Vatican Corruption – Page 24

September 25, 2013

Melbourne Priest Greg Reynolds Defrocked And Excommunicated By The Vatican

File under: Nice goin’ Francis! You talk a good line, but when push comes to shove, you’re just like your predecessor. SHAME!

By Anne Lu

Melbourne priest Greg Reynolds has not only been defrocked, but also excommunicated by the Catholic Church over his support for women priests and homosexuals. The order came directly from Vatican under the authority of Pope Francis, who just recently said that the Church focuses too much on gays and abortion.

Mr Reynolds resigned as a parish priest in 2011, and has founded Inclusive Catholics in 2012. He said that although he was expecting to be laicised or defrocked for his views on ordination of women and homosexuality, he didn’t know he was to be excommunicated as well.

Excommunication is a form of medicinal penalty for members of the Catholic Church. Those who are excommunicated are barred from receiving the Eucharist and other Sacraments of the church.

“In times past excommunication was a huge thing, but today the hierarchy have lost such truth and respect,” he was quoted by The Age as saying.

“I’ve come to this position because I’ve followed my conscience on women’s ordination and gay marriage.

The order, written in Latin, came from Vatican through the authority of Pope Francis, and gave no reason for the former priest’s excommunication.

The letter was dated May 31, months before the Pope told his subjects to go easy on how they deal with gays, abortion, and contraception. Mr Reynolds continued to The Age that he wants the same thing as the Pope, adding that he believes that the Church is in need of reform and renewal.

“My motivation is trying to encourage reform and clear need for renewal in the church,” he said. “I still love the church and am committed to it, I’m just trying to bring about in my own little way to help highlight some of the failing and limitations.”

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, who made headlines in May after appearing at a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into a child sex abuse case of another priest, apparently was not the one who requested the order, “but someone else unknown has gone over his head and contacted the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith,” Mr Reynolds said.

Archbishop Hart explained that Mr Reynolds was excommunicated because he continued to celebrate the Eucharist publicly after his priestly faculties were withdrawn. He was also preaching contrary to the teachings of the church.

As per its official Web site, Inclusive Catholics is an evolving movement/community in Melbourne that has recognises the hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church, but opposes its views on homosexuality and the ordination of women.

Mr Reynolds said that his being excommunicated would not make a different to his ministry.

He was offered $5000 as a payout for his 32 years of service in the church when he resigned, though he claimed he should have received $48,000 as the usual payout figure is about $1500 per year.

Complete Article HERE!

August 22, 2013August 22, 2013

“God Told Me To” -Ex Pope Benedict Says Mystical Experience Caused Resignation

File under — Who says there ain’t a God?

by Rebecca Savastio

Ex Pope Benedict says God told him to resign his position as Pope during a months-long “mystical experience” he had. When asked why he gave up his position, he said “God told me to.” While denying he had heard voices or saw an apparition of any kind, he explained that God gave him an “absolute desire” to give up being pope and spend the rest of his life praying in completely secluded private Vatican apartments. He claims the “will of God” was correct after seeing what an excellent job Pope Francis has been doing.

A Vatican spokesman told The Guardian UK that the original report by Zenit, a Catholic news organization, is correct. “The report seems credible,” the spokesman said. “It accurately explains the spiritual process that brought Benedict to resign.”

However, at the time of his resignation, Pope Benedict claimed that he was abandoning the position because of his rapidly declining health. At a meeting of Cardinals, he said “My strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

Some are skeptical of Benedict’s “mystical experience” claim and point to the fact that there have been extensive reports of a secret Vatican “gay lobby” whose influence was getting totally out of control. Current Pope Francis admitted to this powerful lobby just a few months ago and said he was planning on addressing it. He later came out and said he “would not judge” gay priests, leaving some to wonder if any action would be taken against the alleged lobby.

However, others feel that it was Benedict’s health alone which prompted his resignation, and one journalist who had met with him just prior to his leaving the papacy said Benedict looked “exhausted.” Benedict is 86 years old and has had numerous health problems in recent years, including a heart condition that required the installment of a pacemaker.

Other theories about his resignation include the scandal that broke recently about a top secret “rent boy” ring that was run by numerous priests inside Vatican City, in which they would hire underage male prostitutes to satisfy the sexual needs of their fellow Cardinals.

Perhaps the most controversial theory of all is that Benedict may be gay himself. That allegation comes, in part, from prominent Catholic blogger Andrew Sullivan. In a post entitled “Two Popes, One Secretary,” Sullivan implies that Benedict’s current arrangement with his male secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, is very strange, saying “So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement?”

