View Full Version : Benny Boy XVI Calls It Quits
Va Beach VH Fan
02-11-2013, 07:51 AM
Merely a coincidence that he's resigning so soon after the HBO documentary ????
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/11/world/europe/pope-benedict-resignation/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Pope Benedict to resign at the end of the month, Vatican says
From Hada Messia, CNN
updated 7:45 AM EST, Mon February 11, 2013
Rome (CNN) -- The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, surprised the world Monday by saying will resign at the end of the month "because of advanced age."
It's the first time a pope has resigned in nearly 600 years.
"Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me," the pope said, according to the Vatican.
After Benedict's resignation becomes effective on February 28, cardinals will meet to choose a new leader for the church.
"Before Easter, we will have the new pope," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said at a news conference.
The decision was not impulsive, he said.
"It's not a decision he has just improvised," Lombardi said. "It's a decision he has pondered over."
After his resignation, Benedict, 85, will probably retire to a monastery and devote himself to a life of reflection and prayer, he said.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said the decision "shocked and surprised everyone."
"Yet, on reflection, I am sure that many will recognise it to be a decision of great courage and characteristic clarity of mind and action," he said.
Benedict -- born Joseph Ratzinger -- will not be involved in choosing a new pope or in guiding the church after his resignation, Lombardi said.
Benedict was elected pope in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II, the third-longest-serving leader of the Catholic Church.
He has served during a time in which the church is declining in his native Europe but expanding in Africa and Latin America.
His papacy also has been marked with a series of scandals and controversies, including hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl Am Inn, Bavaria, a heavily Catholic region of Germany.
He spent his adolescent years in Traunstein, near the Austrian border, during the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
Ratzinger wrote in his memoirs that school officials enrolled him in the Hitler Youth movement against his will when in 1941, when he was 14.
He said he was allowed to leave the organization because he was studying for the priesthood, but was drafted into the army in 1943. He served with an anti-aircraft unit until he deserted in the waning days of WW II.
After the war, he resumed his theological studies and was ordained in 1951. He received his doctorate in theology two years later and taught dogma and theology at German universities for several years.
In 1962, he served as a consultant during the pivotal Vatican II council to Cardinal Frings, a reformer who was the archbishop of Cologne, Germany.
As a young priest, Ratzinger was on the progressive side of theological debates, but began to shift right after the student revolutions of 1968, CNN Vatican analyst John Allen Jr. said.
In his book "Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith," Allen says Ratzinger is a shy and gentle person whose former students spoke of him as a well-prepared and caring professor.
Pope Paul VI named him archbishop of Munich in 1977 and promoted him to cardinal the next month. Ratzinger served as archbishop of Munich until 1981, when he was nominated by John Paul II to be the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position he held until his election as pope.
He became dean of the College of Cardinals in November 2002 and in that role called the cardinals to Rome for the conclave that elected him the 265th pope.
In his initial appearance as pope, he told the crowd in St. Peter's Square that he would serve as "a simple and humble worker in the vineyards of the Lord."
He is the sixth German to serve as pope and the first since the 11th century.
The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415. He did so to end a civil war within the church in which more than one man claimed to be pope.
Seshmeister
02-11-2013, 08:44 AM
Rumor is that he is taking up a senior management post on a mysterious new moon...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QCcMTHCBJ4c/TTpm50JaL7I/AAAAAAAAFGU/Yz8GmonsqPo/s1600/Pope+Benedict+XVI+vs+Darth+Sidious.jpg
Kristy
02-11-2013, 10:12 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324880504578297543433266804.html
"...the 85-year-old German pontiff, who has been in office since April 2005, said that leading the world's 1.2 billion Catholics was a job that required strength of both mind and body. But the pope said that his strength had "deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."
God damn! The pusher man! I said god damn! God damn the pusher man!
Right, his "health" is it? Couldn't be all the shit stinking to Gawd's thone about all his rampant priest molesting and exploiting little boys, could it? Benny boy is just as corrupt as the lot of 'em and as guilty. He won't be missed.
jhale667
02-11-2013, 10:28 AM
Funny, I thought you had to DIE to resign that job...no one has quit since like 1294...
LoungeMachine
02-11-2013, 10:32 AM
God had no comment....
:gulp:
Did he at least give 2 weeks notice? I hate it when an employee just shows up saying that this is their last shift.
LoungeMachine
02-11-2013, 10:54 AM
Rumor has it he's stepping down to take a position that would allow him to touch more lives...
Please welcome the new president of The Boy Scouts of America
:gulp:
Nickdfresh
02-11-2013, 11:35 AM
It's funny, but a lot of the media are saying that even some of the highest level bishops and archbishops in North America found this out from reporters calling them early this morning...
Nickdfresh
02-11-2013, 12:07 PM
Right, but what I meant was.....once the Roman Catholic church took over the "Christianity" business, there WAS no real competition.
My main point was that all Christian denominations that exist today were splinter groups from the Catholic Church.
Sure.....there was a period of 300 years where Christians were still being tossed to the lions, etc.
And for some strange reason....the Romans made it a point to attempt to try to wipe out all relatives and descendants of Jebus.
And then after the Roman Empire fell, the Holy Roman Catholic Church seized power in the "Christianity" department, and kept it in a stranglehold until Martin Luther told them to shove their fucking fairy tale books up their asses....
There were some interesting offshoots like The Gnostics. Also, there were no churches, you simply went over to someone's house on Sunday, worshiped, then broke bread and essentially partied. The Church was simply Roman authorities way of instituting hierarchical control by instituting the Roman governmental system into a church and wiping out all dissenters and competitors, with the Pope essentially as emperor...
Nickdfresh
02-11-2013, 12:12 PM
All relevant posts split out of the Catholic Health care run by hypocrite douchebags thread and moved here...
Va Beach VH Fan
02-11-2013, 01:17 PM
God had no comment....
:gulp:
Did he at least give 2 weeks notice? I hate it when an employee just shows up saying that this is their last shift.
CNN was saying that he had to give 17 days notice, which is today to retire on the 28th....
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 02:34 PM
I think Lounge may have missed his calling as a late-late-late night talk show monologue writer.
On second thought...
So Doc, when are you going to start the "Ron Paul for Pope" campaign??
Actually, that might not be a bad idea..... Have the Pope decree that God says the "Federal" Reserve is an abomination, and that He demands an end to all wars of imperialism. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/figuren/a060.gif
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 02:41 PM
So Doc, when are you going to start the "Ron Paul for Pope" campaign??
Actually, that might not be a bad idea..... Have the Pope decree that God says the "Federal" Reserve is an abomination, and that He demands an end to all wars of imperialism. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/figuren/a060.gif
This would be my only reaction:
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/490/435/111.gif
LoungeMachine
02-11-2013, 02:45 PM
Fuck FORD......
Here we go again.....
:gulp:
Where'd I put that book?
Nitro Express
02-11-2013, 02:45 PM
Rumor has it he's stepping down to take a position that would allow him to touch more lives...
Please welcome the new president of The Boy Scouts of America
:gulp:
That or he will get a job at the BBC and host Top of the Pops.
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 02:46 PM
You know how they select a Pope?
WITH A CAUCUS
You know how they select a Pope?
WITH A CAUCUS
Yeah, that's right. Maybe he's got a shot after all? :biggrin:
Va Beach VH Fan
02-11-2013, 03:33 PM
The more I think about it, I have to give Benny props for bowing out, if we're to believe that it's indeed for old age reasons that he's resigning....
John Paul II was basically incapacitated 2 or 3 years before he died....
Headly1984
02-11-2013, 03:40 PM
The more I think about it, I have to give Benny props for bowing out, if we're to believe that it's indeed for old age reasons that he's resigning....
John Paul II was basically incapacitated 2 or 3 years before he died....
Good point - JPII began very young so he is a poor comparison for length of service .. that & the media spotlight is very bright these days - only he knows if he is strong enough in all his facilities for the position - I do hope it is not an US Cardinal selected next tho' ..
JP II had the best idea yet on how to best use/share Jerusalem inclusively for the 3 major religions - no one nation should lay claim to that city / Holy land
Seshmeister
02-11-2013, 06:25 PM
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/69660_10151419873453936_953924015_n.jpg
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 06:35 PM
he really is a scary looking fucker
Zing!
02-11-2013, 06:51 PM
He looks like pure evil in a big hat.
Kristy
02-11-2013, 06:57 PM
But it's a cute hat, though.
Zing!
02-11-2013, 06:59 PM
I'm thinking that's how they pick each new pope. Whoever looks the best in the hat wins.
Va Beach VH Fan
02-11-2013, 07:27 PM
A French Canadian, Marc Ouellet, is the frontrunner to replace him....
That would get a hockey team back there for sure....
Zing!
02-11-2013, 07:36 PM
A French Canadian, Marc Ouellet, is the frontrunner to replace him....
That would get a hockey team back there for sure....
Beers, back bacon and jellies for everybody if Ouellett gets the papal nod. He'd have to trade in his big mitre pope hat for a tuque though, eh.
El Bastardo
02-11-2013, 08:27 PM
For Fucks Sake..
Nitro Express
02-11-2013, 09:23 PM
The pope is quitting because he is tired of being tackled.
Nickdfresh
02-11-2013, 09:38 PM
The more I think about it, I have to give Benny props for bowing out, if we're to believe that it's indeed for old age reasons that he's resigning....
John Paul II was basically incapacitated 2 or 3 years before he died....
He ran out of virgins to bleed for his bath. He is residing in his burial chamber with the accoutrement of mummified Swiss Guards, concubines, and cats sealed in with his piles of gold and statues for his journey to the afterlife...
LoungeMachine
02-11-2013, 09:40 PM
He ran out of virgins to bleed for his bath. He is residing in his burial chamber with the accoutrement of mummified Swiss Guards, concubines, and cats sealed in with his piles of gold and statues for his journey to the afterlife...
Wait, I'm cuntfused.....
:gulp:
The Pope or Dr. Love?
Wasn't this about Bacon?
Zing!
02-11-2013, 09:42 PM
Wait, I'm cuntfused.....
:gulp:
The Pope or Dr. Love?
Wasn't this about Bacon?
This thread and the bacon one could probably be merged and no one would know the difference.
Nickdfresh
02-11-2013, 09:45 PM
Wait, I'm cuntfused.....
:gulp:
The Pope or Dr. Love?
Wasn't this about Bacon?
Take your pick. We live in a relativist world...
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 11:29 PM
There's still virgins to bleed for my bath. A couple can be found posting on this very forum.
Nitro Express
02-11-2013, 11:29 PM
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/69660_10151419873453936_953924015_n.jpg
Nice gold crucifix staff. I wonder how much that would go for on Pawn Stars?
Dr. Love
02-11-2013, 11:36 PM
Nice gold crucifix staff. I wonder how much that would go for on Pawn Stars?
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/284/967/02e.jpg
Nitro Express
02-11-2013, 11:57 PM
I'll wait for that idiot Chum Lee to be behind the counter. I'll sweeten the deal with some kids' toys and laugh all the way to the bank.
