The Vatican’s Financial Reform: The Spin Is Back, by Jerry Slevin, Christian Catholicism (March 1, 2015)

UNACCOUNTABLE CARDINALS & POPES

CANNOT SUCCEED IN THE INTERNET ERA

Pope Francis returned from his Lenten Retreat to face the latest “cardinal leak” scandal. He tried unsuccessfully to give a “subject changing” speech on the current evils for the poor of global capitalism.

“Leak scandals” are inevitable occurrences, given the pope’s futile continuation of secrecy in the Internet Era, and the lack of transparent accountability of cardinals, and of the pope for that matter, in the past, in the present and for the foreseeable future.

The new leak involved large and questionable expenditures of one of Francis’ more than a hundred unaccountable Cardinals, George Pell, the Vatican’s new finance czar. Pell seems to like to spend lavishly on almost everything but abuse survivors’ just claims.

The pope also faced continuing fallout from his unwise “Mexicanization comments” and from his difficult Angela Merkel meeting over the Vatican’s Ukraine, and women and children’s, positions discussed below. The top German Cardinal, Reinhard Marx, is reportedly currently nearly threatening to act in Germany on a seemingly important local “money matter” — divorced and remarried Catholics’ access to communion, regardless of what Francis’ futile “all celibate male” Final Family Synod, or even Francis, may decide in a matter of months.

Unaccountable cardinals are, it seems, not much influenced by an unaccountable pope in his 79th year.

By serendipity, or providence perhaps, legendary investor, Warren Buffett, was at about the same time making relevant remarks on the need to hold managers accountable. Buffett had earlier made some surprising negative observations about global capitalism that were similar to some the pope just made in his new speech on the adverse effect of the current crony capitalist system on the poor.

Buffett, who was raised a Presbyterian, differs from the pope, significantly however, on the importance of top managers being held accountable and on the importance of family planning programs.

Buffett is moving forward with his commitment to transfer most of his $75 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation — a major international advocate for accessible family planning programs.

The priest child abuse scandal that Francis faces, and the desperate plight of millions of poor families that the world faces, are often exacerbated needlessly by couples having more children than they really want or can afford to provide even basic necessities.

Melinda Gates, the Foundation’s co-head and a Catholic, appears, in effect, to be on a collision course with Francis and his upcoming Final Family Synod over the Synod’s approving at least giving poor women access to affordable and effective family planning programs, including contraception. Please see, “Melinda Gates: ‘I’m a Catholic, but women need access to contraceptives‘ – video interview” here, [The Guardian] .

The contraception issue will likely also be upfront and central in the expected efforts of US bishops under Francis’ leadership to help elect next year a right wing, low tax Republican as US President as discussed here, “Hillary Clinton vs. Pope Francis in 2015 ?” here,

http://christiancatholicism.com/grandma-hillary-clinton-vs-grandpa-figure-pope-francis-in-2015/

The former Archbishop from Australia, Pell, is still reeling, it appears, from a recent and devastating government report on his brutal treatment of Australian priest sex abuse survivors who sought minimal financial assistance to alleviate the adverse effects of their abuse, see “Pope Francis Must Fire Cardinal Pell Now ” here, [Christian Catholicism] .

Pope Francis has a “Cardinal Problem”. Cardinals are mostly unaccountable to him. Predictably, Francis made no public mention of Pell’s financial excesses or child abuse scandal omissions.

Of course, Pope Francis has failed to single out financial and/or abuse scandal related missteps of many cardinals, including cardinals Bertone, Sodano, Law, Mahony, George, Rigali, Brady, Dolan, Danneels, et al. Bertone recently disclosed that Francis approved of his lavish apartment. Francis’ spokesman predictably condemned the fact of the Pell leak, but not the subject of the leak.

Also predictably, CRUX’s John Allen did his usual “cherry picked ‘Pell can do no wrong’ column”, as Allen also typically self promoted his latest book. Once again, Allen failed to mention the recent and severe Australian governmental censure of Pell’s cruel “penny wise … ” treatment of abuse survivors’ just claims. The “tough” rugby cardinal has acted like a bully when children’s interests were paramount.

Francis understandably at 78 years old wants a successor who will follow his initiatives, so that may be why he gives cardinals free passes. Francis urges his priests to smell like sheep, while cardinals parade around in “Golden Fleece”.

Cardinals will vote on Francis’ successor and Francis can only appoint so many new cardinals he thinks he can depend on. But, in reality, Francis can only guess who his successor will be when he retires or dies.

Unlike any other ruler on earth, however, Francis has a “papal nuclear option” to advance his personal agenda. He at any time can declare under color of infallibility his own “merciful” positions or he can call for an international council of all bishops, joined by representative and independent lay persons from the Catholic 99.99%, to reform finally and thoroughly the Catholic Church. Let us hope he does one or the other.

Pope Francis, who has often criticized orthodox market economics for fostering unfairness and inequality, in his new speech, that was perhaps intended to distract from the Pell leak, said people are being forced to work long hours for a few hundred euros a month because they were seen as easily replaceable.

”You don’t like it? Go home then. What can you do in a world that works like this? Because there’s a queue of people looking for work. If you don’t like it, someone else will,… It’s hunger, hunger that makes us accept what they give us,… “, the pope reportedly said in an unscripted change from the text of his new speech. Fair point — too many people for too few jobs. Fair solution — more jobs, less people or some combination thereof, no?

The pope’s remarks have special resonance in Italy, where unemployment, particularly among young people, is running at record levels after years of economic recession. Francis’ seeming fix for the “excess people problem” includes, unwisely, pumping up the Italian population as he still bans effective family planning and touts large families there. Is he serious?

