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Vatican Villains

ramonmercado

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Cardinal's profit mission and an FBI investigation into sale of church property
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 61337.html

JASON BERRY

Tue, Jan 17, 2012

RITE AND REASON: IN 2005 parishioners of St James in the farm belt town of Kansas, Ohio, recoiled when Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, facing a tight budget, closed the parish, steering them to one several miles away. They filed an appeal to the Vatican. It failed.

Then they sued in a local county court, arguing that the bishop was a trustee but parishioners owned the property. The state sided with the bishop. “We spent $100,000 in legal fees,” said parishioner Virginia Hull. “Bishop Blair paid his lawyers with $77,957 from our parish account.” Blair had the church demolished.

Canon law says a parish is “a juridic person”. But that “person”, like an olden slave, does not own itself. The bishop does. Nevertheless, a federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts barred the bishop there from razing a church deemed a historic landmark. Parish ownership is unresolved in American law.

A US Catholic parish has closed on average once a week for the last 20 years. Many bishops have sold churches to plug deficits, or pay for abuse cases caused by their negligence or their predecessors’.

The idea that each bishop stands in a lineage going back to Jesus’s disciples renders them immune from prosecution for recycling abuse predators or selling churches to cover mistakes. Since 2005 at least 95 parishes from 21 US dioceses have appealed to Vatican courts. At least 12 closures won partial reprieves in the Syracuse, Buffalo, and Allentown, Pennsylvania dioceses.

The Apostolic Signatura (Vatican supreme court), in a split-the-baby ruling, decided that the protesting parishes were “sacred” property not to be sold, but would not restore them as active churches. Juridic “persons” slumber in the folds of legal farce.

In July 2003 Boston’s then new archbishop Cardinal Seán O’Malley visited Rome seeking financial help to resolve 552 abuse cases. He met Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano and Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then in charge of the Congregation for the Clergy, which oversees the liquidation of diocesan assets.

They gave O’Malley carte blanche to sell properties. In Boston, parish sit-ins ignited bad press and a deep slide in donations.

Cardinal Sodano saw profit horizons. He installed an under-secretary at the Vatican who fed information on closing churches to a New York company, the Follieri Group. Its vice-president was Andrea Sodano, a building engineer in Italy and a nephew of the cardinal. The cardinal greeted potential investors at a New York launch party.

The Follieri website promoted its ties to Vatican officials. Its business plan: find churches, buy low, sell high. When an investor sued Follieri for profligate spending, the FBI investigated.

Follieri had wired $387,000 to the Vatican Bank account of a lay staffer in cahoots with Andrea Sodano. Cardinal Sodano’s nephew’s invoices netted more than $800,000 for work the FBI deemed worthless. Raffaello Follieri today is in prison for fraud and money laundering.

Nepotism, from the Italian “nipote”, means nephew. The FBI considers Andrea Sodano, the Vatican under-secretary and a lay staffer there to be “unindicted co-conspirators”. It helps to have an uncle in robes.

Pope Benedict should empanel constitutional scholars to create a court system for criminal issues and church property. But first, he should sack Cardinal Sodano – now Dean of the College of Cardinals and who will oversee the election of the next Pope.

It would give some sign of papal belief that St Augustine was correct: justice is a virtue.

Jason Berry is a multi award-winning journalist in the US for his pioneering work on clergy child abuse. His latest book is the newly-released Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money In the Catholic Church.

Edit to amend title.
 
The Vatican Bank again.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano held in Vatican bank inquiry
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23094320

Footage shows Monsignor Scarano being escorted to and from a police station, as the BBC's Alan Johnston reports from

A senior Italian cleric has been arrested in connection with an inquiry into a Vatican bank scandal over allegations of corruption and fraud.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano works in the Vatican's financial administration. A secret service agent and a financial broker have also been arrested.

They are suspected of trying to move 20m euros ($26m; £17m) illegally.

Pope Francis ordered an unprecedented internal investigation into the bank's affairs in the wake of recent scandals.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis
image of David Willey
David Willey
BBC News, Rome

An allegedly corrupt Italian monsignor who until recently helped administer the Vatican's financial assets ends up in handcuffs and is hauled off to prison in Rome together with a financial broker friend and an Italian secret service agent.

Pope Francis's new attempt this week to impose transparency and clarity on the Vatican's financial dealings could not be more timely. A sweeping internal investigation into the running of the Vatican's own bank was announced only two days ago. The result is to be on the Pope's desk "promptly", and a cardinal on the commission of inquiry has already admitted that major reforms are necessary.