By John Newland and Claudio Lavanga, NBC News
When the next Papal Conclave meets behind closed doors to replace the retiring Pope Benedict XVI, the United States will have an unprecedented voice in the process.
Eleven cardinal electors, almost 10 percent of the conclave, will be Americans -- the largest share the country has ever had, even though it has historically had a large Catholic population.
The retiring pope gets credit for the greater influence of the U.S.
Last year, he named three new American cardinals, increasing the U.S. total to 19. Only 11 will be electors because in order to vote in the papal election, the cardinals must be under 80 when the pope being replaced dies or leaves his seat.
With 11 votes, the U.S. is now the second-largest bloc, behind only Italy, which has 28 electors, according to the Holy See press office at the Vatican. Germany is third, with six. The new pontiff is expected to be elected by the end of March, according to Vatican officials.
The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, explains the "mixed emotions" he feels about the news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28, saying he feels a "special bond" with the pope.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York who was elevated to cardinal last year, is considered a longshot candidate to succeed the pope.
When asked about the qualities necessary for the next pope, Dolan told TODAY that "a good place to start would be to look at Pope Benedict."
He added: "There's a learning, a savviness about the world, there's a theological depth, there's an unquestionably personal piety and holiness, there's a linguistic talent, there's a knowledge of the church universal."
When asked whether he would be allowed to vote for himself, Dolan laughed. "Crazy people cannot enter the conclave," he joked.
The shift in power toward the U.S. “reflects the vitality of the Catholic Church in the United States,” John Paul II biographer George Weigel said in November.
"But I don’t think it likely that any American will be elected pope for as long as the United States remains the world’s pre-eminent power," he added.
Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent at Religious News Service, echoed Weigel’s opinion, adding that “coming from the world’s only superpower could still be seen as a negative factor in a global church.”
What the increasing U.S. presence among the cardinal electors might mean is that Benedict XVI was very much aware that Catholicism is no longer a predominantly European religion.
The U.S. has as many as 78 million Catholics, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. For comparison’s sake, Italy, despite having the largest share of electors and being primarily Catholic, has a total population of fewer than 61 million residents, according to World Bank estimates from 2011.
"It remains to be seen whether this numerical weight will actually translate into influence at the conclave," Speciale said in November. "Though national links are powerful, many other factors ... play into the secret voting at the Sistine Chapel."
Some experts have suggested that the next pope might be from Latin America.
Reuters noted Monday that Latin America now "represents 42 percent of the world's 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population, the largest single block in the Church, compared to 25 percent in its European heartland."
Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, who now holds the pope's old post as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is among the senior Vatican officials to suggest that it might be Latin America's turn.
"I know a lot of bishops and cardinals from Latin America who could take responsibility for the universal Church," he told Duesseldorf's Rheinische Post newspaper in December.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, announced in a statement Monday that he will help pick the next pope: "I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the Church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor."
Mahony's announcement that he'll participate in the decision came despite documents revealing he was complicit in protecting priests accused of sex abuse during his tenure as head of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Angel
02-12-2013, 12:43 AM
There's still virgins to bleed for my bath. A couple can be found posting on this very forum.
Male virgins I gather...
Dr. Love
02-12-2013, 12:51 AM
what do you do after you gather them
Angel
02-12-2013, 01:19 AM
Send them to you. Isn't that what you pay me for?
ELVIS
02-12-2013, 10:14 AM
Dr. Love Sandusky...
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ELVIS
02-12-2013, 01:05 PM
You on a video binge ??
You on a video binge ??
Nah, I just thought that Stewart & Colbert had the best coverage of Popeapalooza 2013, so far. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/figuren/a060.gif
By Marc Lallanilla, Life's Little Mysteries Assistant Editor | LiveScience.com
(http://news.yahoo.com/act-god-lightning-strikes-st-peters-pope-announces-022219522.html)
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ATQfNXbgyn0LRqf8gaY1yA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD00MDc7cT03OTt3PTgwMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2013-02-12T001411Z_535592776_GM1E92C0MDH01_RTRMADP_3_POPE-RESIGNS.JPG
A flash of lighting is seen over St.Peter's Basilica during a rainstorm at Vatican in this picture provided by Ansa on February 11, 2013. Pope Benedict stunned the Roman Catholic Church on Monday when he announced he would stand down, the first pope to do so in 700 years, saying he no longer had the mental and physical strength to carry on. REUTERS/ANSA/ Alessandro Di Meo
Monday's (Feb. 11) surprising announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that he was resigning from the papacy struck some observers like a bolt out of the blue.
And a few hours later, an actual bolt of lightning struck St. Peter's Basilica, the centerpiece of the Vatican and one of the holiest sites in Christendom, NBC News reported.
Was the lightning strike, coming just hours after Pope Benedict's announcement, evidence of God's wrath, or some ominous sign from above? Perhaps, but it was more likely the natural result of a rainstorm that was passing over Rome at the time.
Lightning often strikes religious symbols, because they are usually placed high in the sky and are, in many cases, the highest thing around. Coupled with the fact that they're often made of metal, lightning striking religious statuary or other icons seems quite normal.
Brazil's 130-foot "Christ the Redeemer" statue atop Rio de Janeiro's Sugarloaf Mountain, for example, has been struck by lightning several times since it was completed in 1931.
Secular objects are also often struck by lightning. Airplanes are struck by lightning frequently, and the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and other tall buildings have all been hit.
St. Peter's Basilica is the tallest dome in the world at 448 feet (137 meters) from the floor to the cross that was added to the very top by Pope Clement VIII in the 16th century. A lightning rod points skyward from the top of that cross — it's likely that this is what was struck by lightning Monday.
vandeleur
02-13-2013, 04:54 AM
Cool pic tho
ashstralia
02-13-2013, 04:56 AM
how cool would a brother be as pope... imagine james earl jones reading the beautiful stuff but insisting on wearing levi's and a casual shirt..:D
vandeleur
02-13-2013, 05:00 AM
Morgan freeman would be an ace pope ...
Every sermon would sound cool regardless of the content .
Nitro Express
02-13-2013, 05:05 AM
Looks like someone upstairs is pissed off at the church. LOL!
If you ever are at the Vatican you can climb up to the top of the St. Peter's dome. It will cost you a few Euros but it's worth doing. One of the best views of Rome you will ever see.
Morgan freeman would be an ace pope ...
Every sermon would sound cool regardless of the content .
It would be a demotion for him. He's already been God in two movies.
vandeleur
02-13-2013, 05:11 AM
Yeah , good point :D
vandeleur
02-13-2013, 05:19 AM
There will be a shit load of chopped pics out there but I quite like this , it works for me :-)
9546
ashstralia
02-13-2013, 05:27 AM
fantastic...:)
Pope Keef has my vote. (Not that it counts, as I'm not even Catholic, let alone a Cardinal)
Nitro Express
02-13-2013, 05:59 AM
The protestant British taking over the vatican? Why not. But after all the kiddie sex scandals in the UK, the children still might not be safe. Especially if the pope wears jogging suits and smokes cigars. If Keef starts a Keef Will Fix It Sunday school. Run kiddies run!
Nickdfresh
02-13-2013, 08:20 AM
You on a video binge ??
Alex Jones-dicksuck says what?
Hardrock69
02-14-2013, 02:12 AM
Well......The Pope resigned to avoid arrest and forfeiture of Church assets.
Wonder about the ligitimacy of this "Tribunal". Never heard of it before.
Read for yourselves:
http://itccs.org/
Pope Benedict resigned to avoid arrest, seizure of church wealth by Easter
Posted on February 13, 2013 by itccs
Diplomatic Note was issued to Vatican just prior to his resignation
New Pope and Catholic clergy face indictment and arrest as "Easter Reclamation" plan continues
A Global Media Release and Statement from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State
Brussels:
The historically unprecedented resignation of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope this week was compelled by an upcoming action by a European government to issue an arrest warrant against Ratzinger and a public lien against Vatican property and assets by Easter.
The ITCCS Central Office in Brussels is compelled by Pope Benedict's sudden abdication to disclose the following details:
1. On Friday, February 1, 2013, on the basis of evidence supplied by our affiliated Common Law Court of Justice (itccs.org), our Office concluded an agreement with representatives of a European nation and its courts to secure an arrest warrant against Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict, for crimes against humanity and ordering a criminal conspiracy.
2. This arrest warrant was to be delivered to the office of the "Holy See" in Rome on Friday, February 15, 2013. It allowed the nation in question to detain Ratzinger as a suspect in a crime if he entered its sovereign territory.
3. A diplomatic note was issued by the said nation's government to the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, on Monday, February 4, 2013, informing Bertone of the impending arrest warrant and inviting his office to comply. No reply to this note was received from Cardinal Bertone or his office; but six days later, Pope Benedict resigned.
4. The agreement between our Tribunal and the said nation included a second provision to issue a commercial lien through that nation's courts against the property and wealth of the Roman Catholic church commencing on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013. This lien was to be accompanied by a public and global "Easter Reclamation Campaign" whereby Catholic church property was to be occupied and claimed by citizens as public assets forfeited under international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
5. It is the decision of our Tribunal and the said nation's government to proceed with the arrest of Joseph Ratzinger upon his vacating the office of the Roman Pontiff on a charge of crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy.
6. It is our further decision to proceed as well with the indictment and arrest of Joseph Ratzinger's successor as Pope on the same charges; and to enforce the commercial lien and "Easter Reclamation Campaign" against the Roman Catholic church, as planned.
In closing, our Tribunal acknowledges that Pope Benedict's complicity in criminal activities of the Vatican Bank (IOR) was compelling his eventual dismissal by the highest officials of the Vatican. But according to our sources, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone forced Joseph Ratzinger's resignation immediately, and in direct response to the diplomatic note concerning the arrest warrant that was issued to him by the said nation's government on February 4, 2013.
We call upon all citizens and governments to assist our efforts to legally and directly disestablish the Vatican, Inc. and arrest its chief officers and clergy who are complicit in crimes against humanity and the ongoing criminal conspiracy to aid and protect child torture and trafficking.
Further bulletins on the events of the Easter Reclamation Campaign will be issued by our Office this week.
Issued 13 February, 2013
12:00 am GMT
by the Brussels Central Office
Seshmeister
02-14-2013, 04:38 AM
A nice thought but this 'Tribunal' seems to be the invention of a lone campaigner called Kevin Annett.
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Kevin_Annett
He may be on the right side of the debate but his previous work in Canada screams persecution complex and paranoid nutjob.
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Chronology_of_Attacks_on_Kevin_Annett
Hardrock69
02-14-2013, 05:10 AM
Yeah, sounded nutso to me, lol.
Kristy
02-15-2013, 12:53 AM
Cool pic tho
Possible Photoshop? I have my doubts.
ELVIS
02-15-2013, 10:39 AM
Looks real...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHBU3b2p54
Hardrock69
02-17-2013, 03:42 PM
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-pope-resignation-immunity-idUSBRE91E0ZI20130215
Pope will have security, immunity by remaining in the Vatican
(Reuters) - Pope Benedict's decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.
