What About The Uighurs?

One area where I've grown increasingly skeptical of Francis-bashing is the criticism we've seen, for example in yesterday's post, of the deal he made with the Chinese government that seeks to unify the official and underground Church there. My wife has mentioned several times the radical difference between how Catholics and Muslim Uighurs are treated in China. For example, I found this piece in Bloomberg Opinion:

The evidence is mounting that China is expanding its campaign against the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority. Testimonials of survivors describe torture and near-starvation at the province’s so-called “re-education centers.” Investigative reports detail the state’s separation of Uighur children from their families and forced attendance at high-walled kindergartens. Academic research has unearthed state documents showing this campaign is deliberate and escalating.

. . . Last summer, United Nations investigators estimated that 1 million Uighurs were in the camps. In May, Randall Schriver, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security, estimated that at least 3 million Uighurs are being detained. (Other U.S. officials tell me this larger estimate includes people who are compelled to visit a re-education facility but still live in their homes.)

My impression is that, in contrast, Catholics have been forced to remove crosses and crucifixes from the outside of church buildings, there are restrictions on steeple height, and in some cases, overzealous officials have forced church demolitions -- but so far, there are no re-education camps. I assume the Vatican is fully aware of conditions in China, for Catholics and other Christians, as well as for groups like the Uighurs. None of this is cause for celebration.

But I mentioned Pius XII yesterday. I read and speak German, and I've been interested in the country's modern history, Catholics under the National Socialist regime were in a precarious situation. Accounts from ordinary officers in the armed forces indicate that even regular attendance at mass could bring unwelcome attention from the Gestapo, as Catholics were felt to have better informal networks that could, and did, lead to assassination conspiracies, however feckless they all proved to be.

Pius XII was fully aware of the measures the National Socialists took against the Jews, and as a diplomat who'd spent years in Germany earlier in his career, he fully understood they were capable of further measures against Catholics -- which Bismark had undertaken in the Kulturkampf. The issues on which Pacelli compromised with Hitler in 1934 were of long standing in that context.

Pacelli himself, as a diplomat, went on to strike a much-criticized deal with Hitler’s Third Reich in 1934, after six months of talks. Again, the removal of Catholics from political life, including the decimation of the Center Party, formed part of a deal that offered concessions on Catholic education and law. But just as the Italian Catholics turned to the fascists when their political outlet was shut down, so too the Germans lurched towards Hitler’s Nazi Party. Long before he was Pope, Pacelli was accused of giving Vatican sign-off to German control of coveted regions, in return for other political favours.

I think Pius was acutely aware of the atmosphere in Berlin, and the potential for anti-Catholic measures much more severe than those in place must have been in his mind. I think he also had to be aware of the unrealistic nature of Catholic plots to decapitate the Third Reich and the potential for widespread retribution against Catholics that could potentially ensue. The link above gives some insight into Francis's thinking:

Pope Francis says the church is confident that the papacy would withstand the findings by historians’ studying the archives, saying Pius was “criticized, one can say, with some prejudice and exaggeration.”

“The church isn’t afraid of history, on the contrary, it loves it, and would like to love it even more, like it loves God,” Francis said. “Thus, with the same trust of my predecessors, I open, and entrust to researchers, this patrimony of documentation.”

He said the Pius papacy included “moments of grave difficulties, tormented decisions of human and Christian prudence, that to some could appear as reticence.” Instead, he said they could be seen as attempts “to keep lit, in the darkest and cruelest periods, the flame of humanitarian initiatives, of hidden but active diplomacy” aimed at possibly “opening hearts.”

I have a sense that Francis has more than a little sympathy for the dilemmas Pius faced, because it's fairly clear that he faces similar dilemmas in China.

Ms Littlejohn is a puzzling case. Certainly she didn't discover the Chinese one child policy or the existence of forced abortion; that's been known for decades, while she didn't even take the name Reggie Littlejohn until about 2009. US presidents of both parties have spoken out against the one child policy and forced abortion. The question is what anyone has been able to do about it, and this is no different from the dilemmas Pius XII faced with the Holocaust.

Things could be much worse for Catholics in China, as they could have been for Catholics in Germany under Hitler. Francis is clearly aware of the issues.

Rev. Robert Chapman Kirk Is Actually Mr Reggie Littlejohn

Slightly more material on Rev. Mr. Robert Chapman Kirk is in the current Ordinariate Observer (p 14), which is in the mail. It's been quite a challenge to find information on the man, partly because up to his ordination, he went by "Rob Kirk". Searches on that name with Methodist are somewhat more productive. It appears that as a United Methodist pastor, he went by Rob pretty much exclusively, and "Robert Kirk" seems to be his new name as a Catholic priest. But far, far more productive are web searches for his wife, who currently goes by Reggie Littlejohn.

There are several observations to make here. Numerous online bios of Ms Littlejohn say that she and her husband, now-Fr Kirk, were "college sweethearts", which would make them roughly equal in age. The current issue of Ordinariate Observer (p 14) says Kirk is 63. But the recent photo of Ms Littlejohn at left shows an apparently much younger woman, although Kirk's account there places them both in graduate school together as well. The explanation, of course, is the miracle of modern cosmetic surgery, which, considering the appearance of Ms Littlejohn's neck, chin, eyes, and likely much else, is one giant leap for mankind.

The San Jose Mercury News story I linked yesterday says, "Kirk is married to Gina Giannini and has a son who will graduate from Harvard this spring." This had several of us stumped for some hours until a visitor commented,

It just occurred to me that Giannini could be translated roughly as "Little John," and Gina might be short for Regina, hence Reggie. It seems odd that she has an alias, but I guess that is par for the course!

Actually, it seems like Ms Littlejohn has reinvented herself several times, and her current persona, a jet-setting do-gooder, has been carefully groomed -- but there's no historical evidence for anyone named Reggie Littlejohn prior to about 2009. Via Ancestry.com, I find a Gina Giannini in a yearbook for Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, CA for 1978, which would place her age in the general range for Fr Kirk's 63. But other online accounts of her, here and here, as Reggie say she was either a "litigation associate" or a "supervising attorney" in a major San Francisco law firm up to about 2003.

I can reasonably assume that a litigator with a major San Francisco law firm would be a member of the California bar. The California Bar Association has a page where you can look up anyone's status there just with a name search -- this includes active, inactive, and deceased members. Just to double-check, I found my wife there, who, now retired, is listed as "inactive". So I did searches on various combinations of the name Giannini, Littlejohn, Kirk, Reggie, and Gina, and found nothing -- even if she were "inactive", her name would appear with that status. UPDATE: Regina Maria Giannini is listed as an active member of the California bar.

The online bios refer, without too much specificity (for instance here), to a period of illness beginning about 2003,

. . . she contracted an MRSA staph infection, which is often deadly. She left the practice of law on a medical leave of absence and was disabled for five years. During that 5-year period, Littlejohn had to undergo several surgeries and developed chronic fatigue syndrome as well.