Sullivan quotes another writer, Angelo Quattrochi, who discusses whether Gänswein’s relationship with Benedict could be more than professional:

When asked if he felt nervous in the presence of the Holy Father, Gänswein replied that he sometimes did and added: ‘But it is also true that the fact of meeting each other and being together on a daily basis creates a sense of “familiarity”, which makes you feel less nervous. But obviously I know who the Holy Father is and so I know how to behave appropriately. There are always some situations, however, when the heart beats a little stronger than usual.’… This man – clearly in some kind of love with Ratzinger (and vice-versa) will now be working for the new Pope as secretary in the day and spending the nights with the Pope Emeritus. This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

So which is the real reason for Benedict’s resignation? A secret “Gay Lobby?” A “Mystical experience?” Health problems? A ring of “rent boys” in the Vatican? The only person who knows the true answer is Benedict himself, and his current claim is “God told me to.”

Complete Article HERE!

July 20, 2013

Pope’s bank clean-up man ‘found stuck in lift with rent boy’

As the man charged with cleaning out the stables at the scandal-struck Vatican bank, Monsignor Battista Ricca will need Machiavellian cunning, good fortune and a whiter-than-white record to have even a fighting chance.

But Pope Francis’s new banker appears to possess none of these attributes after it was reported yesterday that he was found stuck in a lift with a rent boy. Msgr Ricca, as Francis’s new primate with responsibility for the troubled financial institution, known officially as the IoR (Institute for Religious Works), is supposed to usher in new transparency and badly needed reforms after years of financial scandal.

Earlier this month, a major report from finance police and magistrates warned that a lack of checks and controls by the IoR and the Italian financial institutions it had dealings with made the Vatican’s bank a money-laundering hot spot.

It is claimed that Msgr Ricca, 57, impressed Francis with the way he ran three key residences used by cardinals, bishops and priests visiting Rome. But detailed claims have emerged detailing how in 1999, Ricca took a Vatican diplomatic posting in Uruguay and moved his lover, Patrick Haari, a Swiss army captain, in with him, to the outrage of church figures and locals in the conservative South American nation. Captain Haari was forced out by the hardline Polish nuncio Janusz Bolonek in 2001.

But there were more problems for Ricca when he was attacked in a cruising ground that year, and soon after firemen had to rescue him from a broken lift, in which he was trapped with a youth known by local police. The weekly news magazine L’Espresso claims that Msgr Ricca was able to get the position as IoR prelate because the supposedly powerful “gay lobby” in the Vatican airbrushed his colourful CV.

Gay sex scandals at the Vatican have made the headlines before. In 2010 it emerged that one of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers and a member of the Vatican choir were involved in a gay prostitution ring.

Vatican spokesman Padre Federico Lombardi sought to dismiss the claims about Msgr Ricca’s private life. “What has been claimed about Msgr Ricca is not credible,” he said. Msgr Ricca himself has not yet responded to the allegations. But La Repubblica noted that the Vatican had emphasised that his appointment as prelate for the IoR was technically an interim one, thus raising the possibility that the job might not last long.

Complete Article HERE!

July 10, 2013

U.N. rights body poses tough questions to Vatican over child abuse

By Robert Evans

A United Nations human rights panel has posed a list of tough questions to the Vatican about child abuse by Catholic priests, a potential embarrassment for Pope Francis a few months into his papacy.

The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) asked for “detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, brothers or nuns” since the Holy See last reported to it some 15 years ago, and set November 1 as a deadline for a reply.

The request was included in a “list of issues”, posted on the CRC’s website, to be taken up when the Vatican appears before it next January to report on the Church’s performance under the 1990 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It will be the first time the Holy See has been publicly questioned by an international panel over the child abuse scandal which severely damaged the standing of the Roman Catholic Church in many countries around the world.

The CRC has no enforcement powers, but a negative report after the hearing would be a blow to the Church whose leader, Pope Francis, is striving to put a number of scandals behind him since succeeding Benedict XVI who resigned in February.

By issuing its questions, the Geneva-based CRC brushed aside a Vatican warning that it might pull out of the Convention on the Rights of the Child if pushed too hard on the issue.

In a report of its own in late 2011, posted on the U.N. website last October, the Holy See reminded the CRC of reservations on legal jurisdiction and other issues it made when it signed the global pact.

It said any new “interpretation” would give it grounds “for terminating or withdrawing” from the treaty.