Traditionally, great secrecy has been imposed by the Vatican on the bank's functions. The Vatican has hitherto concealed its activities behind a wall of confidentiality, justified by the sovereign status of the papal enclave situated in the heart of Rome.

Monsignor Scarano, 61, worked for years as a senior accountant for a Vatican department known as Apsa (the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See).

He was suspended from that position "about a month ago, after his superiors learnt about an investigation into his activities", Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

Monsignor Scarano has been under investigation by Italian police for a series of suspicious transactions involving the recycling through the Vatican bank of a series of cheques described as church donations.

Nunzio Scarano is a priest from Salerno in southern Italy, who is called "monsignor" in recognition of his seniority at the Vatican.

He was arrested along with two other men suspected of plotting to move 20m euros illegally from Switzerland to Italy. One, Giovanni Maria Zito, is described as an Italian secret service agent, and the other, Giovanni Carenzio, a financial broker.

Secretive bank
Earlier this month, the Pope named a trusted cleric to oversee the management of the bank, which has been beset by allegations of money laundering.

Continue reading the main story
Vatican Bank scandal
September 2010: Italian police launch investigation into money laundering at the bank
December 2010: Vatican sets up financial authority to fight money laundering and make financial operations more transparent
May 2012: Bank chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi dismissed for dereliction of duty
January 2013: Italian central bank suspends all bank card payments in the Vatican, citing its failure to fully implement anti-money laundering legislation
February 2013: German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg appointed to head bank
June 2013: Pope Francis sets up a commission to review the bank's activities
Officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the bank is one of the world's most secretive. It has 114 employees and 5.4bn euros of assets.

Pope Francis has given the commission carte blanche, bypassing normal secrecy rules, to try to get to the bottom of scandals which have plagued the bank for decades.

Traditionally, the Vatican Bank has refused to co-operate with Italian authorities investigating financial crime on the grounds of the sovereign independence of the Vatican city state, the BBC's David Willey reports from Rome.

But Pope Francis has shown that he is now determined to get to the bottom of long-standing allegations of corruption and money laundering involving the bank, our correspondent adds.

The Institute for the Works of Religion was a major shareholder in the Banco Ambrosiano, a big Italian bank which collapsed in 1982 with losses of more than $3bn.

Its chairman, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London - in a murder disguised as a suicide. Mr Calvi had close relations with the Vatican.
 
Vatican bank director and deputy resign amid scandal
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23138680

Headquarters of Vatican Bank (file pic)

The Vatican bank has been plagued by financial scandals for decades

The director and deputy director of the Vatican bank have resigned following the arrest of a senior Italian cleric over corruption and fraud allegations.

Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli offered to step down on Monday "in the best interest of the institute and the Holy See'', the Vatican says.

It comes three days after the arrest of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano.

The 61-year-old and two others are suspected of trying to move 20m euros ($26m; £17m) illegally.

Monsignor Scarano, a priest from southern Italy, worked for years as a senior accountant for a Vatican department known as Apsa (the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See).

He has been under investigation by Italian police for a series of suspicious transactions involving the recycling through the Vatican bank of a series of cheques described as church donations.

The two other men arrested on 28 July have been named as Giovanni Maria Zito, who is described as an Italian secret service agent, and Giovanni Carenzio, a financial broker.

Secretive
Ernst von Freyberg, the current president of the bank, would serve as its interim director, taking over from Mr Cipriani, a Vatican statement said.

A new position of chief risk officer would also be created to improve compliance with financial regulations.

Last week, Pope Francis set up a commission of inquiry to look into the bank, which has been beset by allegations of money laundering for decades. He had already named a trusted cleric to oversee the way the institution had been managed.

Officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the bank is one of the world's most secretive. It has 114 employees and 5.4bn euros of assets.

The scandal is an embarrassment to the Vatican with Pope Francis campaigning for the Catholic Church to be closer to the people of the developing world.

Some churchmen are even questioning whether the Vatican needs its own bank, BBC Rome correspondent David Willey reports.
 
Vatican cleric Scarano charged with money-laundering
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25831234

Undated file photo of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano spent two decades working as a Vatican accountant

A senior Italian cleric has been charged with laundering millions through the Vatican bank, police say.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is already on trial and under house arrest on separate charges of plotting to smuggle 20m euros ($26m; £17m) into Italy.

The former Vatican accountant and two other people were served with arrest warrants on Tuesday, police said.

Last year, Pope Francis set up a commission to review the bank's activities after a series of scandals.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

image of David Willey
David Willey
BBC News, Rome
Italian tax police released a video showing details of the monsignor's luxurious 17-room home in Salerno furnished with valuable antiques.

