Cardinal Pell under attack from within over bishops’ grand house in Rome

A LEADING Catholic priest has criticised Cardinal George Pell for reserving a “grand apartment” for himself at the Australian church’s new guest house in Rome, saying “the ethics of our secular state are higher than those of our church”.

Father Eric Hodgens, of Melbourne, an elder statesman among the clergy, also savaged Australia’s Catholic bishops for what he regards as an abject performance during their five-yearly visit to Rome last month, particularly in failing to stand up for Bill Morris, sacked earlier this year as bishop of Toowoomba.

“They eat their own when fingered by Rome,” Father Hodgens wrote of the bishops in The Swag, the national journal of Catholic priests. “How can you trust them?

”They are reckless with our patrimony. They seem incapable of protecting their own rights, let alone ours, in a system which is corrupt by today’s secular standards. No wonder the attitude of so many priests and observant laity is moving from disappointment to disgust,” he wrote.

Father Hodgens said the Domus Australia guest house in Rome – a beautifully refurbished old religious house with 33 rooms for paying visitors, a richly restored grand chapel and organ and a 150-seat auditorium opened by Pope Benedict XVI last month – cost between $30 million and $85 million, according to different estimates.

He said Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, had hoped all Australian dioceses would pay for it, but only Melbourne, Perth and Lismore had made contributions and the Sydney Archdiocese had paid the bulk.

He said Catholics of the four dioceses were not consulted, there was no prospect of a reasonable financial return and no accountability. “What does it say of us who trust bishops?
The ethics of our secular state are higher than those of our church.”

Secrecy also surrounded the sacking of Bishop Morris, who never saw the charges against him or the report by an “inquisitorial visitor”, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then of Denver, he said.

“And the Australian bishops simply rolled over … . they thanked their humiliators for being generous with their time,” Father Hodgens wrote.

“Thank God we live in a secular state and not in a Catholic theocracy,” he said.

Cardinal Pell is overseas but a Sydney Archdiocese spokeswoman said the total cost to develop the Australian pilgrim centre in Rome was similar to that of a new parish or school, ”not the excessive amounts quoted by some ill-informed sources”, and the investment was expected to pay its way.

”Domus Australia was funded by the transfer of an underutilised property investment to this purpose and by borrowings and donations,” she said.

”No money raised through parish collections has been used in this initiative.”

Complete Article HERE!

A Harrowing Story of Survival

Why I Slept with My Therapist, How One Gay Man Tried to Go Straight

Just how far will a gay man go to be straight? For Brian Anthony Kraemer, that journey included thirteen years of celibacy, daily prayer, extensive reading, participation in an ex-gay ministry, and two exorcisms. He still hadn’t reached his goal when he met a man he believed to be the therapist of his dreams—a married, Christian therapist with an innovative method of healing.

Through what he called “spiritual adoption,” the therapist began a reparenting experiment in which Brian’s therapy included spending time with his therapist in his home and meeting his wife and biological children, as well as other “spiritually adopted” clients. Brian and his therapist shared a bed, showered together, and spent extensive amounts of time holding, cuddling, and caressing.

In his memoir, Why I Slept with My Therapist, How One Gay Man Tried to Go Straight, Brian Anthony Kraemer shares the details of his developing relationship with a Christian male therapist in his attempt to change from homosexual to heterosexual. Though the goal was to go straight, this relationship ultimately led to Brian’s acceptance of himself as a gay man—and the therapist’s loss of his license.

Just before Christmas of 1997, I flew from Southern California, where I worked in a Christian mission agency, to visit my parents five hundred miles north. I originally planned to stay for two weeks, from December 20 through January 3, but after a few days, I knew I could not stay that long. I felt anxious, nervous, and afraid. I had to get back to my own home, my gym, and my routine. I was addicted to my daily trips to swim at a local university pool, where I spent long periods of time in the men’s locker room showering, hoping to see as many naked men as possible.

I watched men come and go in this group shower setting and tried to avoid being too obvious in my sexual interests. My penis, however, often revealed my thoughts, and I had to direct my erection toward the shower wall and pretend nothing unusual was happening. Most men ignored it. Some engaged in friendly conversation without mentioning it. Others revealed interest with eye contact or by moving closer, to a shower head near mine. Still others gave a scowl of disapproval and left. With my eyes, I soaked in these masculine bodies in an eff ort to satiate my longing for any kind of connection with them. … I had not had sex with a man since my conversion to Christianity thirteen years before, in May 1984, at age twenty. I wasn’t about to break my record of celibacy.

