At the Vatican, Up Against the World

[greybeard]

Quote Originally Posted by giovonni View Post
Love and Forgiveness

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God. He created him: man and female He created them
Genesis 1:27

The Last Prayer
"Beloved Father, do you think they understood the true meaning of my message, my life? That Ye are all Gods. That Ye do greater works than I, for I am leaving this plane. Do you think they understood my prayer when I said Beloved Father let them be one as we are one, that within them resides a loving, joyous, wise and powerful manifesting God waiting to unfold? Do you think they understood the true meaning of my death and my resurrection, which was to conquer the greatest of all challenges and fears, which is death itself? Do you think they understood unconditional love, infinite compassion and forgiveness? Will it take another 2,000 years of fear, unworthiness, separation, the worshiping and warring over names, images and doctrines before they find peace, unity and the God within them? Will they ever understand the one law which supersedes all laws, which is the law of love?

That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.
John 17:21


The ego loves to dispense fear, if it comes up with a solution it seems clever and therefore not need in Divine assistance
Oneness is the greatest threat to its existence--- Non duality, Unity consciousness = no ego.
Chris

[MargueriteBee]

The only reason about the church saying that about women not being ordained is just to give people something else to get all riled up about. It's all about keeping people upset and unbalanced.

[ronbono57]

I must disagree if Christ came back he would vomit upon looking at the Vatican. It's a den of Satanist's, child molester's, and homosexuals to say the least. The Vatican is the complete opposite of the teachings of Christ. The Vatican hordes billions of dollars, and hides the true history, our history in its vaults. It is a den of evil pathetic people.

[giovonni]

We are witnessing an institution in severe crisis and possible disintegration

Catholic sex scandal as undercover reporter 'films priests at gay clubs and having casual flings'

By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 3:16 PM on 24th July 2010

A gay priest sex scandal has rocked the Catholic Church in Italy today after a weekly news magazine released details of a shock investigation it had carried out.

Using hidden cameras, a journalist from Panorama magazine - owned by Italian Prime Minister and media baron Silvio Berlusconi - filmed three priests as they attended gay nightspots and had casual sex.

Today there was no immediate comment from the Italian Bishops Conference and the Vatican - which has been rocked by a series of sex scandals involving paedophile priests since the start of the year.
A preview of the Panorama article sent out by email last night added that video footage from the investigation would be made available.

The article describes how the reporter was assisted by a gay 'accomplice' as they 'gate-crashed the wild nights of a number of priests in Rome who live a surprising double-life.'

In it's preview, Panorama added: 'By day they are regular priests, complete with dog collar, but, at night it's off with the cassock as they take their place as perfectly integrated members of the Italian capital's gay scene.'

Panorama described its investigation as 'deeply disturbing' as it detailed how three priests - two Italians and a Frenchman - happily took part in gay events and had casual sex.

The Catholic Church forbids priests to have sex and homosexuality is also seen as a 'sin' .

In 2008 the Vatican issued guidelines which said that any would be trainees should not join if they had 'deep-seated homosexual tendencies'.

In one part of the investigation Panorama said that one priest, named as Carlo, willingly put on his cassock to have sex with the reporter's gay accomplice, adding 'all of which was filmed by the hidden camera'.

The magazine also described how they had attended a Mass which was celebrated by Carlo.
In its preview Panorama insisted that it had carried out through checks and established that all three priests were bona fide but would not reveal their real names or any other details.

Panorama editor Giorgio Mule said: 'This was a two week investigation and was not aimed at creating a scandal but showing that a certain section of the clergy behaves very differently.'

original article link with photos;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...ay-clubs.html#

[RedeZra]

Posted by ronbono57 (here)
I must disagree if Christ came back he would vomit upon looking at the Vatican. It's a den of Satanist's, child molester's, and homosexuals to say the least. The Vatican is the complete opposite of the teachings of Christ. The Vatican hordes billions of dollars, and hides the true history, our history in its vaults. It is a den of evil pathetic people.

nah it's not as bad as our governments and our politicians - but it's getting there

[giovonni]

Pope Benedict XVI's 30-year campaign to reassert conservative Catholicism



Pope Benedict XVI (at far end, c.) led a meeting at the Vatican in February to canonize five new church saints, including the first one from Australia, a 19thcentury nun.
(Osservatore Ro mano/Reuters)

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer
posted August 6, 2010 at 4:07 pm EDT

Some believe Pope Benedict XVI is 'the greatest scholar to rule the church since [Pope] Innocent III," in the 13th century. Child-abuse scandals have marred his tenure.
Munich and Tubingen, Germany —

In the past 30 years, the Vatican has moved strongly to reassert the authority of a traditional, even orthodox Roman Catholicism – to bring the notion of a "one true church" to Europe and then the larger world. The intent was to reverse the "open" or liberalizing trend of the church represented by Vatican II.

In the past three decades, the Vatican has cracked down on liberation theology, affirmed traditional sexual morality, and is now quietly supporting ultradevout Catholic groups such as Opus Dei and the Legions of Christ – while curbing ecumenical outreach and describing Protestant churches as not authentic.

The most constant, diligent, and serious champion of these moves is a shy but brilliant German theologian, Josef Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI.

Princeton University Renaissance scholar Anthony Grafton, not a Catholic, says Pope Benedict is "probably the greatest scholar to rule the church since [Pope] Innocent III," in the 13th century.

"There is no great issue, no direction in Catholic theology, not dominated by Ratzinger over the past three decades," says Hermann Häring, a liberal Jesuit theologian who studied with Ratzinger and has written a book about his theology.

Yet a grand effort to restore authority and make the church purer coincides with an epic impurity – abuse of children by thousands of priests and many bishops in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. To understand Pope Benedict's past, present, and perhaps future responses to the sexual abuse crisis, one must examine the arc of his religious life.

His vision for reforming the Catholic Church was often so all-absorbing that pedophilia got swept under the Vatican carpet, sources say. At the same time, a crackdown on Vatican II – the controversial three-year papal council in the mid-1960s – amplified a culture of fear, secrecy, and hierarchy. "Many rules and codes came down, but efforts to talk 'up' were thwarted," says a Jesuit official in Germany with knowledge of the issue.

"[Pope] John Paul II was the face of the church's world mission, while Ratzinger stayed in Rome, working the books, making rules as the pope's enforcer," says Karl Josef Kuschel at the University of Tubingen seminary in Germany. "Ratzinger has been appointing bishops for 30 years. It is now his church. The bishops today were chosen exactly because they agreed with him."

In dozens of interviews with church officials and theologians in Germany, the US, Spain, and France, many Catholics say the Vatican is not missing cues nor "tone deaf" in its handling of pedophilia. Rather, the abuse cases are playing out fitfully within the pope's vision of the church as ultimate arbiter of spiritual authority, Scripture, and holiness on earth. In this sense, the Vatican is not looking to adapt, modernize, or open itself to new interpretations. Recent Vatican statements against women's ordination, and reaffirming priestly celibacy, are small examples.