She says basically, though again without much specificity, that she emerged from this five-year period with a new sense of purpose, and it would seem as well as with the new Reggie Littlejohn persona and a whole new face. Almost immediately, she became a major player in Catholic NGO and non-profit circles. The photo of her with the Holy Father dates from 2013, and the press release that accompanies it says,

Littlejohn was also the featured speaker at the Rome premiere of the “It’s a Girl” film about gendercide and forced abortion in India and China. She had previously spoken — together with filmmakers Evan Grae Davis and Andrew Brown — at the premieres of the film at the European and British Parliaments, as well as at the United States Capitol.

Her activities in subsequent years involve an equivalent whirl of global travel, media appearances, and massive self-promotion. Several questions come up for me. The biggest is that Fr Rob is quite clearly a tiny asteroid in distant orbit around a very bright and powerful star. He appears almost never in Ms Littlejohn's social media posts, and even at his ordination, she doesn't mention his surname -- just "Robert". Must be Mr, er, Fr Littlejohn, right?

Not only that, but her social media profiles place her residence in San Jose, CA, where her NGO is headquartered, while Fr Littlejohn Kirk is now permanently in Balmer, on the other coast. No matter, Reggie is on first class glights to world capitals most of the time anyhow. Let's get real, these people live separate lives.

A comment that was sometimes perceptively made on sites after the Luke Reese affair was how little attention the ordinariate seems to pay to the marital circumstances of the men it ordains. Bp Lopes, Fr Kramer, and Fr Perkins are boldly going where no prudent Catholic cleric has ever gone before. I was briefly puzzled yesterday when I said Fr Kirk's mannerisms were remarkably like those of Mr Aldrich, my fifth grade music teacher, but Mr Aldrich didn't have a family, while Fr Kirk does.

Well, I guess he has a family of sorts.

More Chains Of Paternity: John Nienstedt

John Nienstedt's successor as Archbishop of St Paul-Minneapolis, Bernard Hebda, publicly "clarified" a couple of days ago that Nienstedt, "like any priest facing similar allegations, would not be free to exercise public ministry in this Archdiocese until all open allegations are resolved." The allegations are substantial, and the lack of action from the Vatican on down is a scandal in itself. According to Church Militant,

Nienstedt was revealed in a formal investigation conducted by officials in the chancery of the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to have been a promiscuous homosexual when he was a student and Vatican official in Rome. This 138-page affidavit from the Ramsey County Court in Minnesota contains sad details about Nienstedt's life as a priest and bishop. Other details are available on Minnesota-based media websites.

Nienstedt and the current Archbishop of Detroit, Alan Vigneron, were classmates at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. Both appear to have been protégés of Cardinal John Dearden, who was Archbishop of Detroit from 1958 to 1980. Vigneron and Nienstedt rose together in the archdiocese.

It is now known that during the years Vigneron served as vice rector of Sacred Heart Seminary (SHS) under Nienstedt, who was rector (from 1988–1991) there were situations where Nienstedt was advancing his deviant designs on seminarians. The two classmates were elevated to the rank of auxiliary bishop in the same ceremony in 1996 in Detroit.

This site gives more details on Nienstedt's earlier career:

John Nienstedt was initially a center-left Detroit priest (e.g., open to women's ordination in 1974) whom the liberal John Dearden mentored and employed. With Dearden's impending retirement in 1980, Nienstedt was sent to Rome to complete a doctorate in moral theology and to work in the Holy See's Secretariat of State, whereby he learned first-hand what it took to become a bishop under John Paul II's reign. With mentoring by Vatican insiders such as Carlo Viganò and Justin Rigali, as well as friendships with those possessing right-wing ideologies and dispositions like Thomas Olmsted, Nienstedt adopted hardcore, un-pastoral conservatism, at least in rhetoric and appearance, to ladder-climb. Upon returning to Detroit in 1985, Nienstedt served Polish-American Edmund Szoka, the ruthless anti-Dearden, who was one of John Paul II's favorite bishops. When Szoka gained further power through positions in the Vatican, he rewarded Nienstedt (and others) who dutifully served him with the office of bishop, even after Adam Maida removed Nienstedt as Rector of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 1994 for misconduct. (NB: *Maida received letters detailing Nienstedt's misconduct over the years, including a letter from the majority of college seminarians at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 1994. These letters should be held in the archives of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Like those alleging McCarrick's behavior was an open secret and church officials did not act thoroughly, either did Maida with Nienstedt. **James Heathcott, a former Sacred Heart seminarian, testified to sending a letter to Edmund Szoka regarding Nienstedt's improprieties (pre-1990). Szoka never replied! This and other letters may well be in the archives.)

This account suggests that Nienstedt has much in common with other "conservative" bishops like Bernard Law and William Levada. In addition, the Nienstedt case adds complexity to the Viganò story, according to the Crux link above, since although Nienstedt eventually resigned under fire in 2015 following numerous allegations of misconduct,

In 2014, Nienstedt ordered his senior auxiliary bishop to investigate claims against him, which he did with the support of two outside law firms. The findings from that investigation were turned over to then papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, and according to Father Dan Griffith, who served as the archdiocese’s Safe Environment coordinator at the time, Viganò brought a halt to the investigation, even ordering evidence in the case to be destroyed.

Francis, however, forced Nienstedt's resignation in 2015, which this site argues prompted Viganò's 2018 letters.

After a half-year hiatus, Nienstedt was taken in by a friend who served as pastor of St. Philip Catholic Church in Battle Creek, MI. John Fleckenstein (NB, former seminarian at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit; ordained 2002), who was to undergo medical treatment, employed Nienstedt temporarily at the parish beginning on January 6, 2016. Michigan residents protested for two-weeks until Nienstedt's resignation was announced on January 21, 2016.

Later in 2016, Timothy Busch, a friend of Viganò and Nienstedt, took Nienstedt in at the Napa Institute, which caters to the agenda of likeminded wealthy, laissez-faire capitalist, ultraconservative US Catholics. Busch is a native of Clinton in rural Lenawee County, MI. He attended Western Michigan and later Wayne State for his law degree. His brothers and he still own Busch's Fresh Food Markets in Southeastern Michigan, though Busch relocated to Southern California in 1982. Busch also owns the Busch Firm, which specializes in estate planning for the wealthy, and the Pacific Hospitality Group. Together, Charles Koch and Timothy Busch donated $25 million to Catholic University of America's Business School, WHICH CUA ACCEPTED (NB, now called The Busch School of Business; Busch is interested in propagating the compatibility of Catholicism with laissez-faire capitalism). Besides the Napa Institute and the Catholic University of America, Busch is involved with "the Papal Foundation, Legatus, Magis Institute and the University of Notre Dame."

Nienstedt has been described as a "conservative", but I think we're beginning to see that political, theological, and liturgical orientation is largely a matter of which way the Vatican winds blow.

Nienstedt's case seems to be very close to the center of what ails the Church these days, and there's probably much more to learn.

I'm Starting To Wonder About This Anglican Business

The visitor who follows the Italian press sent me this gem from a blog that seems to be called La Quotidiana. Translation is by Google.

We are honest. If a man becomes "woman" he changes his name, right? And therefore it is necessary to baptize it again [note the criminal misgendering of the pronoun here -- jb] because the old name of baptism has now expired. It's a matter of logic, that's all. This is the beautiful find of the Anglican Church that we could call "baptism of transsexuals".

