Tag Archives: the Vatican

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Culture, The Left

The St Gallen Mafia – Paul Kengor’s review

Julia Meloni’s The St Gallen Mafia: Crucial Insights into Pope Francis

Paul Kengor, TAN Direction, 21 November 2021

Julia Meloni’s new book, The St. Gallen Mafia, is a fascinating work. Rarely do I push through a book in two days, but this time I did.

The research and writing are outstanding. A read of the text and study of the footnotes and bibliography make clear that Meloni seems to have read every book available (many in Italian) on the central figure of Pope Francis and the core figures that comprised the so-called St. Gallen Mafia, namely: Cardinals Carlo Maria Martini, Godfried Danneels, Walter Kasper, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and Achille Silvestrini. Meloni’s examination of these characters and the connections she draws from them to Francis is admirably skilled and splendidly executed. It’s also eminently fair.

I do not know Meloni, but I partly expected a book on this provocative subject to contain hyperbole and flashes of anger and more than a few digs and shots at the chief characters—or maybe a better word for this group, the chief plotters. Meloni doesn’t do that. She is charitable, level-headed, and allows the facts to drive the conclusions. She narrates exceptionally well.

There is much to take from this book, and yet also, as with any analysis of Francis, much to leave one scratching one’s head. Francis remains an enigma. It is so hard to know the real Francis, especially where and when the man is leading or being led, or frankly, where and when the man is perhaps deceiving or being deceived by those whom he has surrounded himself with at the Vatican.

Read the rest here …

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Media, Radicalism, Religion

Cardinal Pell’s vatican enemies – how far did they reach?

George Pell, vice and the Vatican

by Paola Totaro, Australian, 28 November 2020

Cardinal George Pell shared his suspicions that up to €100m in ­unregistered cash owned by the Vatican could be hidden in foreign bank accounts at a secret meeting with Australian bankers in London’s financial district in 2016 — but four years later his questions remain unanswered.

In a new book citing confidential letters, documents and transcripts of private conversations between cardinals, Italian investigative journalist Gian Luigi Nuzzi recounts in detail the campaign of intimidation and psychological warfare unleashed by the Vatican’s old guard against attempts by Pope Francis and his German predecessor Benedict XVI to clean up the finances of the Holy See.

The intimidation included a Watergate-style break-in and the theft of a dossier of documents relating to the 1982 murder of the Vatican banker Roberto Calvi just weeks after Pell’s appointment as financial tsar. This was interpreted internally as a Mafia-style warning to busybody outsiders.

Nuzzi’s 835-page tome, The Vatican’s Black Book, documents more than 50 years of financial skulduggery by sections of the Roman curia to avoid proper scrutiny and accounting for the millions in cash donated by Catholics around the world each year.

Read the rest here…

Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Religion, The Left

The Pell case: Who’s running scared?

In his Spectator article, The sinister Vatican plot against Cardinal Pell, Damian Thompson writes that he and others have always suspected Cardinal Pell’s enemies in the Vatican had something to do with the cardinal’s conviction. Even so, he did not expect a Vatican cardinal to provide evidence to support those suspicions.

He relates, as others have done (see previous posts), the fall of Cardinal Becciu because of delinquency with Vatican funds, highlighting the mysterious transfer of A$1.1 million to an Australian account around the time Cardinal Pell was running the gauntlet of Victoria’s degraded criminal justice system. In the final paragraphs of his article, he raises some interesting points about where to from here. He says the public may learn more about Cardinal Pell’s ‘solitary accuser’. ‘God only knows,’ he adds, ‘what will happen then.’ If I’m right about the choirboy, some journalists will at this moment be running scared. They will be lucky to come off with no more than mere humiliation.

* ****

Continue reading The Pell case: Who’s running scared? →
Catholic Church, Law, Media, Religion, The Left

Vatican money to destroy Cardinal Pell – The story so far

The following details are from media reports this last week:

National Catholic Register 29 September 2020

An important, but not the primary, consequence of the stunning sacking of Cardinal Angelo Becciu is that it completes on the Vatican side what was accomplished by the Australian High Court in April, namely the complete vindication of Cardinal George Pell.

As Cardinal Pell arrives in Rome this week after three years in Australia, the counterpoint between the cardinal’s return and Cardinal Becciu’s fall is worthy of a novel.

“The Holy Father was elected to clean up Vatican finances … and is to be thanked and congratulated on recent developments,” Cardinal Pell stated in reference to his brother cardinal’s dismissal. “I hope the cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria [Australia].”

Continue reading Vatican money to destroy Cardinal Pell – The story so far →
Culture, Law, Media, Politics

The Becciu File – Was the Cardinal framed?

Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s unprecedented sacking by Pope Francis has crucial importance for several reasons. Becciu was a second-rank official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State – a position with power. He frustrated and blocked Cardinal Pell’s efforts to sweep the filthy financial stables of the Vatican clean. His sacking vindicates Pell’s efforts as Prefect for the Secretariat of the Economy to bring some transparency – and honesty – into Vatican finances.