"The world is evil and the church is pure," says an Austrian church official. "This is serious for Benedict. He doesn't want the church to be a joke. He's suspicious of chaos and avoidance of discipline and order, and of human efforts to adopt popular culture and create church out of the world, instead of a church that transforms the world. This deeply upsets him. He sees all salvation taking place inside the Catholic Church. He believes that."

Yet ironically, child abuse has arguably brought greater disorder than the ferment of Vatican II in the late 1960s. This spring, the pope described pedophilia as "the petty gossip of dominant opinion" before shifting 180 degrees and asking contrition from St. Peter's Basilica on June 11: "We ... insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again."

From progressive to traditionalist

Ratzinger was not always seen as the conservative enforcer of Catholic doctrine. In 1965, the arrival of Ratzinger to the theology faculty at Tubingen brought a stir of anticipation. Ratzinger's bestselling "Introduction to Christianity" seemed a new impulse for democracy and freedom. The school had a joint Protestant-Catholic faculty. Change was in the air. Ratzinger was brought in by Hans Kung, a progressive young Swiss lion of Vatican II; for a time, it looked as if the two men were at the start of a beautiful friendship.

Nazism and the war had disturbed young German Catholics who were suspicious of absolute ideology. Vatican II appeared to "open" the church and allow dialogue and airing of views without fear of ecclesiastical reprisal. At Tubingen, Protestants partook of Catholic learning; Catholics learned Protestant concepts of scriptural interpretation and subjective ideas about spirituality from the teachings of Swiss theologian Karl Barth and German theologian Rudolph Bultmann.

Yet Ratzinger's first lecture to the joint faculty, an important tradition for new professors, was surprising. He spoke on "The significance of the church fathers for Christianity." Mr. Kung was "a little shocked," says Professor Häring. "Rat*zinger was saying the basis of true theology was not the Bible, but the Bible as interpreted by five centuries of church fathers. He was basically telling the Protestant faculty, 'Get lost.' He was saying you must return to Greek theology ... to Hellenism."

The student protest marches at Tubin*gen in the '60s were a watershed for Rat*zinger, moving him toward conservatism. He departed to a quiet Bavarian college. He wrote against democracy in the church, berated the influence of Marxism, and criticized what he called "the dictatorship of relativism." He disliked the language of individualism, of crisis of faith, the search for freedom and meaning, and existential moments. "He saw it as individuals separated from the collective institution of church, where salvation and meaning are found. In service to the true church, one found a new life," says Professor Kuschel.

In 1977, Ratzinger became archbishop of Munich and Freising. Former Jesuit Paul Imhoff remembers Ratzinger as absorbed in medieval Catholicism. Mr. Imhoff, who was ordained by Ratzinger before leaving the church to marry a theology student, went to a "professors' carnival" with him. "We had jokes, dancing, harmless fun ... Ratzinger was charming. But the whole time he spoke about restoring the old Europe ... where the church takes precedence over the state."

Pedophilia not on his radar

Pedophilia cases started mounting in Vatican files in the 1980s. But now, as head of church discipline, Ratzinger was primarily focused on silencing priests or liberation theologians, such as the Brazilian Leo*nardo Boff, who tried to empower farm*ers and peasants. The 1990s brought strictures against abortion, gay rights, same-sex marriage, contraception, and promotion of abstinence and celibacy – just as US bishops were reporting hundreds of child abuse cases, but getting little clarity on how to handle them.

Most heads of the church's Congrega*tion for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) serve two terms, or 10 years. Ratzinger served 24, then became pope.

In recent years, a Vatican focus on ecumenical outreach has given way to evangelical outreach. In June, a new pontifical office to "evangelize" areas of the world that have suffered "an eclipse of the sense of God" was announced. The church has rebuffed Protestants and drawn sharp lines on Islam. But Rome has improved ties to Eastern Orthodox churches.

On July 21, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill praised the pope for holding firm against women priests and not succumbing to "sinful elements of the world" that have entered Protestant churches via gays and female clergy, and offered to work with the pope on world issues.

Today, after his 30-year quest to reshape the church, the sex scandal may be a sizable legacy. It is unclear where the pope is headed. In the past month, there's been some shift in tone and attention. In late July the church extended to 20 years the period that victims' claims can be investigated. But the key question of whether offending priests should be reported to civil authorities is undecided in Rome.

Beyond his few pronouncements, the pope's views on the sex scandal are an enigma. Vatican sources say the pontiff spends time writing books and only sees two church officials regularly. "Even bishops now wait two weeks or more for a meeting," says a church official who is concerned about the pope's isolation.


© The Christian Science Monitor. All Rights Reserved.

original story link;
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europ...ve-Catholicism

[PathWalker]

Dear readers,

The Vatican is the largest and most powerful crime organization. Even more powerful then the USA secret services.
The bad PR and public image it is facing is not the real issues the Vatican faces.

The prominent issue is the change in the global financial system.
When the global financial system melt down, the Vatican power will fall with it. So there is a survival battle going on, fierce and deadly.
See articles by Fulford and Wilcock as well as Jordan Maxwell.

If you wish for change, it is coming on us right now.

[giovonni]

"This inherently sordid sad story just keeps getting worse and worse as country after country pulls away the clerical cover revealing the hidden truth. I can think of no other international organization with a comparable crisis. Thirteen of the abused committed suicide as a result of the molestation. I can only imagine how incredibly painful this must be for believing Catholics. And for parents... how could one leave one's child with a priest? The great majority I am sure are honorable men, but as a parent how would one know one from another. This report states: "Not a single congregation escaped sexual abuse of minors."
comments by Stephen Schwartz

Catholic Church in Belgium details widespread sexual abuse
By the CNN Wire Staff
STORY HIGHLIGHTS






Ariaenssens said there was "not a single congregation" which has escaped abuse.

* 13 of the alleged victims committed suicide
* One alleged victim was 2 when the abuse began

* Belgium

(CNN) -- The Catholic Church in Belgium released an independent report Friday detailing hundreds of assertions of sexual abuse of children by clergy and others working for the church from the 1950s into the late 1980s.

"We can say that not a single congregation escaped sexual abuse of minors by one or more of its members," said the Commission on Church-Related Sexual Abuse Complaints, which was led by Dr. Peter Ariaenssens, who is both a church investigator and psychiatrist.

The commission said it received about 500 reports from alleged victims, about 60 percent of them from males.

It cited 320 alleged abusers, of whom 102 were known to have been clergy members from 29 congregations.

Thirteen of the alleged victims committed suicide, it said.