Brian Anthony Kraemer holds bachelor’s degrees in psychology, health science, and social science; he is currently working on a master’s degree in psychology. He has taught in elementary schools and served as the president of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in Pasadena and Chico, California. He currently lives in Chico, California, where he performs as a musician and engages in public speaking opportunities, mostly on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues.

This book can be ordered through amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and many other book retail outlets.

Cardinal Law’s departure from Vatican post

News that Cardinal Bernard Law is leaving his job as head of a major Roman basilica was welcomed today by attorneys and advocates for clergy sex abuse victims, who have criticized his handling of the sex abuse scandal when he was head of the church in Boston a decade ago.

“With all due respect, society has not lost a great protector of children. Bernard Cardinal Law should return to Boston and address the clergy sex abuse victims who he let be sexually molested while he was cardinal,” said attorney Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who has represented numerous victims.

“Bernard Cardinal Law turned his back on innocent children, acted immorally, and should be held accountable,” Garabedian said.

Terry Donilon, a spokesman for the Boston archdiocese, referred all questions to the Vatican. A man who answered the phone at the Vatican press office declined to comment, suggesting a reporter call back on Tuesday.

Terry McKiernan, founder of bishopaccountability.org, a library and Internet archive of the clergy sex abuse crisis, also welcomed the news of Law’s departure.

“It’s a long time coming, but we are certainly glad his influence is finally, for all intents and purposes, over in Rome,” he said.

McKiernan said Law, because he had hit the age of 80, would no longer be able to vote, as part of a conclave, for a new pope.

He also said Law had also passed the maximum age for membership in a group of top Vatican officials who recommended the appointment of new bishops, where he had a “long history of rewarding managers who worked for him on sex abuse cases.”

He said Law would no longer be part of that “congregation” or “dicastery” of officials and “perhaps we’ve seen the last persons being rewarded with a bishop’s position as part of cronyism on the part of Cardinal Law.”

With his departure from the basilica post, McKiernan said, “even his informal power in the Vatican is truly on the wane.”

Carmen Durso, another Boston attorney who has represented victims of clergy sex abuse said Law’s resignation is “simply a changing of the guard because of his age” and not related to any sort of punishment by the Vatican in connection with the scandal.

“He shouldn’t have had that position in the first place because he didn’t merit it, given how he handled the sex abuse cases in Boston. … All this does is call to mind once again the fact that he wasn’t punished.”

“No bishops have been punished by the Vatican for the failure to supervise priests who abused kids. The real tragedy is that he was awarded. They made show of removing him and then they give him a prestigious position.”

“He should face a lifetime of penance to account for the lifetime of pain that the victims will have to endure. If I were Cardinal Law, I would get up every day and beg God’s forgiveness. It’s tragic that the church operates more like Enron than a church,” Durso said.

Law resigned in disgrace as Boston’s archbishop in 2002 after the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted.

The Vatican said today that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the 80-year-old Law’s resignation as archpriest of St. Mary Major basilica and had named as Law’s replacement Spanish Monsignor Santos Abril y Castello, The Associated Press reported.

Law’s 2004 appointment as the archpriest of one of Rome’s most important basilicas had been harshly criticized by advocates for clergy sex abuse victims.

Law turned 80 earlier this month. Victims’ advocates criticized plans for a birthday party for him in Rome. Law’s successor, Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who had to deal with the legal and financial impacts of the crisis, was in Rome on church business, but a spokesman for O’Malley said his time there was “devoted to work” and he wouldn’t be attending.

Rocco Palmo, a former US correspondent for the London-based international Catholic weekly The Tablet, who covers church news and politics online and first reported Law’s move, said Law was leaving his sinecure several years earlier than other recent holders of the seat had. Palmo said he believed the Vatican was reacting to critics who have said Law’s appointment was a sign that the church did not “get it” when it came to clergy sex abuse.

“I think they’re sending a signal that it had become a liability,” he said. “I think it’s an acknowledgment, albeit more belated than a lot of folks would want, that that was not helping in terms of perception.”

He said there was no word on where Law might go, since he will lose the apartment that goes with being the archpriest of the basilica. The Vatican has several apartment buildings for retired church officials, he said. But he also noted that, as a cardinal, Law would be allowed to minister anywhere in the world.