As Pope Francis’ speech was circulating, the 20th Century’s most successful investor and at times world’s richest person, Warren Buffett announced he has identified his successor. To avoid “decay … {from} debilitating {competetive} forces” in making his succession selection, Buffett highlighted good management principles, saying “My successor will need one other particular strength: the ability to fight off the ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency,” he said. “When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies can falter.”

Was Francis listening about management “cancers”? Yes, the ABC’s of bad management, “arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency” can bring down the largest for profit organizations, as it is also apparently bringing down the world’s largest charitable organization, the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is experiencing, with unaccountable cardinals like Pell, arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency, and seems stymied by these cardinals.

Buffett, raised as a Presbyterian, and other corporate capitalists are, of course, subject to the discipline of the marketplace and the rule of law, including requirements to publish timely audited financial reports that reflect their managements’ records.

The pope and his cardinals mostly answer to no one — to a Code of Canon Law and a Catechism ultimately responsive to papal fiat. No outside auditor has even yet been selected yet to review the Vatican’s main holdings. Even then, the audit reports will be made available privately only to Francis and to those he selects and who serve at his pleasure as Supreme Pontiff. In other words, the pope remains an absolute monarch, in effect. This fails even a minimum standard of accountability and transparency, no matter how John Allen and other papal promoters try to spin it.

If Francis wants to save the Catholic Church in the Internet Era, he must return its control to the 99.99% faithful who lost control over 1,700 years to an unaccountable and self perpetuating clerical clique supported currently by self interested billionaire papal allies. The curtain has been lifted too far and too often on the machinations of the Papal Wizard. The curtain can never be lowered effectively again.

Once again, voting cardinals like Pell have shown they can do what they damn please and no pope will hold them accountable. Popes can and often act this way themselves because they also have been and are unaccountable as well.

Interestingly, as reported in a New York Times interview in 2006, Buffett, with immense income from his huge capital reources, paid far, far less in taxes as a fraction of his overall taxable income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, Mr. Buffett claimed he doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?” He reportedly added, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Notwithstanding Pope Francis’ appealing rhetoric about the poor, his appointments to papal financial commissions and his top lay advisers are mainly from Buffett’s “rich class”, as the pope’s US bishops under Francis’ oversight work overtime to help Buffett’s low tax “rich class” dominate US politics.

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney, was appointed as the Vatican’s new finance czar last year. He was appointed by Pope Francis to introduce budgetary discipline and transparency to the Vatican’s murky finances. He spent almost half a million dollars on business-class flights, furniture and other expenses, it emerged on Friday (2/27/15).

Pope Francis has recently also made another significant international misstep, in addition to the one that led to his apparent recent “dressing down” by “no-nonsense” German Chancellor Merkel. The tough German leader apparently expressed her concern privately for Francis’ seemingly indirect support of Russia’s President Putin’s Ukraine invasion, as well likely on some of Francis’ shortcomings on protecting children and respecting women and women’s reproductive rights.

As the head of the pope’s major “donor country”, when Angela speaks, Francis evidently listens.

This time the pope, in effect, insulted Mexicans, including many Mexican American voters, with his unwarranted “Mexicanization slur” revealing the pope’s view of Mexico. Francis reportedly wrote: “Hopefully we’re in time to avoid the Mexicanization. I was talking to some Mexican bishops and it’s a terrible situation, ,,, “. The pope was apparently referring privately, negatively and gratuitously to the risk of Mexican-style drug violence, and the related sexual abuse of children and women, reaching Argentina.

The Vatican defensively reacted to the unexpected disclosure of the pope’s insult by saying reportedly, in pertinent part, that the “pope had absolutely no intention of offending the feelings of the Mexican people, … . The expression ‘avoiding Mexicanization’ was used by the pope in a strictly private and informal email, … ” ! (emphasis mine).

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico reportedly said “… The pope is very well informed about Mexico’s situation … ” Perhaps, but the pope seems less well informed about the risks of e-mail records.

So? If anything, private e-mails likely reflect more accurately the pope’s real views as compared the endless stream of pious pontifications that the pope’s publicists pump out, too often parroted automatically by opportunistic and conflicted journalists. Once again, the pope is caught practicing “revisionism”. Changing his stated positions, seemingly at times, as often as the weather changes, depending on the latest direction of the wind, it appears.

More than 80 percent of Mexicans are Catholic, as are many Mexican American voters that the pope and his US bishops appear eagerly to want to have vote next year for a “low tax” US Republican President (likely Jeb Bush with his Mexico born wife).

Of course, this drug violence also entails the sexual abuse of children, including “rent boys”, a Latin American subject that Francis neglects too often, especially as it relates to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Peru, and many other predominately Catholic countries, as well as to Latino neighborhoods of US cities like Los Angeles.

Many of these abuse cases have involved the abuse of poor children in drug plagued environments allegedly by prominent and influential Catholic clerics, including Mexico’s Fr. Marcial Maciel (also a drug abuser), Chile’s Fr. Fernando Karadima and the Dominican Republic’s and Puerto Rico’s Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, among many more.

These Catholic clerics’ misdeeds are also the subject of related cover-up allegations related, for example, to Mexico’s Cardinal Norberto Rivera and Chile’s Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, and as well, at least, to related failures to speak out adequately on the part of other involved Cardinals, including Honduras’ Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga (head of the pope’s Council of Cardinals), Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles (USA) and even the pope, as former Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina as a long time leader among Latin American bishops.

Latino abuse survivors and others are increasingly speaking out in the media currently, so the pope’s negative Mexicanization comments were especially poorly timed from the Vatican’s and US Republicans’ perspectives.

One suspects the pope is now getting some strong messages from his “low tax” US billionaire donors to put a lid on his ‘too revealing” loose missives and off the cuff remarks. The pope’s true remarks are often in conflict with the latest Vatican/US Republican “talking points”, it appears.