Investigators had information about when the abuse started for 233 of the alleged victims. Forty-eight were 12; one was 2; five were 4; eight were 5; seven were 6; 10 were 7.

Of the 230 alleged victims about whom investigators said they had reliable information, more than 70 percent are currently between the ages of 40 and 70, it said. Ten percent are 31 to 40.

Four alleged victims are 20 to 30 years of age, and one is younger than 20, it said.

At the other end of the scale, five alleged victims are aged between 80 and 90 years old and one is older than 90.

"The victims where the abuse starts before the age of 12 is equally big as the group of victims where the abuse starts after the age of 12," it said. Male victims were at highest risk between ages 10 and 14, while the risk that females would be victimized increased as they got older, it said.

All of the alleged abusers were men.

The committee said none of the alleged cases had occurred recently.

Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly said the Vatican will seek justice for victims. Over the summer he said that the church must promise "to do everything possible" to ensure that the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests "will never occur again."

Benedict said the church must "insistently beg forgiveness from God" and from victims for the sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests, and that priests must be more thoroughly vetted before joining the ministry.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/10/...m.church.abuse

[Studeo]

Sinead O'Connor: 'The Vatican is a nest of devils'

When she tore up the pope's picture as a protest against child abuse, people thought she was loopy. But Sinead O'Connor – former pop star, priest, newly married mother of four – won't say 'I told you so'

You can't mistake Sinead O'Connor's house. Outside the porch is an empty plant pot full of cigarette butts, inside are two large statues of the virgin Mary. As the door opens, I crash into another Virgin Mary. O'Connor's housekeeper, who doubles up as her best friend, opens the door and leads me into a lounge where family photos, rocking chairs and kids' paintings jostle for pole position with more Virgin Marys. A huge beautiful bay window overlooks the sea at Bray, just outside Dublin.

When O'Connor arrives, I barely recognise her. Her hair is a black bob, her face rounded, she is wearing a three-piece suit and has the air of a mid-20th century industrialist. A big brass cross hangs down her front. "That's my ordination cross. Normally I tuck it into my bra," which she does as she speaks. She suggests we retire to the shed-cum-office in the garden. So we stroll past the hanging linen, a few guitar cases, two Yorkshire terrier puppies, the cat, and she chats away confidently, and we reach the wooden hut and shut the door on the world. Then everything changes. She sits down, just about manages to light a fag with a shaking hand and morphs into the terrified (and terrifying) wisp of a girl from yesteryear.

In 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on the American TV show Saturday Night live. She said it was a protest at child sex abuse in the Catholic church, and many people thought she was loopy. What abuse? Two weeks later she was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert, her records were publicly smashed, and that was pretty much that as a pop star.

Eighteen years on, she has been vindicated. In March, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apology to the victims of decades of sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, expressing his "shame and remorse" for the "sinful and criminal acts". But O'Connor is still boiling – she regards the Vatican's admission as more cover-up than confession.

O'Connor's career is astonishing – for its brevity and longevity. It can be boiled down to the one song – a gorgeous interpretation of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U. She looked like a skinhead angel, and sang with despairing intensity. The accompanying video was equally memorable – the close-up of that luminous face, her haunted beauty, a single tear sliding down each cheek. Nothing Compares 2 U seems to be a conventional song about lost love, but it could just as easily be about God and faith. It went to No 1 all over the world in 1990. After that there were all sorts of records – Irish folk songs, reggae fusions, self-penned compositions, but nothing much to trouble the charts. And yet she is still a source of fascination – whether for her fiery pronouncements on the church, or her unconventional approach to raising a family (four children, four different fathers), her sexuality (in 2000, she outed herself as a lesbian, then changed her mind) or her faith (in 1999, she became a priest, Mother Bernadette, having been ordained at Lourdes by the breakaway Latin Tridentine church).

Today, ahead of the start of the pope's visit to Britain on Thursday, she wants to speak about the Catholic church – not to crow, not to say I told you so, but to look forward in the way only O'Connor can. She stares into the tape recorder diffidently. "I speak very quietly," she says. She doesn't seem ready for Jesus and the pope just yet. So we talk about her new husband Steve Cooney, whom she married this summer ("Third time lucky eh?"), how he produced the first record she made, and how he was a best friend for years. And she tells me how for two years after the 2006 birth of her fourth child Yeshua, she was such a slob that all she wore was a navy T-shirt and trackpants 'til her daughter Roisin, now 14, burnt her clothes in disgust and ordered her to go shopping. "So I thought **** it, and I love suits, and they haven't been in the ****in' shops for years, so I got these at Next, and they're ****in' brilliant 'cos it's like 40 quid for a jacket and 35 for a pair of trousers and you can wash them in the machine, which is ****in' crazy, so I can wear them round the house and if the kids **** me up it's grand."

Do any priests swear as much as she does? "Absolutely not. But that's a Dublin thing. Everybody swears. We put **** between syllables." Part of the image revamp was growing her hair. "I grew too old and fat and ugly to get away with the bald head." She's stopped shaking.

I ask her about the Marys. She says she's always collected them. Her mother and grandmother used to buy them for her birthday. Does she think it's strange that she still has such faith? "I think there's a difference between God and religion."

As she talks I notice an inky tattoo on her elbow. "Ah, that's a conquering lion, the Rasta name for God." She rolls up her sleeve to reveal an arm that is now a series of tattooed quotes. "This is one of the names of Allah, I just got it done a week or so ago and it was incredibly painful." We work our way up her arm. "That's a quote from Muhammad Ali, who I worship – 'No Vietcong ever called me ******'."

And this is from Psalm 91, 'So that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' "

I had always assumed that O'Connor was ordained to stick two fingers up at the Catholic hierarchy. No, she says, not at all. "I didn't do it to cause offence. It was just something private between me and the Holy Spirit." Does she practise as a priest? "I have to be very careful. I guess the way I do it is through music because people sometimes want me to do sacraments but not for the right reasons – they want me to do it because it's Sinead O'Connor."

But she says, apart from her children, her ordination is her greatest achievement. "I am proud that I did listen to that voice inside me rather than be intimidated by men telling me you can't be a priest. One ought to be more concerned in obeying what the Holy Spirit inspires you to feel rather than what a bunch of men in ****ing dresses are telling you to do or not do."

I'm still trying to work out her position – she loves God, but despises Catholicism? She shakes her head. "No, what I think is wrong is that the people running the show are misrepresenting what Catholicism actually is ... what I'm talking about is the highest echelons of the Vatican't as I call it."