"His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn't have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else," said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It is absolutely necessary" that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, adding that Benedict should have a "dignified existence" in his remaining years.
Vatican sources said officials had three main considerations in deciding that Benedict should live in a convent in the Vatican after he resigns on February 28.
Vatican police, who already know the pope and his habits, will be able to guarantee his privacy and security and not have to entrust it to a foreign police force, which would be necessary if he moved to another country.
"I see a big problem if he would go anywhere else. I'm thinking in terms of his personal security, his safety. We don't have a secret service that can devote huge resources (like they do) to ex-presidents," the official said.
Another consideration was that if the pope did move permanently to another country, living in seclusion in a monastery in his native Germany, for example, the location might become a place of pilgrimage.
POTENTIAL EXPOSURE
This could be complicated for the Church, particularly in the unlikely event that the next pope makes decisions that may displease conservatives, who could then go to Benedict's place of residence to pay tribute to him.
"That would be very problematic," another Vatican official said.
The final key consideration is the pope's potential exposure to legal claims over the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals.
In 2010, for example, Benedict was named as a defendant in a law suit alleging that he failed to take action as a cardinal in 1995 when he was allegedly told about a priest who had abused boys at a U.S. school for the deaf decades earlier. The lawyers withdrew the case last year and the Vatican said it was a major victory that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abusive priests.
Benedict is currently not named specifically in any other case. The Vatican does not expect any more but is not ruling out the possibility.
"(If he lived anywhere else) then we might have those crazies who are filing lawsuits, or some magistrate might arrest him like other (former) heads of state have been for alleged acts while he was head of state," one source said.
Another official said: "While this was not the main consideration, it certainly is a corollary, a natural result."
After he resigns, Benedict will no longer be the sovereign monarch of the State of Vatican City, which is surrounded by Rome, but will retain Vatican citizenship and residency.
LATERAN PACTS
That would continue to provide him immunity under the provisions of the Lateran Pacts while he is in the Vatican and even if he makes jaunts into Italy as a Vatican citizen.
The 1929 Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Holy See, which established Vatican City as a sovereign state, said Vatican City would be "invariably and in every event considered as neutral and inviolable territory".
There have been repeated calls for Benedict's arrest over sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
When Benedict went to Britain in 2010, British author and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins asked authorities to arrest the pope to face questions over the Church's child abuse scandal.
Dawkins and the late British-American journalist Christopher Hitchens commissioned lawyers to explore ways of taking legal action against the pope. Their efforts came to nothing because the pope was a head of state and so enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
In 2011, victims of sexual abuse by the clergy asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the pope and three Vatican officials over sexual abuse.
The New York-based rights group Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and another group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), filed a complaint with the ICC alleging that Vatican officials committed crimes against humanity because they tolerated and enabled sex crimes.
The ICC has not taken up the case but has never said why. It generally does not comment on why it does not take up cases.
NOT LIKE A CEO
The Vatican has consistently said that a pope cannot be held accountable for cases of abuse committed by others because priests are employees of individual dioceses around the world and not direct employees of the Vatican. It says the head of the church cannot be compared to the CEO of a company.
Victims groups have said Benedict, particularly in his previous job at the head of the Vatican's doctrinal department, turned a blind eye to the overall policies of local Churches, which moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them and handing them over to authorities.
The Vatican has denied this. The pope has apologized for abuse in the Church, has met with abuse victims on many of his trips, and ordered a major investigation into abuse in Ireland.
But groups representing some of the victims say the Pope will leave office with a stain on his legacy because he was in positions of power in the Vatican for more than three decades, first as a cardinal and then as pope, and should have done more.
The scandals began years before the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in 2005 but the issue has overshadowed his papacy from the beginning, as more and more cases came to light in dioceses across the world.
As recently as last month, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, was stripped by his successor of all public and administrative duties after a thousands of pages of files detailing abuse in the 1980s were made public.
Mahony, who was archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011, has apologized for "mistakes" he made as archbishop, saying he had not been equipped to deal with the problem of sexual misconduct involving children. The pope was not named in that case.
In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese, which serves 4 million Catholics, reached a $660 million civil settlement with more than 500 victims of child molestation, the biggest agreement of its kind in the United States.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope "gave the fight against sexual abuse a new impulse, ensuring that new rules were put in place to prevent future abuse and to listen to victims. That was a great merit of his papacy and for that we will be grateful".
Hardrock69
02-17-2013, 04:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pope-benedict-xvis-leaked-documents-show-fractured-vatican-full-of-rivalries/2013/02/16/23ce0280-76c2-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html
Pope Benedict XVI’s leaked documents show fractured Vatican full of rivalries
VATICAN CITY — Guests at the going-away party for Carlo Maria Viganò couldn’t understand why the archbishop looked so forlorn. Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Viganò ambassador to the United States, a plum post where he would settle into a stately mansion on Massachusetts Avenue, across the street from the vice president’s residence.
“He went through the ordeal making it very clear he was unhappy with it,” said one former ambassador to the Vatican, who attended the Vatican Gardens ceremony in the late summer of 2011. “And we just couldn’t figure out, us outsiders and non-Italians, what was going on.”
There was no such confusion within Vatican walls. Benedict had installed Viganò to enact a series of reforms within the Vatican. But some of Rome’s highest-ranking cardinals undercut the efforts and hastened Viganò’s exile to the United States.
Viganò’s plight and other unflattering machinations would soon become public in an unprecedented leak of the pontiff’s personal correspondence.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-29/national/35458342_1_vatican-archbishop-angelo-becciu-paolo-gabriele
Much of the media — and the Vatican — focused on the source of the shocking security breach. Largely lost were the revelations contained in the letters themselves — tales of rivalry and betrayal, and allegations of corruption and systemic dysfunction that infused the inner workings of the Holy See and the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI. Last week, he announced that he will become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.
The next pope may bring with him an invigorating connection to the Southern Hemisphere, a media magnetism or better leadership skills than the shy and cerebral Benedict. But whoever he may be, the 266th pope will inherit a gerontocracy obsessed with turf and Italian politics, uninterested in basic management practices and hostile to reforms.
VatiLeaks, as the scandal came to be known, dragged the fusty institution into the wild WikiLeaks era. It exposed the church bureaucracy’s entrenched opposition to Benedict’s fledgling effort to carve out a legacy as a reformer against the backdrop of a global child sex abuse scandal and the continued dwindling of his flock.
It showed how Benedict, a weak manager who may most be remembered for the way in which he left office, was no match for a culture that rejected even a modicum of transparency and preferred a damage-control campaign that diverted attention from the institution’s fundamental problems. Interviews in Rome with dozens of church officials, Vatican insiders and foreign government officials close to the church, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, mapped out that hermetic universe.
“We can reveal the face of the church and how this face is, at times, disfigured,” Benedict said in his final homily on Ash Wednesday. “I am thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the church, of the divisions in the body of the church.” He called for his ministry to overcome “individualism” and “rivalry,” saying they were only for those “who have distanced themselves from the faith.”
A radical transformation of the culture is unlikely. “We’re talking about people who have given their life to this institution, but at the same time the institution has become their life,” said one senior Vatican official. “Unlike parish priests, who have the personal rewards that come with everyday contact, their lot is not as human. It’s bureaucratic, but it becomes all-consuming.”
The entire debacle, he said, “wasn’t a communications crisis. It was a management crisis.”
The leak came from within the pope’s inner sanctum. On most mornings, the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, left his apartment, just inside the Vatican walls, before 7 a.m. He walked past the plumed Swiss Guards and into the Apostolic Palace, where he worked in the third-floor papal apartments. His black gelled hair, dark suits and fleshy cheeks became so familiar around the Vatican Gardens that clerics affectionately called him Paoletto.
“I was the layman closest to the Holy Father,” Gabriele would later say. “There to respond to his immediate needs.”
The official duties for the married father of three included laying out Benedict’s white vestments and red shoes, serving his decaf coffee and riding with the pontiff in the popemobile. Unofficial chores included absconding with copies of the pope’s personal correspondence, including letters from Viganò, whose grievances Gabriele found especially compelling.
The butler read letters fleshing out how Viganò, an ambitious enforcer of Benedict’s good government reforms, had earned powerful enemies. In early 2011, a series of hostile anonymous articles attacking Viganò began appearing in the Italian media. Under duress, Viganò appealed to the pope’s powerful second in command, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone. Bertone was not sympathetic and instead echoed the articles’ complaints about his rough management style and removed Viganò from his post.
This set in motion a blizzard of letters that passed through the office Gabriele shared with the pope’s personal secretary. In one missive, Viganò wrote to Bertone accusing him of getting in the way of the pope’s reform mission; he also charged Bertone with breaking his promise to elevate him to cardinal. Viganò sent a copy of this letter to the pope. In a separate letter to the pontiff, Viganò dropped the Vatican’s “C word”: corruption.
“My transfer right now,” he wrote, “would provoke much disorientation and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been rooted in the management of so many departments.”
In another, he described more “situations of corruption” in which the same firms habitually won contracts at almost “double the cost” charged outside the Vatican. Viganò cited savings from cutting the amount spent on the annual Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square from 550,000 euros in 2009 to 300,000 euros in 2010.
Viganò’s efforts failed, and he was soon dispatched to Washington. Bertone and Viganò declined to comment.
“In other circumstances, such an appointment would be a reason for joy and a sign of great esteem and trust in my regard, but in the present context, it will be perceived by all as a verdict of condemnation of my work, and therefore as a punishment,” Viganò wrote to the pope on July 7, 2011. He suggested that “the Holy Father has certainly been kept in the dark.”
The butler agreed and sought an unorthodox way to get the pope’s attention. Through intermediaries, Gabriele reached out to Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian investigative reporter. In clandestine coffee bar meetings, anonymous associates of Gabriele vetted Nuzzi, the journalist later wrote, and drove him around in circles to shake loose potential followers. When Nuzzi jumped through sufficient hoops, he met Gabriele in an empty apartment near the Vatican furnished with only a plastic chair. The two established secret Thursday meetings, and Gabriele left letters in drop boxes; Nuzzi sewed a computer thumb drive into his necktie. One day, the butler showed up to the rendezvous empty-handed, only to reveal 13 pages of documents taped to his back, under his jacket. Nuzzi, who referred to his secret source as “Maria,” used the material to write “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Pope Benedict XVI,” a blockbuster book published last year.
As the media hunted for moles, or “crows” as they are known in Italian, Gabriele’s office mate, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein — a former ski instructor and papal confidant known as Gorgeous George — cracked the case. Vatican gendarmes found 82 boxes of documents in the butler’s apartment and arrested him. He was tried, convicted and jailed for several months before the pope personally pardoned him.
“Seeing evil and corruption everywhere in the church, I finally reached a point of degeneration, a point of no return, and could no longer control myself,” Gabriele explained to Vatican investigators. A shock, “perhaps through the media,” Gabriele continued, could “bring the church back on the right track.”
****
If the intention of the leaks was to force the ouster of Tarcisio Bertone — the secretary of state blamed for exiling Viganò and undercutting reforms — the effort failed.