The Mexican slur clearly undercuts to some extent the pope’s effectiveness in supporting US bishops’ efforts to help elect Jeb Bush US president next year, as some key “low tax” billionaire donors likely already expect.

Mexico and its drug culture are sensitive subjects seemingly for Jeb Bush. He recently reported “to have lost” almost all of his wedding pictures, presumably including those with his wife’s migrant worker family. No wedding pictures available for the son of an experienced US politician and diplomat at the time. Right! The Bush family “airbrush” seems to be up and running!

Moreover, one of Jeb’s half-Mexican children had earlier been jailed reportedly in connection with multiple cocaine possession and prescription drug fraud allegations. Jeb, a Catholic, surely did not need “his pope” unnecessarily raising now the “Mexicanization drug mess”, as Jeb skillfully works to craft his latest election year “persona”.

Most important for the pope evidently is having another “Vatican friendly Bush president”. This appears central to the pope’s worldwide defensive strategy to protect US bishops’ (and even Vatican officials, as was clearly the case with Cardinal Angelo Sodano and George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Condeleeza Rice, in 2005) from priest child sexual abuse fallout from the US Federal government, the world’s most powerful government. Francis already faces a massive Australian investigation and the UK is starting up a comparable one. More national investigations will likely follow and pressure will almost certainly increase on the US president to investigate as well.

Incidentally, according to John Allen, Rice was asked in 2005 by Cardinal Sodano (the Vatican’s Secretary of State and mentor of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s current Secretary of State and heir apparent as pope to Francis), whether the United States government could stop a class-action lawsuit currently then before a US Federal Court that sought to hold the Vatican financially responsible for the sexual abuse of US minors by unaccountable Catholic priests.

The pope’s latest Mexicanization misstep also increases pressure on Francis to revise the Code of Canon Law to restore the popular election of bishops, a change he could make at any time. Accountability of all bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, is the sine qua non of any meaningful Catholic Church reform.

Anything short of election by the 99.99% of Catholic faithful (rather than by the 0.01% as at present) is mere fluff and will not save the present corrupt Catholic Church in the “glass house” Internet Age, as more and more nations move in to hold the Vatican accountable to the rule of law.

Francis can make the bishop accountability change himself or he can just wait until outside governments pressure him to do so, as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel just evidently pressured him recently on pushing back on Russia’s President Putin on the Ukraine invasion.

More than 100,000 people have died in drug cartel violence in Mexico since the start of 2007. The September 2014 abduction and apparent massacre of 43 Mexican students by police in league with a drug gang seriously embarrassed the current Mexican government. This drug related violence has fed other serious outcomes, including their being abused sexually, especially adverse for children. Francis saw this first hand as well in the Philippines, also a predominantly Catholic country with mostly unaccountable bishops.

As indicated, Francis is already facing pressure from Mexican and other Latino sex abuse survivors were were victims of Mexican priests who abused in both Mexico and the US, especially in Cardinal Mahony’s Los Angeles Archdiocese.

This papal misstep is not a pretty backdrop for a pope who would prefer to talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe, martyred Archbishop Romero and Franciscan Junipero Serra when he begins in a matter of months his pre-election warm-up visit to the US, as the US presidential election campaign gathers steam later this year.

Let us hope Pope Francis received some “divine inspiration” during his Lenten Retreat last week about abandoning his flawed plan to save the Catholic Church, as he increasingly realizes he cannot evade international law enforcement mainly by kissing more babies. He may not merit sainthood, but he has already garnered a place of honor the the Hall of Fame for Senior Citizens.

That said, his decision to become pope at 76 years old was as brave and generous as it was unwise and ambitious. It appears likely that neither he nor anyone else, of any age, could have succeeded with a plan formulated in secrecy, with many of the same clerics that contributed to the Catholic Church’s current mess — a plan that seems designed mostly to maintain the unacceptable status quo that prioritizes the power and wealth of the pope and his 5,000+ bishops worldwide, women and children be damned, it seems.

In actuality, under Francis’ two year reign, children still remain at unnecessary risk of priest sexual abuse, and women, couples, gay and divorced folks are still subjected to unchristian “dogmas” aimed mainly at maximizing the unaccountable power and hidden wealth of the Vatican and its 5,000+ bishops. And priest abuse survivors still receive inhuman and insensitive treatment from bishops who disrespect them with impunity, as Cardinals Law, Mahony, Brady, Danneels, Pell, Rigali, Dolan, et al. still indicate vividly. On real reforms, Pope Francis gets an “F” grade on his two year report card!

In his 79th year, with only one lung and very limited international experience, as well as some serious missteps as already indicated, Pope Francis is showing daily he cannot save the Catholic Church with his current plan.

The pope must know by now that his only real choice is either to move now to begin the return of power to the Catholic 99% by making all bishops accountable to them again, or he fail to save the Catholic Church. He has bought the frightened Vatican Cardinals a two year delay on real reforms, but his lack of real reform action can no more be hidden behind the babies he so often hugs. The curtain has been raised on the Papal Wizard, no?

Indeed, even Francis’ close adviser, Cardinal Walter Kasper reportedly asks in his yet to be released (in English) book, “Will Francis really trigger a comprehensive reform or will his pontificate disappoint expectations? These are the questions many people, including those favorably disposed towards him, are asking,” Kasper reportedly wrote.

Kasper adds that there is no doubt that Francis will continue to realize individual points on his reform agenda step-by-step and that we can expect many a surprise, but it is “humanly impossible” to tell whether he will be able to set an irreversible process of reform in motion that will last beyond his pontificate, Kasper reportedly wrote. (emphasis mine)

Kasper reportedly added that the reform answer, moreover, does not depend only on the pope, but also on how far the Roman Curia, the local churches, the religious orders, the movements, the theological university faculties and Christians take up the pope’s impulses.