The prelude to Becciu’s inglorious removal was a string of dodgy, smelly (some stinking) financial dealings. One of those shifty splashings of Vatican cash was a transfer of $800,000 to an account in Australia just when Cardinal Pell was undergoing his ordeal in Victoria’s corrupted legal system and police force. The voices talking about a framing originating in the Vatican are becoming louder. My Becciu file (a tab under Cardinal Pell section) will keep up to date with the Becciu and Pell affair.

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Culture, Economics, Media

Cdl Pell’s Financial regime vindicated

Pell thanks Pope for cleaning Vatican ‘stables’ after cardinal who canceled 2016 audit resigns

Becciu was instrumental in April of 2016 in canceling an external audit of Vatican finances that had been planned by Cardinal Pell.

SYDNEY, Australia, September 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal George Pell, who had been tasked by Pope Francis in 2014 to clean up the Vatican’s finances, thanked the Pope for moving to “clean the stables” of the Vatican by accepting the resignation of a powerful Vatican official who in 2016 single-handedly canceled a planned external audit of Vatican finances. 

“The Holy Father has elected to clean up Vatican finances,” the Australian cardinal wrote in an official statement dated today where he identifies himself as the former Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in the Vatican. “He plays a long game and is to be thanked and congratulated on recent developments. I hope the cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria.” 

Yesterday the Holy See announced that Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciù, 72, had offered Pope Francis his resignation and, very unusually, his rights as a cardinal. The most recent cardinal to be stripped of his rights, but not also expelled from the College of Cardinals, was the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien after being accused of sexual misconduct with priests.    

Read the rest here…

Catholic Church, Culture, Political correctness, Radicalism

Is the Vatican colluding with the forces of the Anti-Christ?

Michael Matt comments on the increasing collusion of Pope Francis and the Vatican with the population-control guru Jeffrey Sachs (read abortionist). It’s clear enough that Francis and his fellow apostates in the Vatican plan to work with Sachs and his one-world Marxist coterie to ensure President Donald Trump is not re-elected.

There is some chilling stuff in this video, in particular the glimpse into the mind of Jeffrey Sachs who seems entirely unaware of how frighteningly naked he and his plans appear to those who have not succumbed to his class’s indoctrination. And pay attenton to the Vatican prelate sitting next to Sachs. What could he be thinking to conduct himself in such an obnoxious manner? See this powerful video HERE.

Catholic Church, Political correctness, The Left

The state of the Church Today

John-Henry Westen is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the first life-and-family issues news service operating on the Internet: LifeSiteNews.com. A veteran journalist and speaker, John-Henry is the author of thousands of articles on life, family, faith and culture; his LifeSiteNews.com articles have appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide.

Founded in 1997 and based in Front Royal, VA, LifeSiteNews.com is the largest pro-life, pro-family news website on the Internet with an average of 5 million page views per month.

John-Henry Western recently posted a video on the state of the Catholic Church. The video provides a many quotations (many in the actual circumstances) from Pope Francis that will appall and shock orthodox Catholics, and will be the joy of the destroyers who see him fulfilling the promise of Vatican II. See the video HERE.

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Politics, The Left

Gays in Vatican – The Australian censors comments

The Australian ran an article on 16 February headed ‘New book on sex lives of Vatican priests suggests 80 per cent are gay.’ The book In the Closet of the Vatican by homosexual Frederic Martel is ‘based on 1500 interviews with cardinals, clerics and even papal Swiss guards.’ It alleges further that one of the most outspoken prelates against ‘same-sex marriage’ ‘secretly frequented male prostitutes.’ All very sensational.

The article provoked the usual simple-minded, ignorant, anti-Catholic bigotry in the comment section as well as the usual reaction by many Catholics that the anti-Catholic media were at it again. They were, indeed, but they were close to the truth this time. I submitted the following comment:

The Australian media appear way behind the international conversation (especially in the US) over the incidence of homosexuality among the clergy and what it means. Some traditional Catholic groups, like Church Militant, are hammering the hierarchy unmercifully not only over clerical sexual abuse and the cover-up by many bishops, but about the behaviour of some well-known prelates.

Google Cardinal McCarrick and one will find a sensational story of scandal. Cardinal McCarrick is on the point of being laicized – defrocked. There has been a 180 degree turnaround by some traditional Catholics (like me) in their attitude to clerical sexual abuse. They thought it was just a beat-up by an anti-Catholic press. No, we have discovered that the story goes far deeper – and into the past. The huge increase of homosexuals in the priesthood after 1960 was no coincidence. Nor was it a coincidence that the rate of the abuse of male teenagers rose relative to that increase. The figures are there.

The Australian did not print my comment – as I expected. Even Australia’s most reliable newspaper quakes before the power of the far-left homosexual activists.