The Vatican't? She grins. "Yes, as in they can't admit anything, they can't stand up for anything." Where to start? Women priests, homosexuals, contraception and, of course, child sex abuse. "You can go back centuries, but the way they've behaved just in the last 20 years, over this issue of sexual abuse, shows they don't give a ****. They feel untouchable. And to me it seems they don't believe in God at all. Because if you did believe you couldn't stand in front of that spirit covering up and moving priests and doctoring reports to psychiatrists and not telling them there was a suspicion of abuse, you just couldn't do that."

She quotes any number of documents and papal decrees verbatim at me, hands me copies, insisting I doublecheck everything she says. You could imagine her in court, prosecuting the Vatican. She gives me a potted history of clerical child sex abuse – how it can be traced back to AD 320, how the first official complaint was made in 1917, the first edict was issued from the Vatican in 1922 stating that any complaints of abuse had to be silenced under pain of excommunication, how the first centre for paedophile priests was opened in 1940, how the original edict was reissued in 1962. "So they knew about it all right.

What shocks her as much as the abuse is the manner in which the Vatican claimed ignorance and suggested it is also a victim. In April, the pope's personal preacher Raniero Cantalamessa compared the attack on the Catholic church with the Nazi persecution of the Jews. "That is incendiary," she says. "Quite evil, a ****ing disgrace." She is talking calmly, and stops occasionally to sip from a mug, which says: "I feel a sin coming on."

She passes me the 2009 Murphy report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, which concludes: "The commission has no doubt that clerical child sex abuse was covered up by the archdiocese of Dublin and other church authorities ... The structures and rules of the Catholic church facilitated that cover-up."

So what is the way forward? "OK, the abusive priests have been dealt with and that's very important, but now what has to be dealt with is the criminality of the cover-up." She says it has to go to the very top – after all in 2001, Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, issued an updated edict instructing the world's bishops to silence all abuse allegations or risk being thrown out of the church. "The Vatican is a nest of devils and a haven for criminals. It's evil, the very top of the toppermost is evil."

O'Connor is clear what has to happen – those responsible have to go. "And when all the those guys stand down we should take back the church for us." Would she like to see a democratically elected pope? "Do we need a ****ing pope? Why do we need a pope? Christ doesn't need a representative. Ten years from now the church will be nothing resembling what it has been."

O'Connor's anger has always been personal. As a child, she was abused by her mother – her father was only the second man in Ireland to be granted custody of his children. O'Connor, 43, says her mother's behaviour was fashioned by a church that normalised abuse. "People under 40 don't understand what Ireland was like. It was a theocracy, like Iran, slightly less potent but the same situation. The photo of the pope I ripped up was one that had been on my mother's bedroom wall for 25 years. I took it when she died. She learned at school that violence was the way to sort her problems out. These kids were having the **** kicked out of them, and they grew up with the message that this was the way you get people to behave."

Was her mother's violence physical? "Yes, but it was also very sexual. It wasn't like she was having sex with me, but it was sexually abusive violence from when I was very small. It was horrific. I loved my mother but I was terrified of her. I literally pissed my pants if she came near me, but even when she was doing what she did to me I could see this was a soul in torment." She lights a cigarette. "I once won a prize at school for curling up into the smallest ball and the reason I could do that was because I was so used to having the **** kicked out of me." Ultimately, she says, it was the theocracy that led to her beatings that also helped her survive them. "Thank **** I had a sense of Jesus. When I was lying on the floor having the **** kicked out of me, I'd envision Jesus on the top of some hill on the cross, and the blood would run from Jesus's heart down into mine on the floor and that's how I got through being beaten. I'd concentrate on that image."

O'Connor says she is so much calmer than she was in her 20s. A turning point came seven years ago when she was diagnosed as bipolar. "It explained a lot about being angry, fighting with people, being suicidal. And often with anger what's behind it is grief. Did you ever see this creepy cowboy movie, and at the end the guy was shot from behind and a huge hole is blown through his back – that's how I used to feel. I felt like I was walking round the world with a huge ****ing hole in me. And within a day of taking the medication, I felt the cement had come and filled in the hole."

Will she always have to be on drugs? "Yes, but that is great as far as I'm concerned. Because you couldn't really live without them, you'd be in the nuthouse. Being diagnosed meant I actually had a chance of being a normal person."

The two youngest children arrive back home, jump into her arms, and tell her what they've been doing. "Someone described me as mumsy," she says, "and I love that because to me the most important thing in my whole life has been being a mum."

She's relaxed now, talking about the future. She's recording an album of her own songs but doesn't want to say much about it . "I hate talking about my career when I'm doing church stuff because it's as if I'm using the church to further my career, you know what I mean?"

Did she ever enjoy her success? "I was such an unhappy person I couldn't. The day I ripped up the picture of the pope was the best day of my life because then I became me. I could become the kind of artist I wanted to be. And now 99% of my life is rolling around the house and looking after the kids. I wouldn't go back to it for a million years."

She takes me round the house, showing favourite photos of her children. Do you think the new calm you is permanent, I ask. "People always say to me do you think your happiness is going to last, as if I'm teetering on some edge." She smiles. "Bollocks."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...nor-pope-visit

[wynderer]

i'm really glad i was raised w/no religion -- it seems to have deeply scarred many human beings

[Studeo]

Johann Hari: Catholics, it's you this Pope has abused

It is my conviction that if you review evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them - and join the protesters

Thursday, 9 September 2010

I want to appeal to Britain's Roman Catholics now, in the final days before Joseph Ratzinger's state visit begins. I know that you are overwhelmingly decent people. You are opposed to covering up the rape of children. You are opposed to telling Africans that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. You are opposed to labelling gay people "evil". The vast majority of you, if you witnessed any of these acts, would be disgusted, and speak out. Yet over the next fortnight, many of you will nonetheless turn out to cheer for a Pope who has unrepentantly done all these things.

I believe you are much better people than this man. It is my conviction that if you impartially review the evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them – and join the protesters.

Some people think Ratzinger's critics are holding him responsible for acts that were carried out before he became Pope, simply because he is the head of the institution involved. This is an error. For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse. He is a notorious micro-manager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Küng, a former friend of Ratzinger's, says: "No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope."
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We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.

Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican's documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples.

In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn't go to the police, instead Hullermann was referred for "counselling". The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was "untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again". Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.

In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining that he was thinking of the "good of the universal Church" and of the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age" of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger's statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the "good of the universal Church" – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical "trial" – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a "spiritual retreat". He died years later, unpunished.

These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with "in absolute secrecy... completely suppressed by perpetual silence". That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: "I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration." The commendation was copied to all bishops.

Once the evidence of an international conspiracy to cover up abuse became incontrovertible to any reasonable observer, Ratzinger's defenders shifted tack, and said he was sorry and would change his behaviour. But this June, the Belgian police told the Catholic Church they could no longer "investigate" child rape on Belgian soil internally, and seized their documents relating to child abuse. If Ratzinger was repentant, he would surely have congratulated them. He did the opposite. He called them "deplorable", and his spokesman said: "There is no precedent for this, not even under communist regimes." He still thinks the law doesn't apply to his institution. When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with... ordaining women as priests.