While Benedict was the public face of the universal church, Bertone, for now, remains the private power broker who runs the Vatican on a daily basis. In 2006, Benedict appointed Bertone, his longtime doctrinal sidekick, to secretary of state — the second-most-powerful position in the Vatican. An amiable, soccer aficionado who shares the pope’s passion for cats, Bertone, 78, had little international experience. This prompted concern among the church’s elite diplomatic corps, which interpreted his appointment as a threat to the traditional Vatican career track. Bertone bore out their fears, essentially doing away with papal audiences for returning ambassadors. He ensured that many of the newly elevated cardinals were Italian loyalists, and he adopted a wide-ranging travel schedule that many considered an overreach.
Angelo Sodano, John Paul II’s secretary of state and Bertone’s predecessor, has not hidden his disregard. “It was quite visible,” said a former ambassador to the Vatican. “Sodano was a real insider, and you could tell that he thought Bertone was a real outsider and that he had no legitimacy in that position.”
But Bertone worked diligently to consolidate power. His allies control the church’s main financial institutions, prompting one official to write in a leaked document that traditional checks and balances had been ignored. “They say that our principal point of reference is the Secretary of State,” the letter read, “yet in many cases he’s precisely the problem.” Bertone’s position also meant he presided over the Vatican Bank, a post he appeared to use to impede Benedict’s financial reforms.
Benedict, for example, had issued a decree for the Vatican to adopt international money-laundering norms to combat the financing of terrorism. This initiative would allow outside auditors to examine the Vatican’s financial books. For an institution historically allergic to scrutiny, this constituted a revolution. He subsequently created a Vatican watchdog to oversee a whole swath of financial activities, from the Vatican Bank to the Vatican pharmacy and supermarket. But the leaked documents depicted Bertone’s efforts to defang Benedict’s watchdog and to keep power for himself.
“Bertone wanted to have a monopoly on relations with Italy,” an Italian official with close ties to the Vatican said.
But there is a pervasive view among some of the Vatican’s top cardinals that, despite the breadth of Bertone’s involvement in church affairs, he is out of his depth. A confidant of many cardinals said that Bertone has personally acknowledged his limitations. According to the insider, many of the Vatican’s highest-ranking prelates have reported that Bertone had tendered his resignation but was turned down by the pope. Few of them foresaw that Benedict would be the first to leave.
****
The next pope will inherit a government with a rather Byzantine approach to cleaning house, a place where demotions are peddled as promotions. Like the U.S.-bound Carlo Maria Viganò, many insiders believed the butler’s supervisor, James Michael Harvey, would be shunted aside in royal fashion.
One morning last November, Harvey stepped inside a curtained-off nook of St. Peter’s Basilica to pray at the tomb of John Paul II. For nearly 15 years, Harvey, a tall and gaunt Wisconsin native and comparatively youthful at 63, enjoyed close proximity to John Paul II and then Benedict as head of the papal household. On this day, he would join a handful of other prelates in kneeling down before Benedict, who would bestow birettas upon their heads and elevate them to the exclusive college of cardinals. As horns blasted from high above the basilica’s bronze doors, Harvey, clad in scarlet, led a small and internationally diverse procession down the nave. Lebanese and Nigerian flags waved in the packed pews. A roar went up as Benedict appeared in a gold stole, coasting over the buffed marble on a rolling platform.
With the exception of Gabriele, the butler, then locked up in a Vatican jail, all the major players in the leak drama attended. The gendarmes who had raided Gabriele’s top-floor apartment patrolled the floor in blue uniforms with flat-topped caps. Cardinal Bertone prayed in the front row. Among the 97 cardinals illuminated in a shaft of white light behind Bertone, potential “crows” perched.
Benedict appointed Harvey to a new job as titular cardinal priest of the St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica. It seemed like the honor of a lifetime, but for Vatican insiders and officials, the move amounted to an exquisite eviction. As the head of the papal household, Harvey had overseen Gabriele, and his new assignment seemed a classic example of promoveatur ut amoveatur — promote to remove. (Benedict later banished his former butler to a silence-encouraging sinecure at a hospital adjoining Harvey’s church.)
After the ceremony, Vatican officials charged with running the church shrugged off the scandal.
“They are little things, pebbles in the shoe that hurt so much and seem to prevent you from going forward,” said Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who supervised Viganò during the height of VatiLeaks. “If one looks at the act of betrayal, it is in itself a grave act, even more so because it is near the apex of the church. But what does this tell us? It tells us only about the fragility of a person or of some people.”
A few hours after the ceremony, the Vatican offered the public a rare chance to enter the Apostolic Palace, where the pope lives and Gabriele had worked as butler. Inside the palace, Harvey accepted congratulations at the end of the barrel-vaulted Sala Regia.
“We all feel very hurt for him and for what was done,” he said of the butler’s leak. “That’s the common sentiment of all us here, because it was a hard thing to accept. But it’s a difficult thing for the whole church.”
****
The Vatican’s reaction to the leak scandal was not to address its inner flaws but to burnish its outer image.
Enter Twitter and Fox News.
Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Twitter’s liaison to religious institutions, wrote the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See looking for a Vatican contact. Soon after, she and Paul Tighe, the No. 2 official at the church’s social communication department, started talking about the possibilities of a Twitter account for the pope. They racked their brains for the perfect handle, but the Vatican’s main concern, Diaz-Ortiz said, was: “ ‘Is there any chance this account is going to get hacked?’ ”
At about the same time, the Vatican hired away a Fox News reporter. In June, Bertone’s office rang Gregory Burke, a veteran correspondent in Rome and member of Opus Dei, a conservative and influential Catholic lay organization. They wanted him to bring a “common-sense journalistic view of how things are going to play out” to the church, Burke said, adding that they needed someone to “help craft the message.”
Burke, well-liked and respected by reporters, doesn’t look like a Vatican operative. On a rainy afternoon, he showed up late at a restaurant near the Pantheon in a trench coat, swinging a long umbrella. With his thicket of auburn hair and ruddy complexion, he looks more corn- than cannelloni-fed.
“I’m within the 15-minute Roman grace period,” he said in Italian. Burke’s approach to media, like his Italian, bears a strong American accent. “I would love to bring some Roger Ailes into this job,” he said. “The difference is Roger Ailes has a lot of power, and I have very little.”
Since joining the Vatican, Burke has sought to make the Vatican media operation less reactive. He said there remains within the Vatican a view that the church will survive another 2,000 years regardless of scandals, and while that might be true, “you can do a lot of harm in the meantime.” He organized a field trip for reporters to the Vatican Bank, housed in a round 15th-century fortress that sits below the Apostolic Palace like a footstool. He has proposed embedding a virtual tour of the bank on the Vatican Web site. “From a normal press point of view, it’s not thinking outside the box,” he acknowledged.
Burke and company developed a two-pronged damage-control strategy to confront the leak scandal: heap blame on the butler as a simpleton suffering delusions of grandeur and use the Vatican trial that convicted the butler as evidence of the church’s commitment to transparency.
“I don’t think we got enough credit for what we’ve done,” Burke said. “It might not have been perfect. But 10 years ago, would there have been an open trial?”
The Vatican pointed back to the butler’s day in court and the pool of eight reporters taking notes as exhibit A for openness. “There was a sense of great responsibility to guarantee the transparency,” said head judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre, noting that the defense wanted to keep the trial private. “The entire international press would have said, ‘What is this?’ They observed it, saw it, heard it.”
They didn’t hear everything. During the trial, Dalla Torre relied on the Vatican’s 19th-century penal code to forbid Gabriele from discussing his contact with assorted cardinals. According to the law, Gabriele hadn’t disclosed the substance of those conversations before trial and so couldn’t do so in the courtroom.
Some church officials acknowledge that there needs to be greater commitment to openness among the Vatican’s leaders. Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli runs the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which has been on the forefront of the church’s engagement in social media. Celli pointed to his lips: “You see, what I say here,” he said, moving his finger to his temple, “starts here.” But here, he added, as his finger lingered, “has to enter a new culture. And the new culture is sharing.”
But even with the trial over, the Vatican’s focus has remained on the message, rather than on changing the culture. In December, reporters packed into a Vatican briefing theater for a news conference to introduce the world to the Twitter account @pontifex, meaning both “pope” and “bridge builder.”
The pope’s Twitter followers went from single digits to 2,000 in 30 minutes. (@pontifex currently has more than 1.5 million followers.) The panelists made the case for Benedict using Twitter to drop “pearls of wisdom,” and they answered questions about the account’s infallibility (“it’s a papal teaching”) and its durability (it would be used after Benedict’s departure).
After the news conference, Diaz-Ortiz, the Twitter liaison who had flown to Rome for the event, said the “launch plan” for the pope was “similar to the Obama town hall but obviously a much more toned-down version.” The main takeaway of the day, she said, was “the pope joining Twitter should just be an encouragement for all of us to essentially keep tweeting.” In return, the Vatican got a greater presence in the modern world. It also, as the packed briefing room attested, shifted the subject for the media away from scandal.
****
On a rainy December day, Benedict clapped along with jugglers, lion tamers and puppeteers in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall as the church opened its arms to the world of itinerant circus performers. While a woman wearing a cat mask twirled four hula hoops in the hall, Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca was chauffeured across a piazza behind Vatican walls to greet a visitor.
“Good morning, dottore!” Sciacca called from the passenger seat of a small blue Volkswagen. Sciacca, the successor of Viganò, the central player in the leaks scandal, is a sprightly and gregarious Sicilian who walks around Rome doffing his hat to the waiters and storekeepers. He tends to stop walking when he has something to say, with the expectation that his audience will stop to listen.
Sciacca, who will play a principal role in organizing the papal transition, has a reputation for intelligence and honesty, but unlike his reform-minded predecessor, he is considered loyal to Tarcisio Bertone, Benedict’s No. 2. When asked for an interview as he window-shopped for vestments on Via dei Cestari, behind the Pantheon, he said he first needed to see the questions and get permission to talk. He shrugged off the suggestion that an official request should go through the Vatican press office.
He would need permission, he said, from Bertone.
As the Volkswagen rolled to his Vatican apartment, Sciacca claimed that he had overruled Bertone and his lieutenants in agreeing to an interview. “They told me not to talk to you!” he said, jokingly comparing himself to a “shepherd who invites in the wolf.”
The driver pulled up to Palazzo San Carlo, a centuries-old apartment building opposite the Vatican’s private gas station. Above the few steps, renovated with wheelchair access for the aged prelates, a polished gold plate held the names of the building’s residents. On a lower floor were offices belonging to one of the Vatican’s financial institutions. On the top floor lived one of the cardinals Gabriele had named as a sympathizer to his concerns about the Vatican.
Sciacca’s home is a spacious L-shaped apartment warmed by thousands of books broken into sections reflecting his years as a Latinist, high school teacher of literature and philosophy, canonist and judge on the church court. He pointed out a portrait of Benedict overlooking the hallway that he had commissioned.