The Vatican announcement made no mention of Law’s resignation, merely noting in a perfunctory, two-line statement that Benedict had named a new archpriest for the basilica.

“There’s only one person who can hold the post at a time,” said Palmo.

Law became the first — and so far only — US bishop to resign for mishandling cases of priests who sexually abused priests.

Complete Article HERE!

Many alleged abusers left off church list

Cardinal O’Malley is credited with going public when many dioceses have not, but critics say he has stopped far short of a full accounting

Robert M. Burns pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting five boys while working as a priest in Jamaica Plain and Charlestown, earning an eight- to 11-year sentence that he is still serving at the Old Colony Correctional Center.

Even before Burns went to the Bridgewater prison, the Boston Archdiocese paid several of his victims – including two who later died of drug overdoses – more than $2 million to settle claims of abuse after their lawyers discovered that church officials had assigned Burns to parish work knowing he had a history of molesting children.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley has called it proper to omit the clerics — most of them priests, but also deacons and brothers — because they are ultimately supervised by other church officials.

But last August, when Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley published a long-awaited official roster of 159 clerics publicly accused of abusing minors, Burns’ name was not on it. The reason: Burns, who served as a parish priest in Boston for nearly a decade, was originally a priest of the Youngstown Diocese in Ohio.

O’Malley, facing opposition from some in the church to publishing such a list at all, in the end released a very selective accounting, limited to priests originally from the Boston Archdiocese – and thus directly under its supervision – and excluding members of religious orders, including O’Malley’s own Capuchin friars.

The result is that 70 accused clerics, including some with notorious reputations and many alleged victims, are not listed at all, a Globe review of church records has found. To critics of the church it is a disheartening sign that nearly 10 years after Boston became the epicenter of the global sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, the Boston Archdiocese is still struggling to face its troubled past.

The cardinal’s decision has also undercut his reputation as a reformer among some victims of clergy abuse, who worry that omitting any accused abuser’s name from the official list, which is published on the archdiocese’s website, only lowers the chances of further victims summoning the courage to come forward. It puts him at odds with most of the 33 dioceses that have released more complete lists of accused priests, though it compares favorably with the vast majority of the nation’s 195 dioceses, which have released no official lists at all.

Among those left off the Boston list are Fidelis DeBerardinis, a Catholic brother completing an eight-year prison term for preying on altar boys at an East Boston parish; the late Rev. Paul M. Desilets, a one-time Bellingham priest who served 17 months for molesting more than a dozen altar boys; and the Rev. James F. Talbot, who served a six-year sentence for raping two Boston College High School students.

O’Malley, who declined requests for an interview, has called it proper to omit the clerics – most of them priests, but also deacons and brothers – because they are ultimately supervised by other church officials. In a seven-page letter that accompanied his list of accused clerics he said he decided to leave them out “because the Boston Archdiocese does not determine the outcome in such cases; that is the responsibility of the priest’s order or diocese.’’

But survivors of clergy abuse and their advocates consider it a flawed rationale, since so many of the nearly 600 priests working in the Boston Archdiocese – more than 40 percent – are affiliated with religious orders, such as the Jesuits or O’Malley’s own Capuchin Franciscans, or came from other jurisdictions.

All accused abusers, no matter their provenance, should be considered the archdiocese’s responsibility and concern, they say.

“It’s heartbreaking to think the church has all this information about accused religious order priests and priests from other dioceses and isn’t releasing it,’’ said Terence McKiernan, the founder of BishopAccountability.org, a group that maintains records of accused clergy and also advocates for victims. “O’Malley’s list is just one pretty obvious example of a concerted effort to appear transparent and pastoral while trying to make sure that a lot of this goes back under the radar.’’

Church law cited

In leaving out the names of religious order and visiting priests, O’Malley cited canon law, or church law, saying it is up to the superior of a religious order or the bishop of a home diocese to investigate clergy abuse accusations.

But church records show that the Boston Archdiocese has often investigated accusations against religious order and visiting priests – and paid their alleged victims to settle damage claims.

Indeed, the Vatican has allowed bishops wide discretion in responding to the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and bishops in some other dioceses have not felt bound by a narrow reading like O’Malley’s, according to a recent survey by BishopAccountability.org.