The Conference of Bishops of the Church of England has promoted an initiative called "affirmation of the baptismal faith". This is not a new baptism, they want to clarify, but it has all the characteristics to seem such. In fact during this ceremony the Church of England blesses the new life and a new name is imposed on the transsexual. Then this sexual renaissance is sucked through the sprinkling of the head of the "baptized" with water and blessed oils, reciting some verses of the Book of Psalms and signing a veritable baptism certificate.

The clumsiness of Google's rendering here, I suspect, reflects ironies in the original. Further,

"Rebirth" is the key word to understand this carnival blasphemous. According to Catholic doctrine baptism allows us to be reborn in Christ because before, because of original sin, we were dead. In the Anglican version, rebirth involves sexual identity. The discomfort of living in a body that does not feel its own can be assimilated to the feeling of dying by leading an existence into a certain sexual identity. The rebirth happens in the exchange of sex. Therefore it seems reasonable to bless this rebirth even in the church. And it seems obligatory to conclude that this second "baptism" is worth more than the first, since the first baptism had been done on a creature that had not even begun its caterpillar-to-butterfly journey.

It is then to be noted that this para-baptism overturns exactly the meaning of authentic baptism. In fact, he hinges the person into sin even more. If after baptism we must do everything to remain immaculate, trans baptism, blessing sexual rectification, blesses sin, because it qualifies as right to throw into the bin that identity intended for us by God in order to replace it with another invented by we. A clear rejection of the natural laws desired by the Creator.

Those who've been following this blog recognize that there's something quintessentially Anglican about this. The problem I have is why liberals like Bernard Law or Francesco Coccopalmerio should want to bring Anglicanism into the Church in a formal and unique way, rather than to accept individual ex-Anglicans as converts to the faith in the same way that any other non-Catholics come in. Perhaps it's the appeal of all the weasel-worded ambiguity that we see here in the justifications of sorta-kinda rebaptism, for instance.

I think the characterization of Anglicanorum coetibus as some sort of generous gesture by Pope Benedict ought to be subject to reinterpretation. Yet again, my instinct is not to go anywhere near an ordinariate parish -- I'd sooner visit old friends at St Thomas Episcopal Hollywood knowing what I was doing, rather than step into an ordinariate parish with nothing like that clarity.

Demons exist. Playing footsie with demons is dangerous indeed.

Has The Outfit Put Out A Hit On His Holiness?

From the UK Independent via a visitor:

Pope Francis's life is in danger from 'ndrangheta, Italy's most feared crime group, a leading anti-mafia judge has claimed.

Nicola Gratteri, a magistrate in the southern city of Reggio Calabria, near 'ndrangheta's heartland, has said the Pontiff's crackdown on financial corruption in the Vatican, has angered bosses in the brutal crime syndicate, which is thought to rule Europe's cocaine trade.

It does appear that 'ndrangheta, a version of the mafia located on the toe of the Italian boot next to Sicily, has been the subject of a European crackdown. From the BBC, via the same visitor:

Members of the notorious 'Ndrangheta Italian mafia have been targeted in a simultaneous police sting in Europe.

Hundreds of police are understood to have been involved in the operation in Belgium, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

At least 90 people were arrested, and more than three tonnes of cocaine and 140kg of ecstasy were seized.

Italian restaurants and ice cream parlours used to launder money were among the premises raided.

Well, as a true crime fan, I especially like mafia shows. I justify it to my wife by telling her it's Catholic history. But as far as I can see, at least so far, something doesn't fit. In 2009, Pope Benedict put Abp Viganò in charge of cleaning up Vatican finances. According to Wikipedia,

In 2009, Viganò was appointed Secretary General of the Vatican City Governatorate. In that role he established centralized accounting procedures and accountability for cost overruns that helped turn a US$10.5 million deficit for the city-state into a surplus of $44 million in one year.

In 2010, Viganò suggested that the Vatican should drop out of the Euro currency agreement in order to avoid new European banking regulations. Instead, the Vatican chose to adhere to the Euro agreement and accept the new scrutiny that tougher banking regulations required. In late January 2012 a television program aired in Italy under the name of Gli intoccabili (The Untouchables), purporting to disclose confidential letters and memos of the Vatican. Among the documents were letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him. Viganò, formerly the second ranked Vatican administrator to the pope, requested not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions in higher contract prices.

. . . On 13 August 2011, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone informed Viganò that Pope Benedict was appointing him Nuncio to the United States. Reuters reported that Viganò was unwilling to take that assignment. Viganò stated that this decision was not what Pope Benedict XVI originally had manifested to him. One of the letters leaked by Benedict's butler in 2012 revealed that Viganò had gone over Bertone's head and complained in a letter to Benedict of corruption in the Vatican, for which Bertone arranged to transfer Viganò to Washington over Viganò's objections.

The letters were leaked as part of the Vatileaks scandal, which observers tend to connect in some way to Benedict's resignation.

But in 2013, Francis appointed Msgr Battista Ricca, who appears to be a thoroughly corrupt individual, as prelate over the Vatican Bank. It's difficult to imagine Ricca cleaning anything up.

We'll have to see what develops, but Francis, in demanding a "loan" from the Papal Foundation that's caused problems in the US, doesn't so far seem to be on the side of cleanup. We'll probably have to see what falls out, but I can't imagine that the Outfit is all that unhappy with him, though the threat we see here could simply be a worthwhile reminder to the guy to stay with the program.

In fact, if we take Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel, Albert Anastasia, or Sam Giancana as examples, the Outfit generally doesn't bluff and bluster before it whacks guys -- it simply does it and lets the world speculate for decades over who did it and why.

Opus Dei Bishops And Other Topics

A visitor comments,

One thing that might not be understood by your average reader is that Bishops (and by extension, Archbishops) must resign their memberships in Opus Dei before they become Bishops. This has to do with the person or hierarchy to whom they must be obedient. In Opus Dei, the person is obedience to the Prelate. When a priest is made a Bishop, that vow to the Prelate is dissolved and a vow of obedience is then made to the episcopal polity ultimately headed by the Pope.

While I do not doubt there is some animosity between the Jesuits and Opus Dei, Archbishop Gomez is no longer a part of Opus Dei. Is there some Tom Hanks/DaVinci Code type of conspiracy for Opus Dei to subsume the papacy? Is our Holy Father paranoid about such a thing? I would put more money on the latter being true than the former.

Pope Francis has a track record of being suspicious and authoritarian during his history as a Jesuit and as a Bishop and now Pope. Archbishop Gomez has a history of faithfulness to Church teaching which has angered some who prefer an agenda of Social Justice over fidelity to the Magisterium. Which of these two seems to be likely targeted by the other?

These are difficult times for our Church. It is sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees. Something tells me, a great winnowing is about to take place and the fire to burn the chaff has already been prepared and lit. Hold on to your catechisms, folks, it is about to get real hot!

Further on the putative feud, another visitor comments,

The feud between the Jesuits & OD is hype. Pope Francis chose Greg Burke as his spokesman. Most ODers don't admit that they are in OD unless it's good press for them---Burke is one of those cases.