In its request for information, the CRC asked how the Vatican was ensuring that abuser priests have no more contact with children and what instructions it has issued to ensure that cases known to the Church are reported to the police.

In several countries, including the United States and Ireland, the Church has been accused of simply moving suspect priests from one diocese to another, and of handling cases secretly.

The committee also asked if the Church had investigated the Magdalene Laundries run by nuns in Ireland over several decades until they were closed in 1996, where former female inmates say they were treated as slaves.

There was no immediate comment from the Vatican on Wednesday.

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of Britain’s National Secular Society who gave evidence to the committee in June, said he hoped for a new line from Pope Francis.

“He has expressed the Catholic Church’s determination to act decisively against paedophiles,” said Wood. “This gives room for optimism that these issues will at last be tackled. His papacy will be judged on his success in doing so.”

Complete Article HERE!

July 7, 2013

Protests mount over fast track for John Paul’s beatification

Sex abuse controversy refuses to go away as Catholics prepare for ceremony in Rome

By Tom Kington

A growing lobby of churchmen and religious experts are challenging the speed with which the Vatican is propelling Pope John Paul II towards sainthood, just six years after his death.

Hailed as the pope who helped bring down communism, who prayed alongside Jews and Muslims, and shrugged off an assassination attempt, John Paul will be beatified in St Peter’s Square next Sunday, a first step towards sainthood.

The Vatican is erecting tent cities and stocking up with millions of bottles of water. More than 300,000 people are expected to descend on Rome to honour the Polish pontiff whose charisma gave Catholicism a new lease of life.

But as the crowds begin to arrive, doubts are being expressed over the decision to begin beatification proceedings for John Paul immediately after his death in 2005, instead of observing the usual five-year waiting period.

Some experts are questioning whether John Paul is fit for sainthood at all, pointing to his poor record in handling the sex abuse allegations against priests that came to the fore during his 26-year papacy. “I oppose this beatification and predict history will look unkindly on John Paul, who was in denial as the worst crisis since the Reformation happened in the church,” said Father Richard McBrien, a theology professor at Notre Dame University in the US.

“My doubts are about John Paul being beatified by his successor, Pope Benedict,” said the Catholic historian Michael Walsh. “It appears incestuous and akin to the habit of deifying one’s ancestors.”

Even as Benedict faced the fallout from accusations that scores of priests abused children around the world, he has pulled out the stops to beatify John Paul. Sorting through hundreds of miraculous cures attributed to the pontiff, Vatican officials have selected the overnight recovery from Parkinson’s disease of a French nun as the miracle required for beatification. Experts believe canonisation could follow in two to three years.

“Years from now people may be saying, why the rush?” said Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author. “It takes a little bit away for future generations.” Tom Reese, a theologian and author, added: “What we need are fewer popes and priests beatified, and more real lives.”

The ramifications of the sex abuse scandal will continue as an internal Vatican report on predator priests in Ireland reportedly lands on Benedict’s desk, ahead of the publication next month of an Irish government report on the scandal. It is expected that the report will shed light on whether the abuse was ignored by Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, a former private secretary to John Paul.

John Paul’s unwavering support for Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican priest and morphine addict who ran the powerful Legion of Christ movement, has also sparked concerns. Maciel has been accused of abusing seminarians, fathering up to six children and allegedly pacifying the Vatican through large donations, despite complaints about his behaviour dating back to the 1970s.

Supporters of the pope have argued that John Paul was wary of sex abuse accusations after seeing communist officials use fake charges to discredit priests in his native Poland. But Walsh said there was no excuse with the Legion. “John Paul clearly safeguarded Maciel,” he said. Benedict was quick to banish Maciel to a life of penitence in 2006 after his election as pope.

Those voicing reservations over John Paul’s beatification are very much in a minority. Martin said: “Among church insiders there is a sense of the perceived haste over the beatification, but it’s a small concern among ordinary believers. The Vatican is often criticised for not responding to the will of the people, but here you can argue it is doing just that.”

Visitors to his simple marble tomb are convinced John Paul is worthy of beatification. “He had courage, look at how he forgave the man who shot and wounded him in St Peter’s Square in 1981,” said Olivier de Pommery, a banker from Paris. “Through his own illness at the end of his life he taught us to live and suffer with love,” said Marie Louise Murebwayire, from Rwanda. “He made suffering become love and gave dignity to all people who suffer.”

Following his beatification, John Paul’s remains will be moved to a large, ornate chapel near the entrance to St Peter’s Basilica. The tomb of a 17th-century pope, Innocent XI, will be moved to make space.

Complete Article HERE!