“Economics, the budget, transparency! This is what I think about,” he said. “It cost a couple hundred of euros. It’s not necessary to spend more. Plus Michelangelo’s not around anymore.”
Sciacca had his good-governance talking points down. In the corner of his bedroom, opposite a purple clerical robe hung on the outside of a wooden armoire, a single bed lay under a modest comforter. (“I’m single” he joked.) In the study was a faux-marble statue of the Good Shepherd with a sheep draped over his shoulders that he had picked up “at a good price in the Vatican museums,” he said.
Over espresso and a couple of slices of pandoro at the kitchen table, covered in mandarin oranges and marmalades offered to him at the morning’s Mass, Sciacca said he’d later offer a tour of the Vatican grounds “with my cheap car. I’ve always had little cars because when I was a kid in Sicily, I noticed that people got angry if they saw priests in luxury cars. Decorum, yes, solemnity in worship and the liturgy, but the private life should always be poor.”
He took a seat on a burgundy leather couch in his study and read six typed pages he had prepared in response to transparency questions.
He paid heed to “my predecessor, the former Secretary General Viganò,” for imposing more rigorous checks on spending and the rewarding of contracts, which “I maintained and enhanced.” As a testament to his belt-tightening, he pointed to the church-owned organic cattle farm outside Rome that provided the Vatican with less-expensive beef. Mindful of the exorbitant costs Viganò targeted for the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square, Sciacca focused on a cut-rate deal he had reached on a centerpiece.
“This year, we will have a full savings,” he said. He added that the pope was pleased about the budget discipline, that the region was delighted about the publicity and that the Vatican workers expressed no misgivings.
“They were all happy. They congratulated me. They said, ‘What good news!’ If they were angry they would have demonstrated their own dishonesty,” he said, referring to the workers. With his script lowered, he continued: “They’re not so stupid. This is also the proof that everyone worked well.”
Sciacca offered a hard copy of his answers and a jar of peach marmalade as he selected a bottle of wine for his lunch meeting with a powerful French cardinal from the diplomatic corps. Sciacca asked a Washington Post reporter to put his number in the prelate’s phone, an old flip-style cell. The reporter accidentally stumbled upon Sciacca’s list of contacts and backed off. “Go ahead!” Sciacca said. “There aren’t any mobsters in there. There’s nothing to hide.”
Downstairs, he asked a gendarmes officer to lend him a driver and a car, small and economical, he specified, to escort his guest on a tour of the sprawling, immaculate gardens. From the passenger seat, he pointed out elaborate fountains, the old Vatican train station and the grotto where Benedict takes a walk every afternoon. The tour concluded at St. Anne’s Gate, near where the butler was then being held. Sciacca promised an electronic copy of his answers on a disk. He later provided a Verbatim floppy disk.
Minutes later, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, called an unexpected news conference across St. Peter’s, where tourists posed in front of a circus tent, a clown performed magic tricks and workers set up the season’s Nativity scene.
The Gabriele affair, Lombardi said, should be considered a “closed chapter.” He stepped off the stage and noted how the pope, out of his respect for transparency, had studiously kept out of the butler’s trial to ensure the independence of the judges.
The theater door opened and the sound of a circus troupe playing “March of the Wooden Soldiers” filled the press office. Among the journalists filing their stories was Giovanna Chirri, the Italian reporter who would on Feb. 11 break the news of the pope’s resignation. “Guys,” she shouted to her colleagues over the band, “You think it’s a metaphor that the circus is in town?”
Hardrock69
02-17-2013, 04:35 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-struggled-to-lift-sacred-secrecy-of-vatican-finances/2013/02/15/a1620d06-7760-11e2-b102-948929030e64_story.html
Pope struggled to lift sacred secrecy of Vatican finances
By Anthony Faiola, Published: February 15
VATICAN CITY — Inside a 13th-century monastery in a sleepy village north of Rome, the Rev. Salvatore Palumbo was allegedly serving more than one higher authority. Italian prosecutors say a Ferrari-
driving lawyer who defrauded insurance companies used the priest as a frontman, with Palumbo stashing the illicit cash inside the secretive Institute for Works of Religion.
A.k.a. the Vatican Bank.
The arrests over the past six months of Palumbo and the 34-year-old lawyer, Simone Fazzari, highlight one major source of the scandals and power struggles that observers say contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation this week — the murky world of Vatican finances.
With ATMs offering transactions in Latin and a castle-like headquarters protected by spear-toting Swiss Guards, the financial arm of the Vatican has never been a run-of-the-mill bank. But a sense of crisis has been building around it and other Vatican financial dealings.
Last month, Italy barred its own banks from doing business in the Holy See, citing a lack of transparency by the city-state’s financial apparatus that has routinely declined to release data on accounts held there by church bodies, clergy, foreign embassies and lay entities related to the Vatican. The move cut off credit card processing at Vatican commercial sites including the Sistine Chapel, effectively forcing them to go cash-only. This week, plastic was finally welcomed again in Vatican City, but only after church authorities cut a deal with a Swiss firm that is not subject to European Union banking laws.
That followed a series of Italian money-laundering investigations, including one that led to the 2010 seizure of nearly $30 million worth of Vatican Bank holdings kept outside the Holy See.
Evidence suggests the outgoing pope sought to shed light on the dark Vatican books, but that effort yielded even more controversy. The former president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was forced to resign in May, alleging he was fired for getting “too close to the truth.” Last year, other documents leaked by the pope’s butler and other sources revealed the depth of the internal tug of war over financial transparency, with Vatican reformers pitted against traditionalists who appeared to believe the church should answer only to a higher power.
On Friday, the pope backed a decision by a commission of cardinals to name Ernst von Freyberg to head the Vatican Bank. The German-born lawyer and member of the ancient Knights of Malta was selected, the Vatican said, because of “his vast experience.” However, Italian commentators were quick to question why the choice was not left to the incoming pope.
“It seems like an attempt to force the situation, not to leave the new pope an option,” said Massimo Franco, author of “The Crisis of the Vatican Empire” and a columnist at Corriere della Sera. “I find it quite strange that this is the last major act of the pope.”
Vatican officials and the pope have cited age and declining health for the first voluntary resignation of a pontiff in several centuries. But in the end, Vatican observers believe a steady barrage of scandals — not the least of those over financial transparency — took a toll on a formidable theologian, who came to the throne of St. Peter on a mission to reinvigorate the church.“It is very clear that Benedict suffered a lot from the revelations of scandal, from the infighting and intrigue at the Vatican Bank and within the Roman curia,” or the Catholic Church’s governing body, said John Thavis, author of “The Vatican Diaries” and a longtime correspondent for the Catholic News Service. “Did that affect the pope’s decision? A lot of people inside the Vatican believe it did.”
Little from Vatican
The day after Benedict’s triumphant return from a historic visit to Britain in September 2010, he was greeted with unwelcome news at the Vatican. Italian authorities had seized nearly $30 million worth of Vatican Bank funds that the Holy See was seeking to transfer out of Italy’s Credito Artigiano bank.
With $8.3 billion in assets, 33,000 accounts and a distribution network in more than 100 countries, the Vatican Bank often moved funds from one destination to another. Yet officials familiar with the case said they were struck by the size of the transaction and demanded to know where the money had come from.
But the Vatican wasn’t telling.
Financial scandal at the Vatican was nothing new. In the 1980s, Banco Ambrosiano, a financial institution largely owned by the Vatican Bank, became embroiled in a money-laundering scandal related to the Sicilian mafia. In June 1982, Ambrosiano’s former chairman, Roberto Calvi — dubbed “God’s banker” by the Italian media — was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in a death that was ruled a homicide and has yet to be solved.
There have been more recent cases of alleged criminality related to the Vatican Bank, including that of Palumbo, who is awaiting trial and has denied charges of using the institution’s secrecy to veil a money-laundering ring. But more frequent have been what Italian prosecutors describe as a haughty resistance to European Union laws forcing banks to prove the legitimacy of funds.
Letters of inquiry, prosecutors said, have often been sent to the sovereign city-state only to go unanswered or be tersely rejected. In the case of the $30 million, for example, Italian government officials say they have spent almost three years seeking evidence that the funds are legal.
“It's a matter of fact that the collaboration between the anti-money-laundering authorities of Italy and Vatican City have been interrupted, and requests for information have not received useful answers,” Rome Deputy Prosecutor Nello Rossi said.
In December 2010, however, Benedict took a landmark step toward transparency, issuing a motu proprio, or papal letter, forbidding money laundering and the financing of terrorism. More importantly, for the first time, he established an independent Vatican watchdog, the Financial Intelligence Authority.
Yet subsequent events seemed to undermine his mission. Tedeschi, the Italian economist appointed president of the Vatican Bank in 2009 and who claimed to be an anti-corruption crusader, was fired in May by the bank’s board because of negligence. The banker also became the target of Naples prosecutors investigating money laundering, allegations Tedeschi has denied.
Last June, an explosive dossier from his time at the bank was seized by Italian authorities and leaked to the news media. In it, according to Corriere della Sera, Tedeschi wrote of a power struggle inside the bank over reform, citing deep resistance “when I asked for information about bank accounts that did not belong to priests.” Referring to the 2010 seizure of the $30 million, he wrote that he had been in favor of releasing data to Italian authorities but had been blocked by powerful forces within the bank.
Last year, in a cache of documents leaked by the pope’s butler, fresh details emerged of the broader quest to clean up administrative corruption within the Vatican. The incident showed how difficult it has been for the Holy See to maintain its traditional airtight secrecy in an age of voracious media, digital or otherwise.
‘Encouraging’ signs
Yet even as scandal swirled, the Vatican has also appeared to take genuine strides toward transparency. In September, it hired Rene Brulhart — a wunderkind Swiss lawyer who helped clean up the dodgy reputation of Liechtenstein’s banking system — as a special adviser, quickly promoting him to the head of the Financial Information Authority. Under his direction, the agency is thought to be formulating a series of major directives aimed at pushing the city-state toward a deeper embrace of international banking norms, with announcements expected in the coming weeks.
In a report by an E.U. commission last year, the Vatican Bank was also found to be mostly compliant with anti-money-laundering standards and was praised for coming “a long way in a very short period of time.” However, the committee said, the bank lags in monitoring suspicious activities and carrying out sufficient due diligence.
“We have informed everybody very well of the path that we are following to be a part of the international system of controls on money laundering, and we have been doing so for two full years,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman. He called the E.U. commission report “encouraging,” adding that “they’ve also signaled the points we need to improve, and we’re working on that.”
Hardrock69
02-17-2013, 04:53 PM
http://www.examiner.com/article/pedophile-enabling-cardinal-mahony-finds-inner-peace-humiliation
Pedophile enabling Cardinal Mahony finds ‘inner peace’ in humiliation
SECULARFEBRUARY 15, 2013BY: MICHAEL STONE
In a perverse display of religious narcissism, the pedophile enabling Cardinal Roger Mahony is finding “inner peace” in the humiliation and disgrace he now faces for his role in the sexual abuse of children.