Francis has also appointed at least 1 OD priest a bishop in Australia (& has appointed 11 Jesuits. 12,000 Jesuits in the world vs 3000 OD priests. And, obviously the Jesuits have 1500 years on OD.) The one thing Francis has not done is make the head of OD a bishop as JP2 did w/Portillo & Echeverria. OD has to get a OD-friendly bishop to do ordinations (& there's been no problem finding them).

Elsewhere, there's been much comment on Francis's reported remarks about homosexuality, for instance, here:

Rome (kath.net) Pope Francis is worried about homosexuals in the Church. "In our societies, it seems that homosexuality is a fashion, and this mentality also influences the Church in some way," said the head of the Church in a recent interview, which will be published in a book on Monday. This was reported by “ORF.” According to the interview, Francis is worried about homosexuals in the clergy and seminaries. [What about his close circle?]

So does this mean he's going to throw Coccopalmerio, McCarrick, Tobin, and all the others under the bus? Don't wait for it. If any of them crosses him, of course, all bets are off. As I commented yesterday, in a corrupt organization, the ruling clique has something on everyone, and anyone is subject to removal for "corruption" at any time. But as long as they stay with the program, they're safe, unless too much pressure builds up to make one of them an example no matter what.

Francis is triangulating here. At least it's an indication he knows there's concern out there -- but he'll always weasel his way out of any such statement and point to his "zero tolorance" in Paraguay if he has to.

The Roger Mahony Chain Of Paternity

Roger Mahony retired as Archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011. According to Wikipedia,

On January 31, 2013, in the wake of a court order requiring the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release its unredacted files on clergy sexual abuse, Archbishop Gómez relieved Mahony of all of his remaining public and administrative duties. Critics called Gómez's action "purely symbolic punishment" and "hand-slapping...a nearly meaningless gesture", and noted that Mahony remains "a powerful man" in the church. According to the archdiocese, Mahony remains "a priest in good standing" and may still celebrate Mass, but he may no longer speak publicly or exercise any responsibilities ordinarily reserved for a bishop. . . . Under canon law, as Mahony is a cardinal, he enjoys the "privilege of forum", meaning that the only the pope is competent to judge and punish Mahony in matters subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Gómez only has the authority to control Mahony's administrative assignments within the archdiocese.

Thus we had the situation mentioned in yesterday's post, in which Francis made Mahony his delegate to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Scranton, from which Mahony withdrew after protests. Similar protests took place in Utah when Mahony was scheduled to keynote a fundraising event; he withdrew from that as well.

It seems as if Pope Francis had been trying to rehabilitate Mahony as he had McCarrick. This suggests Francis has been reversing a course he had apparently set in 2014, in which he publicly acted against a Paraguayan bishop accused of tolerating flagrant abuse -- I'll cover this tomorrow.

Throughout his time in California, Mahony has enjoyed remarkably good press. He rose in the Church via the same path that Bernard Law and Joseph Bernardin followed, allying himself closely with civil rights and anti-poverty causes, in his case Cesar Chavez and the first California governorship of Jerry Brown. This led to consistently favorable treatment from the Los Angeles Times and other California media. Although his indulgent treatment of sex offenders was comparable to Law's, he never attracted the same scrutiny in Los Angeles as Law did in Boston -- Law's association with the Bush family was probably his undoing, even though Law's practical positions on theology and liturgy were equivalent to Mahony's.

In fact, Mahony's impact on AmChurch probably exceeds that of both Bernardin and Law. Engel's The Rite Of Sodomy certainly has more to say about Mahony than Law, though I'm finding that its coverage of Mahony is poorly organized, and it often tells the story through Mahony's numerous protégés. But an example is the case of a 2003 civil suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of 17 victims of clerical abuse:

The December 2003 lawsuit exposes a portion of the clerical homosexual underworld operating out of Southern California with tentacles that reach into the American heartland. The lawsuit supports one of the major claims of this book—that clerical pederasts and homosexuals tend to gravitate toward and colonize certain administrative areas in a diocese, specifically the Chancery, diocesan major and minor seminaries, and departments connected to liturgy, religious education, canon law and finances.

According to attorneys Boucher and Drivon, unlike Cardinal Law of Boston, who was forced to resign in disgrace for his role in covering-up multiple clerical abuse cases, Cardinal Mahony has managed to survive the legal earthquakes that continue to shake the Archdiocese of Los Angeles because he enjoys the favor and protection of the ruling media and political elite.

. . . The lawsuit alleges:

In terms of shaping the make-up and philosophy ... of the archdiocese toward child molestation in the 1950s and into the 1960s, perhaps the most significant child molester faculty member of Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary was Fr. John Farris. Fr. Farris was among the most popular teachers and spiritual advisors at Our Lady Queen of Angels ...while rendering spiritual advisement, Farris sexually molested the young students at the junior seminary. During this time period, not uncoincidentally, the attrition rate of students dropping out from the junior seminary was extremely high. During this time many of the present archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in California were students at Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary, including Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop William Levada, Bishop John Steinbock, as well as former Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno. (p 807)

Engel describes a Mahony "Gang O'Four" that emerged from the Our Lady Queen of Angels seminary and the St John's major seminary in Camarillo, CA. These were Justin Rigali, Tod Brown, William Levada, and Mahony himself. These in turn sponsored or protected other gay or gay-friendly bishops, including Patrick Ziemann, the disastrous Bishop of Santa Rosa, CA; Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno; and John Steinbock, Ziemann's predecessor in the gay-friendly Santa Rosa diocese and later Bishop of Fresno, CA, where his record of handling abuse was at best mixed.

As far as I can see, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in large part because California media hasn't covered abuse cases as fully as media in other regions, and because the political establishment is aligned with liberal and gay-friendly prelates.

US Legal Updates

My own view continues to be that proceedings under secular law, especially in the US, will be the most effective short-term factor to curb an ingrained worldwide culture of Catholic sex abuse. Christine Niles mentioned the case of William Jeffrey Paulish of the Diocese of Scranton, PA in yesterday's Church Militant Headlines YouTube broadcast, but there was no equivalent print story on the site. However, it seems to have been well covered in local Pennsylvania news:

Paulish, 61, was transferred from one unsuspecting parish to another 11 times and granted two leaves of absences before he landed at St. Mary’s Church, now known as the Prince of Peace Parish, in Old Forge in October 2006, Williams said. He immediately began abusing Williams’ client.

“While Paulish, we have alleged, is the direct abuser of our client ... the diocese was responsible for having Paulish where he was in direct proximity to children,” Williams said. “It was clearly known by the diocese he was an abuser.”

The lawsuit, filed in Lackawanna County Court, names as defendants the diocese, Paulish, current bishop the Most. Rev. Joseph C. Bambera and retired bishops James C. Timlin and Joseph F. Martino.

This is yet another example of how we need a much better and more searchable index to chains of paternity. Engel in The Rite of Sodomy discusses an earlier problem in the Diocese of Scranton in which Bp Timlin protected a flagrant predator, Fr Carlos Urrutigoity, an SSPX priest who had been transferred repeatedly among seminaries for known abusive conduct with teen boys.

