In fact, Cuba has won accolades for its treatment of children. “In Cuba, there are no children on the streets, no children out of school, no children without access to health services or culture, and there are no unprotected children without opportunities for development,” said Jose Juan Ortiz, UNICEF representative in Cuba.

Paradoxically, the CIA attributed its own objective to the Cuban government: separating children from their parents. Maybe, if NPR staff thought ironically they would’ve done a more accurate report on Operation Peter Pan.

[seemslikeadream]

new pope has been selected....to be announced shortly

[crikkett]

Pope Francis is a jesuit

[JackRiddler]

He's also a man, I hear.

I read a Cracked piece last week about how the legend of Pope Joan doesn't hold up in the actual chronology of popes, and the balls-checking hole in the throne was, surprise surprise, an emergency toilet. (As in, who the hell looks at a chair with a hole in it and thinks it must be for confirming that the sitter in said throne has testicles?)

Pope Francis

Cardinal Bergoglio was elected Pope on the second day of the 2013 Papal conclave, taking the regnal name Francis.[5] Cardinal Bergoglio is the first Jesuit priest chosen to be pope.

Abortion and euthanasia

Cardinal Bergoglio has invited his clergy and laity to oppose both abortion and euthanasia.[6]

Homosexuality

He has affirmed church teaching on homosexuality, though he teaches the importance of respecting individuals who are homosexual. He strongly opposed legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine Government to allow same-sex marriage. In a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires, he wrote: "Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God." He has also insisted that adoption by homosexuals is a form of discrimination against children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition".[7]

Some real surprises in there.

[JackRiddler]

Damn, Argentina.

Who was here that predicted after Chavez's demise that the Vatican would be electing a South American? Come here for your prize! (Wombat?)

[IanEye]

[JackRiddler]

Catholic Church behind theft of 70,000 babies in Vietnam "Operation Babylift"

Gobsmacked.

Had no idea.

How did I miss this, or Operation Pedro Pan?

Sick.

Now adult Pedro Pan kids remain “firmly opposed to any normalization of relations with the Castro regime, the regime that was responsible for breaking up their families and forcing them from their homeland.”

Speaking of empires, this reminds me of the Ottoman Jannisaries. Also, more than a touch of Operation Lebensborn.

Sure puts the Elian Gonzalez story in a different perspective.

.