In a deplorable and insensitive blog post, the disgraced Catholic leader laments the fact that he is “humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many” for his part in the rape and sexual assault of children, without once lamenting the fact that his despicable actions are directly responsible for the unspeakable suffering of those same children.
Mahony is facing well deserved public ridicule and contempt for his role in the rape and sexual assault of children. As archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, Mahony plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement, shielding and protecting child molesters from arrest and prosecution, and in so doing allowing pedophile priests to continue to rape and abuse children.
In his blog post Mahony compares himself to Jesus, implying that he is emulating Jesus “in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.”
Mahony’s self aggrandizing blog post is abhorrent. Mahony’s pity party, coupled with his lack of empathy for the countless children he helped to victimize and sexually exploit, is disgusting. The fact that this moral monster has the audacity to pat himself on the back, and compare himself to Jesus for enduring his well deserved public humiliation, is simply nauseating.
Mahony is a criminal and should be prosecuted. His smug and self congratulating blog post only serves to re-victimize his victims, and paints a picture of a religious narcissist, a moral monster hiding behind religious superstition and ignorance.
Zing!
02-17-2013, 05:30 PM
I'm waiting patiently for the Catholic Church to crumble like a house of cards, which, excluding proof of life outside of our planet, will undoubtedly be one of the biggest stories of the decade - possibly the century.
envy_me
02-17-2013, 05:35 PM
I'm waiting patiently for the Catholic Church to crumble like a house of cards
That is never going to happend. Catholicism is a huge industry, too much money is involved to just let it end like that.
Nitro Express
02-17-2013, 06:54 PM
That is never going to happend. Catholicism is a huge industry, too much money is involved to just let it end like that.
Too much multi-generational family mind control. A lot of people do want to leave the church they grow up in but they aren't willing to pay the cost of leaving which involves upsetting grandma. Also, the Catholic church has a huge business side to it that probably generates more money than the church donations bring in.
Zing!
02-17-2013, 06:55 PM
The cracks in the foundation are evident. How many more scandals will it take before even the most devout leave the flock. I'm seeing it with my own folks - more devout Catholics you'd never meet. Mom is already gone. Pop won't say it, but he can see the writing on the chapel wall.
Nitro Express
02-17-2013, 06:59 PM
Matin Luther was just a reformer and started the protestant movement. The catholic church still was alive and well.
Nitro Express
02-17-2013, 07:02 PM
The church is too strong. Not even this kind of shit can kill it.
Nitro Express
02-17-2013, 07:08 PM
The cracks in the foundation are evident. How many more scandals will it take before even the most devout leave the flock. I'm seeing it with my own folks - more devout Catholics you'd never meet. Mom is already gone. Pop won't say it, but he can see the writing on the chapel wall.
Oh it's weakening in the US. The main problem is less and less men want to go into the priesthood. It used to be catholics had big families and would groom one son to become a priest. They are losing their breeding pool because people are having less children and the church indoctrination in the family unit is not up to the extreme levels it was.
Nitro Express
02-17-2013, 07:22 PM
Yeah, sounded nutso to me, lol.
Everyone is nuts. The only question is how nuts are you?:biggrin:
Angel
02-18-2013, 11:17 AM
A nice thought but this 'Tribunal' seems to be the invention of a lone campaigner called Kevin Annett.
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Kevin_Annett
He may be on the right side of the debate but his previous work in Canada screams persecution complex and paranoid nutjob.
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Chronology_of_Attacks_on_Kevin_Annett
Oh God, not this idiot...
Hardrock69
02-18-2013, 04:48 PM
Don't you mean "Oh Satan"? :hee:
Hardrock69
02-19-2013, 04:47 AM
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/02/priest_who_confessed_to_gropin.html
Priest who admitted groping boy appointed to high-profile position in Newark Archdiocese
A Roman Catholic priest who confessed to groping a teenage boy 12 years ago has been named to a prestigious post in the Archdiocese of Newark, drawing furious criticism from advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse.
The Rev. Michael Fugee, who is barred from unsupervised contact with children under a binding agreement with law enforcement officials, has been appointed co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, the archdiocese recently announced in its newspaper, the Catholic Advocate.
For several years, Fugee also has been director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith, a fundraising position to support missionary work.
The new appointment, effective late last year, shows “breathtaking arrogance” and “an alarming disdain for common sense” by Archbishop John J. Myers, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks abuse allegations against priests across the nation.
“On the scale of actions by Catholic officials in the last 10 years, it’s somewhere between alarming and outrageous,” Barrett Doyle said. “No reasonable person would give a prestigious assignment to a priest deemed by law enforcement to be a danger to children. I hope Newark Catholics call him to account.”
Jim Goodness, ( :lmao: ) a spokesman for the archdiocese, called Fugee's new role an administrative position based in the chancery office in Newark. Under no circumstances, Goodness said, will Fugee be alone with children.
"We have every confidence in him," the spokesman said.
Fugee, 52, was serving as assistant pastor at the Church of St. Elizabeth in Wyckoff when authorities charged him in 2001 with aggravated criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. He allegedly grabbed the crotch of a 14-year-old boy while wrestling with him at the teen’s home and on a vacation in Williamsburg, Va.
Under questioning by detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Wyckoff police, Fugee admitted touching the teen, saying he did it intentionally, that it sexually excited him and that he knew it was a “violation,” according to a transcript of his statement. He later recanted, claiming he lied so he could go home earlier.
In 2003, a jury in Bergen County convicted him of the sexual contact count but acquitted him of the endangering charge. Sentenced to five years’ probation, Fugee appealed. Three years later, an appellate panel overturned the verdict on the grounds that the trial judge gave improper instructions to jurors.
The decision was based, in part, on the judge’s decision to let the jury hear the portion of Fugee’s statement in which he described himself as bisexual or homosexual.
The appellate court said the admission could have led jurors to find Fugee guilty because of the “unfounded association between homosexuality and pedophilia.” The rest of the confession was not called into question.
Rather than retry Fugee, the prosecutor’s office allowed him to enter pre-trial intervention, a rehabilitation program for first offenders. At the same time, the prosecutor’s office secured an agreement that Fugee undergo counseling for sex offenders and have no unsupervised contact with children as long as he is a priest.
Fugee and Myers declined to comment for this story.
Goodness, the spokesman, characterized Fugee as a victim in the case, saying the priest had been through a “terrible ordeal.”
“The whole situation that caused this ordeal was not pleasant for anybody,” Goodness said. “However, at the end of it and the whole legal process he went through, he was determined by the courts to be unfairly judged in the trial. As a result, that should not penalize a priest from returning to a ministry.”
Fugee's new role is an influential one, with a responsibility for shaping the education and so-called formation of priests in the archdiocese. That includes researching programs and workshops in New Jersey and elsewhere and alerting priests to them, Goodness said. Fugee is not likely to engage in one-on-one counseling with priests, the spokesman said.
“That doesn’t appear to be part of what his responsibilities are,” Goodness said.
Fugee continues to celebrate Mass daily at parishes across the archdiocese — which includes Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Union counties — but Goodness declined to identify specific churches.
While children are certainly present in such situations, Fugee will not be alone with them, Goodness said.
“He’s on the altar, and families go home after Mass,” the spokesman said.
In a brief interview with The Star-Ledger, Fugee’s alleged victim, now 26, called the priest’s elevation to a second high-profile post “outrageous.”
“Does it come as any surprise to me? No, not really, just seeing how everything has been swept under the rug in the past or at least ignored enough to get these promotions,” said the man, whose name has been withheld by the newspaper because he is an alleged victim of sexual abuse. “It doesn't surprise me remotely.”
The man, who still resides in Bergen County, added that while the alleged incident took place more than a decade ago, “this will be part of my life for the rest of my life.”
Other critics of the move contend it demonstrates a pattern of questionable decisions by Myers involving Fugee and other priests.
In 2009, for example, Myers installed Fugee as a chaplain at St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark without informing the hospital of his involvement in the criminal trial. A card Fugee carried identified him as a priest “in good standing.”
After The Star-Ledger alerted hospital officials to Fugee’s background, they requested his immediate removal, and Fugee was recalled from the post, which gave him unrestricted access to patients and visitors of all ages.
Mark Crawford, New Jersey director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a national advocacy and support group, said Myers’ insistence on allowing Fugee to remain in ministry runs counter to the “one strike and you’re out” rule the nation’s bishops pledged to uphold at the height of the clergy sex abuse crisis in 2002.
“It is unconscionable that a priest who admitted to touching a young boy — but who later got off on a technicality — is deemed to be fit for ministry,” Crawford said. “He still gets to wear his collar. He will at some point have access to children regardless of where he is assigned.”
ELVIS
02-19-2013, 09:22 AM
*yawn*
Hardrock69
02-22-2013, 09:39 PM
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/22/priests-in-panties.html
Did a Cross-Dressing Priest Sex Ring Bring Down Benedict XVI?
by Barbie Latza Nadeau Feb 22, 2013 12:43 PM EST
Did a secret cross-dressing gay sex scandal bring down Pope Benedict?
Of all the rumors floating around about just why Pope Benedict XVI is hanging up his camauro, one has taken on a life of its own. According to several well-placed vaticanisti—or Vatican experts—in Rome, Benedict is resigning after being handed a secret red-covered dossier that included details about a network of gay priests who work inside the Vatican, but who play in secular Rome. The priests, it seems, are allegedly being blackmailed by a network of male prostitutes who worked at a sauna in Rome’s Quarto Miglio district, a health spa in the city center, and a private residence once entrusted to a prominent archbishop. The evidence reportedly includes compromising photos and videos of the prelates—sometimes caught on film in drag, and, in some cases, caught “in the act.”
Revelations about the alleged network are the basis of a 300-page report supposedly delivered to Benedict on December 17 by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Joseph Tomko, and Salvatore De Giorgi. According to the press reports, it was on that day that Benedict XVI decided once and for all to retire, after toying with the idea for months. He reportedly closed the dossier and locked it away in the pontifical apartment safe to be handed to his successor to deal with. According to reports originally printed by La Repubblica newspaper and the newsweekly Panorama (and followed up across the gamut of the Italian media), the crimes the cardinals uncovered involved breaking the commandments “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” the latter of which has been used in Vatican-speak to also refer to homosexual relations instead of the traditional reference to infidelity.
The trio of cardinals who authored the report, known in the Italian press as the “007 Priests,” were commissioned by Benedict to dig into the Vatileaks scandal that rocked the Holy See last fall when the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted of stealing secret papal documents and leaking them to the press. The sleuthing cardinals ran a parallel investigation to the Vatican tribunal’s criminal case against the butler, but theirs was far more covert and focused not on the mechanics of the leaks, but on who within the Roman Curia might be the brains behind them. And, according to the leaked reports, what the “007 Priests” found went far beyond the pope’s private desk. “What’s coming out is very detailed X-ray of the Roman Curia that does not spare even the closest collaborators of the Pope,” wrote respected Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao in Panorama. “The Pope was no stranger to the intrigues, but he probably did not know that under his pontificate there was such a complex network and such intricate chains of personal interests and unmentionable relationships.”