In February 11, 1999, Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X sent a formal communication to Bishop Timlin informing him that Father Carlos Urrutigoity had been accused of molesting a seminarian under his spiritual care at the SSPX’s St.Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn.

Bishop Fellay also indicated that in 1987, prior to Urrutigoity’s acceptance by the Winona seminary, Fr. Andres Morello, Rector of Our Lady Co- Redemptrix Seminary in La Reja, Argentina had accused the priest of homosexual practices.

According to Fr. Morello, he had intended to expel Urrutigoity from the La Reja seminary because of his significant pride, his habit of forming “particular friendships,” his formation of a faction of seminarians acting under his influence and grave denunciations regarding moral matters. (p 963)

Despite these warnings, Urrutigoity was able to leave Winona and find a place at St Gregory’s Academy in the Diocese of Scranton. Timlin discounted the allegations against Urrutigoity, but he resumed his abusive activity at the new academy, where abuse was in fact widespread.

By early 2002, Bishop Timlin was aware that Fathers Urrutigoity and Ensey were accused of sexual molestation. The District Attorney’s office of Lackawanna County had launched a criminal investigation into the accusations of sexual misconduct by the two SSJ priests, but was forced to abandon the case because of the statue of limitations. (pp 968-69)

Bishop James Timlin retired from the Scranton Diocese on July 25, 2003, with civil litigation in the case still pending. In September of this year, one of his successors,

Bishop Joseph Bambera of the diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania announced he is forbidding Bp. Emeritus James Timlin "from representing the Diocese of Scranton at all public events, liturgical or otherwise."

Bambera maintains he is acting in response to a recommendation by the diocesan independent review board, the membership of which is confidential and "put in place to advise a bishop on the assessment of allegations of abuse."

However, Bambera was at the center of a controversy earlier in 2018, in which Cardinal Roger Mahony, under equivalent restriction in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for the same offenses, nevertheless was appointed by Pope Francis to be his special envoy to the Catholic Diocese of Scranton’s 150th anniversary Mass.

“We are most grateful to our Holy Father for appointing Cardinal Mahony to be his personal envoy for this special celebration, and we are honored that the Cardinal has so graciously accepted this invitation,” Scranton Bishop Joseph C. Bambera said in this press release. “This expression of the Pope’s pastoral support is another blessing as we mark the founding of our Diocese, and we look forward to welcoming His Eminence Cardinal Mahony to celebrate this historic milestone with us.”

Local Catholics then promised to protest the event and expressed to media outlet Church Militant their frustration that the Holy See was sending the disgraced cardinal as its representative.

“Bishop Bambera was informed late last week that his Eminence, Roger Cardinal Mahony, is unable to attend the Mass commemorating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Diocese of Scranton Mass on March 4, 2018,” Bill Genello, the diocese’s executive director of communications, told LifeSiteNews on Monday.

Mahony himself is an interesting case which, barring more important news, I'll take up tomorrow.

Meanwhile,

Police have raided the chancery of the Galveston-Houston archdiocese for evidence about a priest charged with sexually abusing minors.

Several law enforcement agencies showed up at the archdiocese's offices in downtown Houston around 10 a.m. Wednesday morning to comb through the "secret archives" — the confidential documents that every diocese keeps about its personnel.

Authorities are looking for documents related to Fr. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, a priest of the archdiocese who was arrested in September on charges of sexually abusing minors. Father La Rosa-Lopez was accused of sexually abusing two teenagers — one boy and one girl — between 1998 and 2001.

Cupich And Wuerl Deny Complicity In Baltimore Delay

Thanks to a visitor for sending me the link to a Crux story from yesterday:

Cardinal Blase Cupich is firing back against claims that he sought to advance an alternative proposal for bishop accountability ahead of last week’s meeting in Baltimore, in place of the plan put forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

“The allegation is false,” the archbishop of Chicago told Crux on Sunday, in response to a Catholic News Agency (CNA) report Friday that he and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated on a separate proposal.

“At no time prior to the Baltimore meeting did the two of us collaborate in developing, nor even talk about, an alternative plan,” he said.

Further,

Cupich said that he, along with the other cardinals, were summoned to DiNardo’s hotel suite by USCCB General Secretary Monsignor Brian Bransfield on Monday morning ahead of the start of the general meeting, and they were informed of the delay. While all cardinals were invited to attend the meeting, only he and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, were present, he recalled.

Contrary to the CNA report, which alleges Wuerl and Cupich collaborated “for weeks and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore,” both Cupich and a spokesman for Wuerl insist that’s false.

Cupich told Crux that upon arrival in Baltimore, and hearing the news of the delay in voting, he consulted with numerous bishops on the plan that he eventually submitted.

I strongly suspect weasel-wording in these denials -- I tend to agree with the occasional analysis I've seen that it's in Francis's interest to delay any independent plan in the US until the February 2019 synod can address it, when, as with other Franciscan synods, he can directly control the outcome. There's little argument that in the Baltimore discussion, Cupich came out supporting Francis's delay and an agenda other than the one that was on the USCCB's table.

There's another issue here: all of a sudden, Msgr Brian Bransfield turns up as a key actor as USCCB General Secretary. We will recall that this position is an immediate stepping stone to more powerful rank in the US hierarchy, as it was Joseph Bernardin's post before he became a bishop. However, as we discovered yesterday, his cousin, Michael Bransfield, recently resigned as Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, WV.

Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

Yet Bransfield's cousin is General Secretary of the USCCB! The rot is pervasive -- and, pace Cupich and Wuerl, regardless of who ran a draft of whichever by whom on what date, there's pretty clearly an effort to promote a single agenda by Francis, Wuerl, Cupich, and Bransfield.

Back To The Papal Foundation

Via a French site a visitor pointed me to, I found an article by Matthew O'Brien in First Things from last September, The Papal Foundation & McCarrick's Conflict of Interest. We're seeing increased speculation on how Francis might somehow be encouraged to abdicate, but in light of the political background in which Bergoglio formed his sense of obligation, I would say that caudillos mostly don't leave office unless they're put on the plane by a successor group of colonels. Or put in the ground, for that matter. So I don't give the idea of abdication much chance, but then, what do I know?

I'm inclined to agree with commentators like Marco Tosatti in yesterday's post that pressure from the US legal system will probably be a better route to limiting any mischief Francis can create. Per O'Brien:

As an ex officio member of the board of cardinals which controls the Foundation, McCarrick advocated and voted four times to approve an extraordinary, expedited grant of $25 million to the Vatican, in order to help it bail out a scandal-plagued dermatology hospital that it controls, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI) in Rome: first in executive session in June 2017, then at the Foundation’s annual meeting in December 2017, again in January 2018, and finally in April 2018.

During at least the latter three votes, then-Cardinal McCarrick knew that he was under a Vatican-authorized investigation, carried out by the Archdiocese of New York, for sexually molesting a boy. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter, McCarrick knew by October 2017 at the latest that he was under investigation. Because the recipient of the $25 million grant was the Vatican, which was the very entity that would determine McCarrick’s fate as a result of the investigation it authorized into his conduct, McCarrick appears to have had a manifest and gross conflict of interest in considering the grant request in the best interest of the Papal Foundation. McCarrick stood to benefit personally if, by helping to secure $25 million for the Vatican, he could win leniency in how it handled his sex abuse case.