There are people who will tell you that these criticisms of Ratzinger are "anti-Catholic". What could be more anti-Catholic than to cheer the man who facilitated the rape of your children? What could be more pro-Catholic than to try to bring him to justice? This is only one of Ratzinger's crimes. When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can't contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don't work. In a church in Congo, I watched as a Catholic priest said condoms contain "tiny holes" that "help" the HIV virus – not an unusual event. Meanwhile, Ratzinger calls consensual gay sex "evil", and has been at the forefront of trying to prevent laws that establish basic rights for gay people, especially in Latin America.

I know that for many British Catholics, their faith makes them think of something warm and good and kind – a beloved grandmother, or the gentler sayings of Jesus. That is not what Ratzinger stands for. If you turn out to celebrate him, you will be understood as endorsing his crimes and his cruelties. If your faith pulls you towards him rather than his victims, shouldn't that make you think again about your faith? Doesn't it suggest that faith in fact distorts your moral faculties?

I know it may cause you pain to acknowledge this. But it is nothing compared to the pain of a child raped by his priest, or a woman infected with HIV because Ratzinger said condoms make Aids worse, or a gay person stripped of basic legal protections. You have a choice during this state visit: stand with Ratzinger, or stand with his Catholic victims. Which side, do you think, would be chosen by the Nazarene carpenter you find on your crucifixes? I suspect he would want Ratzinger to be greeted with an empty, repulsed silence, broken only by cries for justice – and the low approaching wail of a police siren.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...d-2074029.html

[Studeo]

Source: The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...p-2077548.html


'Administration problems' blamed for Pope Benedict's ticket slump
By Sofia Piazza

Monday, 13 September 2010
Thousands of tickets for open-air masses during Pope Benedict's visit to Britain this week are yet to be taken up just four days before he is due to arrive.
Organisers have blamed poor communication between dioceses and the parishes distributing tickets as well as early application deadlines for the low take up. Some Catholics, especially the elderly, have also been put off by the pre-dawn starts and long journeys demanded for many events. Because of tight security arrangements, attendees must attach themselves to a local parish group and travel with them from designated departure points.
Although just 400,000 tickets had been allocated for the open-air masses which will be presided over by Pope Benedict in Glasgow, London and Birmingham, organisers are now racing to ensure the parks will be full.
The forecast is not a patch on 1982, whens hundreds of thousands of people congregated at six venues across the country to see John Paul II during his six-day visit.
Parish priests have been urged to distribute thousands of tickets to schools, while the Archbishop of Westminster, Rev Vincent Nichols, wrote to Catholic school heads in London last week asking them to organise parties of schoolchildren to attend the evening prayer vigil in Hyde Park on Saturday.
While it may also be the case that numerous paedophilia scandals have tarnished the church's image, cost may have contributed towards the low turn-out. The visit is expected to cost the Catholic Church around £10m, and applicants were told they had to make a financial contribution to attend the masses. Attendance at the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham on Sunday, the final day of the Pope's visit, costs £25. The afternoon mass in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park on Thursday was priced at £20, while the evening prayer vigil in Hyde Park cost £5. Organisers have denied that the charges are an entrance fee but would go towards transport and security provisions.
Jack Valero, a spokesman for Opus Dei, said that there was "huge excitement" and "no lack of enthusiasm from Catholics" about the upcoming papal visit but admitted there had been administration problems which meant that there was a "redistribution of tickets going on now".
He added that he believed the Hyde Park event would be at full capacity at 80,000, but was less confident that Cofton Park in Birmingham would receive the full number of 60,000 visitors. He attributed this to health and safety and security arrangements which would necessitate visitors arriving at the park between 3am and 7am for the 10am mass, and said that "those who can't face getting up at 2am" would be deterred.
Peter Jennings, press secretary to the Archdiocese of Birmingham, said the process of allocating spaces for the mass was a "huge and complicated task". He added that visitors were "not paying to go to mass, which is free – the £25 contribution is for the cost of travel and the travel arrangements."
Austen Ivereigh, the co-ordinator of the media group Catholic Voices, admitted that there had been some "problems with communicating the availability of spaces" and that the cost of going to the masses could have deterred some visitors.
"But what's more likely is the distance – because of the logistics and security, where the police need to know about every single coach coming and that everyone on the coach can be vouched for, the organisers have had to ask people to travel very early," he said. "There is a finite number of spaces for security reasons, and there is the problem that more people want to go than there are tickets available.
"With the general election campaign, a new government, and the venues for events changed at the last minute, all of this has been quite complex and the church has had very little time for the allocation process. But I am confident the events will be full."
A source close to the papal visit said that the long journeys faced by some Scottish parishioners to attend the Pope's Glasgow mass on Thursday afternoon meant that tickets were now being transferred to closer parishes, and that it would be "a race against time" to ensure an attendance of 100,000.

[giovonni]

Note~ if you all want to ascend

Pope in UK urges tolerance, warns against atheism


Reuters – Pope Benedict XVI waves as he boards the aircraft taking him to the United Kingdom from Rome's Ciampino … Slideshow> here http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Pope-v...9cb2cc8c80489f


Pope in UK urges tolerance, warns against atheism
By Philip Pullella and Avril Ormsby Philip Pullella And Avril Ormsby 2 hrs 24 mins ago

GLASGOW (Reuters) – Pope Benedict started a trip to Britain on Thursday with some of the clearest criticism yet of his Church's handling of its sexual abuse crisis and urged the country to beware of "aggressive secularism."

Some 125,000 people, including a small number of protesters, watched the 83-year-old pope as he was driven through the Scottish capital Edinburgh wearing a green plaid scarf.

Hours before landing, he told reporters aboard the plane taking him to Scotland for a four-day trip to Britain that he was shocked by what he called "a perversion" of the priesthood.

"It is also a great sadness that the authority of the Church was not sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick and decisive in taking the necessary measures," he added.

Advocates for victims have long been calling for Church leaders to assume more legal and moral responsibility for allowing the sexual abuse scandals to get out of hand in the United States and several countries in Europe.

Benedict has a delicate path to tread in England and Scotland in relations with the Anglican church after his offer last October making it easier for disaffected Anglicans, unhappy over the ordination of women and gay bishops, to convert.

These relations could be thrown into sharp focus on Friday when the pope is due to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, the Anglican mother church, at Lambeth Palace, in London.

AGGRESSIVE SECULARISM

On Thursday, after the pope was greeted by Queen Elizabeth -- titular head of the Church of England founded when Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 -- he got to the heart of his message in his first speech on British soil as Roman Catholic leader.