The existence of a gay-priest network outside the fortified walls of Vatican City is hardly news, and many are wondering if it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of sex scandals. In 2010, investigative journalist Carmello Abbate went undercover with a hidden camera to write a shocking exposé called “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests”.
Abbate caught the priests on hidden camera dirty dancing at private parties and engaging in sex acts with male escorts on church property. He also caught them emerging from dark bedrooms just in time to celebrate mass. In one postcoital scene, a priest parades around seminaked, wearing only his clerical vestments. “This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate told The Daily Beast when he published the exposé. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”
Because so much of the secret lives of gay priests is actually not so secret thanks to Abbate’s exposé and subsequent book, Sex and the Vatican, many are wondering what else could be hidden in the alleged red-covered dossier. Vatican elite have also been loosely tied to a number of other secular scandals during Benedict’s tenure, including the ultra-tawdry affair between former Lazio governor Piero Marrazzo and several transvestite prostitutes, including one named “Brenda” who was found burned to death in 2009. At the time that Marrazzo’s relationships with the transvestites were discovered, his driver reportedly told investigators that several high-ranking priests and even cardinals were customers of Rome’s elite transsexual circuit, though no proof was ever provided and no one has ever been arrested tied to the transsexual prostitution circuit. Nor has anyone mentioned whether reference to these crimes might also be in the dossier. But Marrazzo was whisked off to the Vatican-owned Monte Cassino abbey south of Rome to do his penance, and he even wrote a letter to Vatican Secretary of State Tarciso Bertone asking for Pope Benedict XVI’s forgiveness.
Whatever secrets the red binders supposedly hold will have to remain just that until the next pope is elected. But Ingrao believes its contents are so important that the dossier will be like the 118th cardinal in the conclave. “Many new skeletons from the closets of the cardinals could come out until the beginning of the conclave,” says Ingrao. “Many voters know or claim to know the secrets of their brothers, but it is already clear that the new pope who leaves the Sistine Chapel will have to be scandal-free in order to proceed with cleaning up [what] Ratzinger has left for his successor.”
Do cross dressing priests dress up as nuns?
And if so, would they be called transisters?
Nitro Express
02-22-2013, 10:16 PM
They need to end the celibacy thing. A man is a man. If he isn't getting any poontag he's going to eventually start humping anything that moves. Baby we are born to fuck!
Matt White
02-22-2013, 10:21 PM
They need to end the celibacy thing. A man is a man. If he isn't getting any poontag he's going to eventually start humping anything that moves. Baby we are born to fuck!
It's a control issue...individual Priest were hard enough to keep inline....a Priest with a Wife buzzing in his ear was beyond their control.....originally, Priest could marry....
Nitro Express
02-22-2013, 10:25 PM
I read at one time the priests did marry and running some of the parishes was lucrative. Religion is still lucrative. The church wanted the inheritance and didn't want to fight a family for it. Yeah control and money. It's why church's wanted members to marry other members. Keep it on the fold. Outsiders might convince them to leave the church.
Hardrock69
02-23-2013, 01:00 AM
Apparently it is beginning to blow up into the legit news channels.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/02/secret-vatican-report/62419/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/pope-benedict-resigned-vatican-gay-lobby-paper-claims_n_2735642.html
http://www.examiner.com/article/report-on-sex-scandals-vatican-possibly-led-to-pope-s-resigination
Hardrock69
02-23-2013, 01:00 AM
Do cross dressing priests dress up as nuns?
And if so, would they be called transisters?
:lmao:
Hardrock69
02-24-2013, 12:37 PM
WHEN IN THE FUCK IS THIS GOING TO END?
:mad:
If there were a way to destroy the Catholic Church, I would surely be in favor of it.
But then, they are destroying themselves (a good thing), though I am not in favor of the collateral damage....the thousands if not millions of children who are raped every fucking year by these goddamnable worthless piece of shit asslicking bastards!!!! :mad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/23/cardinal-keith-o-brien-accused-inappropriate
UK's top cardinal accused of 'inappropriate acts' by priests
Three priests and former priest report Cardinal Keith O'Brien to Vatican over claims stretching back 33 years
Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour stretching back 30 years.
The four, from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, have complained to nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican's ambassador to Britain, and demanded O'Brien's immediate resignation. A spokesman for the cardinal said that the claims were contested.
O'Brien, who is due to retire next month, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, condemning homosexuality as immoral, opposing gay adoption, and most recently arguing that same-sex marriages would be "harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved". Last year he was named "bigot of the year" by the gay rights charity Stonewall.
One of the complainants, it is understood, alleges that the cardinal developed an inappropriate relationship with him, resulting in a need for long-term psychological counselling.
The four submitted statements containing their claims to the nuncio's office the week before Pope Benedict's resignation on 11 February. They fear that, if O'Brien travels to the forthcoming papal conclave to elect a new pope, the church will not fully address their complaints.
"It tends to cover up and protect the system at all costs," said one of the complainants. "The church is beautiful, but it has a dark side and that has to do with accountability. If the system is to be improved, maybe it needs to be dismantled a bit."
The revelation of the priests' complaints will be met with consternation in the Vatican. Allegations of sexual abuse by members of the church have dogged the papacy of Benedict XVI, who is to step down as pope at the end of this month. Following the announcement, rumours have swirled in Rome that Benedict's shock move may be connected to further scandals to come.
The four priests asked a senior figure in the diocese to act as their representative to the nuncio's office. Through this representative, the nuncio replied, in emails seen by the Observer, that he appreciated their courage.
It is understood that the first allegation against the cardinal dates back to 1980. The complainant, who is now married, was then a 20-year-old seminarian at St Andrew's College, Drygrange, where O'Brien was his "spiritual director". The Observer understands that the statement claims O'Brien made an inappropriate approach after night prayers.
The seminarian says he was too frightened to report the incident, but says his personality changed afterwards, and his teachers regularly noted that he seemed depressed. He was ordained, but he told the nuncio in his statement that he resigned when O'Brien was promoted to bishop. "I knew then he would always have power over me. It was assumed I left the priesthood to get married. I did not. I left to preserve my integrity."
In a second statement, "Priest A" describes being happily settled in a parish when he claims he was visited by O'Brien and inappropriate contact between the two took place.
In a third statement, "Priest B" claims that he was starting his ministry in the 1980s when he was invited to spend a week "getting to know" O'Brien at the archbishop's residence. His statement alleges that he found himself dealing with what he describes as unwanted behaviour by the cardinal after a late-night drinking session.
"Priest C" was a young priest the cardinal was counselling over personal problems. Priest C's statement claims that O'Brien used night prayers as an excuse for inappropriate contact.
The cardinal maintained contact with Priest C over a period of time, and the statement to the nuncio's office alleges that he engineered at least one other intimate situation. O'Brien is, says Priest C, very charismatic, and being sought out by the superior who was supposed to be guiding him was both troubling and flattering.
Those involved believe the cardinal abused his position. "You have to understand," explains the ex-priest, "the relationship between a bishop and a priest. At your ordination, you take a vow to be obedient to him.
"He's more than your boss, more than the CEO of your company. He has immense power over you. He can move you, freeze you out, bring you into the fold … he controls every aspect of your life. You can't just kick him in the balls."
All four have been reluctant to raise their concerns. They are, though, concerned that the church will ignore their complaints, and want the conclave electing the new pope to be "clean". According to canon law, no cardinal who is eligible to vote can be prevented from doing so.
Nickdfresh
02-25-2013, 12:10 PM
I actually think the Vatican Scandel in Rome is actually a bit of an improvement since it involves consenting, but blackmailing gay-manwhore, adults. At least no children were abused, for once...
Va Beach VH Fan
02-28-2013, 09:38 AM
Dayum... Of course, Sullivan himself is gay, so I guess he would know...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/andrew-sullivan-pope-is-gay_n_2776603.html
Andrew Sullivan, Gay Catholic Blogger, Speculates Pope Is Gay
The Huffington Post | By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 02/27/2013 7:01 pm EST | Updated: 02/27/2013 11:57 pm EST
A prominent Catholic and gay blogger has renewed speculation that the outgoing Pope Benedict may be secretly gay.
Following the announcement that Benedict will not go into hidden retirement but will instead continue living in the Vatican with trusted secretary Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, The Dish's Andrew Sullivan penned a post titled, "Two Popes, One Secretary," in which he speculates that "something truly weird going on."
The 56-year-old Gaenswein, dubbed "Gorgeous Georg" by the Italian media, was recently featured on the cover of Italian Vogue, according to the New York Daily News. Vogue, which did not interview the archbishop for the article, titled its piece: "Father Georg - It's not a sin to be beautiful."
"So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day," Sullivan writes. "Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement?"
Clearly, Sullivan does not.
In a past column, Sullivan concluded that it "seems pretty obvious" that "the current Pope is a gay man," albeit one who has not "explored his sexuality, or has violated his own strictures on the matter." Detailing the close relationship between His Holiness and the papal right-hand man, Sullivan's column cites Colm Tóibín's tabloid-esque review of Angelo Quattrocchi's book The Pope Is Not Gay.
From the review:
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.’
Gaenswein's proposed living arrangement is just more proof for Sullivan that the pope is closeted. "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," Sullivan wrote this week. "This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place."
Sullivan's column is more grist for the Vatican's gay rumor wheel, coming on the heels of a bombshell article in Italian paper La Repubblica, which claimed the pope's resignation was influenced by a damning internal document that reportedly cited powerful lobbying influences in the Vatican, including a gay lobby.
La Repubblica detailed other points from the alleged dossier, including the claim that a gay underground network organized sexual meetings of members at venues across Rome and Vatican City.
Nickdfresh
02-28-2013, 10:44 AM
Will the next Pope be Fabulous IV?
Hardrock69
03-01-2013, 04:37 PM
A great op-ed piece in the NY Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/opinion/if-the-pope-can-quit-catholics-can-too.html
Give Up Your Pew for Lent
By PAUL ELIE
Published: February 28, 2013
AT 8 p.m. last night in Vatican City, Benedict XVI resigned the papacy. Now American Catholics should consider resigning too.
The conventional wisdom has it that Benedict’s resignation sharply reduced the aura of the papal office, showed a tender realism about old age, and made clear that even ancient Catholic practices could be changed. That is all true, but the event’s significance is more visceral than that. It has caught the mood of the church, especially in North America.
Resignation: that’s what American Catholics are feeling about our faith. We are resigned to the fact that so much in the Roman Catholic Church is broken and won’t be fixed anytime soon.
So if the pope can resign, we can, too. We should give up Catholicism en masse, if only for a time.
We are in the third week of Lent, a six-week season of reflection and personal sacrifice when Christians prepare for Easter by taking stock of their religious lives. In recent centuries Roman Catholics have observed Lent by giving up a habit or pleasure, whether red meat, chocolate, soap operas or Facebook, to simplify their lives and regain their independence from worldly attractions — their religious freedom, if you like.
