UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
A Pope & + Burke On Damning A Million Irish, World Leaders & US Judges as “worse than the pagans for legalising gay marriage”!
The over-hyped “who am I to judge” Pope Francis likes to pick subordinates who seem to love to rush to judge others, such as for causing a purported “defeat for humanity” and for acting even “worse than the pagans for legalising gay marriage.” A classic “good cop/bad cop” ploy — let the subordinates be the bad guys! Pope Francis should skip these contrived distractions and face directly the crisis before him.
Pope Francis now faces new “messes” even before his too touted US trip begins, as Cardinal Raymond Burke, in effect, damns over legalizing civilly same sex marriages many of the USA’s and world’s political and judicial leaders that favor civil same sex marriage, including by implication apparently some US Supreme Court justices, as well as President Barack Obama and many members of the US Congress. The pope should have an interesting visit to Washington DC with Burke in tow, perhaps wearing his $30,000+ special cardinal’s costume.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the top Vatican official working on Philadelphia’s September World Meeting of Families and the pope, and who also serves as head of the pope’s Family Council, is reportedly under serious criminal investigation as a key figure for fraud and other crimes. Italian prosecutors after a two year investigation allege that Paglia, as an instigator, and others, including clerics, in 2012 used funds illegally obtained from Paglia’s heavily indebted diocese to buy a former religious property/castle for one-third of its value with the intention of selling it for an almost $5 million quick profit.
Vatican hierarchs seeking to profit, directly or indirectly, from unused Church property transactions, including of nuns’ properties, is not new. For example, intrepid investigative reporter, Jason Berry, in a critical look at how the Catholic Church handles property, has reportedly written that Cardinal Angelo Sodano watched on as an American real estate company, that prominently employed his nephew, trumpeted its ties to the Vatican, implying that it had inside knowledge on closed church properties coming on the market. Its president, Raffaello Follieri, pleaded guilty to US federal charges of cheating investors in 2008. Berry says the FBI found that before his fall, Follieri paid two Vatican employees $800,000 for their assistance. No Vatican employee was charged by civil authorities, nor were any disciplined by the church.
And of course, the recently ended Vatican witchhunt of American sisters triggered many complaints from US sisters of the Vatican’s near obsession with the sisters’ assets, mostly real estate.
One wonders how the pope picks his men for key assignments. Paglia, Cardinal George Pell, Monsignor Battista Ricca, et al., all had poor records when Pope Francis gave them important tasks. Ricca has been Francis’ ‘eyes and ears’ at the Vatican Bank despite reports he had a string of notorious homosexual affairs. Paglia’s alleged fraud involvement was known for at least two years and Pell’s alleged over-ups of priest child abusers and cruel treatment of an abuse survivor were publicly reported for many years.
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