Vatican investigators are currently going through the bank accounts of many clerics working in areas of southern Italy, where organised crime syndicates operate.

Monsignor Scarano spent several months last year awaiting trial in Rome's Queen of Heaven prison, and was then released to house arrest for health reasons. American financial inspectors appointed by Pope Francis believe the monsignor may not be alone in having used the Vatican bank for money-laundering operations.

Traditionally the Vatican has opposed the right of the Italian judiciary to investigate alleged crimes committed by its officials on the grounds of diplomatic immunity and privilege, reports the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

But under Pope Francis, increased cooperation between the Vatican and Italian authorities led to the arrest of Monsignor Scarano last summer, our correspondent says.

'False donations'
On Tuesday, police seized some 6.5m euros in bank accounts and real estate, including Monsignor Scarano's luxury apartment in the southern city of Salerno.

Authorities said the latest charges against the cleric related to "false donations", which he allegedly recycled from offshore accounts through the Vatican bank.

Prosecutors allege that Monsignor Scarano got dozens of people to make contributions to a home for the terminally ill in Salerno, and used the money to pay off a mortgage on one of his properties.

Another Catholic priest has also been arrested on charges of laundering and making false statements, officials say.

Vatican bank
The Vatican bank is one of the world's most secretive financial institutions
Monsignor Scarano worked for two decades as a senior accountant in a Vatican department known as Apsa (the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See).

Continue reading the main story
Vatican Bank scandal

September 2010: Italian police launch investigation into money laundering at the bank
December 2010: Vatican sets up financial authority to fight money laundering and make financial operations more transparent
May 2012: Bank chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi dismissed for dereliction of duty
January 2013: Italian central bank suspends all bank card payments in the Vatican, citing its failure to fully implement anti-money laundering legislation
February 2013: German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg appointed to head bank
June 2013: Pope Francis sets up a commission to review the bank's activities
The division manages the Vatican's real estate holdings and stock portfolios.

The cleric was suspended from his position last year, after he was accused of conspiring to smuggle millions from Switzerland into Italy with the help of a secret service agent and a financial broker.

The trio's high-profile trial began in early December in Rome.

Officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican bank is one of the world's most secretive. It has 114 employees and 5.4bn euros of assets.

The bank is undergoing a major restructuring on the orders of Pope Francis.

He has hired an American financial services company to examine all 19,000 accounts to ensure that international rules against money laundering are being correctly observed.
 
Any Germans living in the Vatican? He'll probably get in more trouble over the condoms.

Germany intercepts cocaine-filled condoms sent to Vatican
http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0323/604027 ... s-vatican/
Sunday 23 March 2014 10.31
The 14 condoms filled with cocaine was sent to Vatican

German customs officials have intercepted a package addressed to the Vatican containing 14 condoms filled with cocaine.

Newspaper Bild am Sonntag said that a box packed with 340 grammes of cocaine valued at €40,000 were seized at the international airport in the eastern city of Leipzig in January.

The narcotics, posted from an unnamed South American country, were in liquid form and had been poured into the condoms and placed in the package addressed to the main postal centre at the Vatican.

The newspaper, citing a German customs report, said authorities handed the package with the drugs to a police officer at the Vatican with the aim of laying a trap for a culprit who might try to claim it.

But Bild said the parcel had remained there since January.

German investigators believe the intended recipient, who remains unknown, was likely tipped off that the package had been intercepted, the newspaper said.

The Vatican office of Interpol is now working on the investigation with German police, according to the report.

German customs authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.
 
Men held over Vatican Bank 'three trillion euro bond fraud'
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26811528

The headquarters of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) the Vatican's bank

The Vatican bank is among the world's most secretive financial institutions

Italian police have arrested two men who were allegedly trying to deposit trillions of euros in fake bonds in the Vatican bank.

Officials say the pair, an American and a Dutch national, claimed they had an appointment with bank officials to gain entry but were handed over to police.

Fake bonds with a face value of 3tr euros ($4.1tr; £2.5tr) were found in their briefcase, the officials say.

The suspects were reportedly hoping to open a line of credit at the bank.

The bank - officially called the Institute for the Works of Religion - runs thousands of private accounts held by cardinals, bishops and religious orders all over the world.

The two suspects were later released pending further investigation, Financial Guard police officer Davide Cardia told AP news agency, as Italian law does not require arrest for fraud investigations.

The Vatican has been tightening up banking procedures after criticism by a European watchdog body that it has been used as an offshore fiscal haven.

Pope Francis has ordered a complete overhaul of the bank and a detailed inquiry into the transparency of its transactions.