He spoke of the "deep Christian roots that are present in every layer of British life."

Groups that plan to protest against the pope's trip, only the second in history, include atheists, secular organizations, and those who want the pope to be held legally responsible for the sexual abuse scandals.

The pope, out to win over one of Europe's most secular countries, reminded Britons to beware of extremism, saying that the attempt by totalitarian regimes in the 20th century to eliminate God should provide "sobering lessons" on tolerance.

"Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate," he said.

The National Secular Society criticized the pope, saying his comments about British society were wrong.

"The secular identity of the British people is not something to criticize, but to celebrate. We have rejected dogmatic religion devoid of compassion," it said in a statement, adding that the Church discriminates against gays and women.

Later, at an open-air mass in nearby Glasgow, during which TV show "Britain's Got Talent" singing sensation Susan Boyle sang, the pope told the 65,000 people attending that followers should not be afraid to promote their faith.

"There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty," he said during his homily.

He is expected to return to the theme during a speech to civic leaders at Westminster Hall on Friday.

The German pope spoke glowingly of Britain's history and, significantly because of his own background, praised its people for standing up to the "Nazi tyranny" that was wreaked on the country by his own people in World War Two.

The Queen also spoke of the common Christian heritage that Anglicans and Catholics shared, and of their common belief that religion should never be allowed to justify violence and that dialogue could transcend "old suspicions."

Outside, around 150 protesters waved gay rainbow flags and banners saying "Pope opposition to condoms kills people" and "Stop protecting pedophile priests."

(Additional reporting by Anna MacSwan; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

Source;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100916/...s_pope_britain

[Studeo]

Is the systematic abuse of children worldwide seeding our society with mentally scared individuals who themselves perpetrate other crimes and drug abuse thus speeding up the breakdown of communities from families to civil servants to government?
This seems to me to be a planned assault on the family and the mental state of our future citizens. These individuals grow up to be angry and disturbed who unless are given professional help to deal with their demons will cause a lot of damage to themselves and those around them like a terrible cancer IMHO.

Studeo.

The Great Catholic Cover-Up

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, March 15, 2010, at 10:20 AM ET

On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.

Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing—indeed endless—scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made "to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse." He stupidly went on to say that "those efforts have failed."

He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. (One of the sanctified voters in that "election" was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who had already found the jurisdiction of Massachusetts a bit too warm for his liking.)
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There are two separate but related matters here: First, the individual responsibility of the pope in one instance of this moral nightmare and, second, his more general and institutional responsibility for the wider lawbreaking and for the shame and disgrace that goes with it. The first story is easily told, and it is not denied by anybody. In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked, and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing "abuse"?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for "therapy" by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger's deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to "pastoral" work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.

It is, of course, claimed, and it will no doubt later be partially un-claimed, that Ratzinger himself knew nothing of this second outrage. I quote, here, from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former employee of the Vatican Embassy in Washington and an early critic of the Catholic Church's sloth in responding to child-rape allegations. "Nonsense," he says. "Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He's the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he's trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope."

This is common or garden stuff, very familiar to American and Australian and Irish Catholics whose children's rape and torture, and the cover-up of same by the tactic of moving rapists and torturers from parish to parish, has been painstakingly and comprehensively exposed. It's on a level with the recent belated admission by the pope's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, that while he knew nothing about sexual assault at the choir school he ran between 1964 and 1994, now that he remembers it, he is sorry for his practice of slapping the boys around.

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

Not content with shielding its own priests from the law, Ratzinger's office even wrote its own private statute of limitations. The church's jurisdiction, claimed Ratzinger, "begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age" and then lasts for 10 more years. Daniel Shea, the attorney for two victims who sued Ratzinger and a church in Texas, correctly describes that latter stipulation as an obstruction of justice. "You can't investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10, the priest will get away with it."

The next item on this grisly docket will be the revival of the long-standing allegations against the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the ultra-reactionary Legion of Christ, in which sexual assault seems to have been almost part of the liturgy. Senior ex-members of this secretive order found their complaints ignored and overridden by Ratzinger during the 1990s, if only because Father Maciel had been praised by the then-Pope John Paul II as an "efficacious guide to youth." And now behold the harvest of this long campaign of obfuscation. The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a filthy wave of crime. Ratzinger himself may be banal, but his whole career has the stench of evil—a clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel. What is needed is not medieval incantation but the application of justice—and speedily at that.

http://www.slate.com/id/2247861/

[Studeo]

The Man Who Sued the Pope

Wednesday, Apr 21 2010

Five years ago, Houston attorney/theologian Daniel Shea watched the results of the papal conclave at home. Intellectually, he knew what the dirty-gray smoke puffing out of the Sistine Chapel's chimney signaled: that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would soon be announced as the new Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
The walls of Daniel Shea's River Oaks-area office are still adorned with his theological degrees from Belgium's ancient University of Louvain seminary, but Shea says the Roman Catholic Church he once solemnly vowed to serve no longer exists.

The walls of Daniel Shea's River Oaks-area office are still adorned with his theological degrees from Belgium's ancient University of Louvain seminary, but Shea says the Roman Catholic Church he once solemnly vowed to serve no longer exists.
In 1971, Shea looked forward to a lifetime of serving the Church as a deacon. Here he is still a seminarian and in Paris with a devout Catholic friend who insisted he wear a collar for their picture.
Courtesy of Daniel Shea
In 1971, Shea looked forward to a lifetime of serving the Church as a deacon. Here he is still a seminarian and in Paris with a devout Catholic friend who insisted he wear a collar for their picture.

Now, as the white-haired Pope battles a seemingly endless series of priestly sex scandals, Shea says he is still trying to get his head around his belief that he and his co-counsel Tahira Khan Merritt set the coronation in motion when they filed a Houston-based sex abuse lawsuit against Ratzinger.

According to Shea, the cardinals elected Ratzinger Pope to give him the immunity that would enable him to avoid answering any questions concerning his knowledge about and handling of sex abuse cases in Houston's St. Francis De Sales church in the mid-1990s.

In fact, Shea believes that what he started with the lawsuit may eventually result in the destruction of the entire Roman Catholic Church.

Dan Shea, a former Catholic deacon, has come a long way from the seminary. Whether that's a long way up or a long way down depends on where today's Catholic Church stands in your eyes. In the last five years, Shea has cracked wise about the Pope being gay and a drag queen in front of the Italian Parliament. He got a bishop to declare in open court that it was the church's position that minor children were accomplices in their own molestation. He looked another bishop dead in the eye and told him to kiss his ass.

So it's safe to say, he evokes strong emotions while expressing his beliefs.