With a typical clerical blind spot, Kasper neglected to mention the most important reform factor, outside political pressure, even as his German Chancellor Merkel is apparently already putting the squeeze on Pope Francis.

Also, Jesuit political science scholar and the world’s top authority on the Vatican;s management structure, Tom Reese, has fairly observed recently, in effect, the Francis and his over-hyped Council of Cardinals including Cardinals Rodriquez Maradiago, George Pell. Reinhard Marx and Sean O’Malley, either do not know how to reform the Vatican’s bureaucracy or are not really serious about reforming it.

Despite Cardinal Pell’s self promotion as a financial reformer, effected with much help from CRUX’s John Allen’s “fairy tale” approach to Vatican finance, accounting is not rugby. John Allen’s insight into the basics of accounting and finance approaches the “tone deafness” he shows in his reporting on protecting children from priest predators. But I suspect the seemingly “low tax” billionaire owner of the Boston Globe welcomed John handsomely, so why am I ever surprised at CRUX’s frequently disappointing “cherry picking” and “softball” approach?

John Allen, in my view, used to do more balanced and incisive reporting occasionally at the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) — before some other “low tax billionaire birds of the same flock” apparently got NCR to turn sharply right, as it now churns out mostly Francismania nonsense and pro-US Republican hype. CRUX steered “right” from its start, putting in jeopardy the Boston Globe’s well earned investigative reporting reputation.

Pope Francis needs now to call for a broad based general ecumenical council, to be held far from Rome, with full and independent lay participation. His Family Synods of only celibate men and illusory lay input are clearly farcical. The limited options for lay Catholics offered by the Synods just underscores the lack of accountability of Catholic Church leaders at present. Please see my relevant remarks “Pope Pivots On Rumored Vatican Council III ?” here,

In this ominous environment, Latin American and U.S. victims of child abuse by members of the clergy asked the pope in Mexico recently that he go further than “good words” with his vow not to tolerate pedophilia in the Catholic Church, and accused the pope of having a “contradictory” position on the subject.

In an open letter sent to the Argentine pope, victims from countries including Mexico, Chile, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Peru and the United States demanded that his statement to the effect that “there is absolutely no place in ministry for those who abuse minors” be translated into effective action.

The pope “is rewarding people who should be in jail,” former seminarian and now US executive, Juan Carlos Cruz told a press conference, referring to his own experience as victim of the prominent Chilean Fr. Fernando Karadima, judged guilty by the Vatican in 2011 of sexually abusing minors.

About that matter, Cruz mentioned recent incidents in Chile, such as the elevation to cardinal of the archbishop of Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati, and the naming of Juan Barros as bishop of the diocese of Osorno, while both of them, according to the ex-seminarian, were covering up the Karadima case.

“We ask the pope that he at least comply with what he is saying,” Cruz reportedly said, acknowledging that the Chilean victims felt “tremendously disappointed” in the pope.

“Words and certain actions aren’t enough – even less when they are ambiguous and contradictory – because they not only don’t signify zero tolerance for clerical pedophilia, but only aggravate the harm done to the victims and do not build an institutional path to truth and justice,” the victims said in the letter.

The ex-priest and defender of human rights, Alberto Athie, said that Pope Francis will have to establish “levels of responsibility” among members of the Catholic Church, both with regard to those who commit abuses and those who cover up what the offenders are doing.

Athie also involved in his remarks the previous pope, Benedict XVI, in these responsibilities, because “he is implicated, since he knew of thousands of cases of child abuse and only resolved 400.”

Those 400 cases were priests who were suspended, in secret, and whose identities and whereabouts are still unknown, since the Vatican “has not assumed the responsibility of providing that information” to the authorities or of making it public.

“The church believes it is not accountable to anyone, but it has to learn that it must submit to civil authority,” Athie reportedly said.

The Vatican’s protection of bishops complicit in recycling clergy sex abusers is obviously a front-burner issue for Alberto Athié, one of Mexico’s most respected public figures.

Last July, when Pope Francis met in a hyped public relations meeting with abuse survivors in Rome, Athié posted an open letter asking the pope to dismiss Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera for his defense over many years of the long-accused pedophile and founder of the Legion of Christ religious order, Fr. Marcial Maciel.

Athié’s manifesto, signed by 128 abuse survivors, lawyers and supportive groups, called for reforms in the way Catholic Church leadership handles abuse cases — and the loophole that gives bishops full discretion.

“They know that such behavior existed within the institution, and the [internal] mechanism is precisely what prolonged the abuse,” Athié reportedly indicated in an email recently. “The damage caused by bishops, cardinals and the Holy See for years of protecting abusers must be confronted.”

Athié argues that Rivera bears responsibility beyond the Maciel case, which stained the tenures of Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict.

Athié singles out Rivera’s handing of the case of Father Nicolás Aguilar, who in the 1980s moved between Mexico and Los Angeles (USA)— trailed by accusations reportedly known to Rivera as well as by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, as lawsuit documents have since shown.

Aguilar has disappeared in Mexico with pending arrest warrants in both countries. He eluded police in Los Angeles in 1987 after a tipoff from chancery officials.

“Aguilar had 30 victims in California and 60 in Mexico,” abuse survivors’ attorney Jeff Anderson reportedly indicated.

In Los Angeles, eleven of Aguilar’s estimated 26 victims agreed to negotiated legal settlements last February with the LA Archdiocese in the range of $500,000 per victim, according to media accounts and legal sources.