Among those who have released lists that include the names of religious order and visiting clerics are major Catholic jurisdictions, such as the archdioceses of Baltimore and Los Angeles, the largest in the United States.

Some of those church leaders said they felt compelled to issue as complete a list as possible, to maximize its potential usefulness for those who say they were abused.

“We felt it was important to name them to fulfill the purpose for putting the list out, which was to ensure that if there were other victims they would feel encouraged to come forward,’’ explained Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, whose list of accused priests includes both religious order and visiting clerics.

The Tucson diocese also disclosed the names of priests – both alive and dead – who have faced accusations that have never been made public. O’Malley’s list omitted the names of 91 accused clerics of the Boston Archdiocese, most of whom are dead and are not the subject of public accusations. That means that of a total of 320 priests here who have faced some form of accusation, 161 – the 91 plus the 70 from religious orders and other jurisdictions – are not on the archdiocesan website’s tally of names.

Some critics say that O’Malley’s approach is designed to limit the likelihood of new victims coming forward and thus of future financial liability for an archdiocese that has already paid out $147 million in settlements and another $43.5 million to cover legal costs, counseling for victims, and sexual abuse prevention initiatives.

“The driving force in not releasing a full list is money,’’ said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who represents clergy sex abuse victims.

New victims often step forward following publicity about abusive priests, even when they’ve been publicly accused before, which is what happened in the case of the late Czeslaw “Chester’’ Szymanski, a religious order priest who worked in Lowell’s Holy Trinity parish during the 1980s and whose alleged victims only recently began stepping forward.

Last December, attorney Carmen L. Durso held a news conference where he released statements by three men from a tightly-knit Polish community who said they were sexually molested by Szymanski, who was not included in O’Malley’s list.

At Sunday Mass two days later, the church pastor, the Rev. Stanislaw Kempa, denounced Szymanski’s accusers as “cowards.’’ Then, on the following Sunday, O’Malley sent one of his bishops to Holy Trinity to apologize for Kempa’s use of the pulpit “as a platform for harmful words.’’

With the news media covering each development, five additional alleged victims stepped forward.

Recently, all eight completed negotiations for damages and are slated to receive a total of $600,000, to be paid by the archdiocese and the Order of St. Paul, Szymanski’s religious order.

Keeping the list of accused clerics short may also ease the internal pressure O’Malley has faced from priests who opposed his decision to release such a list in the first place.

But Massachusetts’ chief law enforcement official warned O’Malley in advance that his list would draw public criticism. Attorney General Martha Coakley, a former Middlesex District Attorney who supervised the prosecution of the late Rev. John J. Geoghan, a serial pedophile and a symbol of the Boston abuse crisis, said she repeatedly told the archdiocese that O’Malley’s plan was inadequate to ensure public safety and assuage the concerns of victims.

“By failing to name the visiting priests and those from religious orders they’re sending a mixed message to the public, some of whom may still be incredibly angry,’’ Coakley said in an interview.

Strong start fizzles

When he arrived in Boston in 2003, O’Malley faced a daunting task: healing the wounds of a historic diocese in the most Catholic major city in America that was still reeling from an unprecedented scandal. And O’Malley seemed to be an ideal candidate for the job.

To many committed Catholics, his brown robe and sandals – the attire of a Capuchin friar – symbolized a refreshingly humble alternative to his predecessor, the imperious Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who resigned as archbishop and decamped for Rome after 58 of his priests signed a letter urging him to quit because of his handling of the burgeoning abuse crisis.

Moreover, by the time O’Malley introduced himself to beleaguered parishioners, the nation’s Catholic bishops already had approved a “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,’’ in which they pledged to safeguard children and end the secrecy surrounding the issue.

Almost immediately, O’Malley undertook a series of initiatives aimed, he said, at ensuring that “the tragedy of sexual abuse is never repeated in the church.’’ Over the next decade, church officials provided “safe environment training’’ to 300,000 children and taught 175,000 adults – including archdiocesan and religious order priests and seminarians – to identify and report suspected sexual abuse.

In addition, the church conducted more than 60,000 annual criminal background checks on archdiocesan and religious order priests, deacons, educators, and others who work with children.

To O’Malley’s supporters, these initiatives reflected a career spent trying to prevent child sexual abuse, including earlier assignments in the dioceses of Fall River and Palm Beach, Fla., where he proved adept at stemming the outrage of parishioners after major scandals.