In Doe et al v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston et al, Shea and Khan Merritt allege that a letter then-Cardinal Ratzinger sent to every Catholic bishop on May 18, 2001, constituted an international conspiracy to obstruct justice. This official Vatican document Ratzinger penned in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dealt with official church procedure in dealing with clerical sex abuse cases.

Not only did this letter contain the cardinal's current thinking on the subject, it also cited in a footnote a top-secret 1962 Vatican document Shea would eventually flush out.

This 48-year-old document, informally known as Crimen Sollicitationis, considered a smoking gun in some quarters, contains written orders from the Vatican laying bare a system for protecting child molesters. To Shea, Crimen is more than a smoking gun, it is "a nuclear bomb."

Many churchmen disagree as to the true meaning of Crimen. Still, it's easy to interpret that, taken together, Crimen and Ratzinger's letter of May 18 make it plain that Ratzinger wanted these cases handled by the Vatican and only the Vatican. According to Ratzinger's letter, the roles "of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests." Furthermore, the letter was co-signed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who later went on the record as follows: "In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offense of pedophilia is unfounded."

The letter ordered everyone involved in these cases to keep the evidence confidential for ten years after the victims reached adulthood.

The entire proceedings were to be held under "pontifical secret," meaning those who broke the silence to outside authorities could be excommunicated.

"Every Cardinal in that conclave had been a recipient of the May 18 cover-up letter," Shea says. And because they were all recipients, he says, they were all complicit.

In response to Ratzinger's sending that letter, Shea and the Texas Secretary of State had already served his Vatican office with papers. The cardinal was scheduled to appear in federal Judge Lee Rosenthal's Houston courtroom.

What's more, the Pope would be giving his deposition to Shea, who is not just a tough plaintiff's lawyer, but also a former Catholic deacon with three postgraduate theological degrees — one of them pontifical — from the University of Louvain, one of the oldest Catholic universities in Europe.

"I don't think they were too pleased by that prospect," Shea says.

But now that he had been made Pope, it would be a cold day in hell before Joseph Ratzinger would darken the Rusk Street doorway of Rosenthal's court. As a newly minted head of state, Pope Benedict XVI was now diplomatically immune to American lawsuits.

Again, Shea believes that was the whole point behind Ratzinger's election.
_____________________

Along with its Sharpstown surroundings, St. Francis De Sales was rapidly becoming Hispanicized in the 1990s. That was when Colombian native Juan Carlos Patiño-Arango was brought in to minister to the growing Spanish-speaking portion of the flock, and he conducted most of the Spanish masses at the church. His accusers later swore that he was presented to them as a priest, not a mere seminarian.

According to court documents in Shea's lawsuit, Patiño-Arango would offer to help counsel the boys about sex and masturbation — topics some mothers don't want to broach with their sons. The suit alleges that these rectory "talks" escalated into Patiño-Arango masturbating some of the boys and performing fellatio on one of them while masturbating himself. Some of the boys said he later threatened them after the fact by telling them that nobody would believe their stories over his, and also claimed that many of the other boys in the class had submitted to his "counseling," so they shouldn't feel too bad or abnormal.....read more

http://www.houstonpress.com/2010-04-...sued-the-pope/

[Studeo]

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry

http://dai.ly/dyJv4S

[Studeo]

Pope's visit: Six held by counter-terror police hours before historic addressArrests of London street cleaners under Terrorism Act 2000 made on basis of 'overheard conversation'
Police arrested six men over an alleged terrorist plot against the pope hours before he delivered one of his trip's key addresses to four former prime ministers and hundreds of parliamentarians and religious leaders in Westminster Hall.

Five London street cleaners were arrested at gunpoint by counter-terrorist officers in a dawn raid at the depot where they worked in Westminster, London. The sixth man was arrested on Friday afternoon in north London.

Searches by officers at up to 10 addresses were continuing, but no equipment linked to bomb-making or anything that could obviously be used to stage a terrorist attack was recovered.

Some of the men arrested are believed to be of Algerian heritage. They were being held and questioned by detectives who are also trying to establish their identities.

Security sources described the arrests as "precautionary" and Scotland Yard officers are understood to be bracing themselves for criticism if their suspicions are unfounded and the men are released.

News of the arrest came hours before Benedict arrived at Westminster Hall, where he delivered an address to several hundred of the most prominent people in British public life, among them Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Sir John Major, Lady Thatcher, Nick Clegg and the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

One knowledgeable source said the arrests were made because of concerns including conversations overheard between some of those arrested, the fact their jobs gave them access to areas to be visited by the pope, and the difficulty in gauging the threat in a very short time.

Other sources said that the level of alarm in Whitehall was "low key". There was no meeting of the government's emergency committee, Cobra, and the terrorism threat level remained unchanged, indicating that there was no credible evidence pointing to an imminent attack.

Despite the scare, the 83-year-old pope continued with the second day of his four-day state visit. He was told of the arrests at his first engagement of the day – a visit to Britain's biggest Catholic teacher training establishment, St Mary's University College in Twickenham.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's head of press, said that the visit would carry on with "courage and joy" despite the arrests, adding: "We are calm … We are totally confident in the work of the police and Scotland Yard."

Scotland Yard said the policing plan had been reviewed, but the pope's itinerary would remain unchanged.

The six men – who are aged 26, 27, 29, 36, 40 and 50 – were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Searches were carried out at their work and home addresses in north and east London. Other locations were searched later in the day with police seizing computers for evidence of terrorist planning or signs of extremism.

Westminster council said the first five to be arrested worked for Veolia Environmental Services, a contractor employing 650 on-street staff.

Sources said the men were not known to counter-terrorism officials.

The information that led to the arrests was not the result of intercepts or undercover work, but was, sources said, more akin to an overheard conversation that could be interpreted as posing a threat.

It came to police on Thursday as the pope prepared for a round of public events in London. His schedule was a key factor in the decision by senior officers to act and thereby quash any potential threat.

The timing of the arrests will expose Scotland Yard to criticism if the men are released without charge. However, the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, Bob Quick, said police had little choice. "You don't have much time to evaluate the information, and you cannot take the risk," he said. "The duty on the police is to err on the side of caution, even if someone is not charged, rather than not acting and finding out you had a real plot which came to fruition."

Quick added there was a public misconception about the purpose of arrests in terrorism cases: "An arrest is a means of investigation, it does not mean someone is guilty of an offence."

Counter-terror sources said M15 was also investigating the men's background.

A huge security and public order operation swung into action on Thursday when the pope touched down in Britain. Thousands of officers are involved in the operation from forces including the Met, Strathclyde, Lothian and Borders, West Midlands and British transport police and the cost of policing the papal visit could reach £1.5m

Senior police officers said last week that there was no information to suggest any specific group wanted to attack the pope, but warned against underestimating the "passion and the fervour" the visit would evoke.