Cardinal O’Malley has apparently indicated recently that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) may be asked to broaden its canon law tribunal to consider charges against bishops. But cardinals are “Princes of the Church”. Cardinals elect popes. How much weight — if any — will a Vatican forum give to voluminous civil findings against the likes of Rivera and Mahony? Cardinal Bernard Law suffered no penalty in the Vatican for the damage he left in Boston. Francis and Parolin still honor Law. And Archbishop Wesolowski’s secretive criminal proceedings have barely begun at the Vatican after almost two years, it appears.

As to other papal issues, what happened between last Friday’s papal prohibition of Ukrainian bishops’ making further political speeches and, less than 100 hours later, the Ukraine’s top bishop’s blasting of Russia, with help from Vatican Radio, and even help through the occasionally papally favored USA outlet, the Boston Globe’s CRUX website. Yes, CRUX even reported the Ukraine bishop’s blasting of the pope for using Soviet style propaganda! Now it is being reported that the pope himself may visit the Ukraine soon. Yes, what happened?

Angela Merkel visited the pope, that’s what happened! Perhaps the pope should learn a lesson here and invite some independent women as full participants to his absurd “all celibate male” Final Family Synod in several months.

On Friday (2/20/15), as reported, “Pope Francis tells Ukrainian bishops to stay out of politics” here, [National Catholic Reporter] .

On Saturday (2/21/15), Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, fresh from her futile efforts with Russia’s President Putin over the Ukraine invasion, met with Pope Francis, along with 15 of her aides and the pope’s key foreign policy aides, reportedly to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine, women’s rights and equality, children’s health issues in developing countries, etc., as considered further below.

On Monday (2/23/15), the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, held a press conference about his Vatican meetings last week, as reported by Vatican Radio, in “Ukrainian Archbishop calls on Christians to help end conflict” here, [Vatican Radio] .

Also on Monday, the Vatican’s often favored US media promoter, the CRUX website, reported “Ukrainian Catholic leader urges pope to be tougher on Russia” here, [Crux] .

Importantly, what happened over the 100 hour weekend period apparently was an ominous and decisive visit to the Vatican from the world’s most powerful woman, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. For a recent superb and incisive overview of the remarkable Angela Merkel, please see “Angela’s Assets” here, [Vanity Fair] .

Germany still has a religiously divided Christianity, as it paradoxically prepares to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of Luther’s “revolt” in less than two years. As the pope, who studied in Germany, and the Lutheran Chancellor, both must know well, many of the Vatican’s sins that Luther challenged are still pervasive in Rome. These “sins” are funded now by direct German subsidies, rather than through sales of indulgences . Moreover, but for Luther, Merkel’s father likely would never have been able to have been a married cleric.

The pope should have been on guard, perhaps, when he received as a gift from Merkel a box of CDs of the music of the Lutheran genius, Bach, (and not of the Roman Catholic born German genius, Beethoven).

The pope had been preparing, before Merkel arrived, for a week long Lenten retreat with his Vatican officials. This was to be a “spiritual break” after an intense period that began with the pope’s public Christmas shaming of his administrative team, continued with his failed Philippine trip, and ended with his unusually secretive meetings with all of his cardinals.

Did Pope Francis and his likely successor, Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, really want to or even need to spend so much time now with Merkel and her entourage of 15 German officials?

Given the pope’s seeming flip flop on his Ukraine policy in less than 100 hours, can the pope still claim that the Vatican after three decades needs more time to figure out how to hold bishops accountable for protecting priest child abusers? The pope should order all his bishops, not just Ukrainian ones, and including US bishops as well as himself as Bishop of Rome, to stay out of actual politics!

Of course, the Pope and Parolin did have to listen if Merkel insisted on it. Germany is the largest single “guaranteed source” of Catholic Church financial support, with over $7 billion in annual direct governmental subsides. Money still talks loudest at the Vatican, it appears.

The talks, as indicated, reportedly (in the words of the polite diplomatic script mutually agreed likely by Merkel and the pope) focused on international crises, including the conflict in eastern Ukraine, women’s rights and equality, children’s health issues in developing countries, etc.

The pope talked to a woman about women and family issues? Almost unprecedented, no? Are these terms “code words” for issues like changing the ban on the Pill and for holding bishops accountable for protecting priest child abusers?

Merkel may have had trouble pushing Putin, Russia’s president, but Germany pays many of the pope’s bills. As Greece is learning, she surely knows how to apply her economic power. She also recently met in Washington with President Obama so likely knows where he stands on reining in this popular, but internationally inexperienced, pope, no?

Hopefully, Pope Francis and his Vatican team will now concentrate at their retreat on the curing the Vatican’s centuries’old obsession with power — power over women, children, divorced and gay persons, etc.

The pope needs to consider reversing the Vatican’s modern strategy adopted initially at the First Vatican Council in 1870. The strategy is built on an all powerful infallible pope who controls clerics through his own rules (the Code of Canon Law) and controls Catholics through popes’ own “dogmas” (the Catechism) pounded into Catholic children’s minds beginning with First Confession at 7 years old.

Sharing power with the Catholic 99% majority is the only way to save the Catholic Church. The pope must accept this now. Hopefully the Merkel visit helped him to understand this better.

For a relevant discussion of what Pope Francis needs to do, if he truly wants to save the Catholic Church, please see my related reform remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here, [Christian Catholicism]

My considered reform remarks are based on my lifetime experience as a Catholic and decades experience as an international lawyer. Jesuit educated Fr. Hans Kung, whom Pope Francis has honored recently with replies, etc., and whose former assistant, Cardinal Walter Kasper, reportedly is the pope’s theologian of choice, has complimented me on these reform remarks. Perhaps Chancellor Merkel consulted with Fr. Kung before meeting with the pope? Fr. Kung had been consulted occasionally by Merkel’s mentor, Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

These remarks, unlike some of my other ad hoc advocacy intended remarks which Hans Kung has not endorsed, are my considered and best effort to point Pope Francis to an efficacious path to required reforms. But the “Holy Father” thinks he knows best! Time will tell, soon!!