Under Pennsylvania law, the directors of non-profits such as the Papal Foundation are under an obligation to disclose material conflicts of interest to their organization’s directors and officers, and to recuse themselves from board decisions in which their conflict of interest is implicated. McCarrick failed to make any disclosures to the Papal Foundation’s board or to recuse himself from board decisions, according to people present at the board meetings in 2017 and 2018.

O'Brien then lists at length circumstances under which the foundation board has not operated under legal definitions of "good faith" in disbursing grants, in particular by not confirming with the ultimate grantees whether they actually received the amounts designated in the foundation's grants. The basic problem is that the foundation sends the grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State, which passes it on to the grantee. The clear issue is whether, as a possible example, the foundation granted the Secretariat of State $200,000 for a school project, but the school received only $20,000, with the remainder going elsewhere.

In late 2017 Cardinal Wuerl tasked the Foundation’s legal counsel to review its operations and bylaws for legal compliance. In a letter dated December 29, 2017, a copy of which was provided to me by a person involved with the Papal Foundation, its own attorneys identify five problem areas in the Foundation’s operations and procedures. Two of these were particularly important: first, an apparent general failure to confirm that the ultimate recipients of its grants were operated in a fashion analogous to US public charities; second, an apparent general failure to obtain meaningful audits or accountings of how grant beneficiaries spent the money they received. The Foundation’s attorneys concluded this assessment with an injunction, “There must be some accountability for the Board to satisfy itself that funds are indeed expended for charity.”

The cardinals’ board of the Papal Foundation apparently distributed its charitable grants in a manner that made them remarkably vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement, and in so doing, the board appears to have contravened its own bylaws, and thus violated Pennsylvania civil law as well. The Foundation’s chosen partner in distributing grants, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has a longstanding reputation of financial mismanagement. In recent years the Secretary of State himself, Cardinal Parolin’s predecessor Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was personally involved in misappropriating $500,000 in charitable assets to double pay a contractor friend to renovate his Vatican apartment, and also in directing millions of dollars from the Holy See into now-failed Italian television venture owned by his friends.

O'Brien raises questions about whether approving or directing Papal Foundation grants was a factor in McCarrick's rise, as well as that of other McCarrick protégés.

No prelate has been more consistently and intimately involved in the Papal Foundation than McCarrick, who helped to found the non-profit in 1988 alongside the late Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and Cardinal O’Connor of New York. The current chairman of the controlling board of cardinals is Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington. Before he was elevated to the cardinalate and moved to Rome, then-Bishop Kevin Farrell, McCarrick’s protégé and former housemate in Washington, was a member of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees. The current president of the board of trustees is another McCarrick protégé, Bishop Michael Bransfield.

. . . Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

The first executive director of the Papal Foundation, who served from 1988 until 2001, was a priest named Monsignor Thomas Benestad. Benestad, who retired early from his home Diocese of Allentown and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, is accused in the Pennsylvania Grant Jury Report of sexually abusing boy over a period of years in the early 1980s, beginning when he was nine years old.

. . . Benestad, Bransfield, and McCarrick have been three of the most important clerical leaders of the Papal Foundation, and all face serious allegations of sex abuse. Some of these allegations were widely known for decades, but did not prevent the men from rising from one ecclesiastical preferment to the next. Did these men use the grant-making power of the Papal Foundation to curry favor and buy protection from Vatican officials? Did they enable the misappropriation of the Foundation’s charitable grants? The only way to answer these questions is with an independent investigation of the Papal Foundation, along with a forensic accounting of its past grants.

Such an investigation would not face canonical impediments or infringe upon the proper authority of bishops over their dioceses. The Papal Foundation is not an ecclesiastical entity, but an ordinary 501(c)(3) religious non-profit. No permission from Rome is necessary. The Foundation’s board could commission an investigation with a simple vote. If the Foundation does not authorize its own independent investigation, it may nonetheless find itself facing one from state or federal authorities.

The US legal path strikes me as a potentially much more effective route to imposing reform on the Vatican, if the Vatican can't reform itself. In fact, the O'Brien article provides the outline for a "lay-led" investigation of how McCarrick rose in the hierarchy despite his well-known record of abuse -- and it could be done, for instance by an entity connected with Timothy Busch's charities, without approval of the Vatican or the USCCB.

The Current Crisis And The Legal Status Of The Vatican

A visitor very kindly sent me a PDF of an article whose abstract is available here, "The International Legal Status of the Vatican/Holy See Complex", by John R Morss, which appeared in the European Journal of International Law in 2016. The site says it isn't available for download, so I'm not sure how visitors may be able to find a copy, although interested parties can certainly e-mail me, and I'll forward my copy.

The abstract says,

This article offers a re-examination of the international legal status of what is here termed the Vatican/Holy See complex (VHS), focusing on claims to statehood. The problematic ‘effect’ of Vatican City, of the Holy See, of the papacy and of associated entities is interrogated at the level of international law, entering as little as possible into administrative or theological distinctions. The various grounds cited as supporting status amounting to statehood are argued to be inadequate.

As I've mentioned here already, the current crisis has offered so far a small number of instances in which the Vatican has used its diplomatic status to avoid legal accountability for high-level officials. Cardinal Law's departure from Boston for Rome in 2003, although it was not to avoid direct legal jeopardy, would have made him effectively unavailable for civil depositions, and observers have suggested this as a reason he never returned to the US afterward. Others have suggested Cardinal Wuerl might find it in his interest to leave for Rome and stay there for similar reasons.

More recently, "The Vatican has told French authorities that Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), cannot testify at a clerical sexual abuse trial in Lyon because he enjoys immunity due to the Holy See's sovereign status." A more pressing question, although it's largely outside the scope of the subject here, is how the Vatican has or hasn't lived up to its legal responsibilities as a player in the international banking system.

Morss argues,

[A]n agreement was reached between the incumbent Pope and Benito Mussolini in 1929, according to which a small area of Rome (the Vatican City) would be treated by the Kingdom of Italy as having special status. The international status of this ‘sui generis’ entity is both conceptually problematic and of practical concern – whether this status amounts to statehood or to something less than statehood.

. . . To the extent that the Vatican City or the Holy See has either internationally recognized statehood, or a status that in any way approaches statehood so as to sustain any of the privileges that go with statehood, then any ‘normal’ criminal investigation is impeded. (p 928)

Morss discusses the arbitrary and ambiguous relationship between the "Holy See" and the international entity of the Vatican State.

[T]he Holy See is defined expansively in the Code of Canon Law as comprising the pontiff, the Roman Curia and ‘that which appears from natural law or the context’. At the same time, ‘a country does not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but with the Holy See’. In its preparatory work for the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Law Commission noted that treaties are ‘entered into not by reason of territorial sovereignty over the Vatican State, but on behalf of the Holy See, which exists separately from that State’. (p 930)

It seems to me that in normal circumstances, this is a purely theoretical, not a practical, question. But the quote attributed to Stalin, "The pope -- how many divisions has he got?" bears some resonance if we try to consider the Vatican as a nation-state. Since 1870, popes have usually relied on moral suasion in the international field; if a pontiff addresses the United Nations, it's on the same basis as the Dalai Lama, but if the President of the United States speaks, it's to articulate policy that can be backed up with legal, financial, and military muscle.