But along the way, others questioned O’Malley’s commitment to fully disclosing the church’s role in the sex abuse crisis. In 2002, then-Bristol District Attorney Paul F. Walsh Jr. criticized O’Malley at a press conference at which Walsh released the names of 20 priests who he said had been accused of abusing minors.

He also said O’Malley had impeded his investigation by declining to turn over the names of accused clergy, a charge he stands by today.

“I have no warm feelings for that guy,’’ said Walsh, a onetime altar boy and graduate of Catholic-led Providence College. “I don’t think he ever lied to me but I’m convinced he never told me the full truth.’’

‘Electronic wall of shame’

From the moment Cardinal O’Malley announced plans to release a list of priests accused of sexual abuse, in 2009, many of his priests opposed the idea.

During a March 2009 meeting of O’Malley’s Presbyteral Council, an advisory group of clergy, the Rev. Peter G. Gori of St. Augustine’s Church in Andover gave O’Malley’s plan an unflattering name, referring to the proposed roster as an “electronic wall of shame.’’

“The ramification to priest morale hangs in the balance,’’ Gori continued, according to minutes of council meetings provided to the Globe through a priest who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to release them.

“The priests who are speaking in favor of the concept have been less, by far, than those who are opposed,’’ reported a top O’Malley aide, the Rev. Richard Erikson, during another council meeting in 2010.

Apart from the opposition expressed at the meetings, some priests still argue that O’Malley should be compelled to do no more than what civil law requires, which is to publicize only the names of convicted sexual offenders deemed at high risk of offending again.

“Do the names of teachers who’ve been accused of committing sex crimes get posted on a list available to the public?’’ said the Rev. David M. O’Leary, the Catholic Chaplain at Tufts University and one of the 58 priests who signed the letter urging Law to resign. “Let’s treat everyone fairly.’’

O’Malley chose to read his obligation neither as narrowly as some priests urged, nor as spaciously as those representing alleged victims want. His decision to omit religious order and visiting clerics meant his listing did not apply to a category of clergy that accounts for more than 40 percent of the 1,310 priests working in the archdiocese today.

The archdiocese has acknowledged that O’Malley has at least some authority over these priests. In his letter, O’Malley said that whenever an order or visiting priest is credibly accused of abusing a minor, he rescinds the priest’s permission to minister here, reports the accusation to local law enforcement, and informs the priest’s order or home diocese.

“I hope that other dioceses and religious orders will review our policy and consider making similar information available to the public,’’ O’Malley said.

But so far, none of the religious orders, including O’Malley’s Capuchin friars, have released the names of accused clerics.

A clear signal wanted

If priests were unhappy that O’Malley named so many accused priests, sex abuse victims felt betrayed because the church named so few, in many cases leaving out their abusers. Victims interviewed by the Globe said O’Malley should have named the religious order and visiting priests in part to encourage more victims to step forward, and in part to send a clear signal that the church accepts responsibility for the behavior of all abusive priests.

“To sweep a good number of these guys under the rug and not mention their names I think is really a shame,’’ said Jim Higgins, a 56-year-old Florida resident who said he was molested in the early 1970s by Talbot, the Jesuit priest who served a six-year sentence for raping two Boston College High School students and who was left off O’Malley’s list.

Brian E. Corriveau, a 46-year-old Westborough resident who said he was molested by Desilets – the one-time Bellingham priest who was excluded from O’Malley’s list because he was from a religious order based in Canada – said O’Malley’s decision came as no surprise. “I’m very jaded about the Catholic Church at this point,’’ he said. “I expect them to keep covering up.’’

But few could feel worse than one of Szymanski’s alleged victims, who waited more than 20 years before speaking out.

The alleged victim, who asked for anonymity because several family members retain ties to the church, said he advised one younger student against serving as an altar boy in the 1980s, but didn’t go public until last December, after he heard that the Holy Trinity pastor had branded Szymanski’s accusers “cowards.’’

“What still haunts me is I didn’t save everybody else,’’ he said. “We’re 25 years down the road and the guilt over not doing anything back then just kills me.’’

Complete Article HERE!

Vatican Murder Mystery: Was It a Gay Love Triangle?

A salacious crime in the pope’s backyard has gone unsolved for almost 14 years. Barbie Latza Nadeau on the double homicide—and the rumored gay love triangle that could be behind it.