This disarming pope’s plan or strategy up to now has been fairly simple: Protect at all costs Church leaders and wealth, not by making Church leaders accountable and law abiding, but mainly by shoring up alliances with major world political and financial players. Hopefully, the Merkel visit has helped the pope to see the folly of his plan. As European leaders refused to protect Pope Pius IX’s ongoing folly in 1870, so they appear now to be distancing themselves from the Vatican’s ongoing current follies, as is evident with Ireland and even now the UK, as well as Germany.

The pope’s plan has failed already. Child abuse and financial scandal revelations keep generating more bad press and intrusive investigations faster than the pope’s spinners can find more babies for him to kiss.

The pope clearly has earned and needs a “retreat”, especially after such a tough past week, no? First, Francis’ initial Secretary of State, disgraced Cardinal Bertone, tried to lay his luxurious apartment on the approval of the pope. Then the Bishop of Bling arrived at the Vatican, while the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne “found” almost $4 billion at home and Cardinal Pell “found” almost $1.5 billion in some Vatican “cookie jar”, it seems.

Then respected Jesuit political scientist and Vatican expert, Tom Reese, bravely declared that Francis and his Council of Cardinals do not know what they are doing on hierarchical management reforms, assuming they were even trying to be serious and not just stalling.

And now a “mere woman“, the most powerful of the world’s “Adam’s Ribs” ( a favored Francis term), and 14 of her advisers, showed up Saturday (2/21/15) likely to press the pope on his misguided international political meddling, it appears.

This, as the pope seems to be almost publicly calling for a new crusade against the Middle East terror group, ISIS (the Islamic State). Does the world really need “Papal Crusaders” to go to war with “Islamist Fanatics” ? Has George W. Bush’s obscene Iraq War taught us nothing? Incidentally, Germany opposed the Iraq War from the outset.

Why did the pope drop everything to listen to this woman, yet he cannot even appoint at least one of the half billion women Catholics worldwide to attend as a full participant his absurd Final Synod on the Family in a few months? Money, no?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the middle of her Ukraine, Greek, internal Muslim and other major crises, had an unusually long talk privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Germany currently chairs the G7 major industrial nations, consisting of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, the United States, Canada and Japan. A summit of the group’s leaders is set for June in the southern German state of Bavaria. The media spin was that Merkel bought 15 members of her foreign policy team to the Vatican in the midst of her several serious crises to prepare for a conference four months away. In the present crises environment, four months is a lifetime away, no?

Possibly the June G7 conference was the main trigger for this major meeting, but unlikely. Merkel evidently had messages she wanted to get across now to the pope in person and privately. As leader of a nation that has provided the Catholic Church since at least Hitler’s time apparently with its largest automatic annual governmental subsidies, when Merkel talks, the pope likely listens closely.

Merkel told journalists that the conflict in eastern Ukraine was at the center of discussion. Francis had given Merkel’s nemesis, Russian President Putin, a big prestige boost some months ago, shortly before the Ukraine invasion, with a well publicized, gratuitous and unwise Vatican welcome. As the Ukrainian Archbishop makes clear, the pope also tilted more to please Putin than seems justified, even by the Vatican’s narrow self interest.

Of course, the $7 billion annual German governmental subsidies to Catholic Church bishops, and the continued stonewalling of German (and Vatican) Catholic Church officials on holding bishops accountable for child abuse scandals, could never have been far below the surface, no? Germany has a large Catholic population. Merkel is also head of the Christian Democratic Union, which has a strong Catholic component. By contrast, less than 1% of Russians are Catholic and Russia does not generally subsidize the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII made his subsidy deal in 1933 with Hitler, not Stalin.

Pope Francis gave Chancellor Merkel a medal depicting St. Martin of Tours cutting off part of his cloak and giving it to a poor man. The pope told the Chancellor, “I like to give this image to heads of state, because I think it’s their work to protect their poor.” Merkel quickly replied to Francis saying that “we try to do our best.. ”

Given the annual $7 billion German subsidies to Catholic bishops, the Catholic “Bishop of Bling’s” obscene expenditures in Germany and Cologne’s nearly $4 billion in wealth, it took some nerve for Francis to lecture Merkel about her protecting the poor, no? Reportedly, the Bling Bishop needed two moving vans to cart his belongings and ‘bling” to the Vatican. Really amazing, no? Do these guys ever learn?

Interestingly, St. Martin lived during the initial “de facto takeover” of the Catholic Church by Emperor Constantine and his successors in the Fourth Century. Chancellor Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran scholar and minister, graciously let this all pass with the pope, it appears. By now she seems evidently quite comfortable dealing with patriarchs.

For a less “diplomatic” yet more direct view of the Vatican by a top Merkel foreign policy official, please consider the remarks expressed after Francis’ election by Harald Braun. He is now the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, a key post. He was State Secretary of the German Foreign Office (U.S. equivalent: Deputy Secretary of State) at the time he made these remarks, unofficially. Please see his pointed remarks here:

“Hardly a day goes by without reports in the media criticizing the internal state of the Roman Catholic Church. Every month another topic hits the headlines: sexual abuse in schools, hospitals’ refusal to treat rape victims, discrimination against homosexuals and divorced members of staff at Catholic institutions … ”

“Let’s take a look at the world as a whole: the fact that Islam is on the advance worldwide is not in itself a worrying phenomenon. That this advance sometimes involves violence, terrorism and the persecution of members of other faiths (all too often Christians), however, is extremely worrying. At a time like this, what Christians actually need is a high degree of global cross-denominational unity. And our Churches need to be close to the faithful in the practical basic questions of life; they should be a source of strength in dealing with the challenges of today and tomorrow, and provide guidance on day-to-day “moral” issues. People are demanding common solutions to the global problems and challenges. Unfortunately, ecumenism is not fashionable at the moment; the renewed rejection of full communion between Catholics and Protestants at the end of the twentieth century leaves many members of both denominations speechless. …”

“Christians around the world are in competition with the phenomenon of moderate, popular Islam. A comparable readiness to engage with ordinary people and their day-to-day lives is painfully lacking in many of our churches today. Both our everyday concerns and the global challenges are crying out for leadership and guidance from the main Christian denominations and their institutions and leaders. Some of what we have been hearing from the Vatican or from the pulpit, however, has absolutely nothing to do with real life … “.