Police also interviewed mentally unstable people who they feared could pose a threat to the pope.

The pontiff faces a slightly less gruelling day on Saturday, beginning with a meeting with the prime minister and ending more than 12 hours later after a prayer vigil in Hyde Park.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...treet-cleaners

[giovonni]

Vatican bank chief investigated over money laundering claims


Under investigation: Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR). Photograph: Emanuela De Meo/AFP/Getty Images


The head of the Vatican bank has formally been placed under investigation in an inquiry into a suspected violation of Italy's money-laundering laws, judicial sources said today.

At the same time, a judge in Rome ordered a freeze on €23m (£19.5m) held in an account opened by the Vatican bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), at another financial institution in the Italian capital. It was thought to be the first time such action had been authorised against the IOR in Italy.

Since last September, the Bank of Italy has classified the Vatican bank as a non-EU institution whose dealings with other banks are thus subject to especially close scrutiny.

The sources said that last Wednesday, on the eve of Pope Benedict's departure for Britain, a unit of the Italian revenue guard alerted prosecutors to an anomaly in an account owned by the IOR at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano, which has close historic ties to the Catholic church.

Of the €28m deposited, €23m was destined for transfer to JP Morgan in Frankfurt and another €3m to another Italian bank. But in neither case, it is alleged, had the Vatican's bankers supplied details of the individual or corporation for whom they were acting, as required by a 2007 legislative decree.

The sources said the president of the IOR, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and another senior executive were under investigation. It was not immediately clear whether there was any connection between this inquiry and another in which the Vatican bank has been named, which concerns suspect property dealings.

The Vatican has a long history of withholding co-operation from Italian investigators seeking access to its bank's books. The IOR was involved in a major scandal in 1982 arising from the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank.

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
source;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...ted-laundering

[giovonni]

Vatican says probe due to ‘misunderstanding’

By Guy Dinmore in Rome and Rachel Sanderson in Milan

Published: September 22 2010 20:02 | Last updated: September 22 2010 20:02

Stung by allegations of suspected money laundering levelled by Rome magistrates against the Vatican’s top bankers, the Holy See has insisted there had been a “misunderstanding” over two disputed money transfers and it had been co-operating fully with Italian and international authorities.

Italy’s finance police said on Tuesday it had frozen €23m ($31m) held by the Vatican’s bank, the Institute of Religious Works (IOR), in the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano, an Italian bank. Magistrates have opened a formal money laundering investigation involving Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, chairman of IOR, and Paolo Cipriani, director-general.

“The current problem was caused by a misunderstanding (now being examined) between the IOR and the bank which received the transfer order,” Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican representative, wrote in a letter to the Financial Times.

Father Lombardi said that since his appointment a year ago, Mr Gotti Tedeschi had been working “with great commitment to ensure the transparency of the IOR’s activities” and the inclusion of the Vatican as a sovereign state in the “white list” of states deemed to be in compliance with international norms on money laundering.

The issue is of particular sensitivity to the Vatican, which appointed Mr Gotti Tedeschi – a veteran banker and lecturer in ethics – to continue putting IOR in order after its entanglement in the fraudulent collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s and the Enimont corruption trials involving government officials a decade later.

The latest investigation, which was prompted by a tightening of controls by the Bank of Italy, risks straining relations between the Vatican and Italian authorities, particularly over the issue of sovereignty and jurisdiction.

Mr Gotti Tedeschi was quoted by Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s main business daily, as suggesting that “a procedural error was being used as a pretext to attack the Institute, its president, and more broadly the Vatican”. He did not elaborate and declined to comment further on Wednesday.

Avvenire, newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, called the investigation “offensive and inexplicable”.

IOR says the two requested transfers totalling €23m were from an IOR account held at Credito Artigiano to IOR accounts at two other banks. The Bank of Italy asked Credito Artigiano on September 15 not to execute the transfer because the beneficiaries were not identified in accordance with Italian and European Union money laundering regulations.

Italy’s central bank separately confirmed it had sent a circular to Italian banks on September 9 to remind them of the vigilance they were required to exercise in handling IOR transactions.

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Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32298db0-c...44feab49a.html

[giovonni]

oh yeah



Vatican says "misunderstanding" behind bank probe

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Thu Sep 23, 2010 1:06pm BST

Reuters) - A "misunderstanding" between banks was the cause for the Vatican Bank being investigated by Italian authorities on suspicion of money laundering, the Vatican said on Thursday.

The Vatican also said its bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was committed to "complete transparency" and it was working to secure inclusion in the "White List" of states which comply with international standards of banking.

It outlined its defence in a letter sent to the Financial Times and distributed by its press office to journalists in Rome in a defence of the image of the Holy See and that of its bank.

"The current problem was caused by a misunderstanding -- now being examined -- between the IOR and the bank which received the transfer order," spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in the letter.

On Tuesday, Rome magistrates put the IOR's top two officials, President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and Director General Paolo Cipriani, under investigation and froze 23 million euros (£19.28 million) of its funds in Italy.

Two recent transfers from an IOR account in an Italian bank were deemed suspicious by financial police and blocked. One was a transfer of 20 million euros to a German branch of a U.S. bank, and the other of 3 million euros to an Italian bank.

Lombardi's letter betrayed the Vatican's deep irritation that magistrates had opened the probe and made it public.

"The nature and aims of the transactions under investigation could have been clarified with great simplicity," he said.

TRANSFER OF OWN FUNDS

The Vatican has maintained that there was no wrongdoing involved because it was merely transferring its own money between its own accounts.

Lombardi said the Vatican wanted to "avoid the spread of inaccurate information and to ensure that no damage is caused to the activities of the Institute and the good name of its managers."

The IOR primarily manages funds for the Vatican and religious institutions around the world, such as charity organisations, religious orders of priests and nuns, and Catholic hospitals.

He said that while the IOR was "beyond the jurisdiction and surveillance" of the Bank of Italy because it is located in a sovereign state, it was committed to the norms of the European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) aimed at combating terrorism and money laundering.

Still, Lombardi's letter pointed to a sense of urgency in the Vatican after news of the probe put its bank on the front pages of newspapers worldwide, with echoes of past scandals.

The IOR was involved in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank, whose president Roberto Calvi was found hanged under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982. Several investigations failed to determine whether Calvi, known as God's Banker, had killed himself or been murdered.

The Vatican denied any responsibility for the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, in which it held a small stake, but made a "goodwill payment" of $250 million to Ambrosiano creditors.

The IOR's president, Gotti Tedeschi, 65, has been at the helm of the bank for a year and is a close adviser to Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti.

A devout Catholic who has taught financial ethics at the Catholic University of Milan, he also heads an Italian unit of the Spanish Banco Santander, according to its website, and serves on the board of several major Italian banks.

Source:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE68M1O020100923