Even Pius XII and John Paul II acted on the global political scene by indirection, mostly just giving prestige to movements like resistance to Hitler or support for Polish Solidarity, even if such movements were informally or secretly coordinated with the Vatican. But if the Vatican tries to use diplomatic legal standing to protect ecclesiastical bad actors, this could alter the situation.

Morss looks primarily at the legal and diplomatic foundation of the Vatican as the successor to the Papal States (where the pope did in fact have divisions). But, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, popes were players in European power politics beyond the Italian peninsula, with decidedly mixed results. The European religious wars during this period were good for no one, fought the Protestants only to a stalemate, and quite possibly distracted the Church from the more important agenda of defeating Mahometanism, which was resurgent.

I'm still thinking this over, but I wonder if the current crisis signals the start of a new realignment. Morss concludes,

Either the responsibilities that go with statehood must be fully embraced or the immunities that go with statehood must be fully relinquished. The analysis presented above supports the second of these options. What is needed now, in other words, is an appropriately Franciscan gesture of humility. (p 946)

Francesca Chaouqui, Emiliano Fittipaldi, And Gianluigi Nuzzi: Vatileaks II

So let's look at "Vatileaks II", which is a scandal that's based in large part on the unique diplomatic status of the Vatican and also explains in part why commissions, lay-led investigations, special prosecutors, or whatever other remedies some people may propose to remedy the Second Crisis aren't going to work.

The most intriguing case is of Francesca Chaouqui,

In the first big scandal to hit the papacy of Pope Francis, Ms Chaouqui was put on trial for leaking documents to two Italian journalists who subsequently wrote best-selling books about corruption, infighting and skullduggery inside the tiny city state.

She was convicted by a Vatican court last year and sentenced to 10 months in jail in what was dubbed the Vatileaks II trial, but was given a suspended sentence because she was pregnant.

I question how this is the "first big scandal", but I'll let that go. Ms Chaouqui, a thirtysomething public relations consultant, was put on a "financial reform commission" by Francis soon after his accession in 2013. I haven't been able to find the actual name of this commission -- it may be related to a commission or commissions set up in response to "Vatileaks I" discusssed in yesterday's post -- but I think it's interesting that a PR person would be put on a financial commission and then be accused of leaking information.

UPDATE: A visitor referred me to this site (in Italian), which calls it "Cosea , the reference commission for study and orientation on the organization of the economic and administrative structures of the Holy See, led by the Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda. Both were arrested in the Vatican for the leak of information and disclosure of confidential documents."

Er, why have a PR flack of any sort on such a commission? Normally, in a real country with real banking, securities, and tax laws, such a commission would have members from major audit firms and outside counsel. PR duties, if any, would go to someone's staff and be limited to tight-lipped announcements. A full report would be confidential, and CEOs and such would quietly resign to "spend more time with their families". Instead, in the Vatican, we have a sexpot on the commission itself freelancing like an Italian Nancy Drew to get her own secret messages from the conspirators:

In her book, In The Name of Peter, the 35-year-old public relations executive reveals for the first time that she had a mole in the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State.

He kept her abreast of what was going on there by leaving secret notes in a confessional in the 16th century San Luigi dei Francesi church, which is famous for Caravaggio paintings that hang on its walls.

Well, this commission's sure gonna get to the bottom of the whole thing, huh? Maybe they need to hire Inspector Clouseau as well.

Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi are two Italian journalists indicted by the Vatican for publishing classified information from Ms Chaouqui in books. However,

Nuzzi and fellow journalist Emmanuele Fittipaldi were put on trial in a Vatican court in 2015 after both published books based on leaked documents that exposed the greed, mismanagement and corruption at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. In July 2016, after an eight-month trial, the Vatican’s criminal court declared it had no jurisdiction to prosecute them.

The court did, however, convict Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was sentenced to 18 months, and public relations consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who was sentenced to 10 months.

The first, and by far the most basic, question I have is why the US bishops -- and Cardinals DiNardo and O'Malley, with Abp Gómez, strike me as accomplished institutional actors -- would make requests for some new sort of Vatican commission, a lay-led investigation, and "transparency", when it could not be clearer what the result would be even if Pope Francis agreed this was a good idea. In fact, if I were Francis, I'd be saying, "Signora Chaouqui! It's all been a huge mistake! I now need your expertise to chair this extremely important new commission!"

On the other hand, that Ms Chaouqui and a couple of other minor players should be convicted, while the two Italian journalists get off on a jurisdictional issue, raises another interesting question, the legal and diplomatic status of the Vatican, which I'll try to get to, or at least start with, tomorrow.

More Context On Msgr Ricca

As I do more research on Battista Ricca, I'm finding he's at the fulcrum of the other major Vatican scandals -- or at least, those that have reached the European press in the last several years. Let's start with Vatileaks, or as some commentators call it now, Vatileaks I. According to Wikipedia,

The scandal first came to light in late January 2012 in a television program aired in Italy under the name of The Untouchables (Gli intoccabili), and escalated in May 2012 when Gianluigi Nuzzi published a book entitled His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI consisting of confidential letters and memos.

Among the documents were letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by then apostolic nuncio to the United States, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him.

The scandal appears to have been less about the financial corruption than that the information was leaked.

Paolo Gabriele, who had been the pope's personal butler since 2007, leaked the stolen information to Gianluigi Nuzzi. He was arrested on 23 May 2012 after confidential letters and documents addressed to the pope and other Vatican officials were found in his Vatican apartment.

A separate investigation took place concerning the financial and administrative problems.

The Vatican probe into the leaks worked along several tracks, with Vatican magistrates pursuing the criminal investigation and the Vatican secretariat of state an administrative probe. In March 2012 Pope Benedict appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks. The three cardinals appointed by Benedict acted in a supervisory role, looking beyond the narrow criminal scope of the leaks to interview broadly across the Vatican bureaucracy; they purportedly uncovered a sexual and blackmail scandal.

One outcome of the investigation appears to have been that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had been president of the Vatican Bank (IOR) since 2009, was forced from his position in May 2012, although this seems to have been connected with other controversies not necessarily related to the cardinals' investigation. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore that once he became pope, Bergoglio put his corrupt ally Battista Ricca into the position of IOR president.

Although Francis's "Who am I to judge?" remarks on July 29, 2013 were very well publicized, it's less well known that they were made in the context of a question about Battista Ricca and his flagrant homosexual background.

Ricca was also a subject of earlier complaints by Abp Viganò at the time of the 2012 Vatileaks scandal. The visitor with insights into the Italian press sent me a link to a much more recent story in il Giornale from September 3, 2018. The translation is via Google translate with a few emendations of clear errors:

Another burning case is likely to shake the Vatican. The polemics raised by the publication of the so-called "Viganò dossier" are not allayed. The document of the apostolic nuncio was announced a week ago, but the alleged revelations brought to the forefront continue to hold the bank.