Two years ago, Stephen Colbert gave up Catholicism itself. As the comedian told it, he swore off Catholicism on Ash Wednesday and made it as far as Good Friday, when he went on a “Catholic bender.” His riff inverted the old saying that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Mr. Colbert beat the pope to the punch.
In traditional parlance, Benedict’s resignation leaves the Chair of St. Peter “vacant.” So I propose that American Catholics vacate the pews this weekend.
We should seize this opportunity to ask what is true in our faith, what it costs us in obfuscation and moral compromise, and what its telos, or end purpose, really is. And we should explore other religious traditions, which we understand poorly.
For the Catholic Church, it has been “all bad news, all the time” since Benedict took office in 2005: a papal insult to Muslims; a papal embrace of a Holocaust denier; molesting by priests and cover-ups by their superiors. When the Scottish cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned on Monday amid reports of “inappropriate” conduct toward priests in the 1980s, the routine was wearingly familiar. It’s enough to make any Catholic yearn to leave the whole mess for someone else to clean up.
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is a theologian. He would not have stepped down if he did not think he was setting a sound precedent: a resignation prompted by physical, not institutional, weakness. That he felt free to resign suggests that he thinks the church is doing fine. But countless ordinary Catholics know otherwise.
That is why this Sunday, I won’t be at the Oratory Church of St. Boniface in Downtown Brooklyn, even though I love it there — a welcoming, open-minded, authentically religious place.
Instead, I’ll be at the Brooklyn Meeting of the Quakers, who have long invited volunteers from our church to serve food to the poor.
Or I’ll be at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, an Episcopal congregation that hosted the Occupy movement’s relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy.
Or I’ll go to the Zen Mountain Monastery at Mount Tremper, in the Catskills.
Or I’ll be in Washington, with colleagues who attend Shabbat services at Georgetown, the first American Catholic university and the first (four decades ago) to engage a full-time rabbi.
Or I’ll knock on the door of the Masjid Ibadul-Rahman, a mosque on my block, or the Zion Shiloh Baptist Church, across the street, or L’Église Baptiste d’Expression Française, on the corner.
I hope and expect to return to the Oratory church the following Sunday. But I can’t be sure. To some degree, it’s out of my hands, a response to a calling.
A temporary resignation would be a fitting Lenten observance. It would help believers to purify and deepen our faith in the light of our neighbors’ — “to examine our own religious notions, to sound them for genuineness,” as the American writer Flannery O’Connor put it. It would let us begin to figure out what in Catholicism we can take and what we can and ought to leave. It might even get the attention of the cardinals who will meet behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel and elect a pope in circumstances that one hopes would augur a time of change.
And it might dispel the resignation we feel. Most ordinary believers have given up hope that the church will change its ways. But Benedict’s resignation reminds us of a truth we have known all along: change in the church can happen, even dramatically. If so hidebound an institution as the papacy can be changed, what can’t be?
Any religion that believes in an invisible, intelligent, wrathful or benevolent SkyDaddy needs to resign.
The top clerics in Islam, the top Rabbis in Judaism, and the Cardinals in the Vatican all need to step up to the plate and announce to the world that their respective religions are nothing more than scams perpetrated upon the human race for thousands of years.
Give it up people.
If you cannot find meaning in your lives without having to OBEY what other people tell you, then you will just have to fucking deal with it.
New Pope announcement imminent...... stay tuned :sleepy:
mh5150
03-13-2013, 02:21 PM
Azzoff just tweeted
"No new pope despite @whitesmoke
Sensible Shoes
03-13-2013, 02:24 PM
I refuse to turn on CNN and honor this stuff with my watching.
envy_me
03-13-2013, 02:25 PM
How hard is it??? Just put all names in a hat and pick one...
Vatican is so embaressing. Those people outside waiting are so embaressing.
ZahZoo
03-13-2013, 02:39 PM
It takes a two/thirds majority vote. There's 118 cardinals voting... that means about 78 have to vote for one guy to win it.
envy_me
03-13-2013, 02:45 PM
It takes a two/thirds majority vote. There's 118 cardinals voting... that means about 78 have to vote for one guy to win it.
My method is more efficient. And it would achieve the same result :D
It takes a two/thirds majority vote. There's 118 cardinals voting... that means about 78 have to vote for one guy to win it.
And then some right wing cardinal threatens a filibuster and it all goes to shit......
envy_me
03-13-2013, 02:53 PM
And then some right wing cardinal threatens a filibuster and it all goes to shit......
Right wing cardinal :lmao:
Well, OK... that's a relevant term. Odds are that if they're cardinals, they're probably already right wingers.
There are some liberal priests and nuns out there.... but they probably aren't the ones who get chosen to move up in the hierarchy. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/figuren/a060.gif
DLR Bridge
03-13-2013, 03:02 PM
I think the humor in the remark was the idea of a poor little red bird who can't help but fly in a circle.
envy_me
03-13-2013, 03:07 PM
Well, OK... that's a relevant term. Odds are that if they're cardinals, they're probably already right wingers.
There are some liberal priests and nuns out there.... but they probably aren't the ones who get chosen to move up in the hierarchy. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/figuren/a060.gif
I know. It's so sad. You have to be a theif to get anywhere in the catholic (and most others) church.
It's just embaressing to see all those people waiting outside. How they act... Haven't we gotten further as humans?? God, it's sad.
New Pope appears to be from Argentina....
Cardinal Bergolio?
Will pick the name "Francis".
Sounds kinda girly (unless there's an Albert Sinatra after it, of course)
76 years old? Looks like they want another short timer......
Sensible Shoes
03-13-2013, 03:31 PM
This guy is a Jesuit - another first.
Nitro Express
03-13-2013, 03:38 PM
I know. It's so sad. You have to be a theif to get anywhere in the catholic (and most others) church.
It's just embaressing to see all those people waiting outside. How they act... Haven't we gotten further as humans?? God, it's sad.
The church part is not as powerful as it once was. Basically if you spoke out against the catholic church in the old days they killed you. Usually in painful slow ways. Now it's still an independent nation and that allows it to play all sorts of games in the financial and political realms. If you get in trouble you can simply hide out in the vatican and you can run all sorts of scams from the vatican. The church owns enormous amounts of stock in various corporations and the knights of malta actually have a lot of influence in the corporate world.
The church and monarchs are the old power machine and now it's banks and corporations. Television, movies, political parties, sports, and other entertainment are the new brainwashing tools. Same agenda different players in the play. The brilliance of it is those who think they are awake are just getting duped a different way. Still giving their power away to some central authority.
Uh oh.....
This new Pope might be worse than Nazi assed Hitler Youth Ratzinger.
The guy who archives Malloy's show for YouTube is based in Argentina and apparently this Pope is dirty as fuck, closely associated with brutal dictators of the past.
Should have known better than to think this fucked up church might have been taking a slight turn to sanity.
Just like with recent rebranding attempts by the Repuke party, they're just going after the new demographics. Not changing the hate... or probably not the child molesting either.
Hardrock69
03-13-2013, 09:19 PM
Was watching NBC News tonight. Idiot reporter said "The South American people have been waiting for this moment for 20 centuries!"
What a fucking tool.
1. 20 centuries ago, Native Americans in South America had never even seen a fucking white man. It took 15 centuries for white people to show up there.
2. They had no idea what a Pope was, or a "Church". 20 centuries ago there was no such fucking thing as Christianity, as Jebus was still a fucking teenager. Most definitely there was no such thing as a "Catholic Church". That shit didn't arrive until centuries later.
Amazing how as time goes on, the talking heads on the national news programs become more and more ignorant.
But that is not surprising considering our educational system.
Zing!
03-13-2013, 09:56 PM
The editorial standard for today's reporter is: "can you hold a microphone and smile?"
Seshmeister
03-13-2013, 10:09 PM
The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics
That figure is hugely overstated.
It seems to cover anyone born in a predominately catholic country. By their definition if you are born to catholic parents you are catholic and in turn so are your children...
jhale667
03-13-2013, 10:18 PM
The editorial standard for today's reporter is: "can you hold a microphone and smile?"
"You know I could have been an actor, but I wound up here - I just have to look good I don't have to be clear..."
envy_me
03-14-2013, 03:16 AM
That figure is hugely overstated.
It seems to cover anyone born in a predominately catholic country. By their definition if you are born to catholic parents you are catholic and in turn so are your children...
I sure hope that I'm not in that number. By this criteria the pope should be my spiritual leader :puke:
sadaist
03-14-2013, 04:30 AM
That figure is hugely overstated.
It seems to cover anyone born in a predominately catholic country. By their definition if you are born to catholic parents you are catholic and in turn so are your children...
For many many years when asked I would call myself a Christian. All I did was pray a simple prayer each night before bed. Never went to to church or donated money. Never read bible verses or truly followed his word. I imagine there are a lot of people very similar who wear the cross necklace & have the bible at home all because their parents were/are Catholic.
Nickdfresh
03-14-2013, 10:40 AM
Uh oh.....
This new Pope might be worse than Nazi assed Hitler Youth Ratzinger.
The guy who archives Malloy's show for YouTube is based in Argentina and apparently this Pope is dirty as fuck, closely associated with brutal dictators of the past.
Should have known better than to think this fucked up church might have been taking a slight turn to sanity.
Just like with recent rebranding attempts by the Repuke party, they're just going after the new demographics. Not changing the hate... or probably not the child molesting either.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/6695xw.jpg
LOL An Argie Pope. Oy vei!
Seshmeister
03-17-2013, 09:14 AM
.....
Nickdfresh
03-17-2013, 10:28 PM
South Africa cardinal says pedophilia not a crime
Reuters – Sat, Mar 16, 2013
http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/orGgpVjBhUyGLyvhmjX5cg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9Mjg5O2NyPTE7Y3c9NDUwO2R4PTA7ZH k9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD0yODk7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2013-03-16T155418Z_1_CBRE92F186Q00_RTROPTP_2_NAPIER.JPG
Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of South Africa leaves the Vatican after the general congregation meeting April 12, 2005. Reuters Photographer
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis this week has told the BBC pedophilia is an illness and not a crime.
Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Catholic Archbishop of Durban, told BBC Radio 5 on Saturday that pedophilia was a "disorder" that needed to be treated.
"From my experience, pedophilia is actually an illness. It's not a criminal condition, it's an illness," he said.
Napier said he knew of at least two priests who became pedophiles after they were abused as children.
"Now don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged."
The Catholic Church has had its image deeply tarnished by a widespread child sex abuse scandal.
Napier was one of the 115 cardinals in the Vatican conclave that elected Pope Francis on Wednesday, the BBC reported.
The first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years, Francis has signaled a sharp change of style from his predecessor, Benedict, for the 1.2-billion-member Church, which is beset by scandals, intrigue and strife.
He said on Saturday the church should be poor and remember that its mission is to serve the poor.
(Reporting by David Dolan; Editing by Jason Webb)
YAHOO LINK (http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-cardinal-says-pedophilia-not-crime-155418854.html)
sadaist
03-17-2013, 11:33 PM
I can see thinking that being sexually attracted to children is an illness. But acting on those attractions?
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