Chancellor Merkel travelled to Rome exclusively to meet the pope. She then met with Vatican Secretary of State (and likely Francis’ successor), Pietro Parolin, accompanied by Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Richard Gallagher, and with German ambassador to the Holy See, Annette Schavan, German Undersecretary of State, Steffen Seibert, and foreign policy adviser, Christoph Heusgen and eleven more German officials. A big meeting, no?

Schavan, a former German education minister, was considered one of Merkel’s close confidantes before she resigned from her post amid a plagiarism scandal in 2013.

Gallager had recently “exited” his papal ambassadorship position in Australia, reportedly after refusing to turn over to the Royal Commission there, some Vatican records relating to protecting specified priest child sexual abusers. Like Cardinal Pell, Gallagher also seemingly got a “reward promotion” after resisting the Royal Commission’s legal pressure.

Yes, a tough last week for the pope. As Pope Francis approaches his second papal anniversary, he has finally shown his plan to save the Catholic Church. He has shown at least enough to indicate why his plan will fail. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Francis poses with soccer stars endlessly and “globetrots” aimlessly, while the Vatican sinks. Hopefully, Chancellor Merkel tried to set the pope straight on cleaning up the Vatican’s house of cards.

A prominent and informed Jesuit has already, in effect, declared that the Pope, and the Council of Cardinals the pope picked and leads, do not know what they are doing !!!

Indeed, Pope Francis’ latest desperate distraction, to try to salvage his doomed plan, appears to be to drum up support for a new “Christian crusade” against the ISIS terrorists.

Unfortunately for the dangerous plans of the pope and his likely latest US culture warrior, Jeb Bush, ISIS’ days as a serious Western threat appear to be already numbered, even without a new crusade. ISIS should be well contained by the time Hillary Clinton defeats Jeb and his brother’s old war prone foreign policy team in next year’s US presidential elections — bad news for the Vatican and its billionaire donors, as discussed here, “The cracks in Islamic State’s business plan are starting to show” at [Reuters] .

Catholics will now need to stop wishful thinking. They need to press their governments to clean up the Vatican promptly. Catholic Church leaders, we now know for sure, will never do so unless compelled to do so by outside democratic forces.

Very significantly, a devastating two year report card was just delivered to the pope, by a brave Jesuit no less! Fr. Thomas Reese, the world’s leading expert on Vatican organizational structure with a UC Berkeley Ph.D. in political science, just gave the pope a failing grade. Reese is the author of the highly regarded, “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church” discussed at Amazon here, [Amazon]

Reese’s most startling observations, in his brave two year assessment here, [National Catholic Reporter] , is that “ … the Council of Cardinals [taking] two years to come up with this reshuffling of boxes on the organizational chart simply shows they really don’t know what they are doing… . A conspiracy theorist would say that getting the Council of Cardinals to focus on this reorganization was a way of distracting them from any real reform in the [Vatican leadership structure] Curia. …” (emphasis mine)

As one would expect, the Jesuit Reese’s preferred bias is towards merely more clerical structural reform, which will also fail in my view. Sharing power, as Reese seems to want, among more unaccountable men worldwide, is hardly likely to end the child abuse and financial scandals. The Vatican has blown it. It has run out of time! Catholics, especially parents and women, have had enough.

Catholics seem mesmerized by papal mythology. Myths are over simplified stories with a supernatural twist — believed deeply and docilely by many, often from their youth. These “mythical stories” tend misleadingly to “frame” problematic issues for believers, even when unsupported by sufficient facts and/or contradicted by realities that believers irrationally overlook.

Papal myths are ones that modern popes have propagated to Catholics, like papal infallibility, beginning at seven years old during initial sacramental indoctrination, if not earlier through their Catholic parents and teachers. These myths promote papal power and prosperity with no questions asked, even when questions are rationally warranted — Pay, Pray & Obey!

Many Catholics habitually and irrationally accept these myths, thereby avoiding the need to make tough decisions, to act as real Christians, that are honestly called for by viewing papal reality unfiltered by papal spin. Even some purported Catholic scholars and journalists, often seemingly out of ambition and/or intimidation, are influenced by these mythical “frames” when viewing papal reality.

Pope Francis is unsuccessfully trying to preserve, as did his immediate predecessors, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, by similar tactics (internal intimidation, external propaganda and media manipulation), the crucial papal myths underlying current papal power and wealth.

Evidently, Pope Francis fears that the present risks, of prosecution and imprisonment for Catholic Church leaders arising out of child abuse and financial scandals, will increase even faster than they presently are, if the full and unvarnished truth of some Church leaders’ misdeeds were to be uncovered.

Hence, for example, alleged child abuser, Archbishop Wesolowski, is being managed secretively by Francis.

The Vatican seems clearly to be relying heavily on these papal myths to try to obscure reality, as it faces a major and plausible “once in 150 years” threat. Francis had been expected by the frightened cardinals who elected him, it appears, to try to meet this threat and buy time, as an interim “media friendly, globe trotting” papal distraction — like John Paul II also was.