On May 4, 1998, five shots rang out inside a private apartment tucked within the fortified walls of Vatican City in Rome. Dead were Alois Estermann, the newly appointed commander of the elite Swiss Guard army that protects the pope; Estermann’s Venezuelan wife, Gladys Meza Romero, a former model; and Cedric Tornay, who was a corporal in the Swiss Guard. No one heard the shots, according to neighbors who were interviewed after the murders, but the three bodies were enough proof to solve the crime, at least according to the Vatican. The Holy See’s official line was that corporal Tornay had killed Estermann and his wife before putting his 7mm pistol into his mouth and blowing his brains out. The motive was simple, they said. Tornay had been passed up by Estermann for a promotion and could not contain his rage.

But the truth behind the Vatican’s Swiss Guard murders is far more complex, says Tornay’s mother, Muguette Baudat. Earlier this month she pleaded to Pope Benedict XVI to reopen the case and clear her son’s name. In a brief interview with The Daily Beast, she says her son was the victim of a cover-up, not the perpetrator of a murder-suicide. “My son is not the man behind such a murder,” she said. “He was not crazy and vengeful. He was actually a victim in this crime.”

Baudat has written a letter to the current pope in the hope he will reopen the case. She believes that because Benedict was a key administrator in the Vatican hierarchy during her son’s murder investigation, he may be willing to reinvestigate the case for the sake of transparency. “He might want clear his conscience,” she says. “It would be the right thing to do.”

When it happened, the Swiss Guard murder shook Rome to its core. Because Vatican City is a sovereign nation, it has its own police and investigative units. The pope is the head of state, and no one in the papal administration has to answer to anyone outside the Vatican walls—even though the tiny nation is tucked inside the city of Rome. Secrecy shrouded the case from the moment the news broke. In the hours after a Vatican insider leaked the news of a murder, local Italian journalists speculated that then–pope John Paul II himself had been the victim of a gunman’s wrath. It took nearly 24 hours for the Vatican to clarify that it had been the head of the pope’s protective arm who had been killed in a murder-suicide and not the pope himself.


Pope John Paul II greets Swiss Guard Alois Estermann and his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, during a private audience at the Vatican in 1997, AP Photo

In the years that followed, reporters followed several leads in a yet- unsolved quest for the truth about what may have really happened that night. Several books have been penned about the case, but none so far have truly solved the crime. It was no secret within the Swiss Guard that Estermann was a bisexual who had a weakness for young recruits and had allegedly just ended a sexual relationship with Tornay, who was 23 at the time. One theory is that when Estermann turned his affections to another young recruit, Tornay allegedly lost his temper and killed Estermann and his wife in a jealous rage. In a book on the case called Verbum Dei et Verbum Gay (“God’s Word, Gay Word”), author Massimo Lacchei writes that in the days before the murders, he had observed Estermann and Tornay at what he describes as a gay brunch and had later interviewed Tornay, who he said was clearly attached to his superior. He says, ”They were so intimate and friendly for a subordinate and a captain.”

Another theory is that Estermann was at the core of a power struggle within the Swiss Guard itself. On one side was the über-conservative Opus Dei movement, and on the other a Masonic sect with growing strength within the elite guard. Estermann, who was appointed as the guards’ new commander just hours before he was murdered, was caught in the middle, according to a book called Blood Lies in the Vatican, written by anonymous authors who claim to be priests and insiders who live inside the Vatican walls. They maintain that Tornay was attacked and dragged to the Vatican cellar, where he was “suicided” by commandos and then later placed in Estermann’s apartment after the real assailants did their dirty work. They conclude, “The element that undermines the official truth is the fact that no one heard the five loud shots fired by the powerful pistol found under Cedric Tornay’s body.”

Tornay’s mother believes the second theory more than the first, but knows the truth could lie somewhere in the middle. She says her son was the pawn of more powerful entities and got caught in the crossfire in a situation he likely knew nothing about. She denies her son’s homosexual affair with his boss, but concedes that he may have been too trusting and therefore easily taken advantage of. Either way, she is determined to find the truth about her son.

Pope Benedict XVI has not yet responded officially to Tornay’s mother’s letter. Her lawyer Luc Brossollet says she will not let it go. “The case is full of suppressed evidence, contradictions, and lies,” he said recently. “It’s time to find the shameful truth.”

Complete Article HERE!