The last to express themselves on the content of those pages, in order of time, was the journalist Sandro Magister.

. . . Magister, in the interview with La Verità , reported the existence of another affair, the one related to Monsignor Ricca : "There is a twin case, perhaps even more embarrassing: that of Monsignor Battista Ricca. Seventh heaven" [see below]. The clergyman in question would have been responsible for behaviors not in line with the provisions of Catholic doctrine and tradition: "In Montevideo - Magister said - between 1999 and 2001, he lived under the eyes of everyone with his lover , the former captain of the Swiss army Patrick Haari ". And again: "He attended places of appointment with young homosexuals, once he was involved in a fight and another was discovered in an elevator blocked inside the nunciature with an eighteen-year-old known to the Uruguayan police. He was recalled to Rome, his career did not suffer damage, indeed began again as if nothing had happened ".

Monsignor Ricca would have been appointed to the IOR prelature despite these events. Pope Francis was aware of these facts? A similar question was answered by Magister: "In 2013 the Pope was aware and consenting: the nuncios warned him and the documentation sent by the Uruguayan bishops was complete." A question on Ricca and the gay lobby replied: 'I did what the canon law sends to do, the Investigatio previa, and there is nothing that they are accused of". "The offices - specified the journalist - had omitted the most troubled passages, but he had submitted the true documentation and did not speak". Then the clarification: "Ricca never repented. He went out on the Espresso and did not react, with his friends he talked about chatter. Francesco also dismissed them as talk. By pronouncing the famous phrase 'Who am I to judge?' - Magister pointed out -, Francesco referred to the archetypal case of Ricca. With these words, Bergoglio overturned in his favor a public affair that could have undermined his credibility. When he refers to gay issues in the media world, the Pope does something clever. "The clash in the Vatican, meanwhile, seems to have just begun.

The visitor comments,

Reference to "seventh heaven"...it the translation of name of Sandro Magister's blog septimo cielo carried by larepubblica.it went behind a subscription paywall about a year ago.The Vatican had no more attentive theologically astute observer tracking it. And they hate him. I think they tried to have him suppressed, so now he's more remote for me.

The separate Vatican investigation into the financial irregularities in the IOR referred to above appears to have collapsed with a second Vatileaks scandal -- sometimes referred to as Vatileaks II -- in 2017, which I will discuss tomorrow. However, it appears from the information we have that Ricca was placed in his position by Francis specifically to forestall any serious review of the IOR.

But beyond that, the Wikipedia entry cited above refers to a dossier on the scandals as of 2012:

On 17 December 2012 the Pope received a report on "Vatican lobbies" prepared by cardinals Julián Herranz, Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo, and Jozef Tomko. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, speaking on Vatican Radio on 23 February 2013, strongly criticized media coverage of the report as a financial scandal which purportedly became, upon the cardinals' internal investigation, a gay sex and blackmail scandal as well.

Although the dossier was available only to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the investigators themselves, the latter were free to discuss the results of their investigation with the Cardinal electors of the March 2013 papal conclave, and the dossier itself was to have been given to Benedict's successor as Pope, Francis.

It's been speculated that this dossier was the proximate cause of Benedict's abdication in February 2013. While the contents remain confidential, it's hard not to speculate that Ricca is a key figure in making sure the issues that are apparently discussed in it are not addressed.

Msgr Battista Ricca

A visitor who follows the Italian press has sent me pointers to stories that are covered there but are underreported elsewhere and, as far as I can see, are not covered at all in the US Catholic press -- not even by Church Militant. (Come to think of it, I'd follow the German press if anything interesting happened there.) It's a bit puzzling that nobody's followed these stories in the US, since, as Raymond Arroyo has noted, the corruption in the Church has fathers, and those fathers must be in Rome.

Msgr Battista Ricca is the Prelate of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), commonly called the Vatican Bank. He has a remarkably colorful background. The best English-language coverage I've found is in the UK Guardian from 2013:

Papal nunciate who lived openly with his male lover in Uruguay appointed by pope to senior job in the Vatican

On 15 June, the pope appointed Monsignor Battista Ricca, an Italian cleric and former Vatican diplomat, to be "prelate" of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). As such, Ricca is entitled to attend meetings of both the bodies that oversee the scandal-ridden IOR's operations – its board and a five-strong commission of cardinals. The prelate can also demand to see any document he cares to inspect.

According to the latest edition of the weekly news magazine L'Espresso, Ricca has a past punctuated with scandal. Its report, which the pope's spokesman branded as "not trustworthy", claimed Ricca lived more or less openly with a Swiss army officer while at the Holy See's nunciature (embassy) in Uruguay. It said he arrived with his lover and, while running the post between nuncios, provided him with both accommodation and a job.

The weekly magazine said Ricca was once beaten up in a gay bar in Montevideo and that, when the lift at the nunciature broke down in the night, firefighters called to deal with the emergency found him inside with a local rent boy known to police. It said that, after he was transferred to Trinidad and Tobago, that his alleged lover left trunks behind in Uruguay containing his effects. When they were opened later, they were found to contain a pistol, large numbers of prophylactics and sizeable quantities of pornography, the magazine said. Ricca has not made any comment on the allegations.

The Guardian echoes the Italian press in cutting to the chase:

That points to the key questions in the affair: whether Pope Francis knew of the claims against Ricca before he handed him one of the most sensitive jobs in the Vatican. And if not, why not? After he was recalled to Rome, Ricca served in the Vatican's secretariat of state before being given charge of first one, and eventually three, of the guest houses that the Holy See uses to accommodate church dignitaries on visits to Rome.

It was at one of these that the future pope met the Italian cleric. Their friendship was cemented after the pope's election when Francis decided not to occupy the lavish papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, but to remain at the guest house, run by Ricca, in which he stayed during the election.

It would have been standard procedure for him to call in Ricca's personal file before making the appointment and – whatever the truth or otherwise of the claims against him – it is inconceivable that he would have gone ahead had he known about them. It is hard to imagine a more dangerous official for the pope than one charged with shaking up the IOR, yet acutely vulnerable to blackmail.

The conclusion in all this coverage is remarkably polite: it's inconceivable that the Holy Father would hire this guy in light of his history -- someone must have scrubbed his file, huh? An alternate explanation is that this ain't a bug, it's a feature. In light of the Viganò testimony, this would be another circumstance in which Francis, as he was with McCarrick, was fully aware of an individual's sketchy background but made him a key deputy or important adviser.

Ricca continues as the head of the IOR. I would say the question is not whether he's a danger to the pope, but precisely because he's vulnerable to blackmail, he owes Francis everything. Without his patronage, he'd be banished to some remote monastery living out his days in prayer and penance.

There's a second question attached to this one, too: how did a character who was about as well suited to a diplomatic post as Guy Burgess then wind up as the hotel manager for the Vatican guest houses? It seems as though this could also put him in a position where he could learn some secrets of his own -- wouldn't bigwigs from out of town be disposed to seek out companionship? Wouldn't the guy who ran the guest house be in a position to help out?

I asked my visitor if Francis is still at the Casa Santa Marta guest house, and he replied he still is. I asked why it might be to his advantage to stay there, and he said it's a good question.