Francis has already failed. The Internet, social media and 24/7 news cycle have now begun to use the truth to pick the papal bones.

Even disgraced Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in effect, has recently and ignobly pointed the finger of blame, for some of his main misdeeds, at his former longtime boss, ex-Pope Benedict, as well as at the former Vatican Bank directors, and even at Pope Francis, for whom he worked for seven months.

The Vatican Bank directors evidently include Carl Anderson, still the head of another financially oriented organization, the Knights of Columbus (USA). Anderson reportedly was a key mover in the sudden ouster of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the Vatican Bank’s ex-head, who subsequently cleared Italian government financial investigators unscathed.

Anderson was abruptly replaced by Francis on the Bank’s board as more Bank scandals became public.

Anderson appears to continue to have influence with Francis, as they evidently work together to help elect as US president next year a right wing “low tax” Republican, probably the latest Bush candidate, Jeb. For Anderson’s continuing role, please see “How One Religious Organization Bankrolls America’s Social Conservative Movement” here,

At the same time as Bertone tries to lay blame on others, including Pope Francis, Bertone has subtly and publicly taken credit for several positive Francis’ actions, including on Cuba/USA relations, as mostly his and Benedict initiatives per Bertone’s telling.

In his recent “softball interview” in the Huffington Post , Bertone offered a truly pathetic example of “bureaucratic buck passing” and “revisionist history.”

Bertone’s interview version of Vatican Bank scandals differs considerably from the remarkably revealing expose (1/8/15) of Tedeschi, the Vatican Bank’s ex-head, under the Catholic Herald banner headline, “HOW I WAS BETRAYED BY THE VATICAN” here, [Catholic Herald] , discussed further in my “Ex-Bank Head Presses Pope, ex-Pope & Cardinal Bertone” here, [Christian Catholicism] .

Bertone had spent almost two decades, often with considerable authority as the evidently “management adverse” ex-Pope’s top aide. This included the period when ex-pope Ratzinger was in charge as Cardinal of seemingly covering up some priest child abuse scandals, such as the Milwaukee priest who reportedly sexually abused over two hundred deaf boys, as well as the Fr. Marciel Maciel scandals after Cardinal Sodano reportedly weighed in.

Bertone confirms that he knew by mid-2012 that Benedict XVI was planning to quit “at least seven months” in advance of his mid-February 2013 public resignation announcement.

This means Bertone learned about the pope’s planned departure about the time the International Criminal Court prosecutor indicated she was giving the ex-Pope and Cardinals Bertone, Sodano and Levada a free pass on filing “crimes against humanity” charges related to the priest child abuse scandal, at least in the short term. That seems plausible enough. At 85 years of age, the ex-pope’s short term was long term as well !

Bertone reportedly indicated that he told Benedict: “Holy Father, you must bestow upon us the third volume on Jesus of Nazareth and the encyclical on faith, before you sign things over to Pope Francis.”

Of course, Francis was only selected in March 2013 AFTER Benedict left. Or was he selected earlier? By whom? Very interesting !

Still very revealing, though. The Vatican Titanic was already sinking in 2012 on child abuse, gay lobby and financial scandal icebergs. Bertone now expects us to believe he emphasized to the pope that he should stick around to write more books few would read after he resigns. Will Bertone’s memoirs also contain such seeming fiction?

Similarly, when asked if it was difficult to make a pope change his mind, particularly a German one… , Bertone reportedly almost incredibly replied, “When they [popes] make certain decisions before God, how can we humans presume to interfere?” Amazing, no? Was Joseph Ratzinger fully human as Cardinal? Is he now as ex-Pope? The papal mythology never quits, it seems.

In the interview, Bertone said his relationship with Pope Francis was very positive. Regarding Bertone’s lavish — and widely criticized — retirement complex: a 2500-square-foot luxury apartment with a view of the city, Bertone reportedly stated “When this apartment was first criticized, he [Pope Francis] called me up and said, ‘Look, I do not have anything against you going to live on the third floor of Palazzo San Carlo.’ ” Francis, according to Bertone, even went further: “The pope [Francis] was informed about everything, even the small secretary’s office. He [Francis] said to me, ‘It’s perfectly fine and you are entitled to it, seeing as you need to write your memoirs, given you have been witness to three papacies… ‘ ” (emphasis mine) .

Perhaps Pope Francis thought Bertone would be “grazing sheep” on his infamous terrace, to get their smell? Really! What a double standard, no?

According to Bertone’s carefully chosen words in the interview, “The terrace, which has views across Rome, is intended for everyone”.

Intended for everyone, perhaps, but who actually uses it? Somehow, I have trouble visualizing the ex-pope’s butler’s children hanging out on His Eminence, Bertone’s terrace. Can you?

Francis should ask Bertone to share his apartment with the recently “resurrected” Bishop of Bling, who could then park his motorcycles on Bertone’s terrace, no? What hypocrisy?

Bertone in the interview said he acted in line with the committee that oversaw the bank and was not a “puppeteer or despot”. Every decision he made, he said, was “in accordance with the Holy Father”, he reportedly said. What does the non-excuse, “I was only following orders” remind you of? If he were following the ex-pope’s orders, we can safely conclude that at least papal financial decisions are not “infallible”. (emphasis mine).

For the “mythical premises” underlying Bertone’s revisionism, please see my “Five Crucial Myths Pope Francis Preaches: Why?” here, [Christian Catholicism]. For the overall negative implications of, and fatal flaws in, Pope Francis’ continuing protection and rewarding of men like Bertone and the ex-Pope, notwithstanding the papal mythology that seeks to obfuscate what is really happening, please see my “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here, [Christian Catholicism] .