The pontiff sacked two former directors who now face possible trial on money-laundering charges.
 
Doing their best to break links with villains.

Vatican bank clean-up wipes out profit for 2013

The Vatican bank has seen its 2013 profit almost wiped out largely due to a clean-up process which has seen it end relationships with 3,000 customers.

The bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works, reported a 2.9m euro (£2.3m) profit for the year, down from 86.6m euros in 2012.

Most of its losses came from the winding up of investments made before its reform programme began.

Without these, it said profit would have been 70m euros.

Pope Francis has sought to stamp out corruption and other abuses at the Vatican bank, which handles funds for the Catholic Church.

He pledged to clean up the bank following accusations of money laundering and a lack of due diligence which allowed non-religious, and even crony, businessmen to hold accounts.

Between May 2013 until June this year, outside experts combed through all the bank's accounts in what the Vatican said was a "systematic screening of all existing customer records". ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28211798
 
But were the villains inside the bank?

The Vatican's top prosecutor has frozen 16 million euros in bank accounts owned by two former Vatican bank managers and a lawyer as part of an investigation into the sale of Vatican-owned real estate in the 2000s, according to the freezing order and other legal documents.

Prosecutor Gian Piero Milano said he suspected the three men, former bank president Angelo Caloia, ex-director general Lelio Scaletti, and lawyer Gabriele Liuzzo, of embezzling money while managing the sale of 29 buildings sold by the Vatican bank to mainly Italian buyers between 2001 and 2008, according to a copy of the freezing order reviewed by Reuters.

The money in the three men's bank accounts "stems from embezzlement they were engaged in," Milano said in the October 27 sequester order.

Milano's investigation follows an audit of the Vatican bank by non-Vatican financial consultants commissioned last year by the bank's current management. The Vatican bank earlier this year also filed a legal complaint against the three men. The men have not been charged. ...

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-prosecu ... nance.html
 
The Vatican on Monday said it had arrested two members of a papal reform commission on suspicion of leaking classified information, opening a week of intrigue as the Holy See braces for two potentially damaging books purporting to reveal inside corruption.

The upcoming books — including one by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi whose 2012 book on a so-called “Vatileaks” scandal rocked the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI — are set to offer fresh revelations into fraud and mismanagement as well as challenges to Pope Francis’s push for reforms.

[Conservative dissent is brewing inside the Vatican]

In a statement, the Vatican appeared to tie any bombshells in the upcoming books to two sources: Spanish priest Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, former secretary of Francis’s financial and bureaucratic reform committee, and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian public relations executive tapped in 2013 to bring a touch of modern thinking to the Holy See and who became known in some circles as the “the pope’s lobbyist.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...54ba46-816d-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html
 
Vatican’s dodgy goings-on
Toby Abse reviews: Gianluigi Nuzzi Merchants in the temple: inside Pope Francis’s secret battle against corruption in the Vatican Henry Holt and Company, 2015, pp224, £24.99


Gianluigi Nuzzi’s Merchants in the temple is one of two books published in November 2015 - the other being Emiliano Fittipaldi’s Avarizia - which have been written on the basis of secret Vatican documents. They include an audiotape of a furious pope Francis admonishing Vatican officials and many key cardinals about corruption and financial mismanagement at a meeting on July 3 2013. They were leaked to journalists in what became known as ‘Vatileaks 2’.

The original Vatileaks was a similar episode in 2012, when Nuzzi was given a large bundle of important documents by Joseph Ratzinger’s butler - documents which formed the basis for Nuzzi’s earlier book Sua santita. On the previous occasion, the butler - Paolo Gabriele - was tried and found guilty of theft by the Vatican authorities; on the second occasion Nuzzi and Fittipaldi have been charged by the Vatican authorities and are being tried along with three insiders allegedly responsible for the current leaks, which occurred electronically through a computer system, whose password was only known to a very restricted group.

Nuzzi and Fittipaldi were only doing their job as investigative journalists and there seems to be a consensus amongst their colleagues that what they did in receiving and then employing the documents in serious works seeking to make public financial crimes and misdemeanours involving high-ranking clergy (as opposed to, say, using the documents for illicit private gain by blackmailing clergy involved in financial misappropriations) would not be a crime under current Italian law - although in the last 20 years various Italian politicians, not just Silvio Berlusconi, have been eagerly attempting to criminalise the publication of leaked judicial, and other sensitive documents within Italy, so far without success.

Initially the Vatican seemed anxious to finish the trial as rapidly as possible without any regard to judicial procedures of the kind usually followed in western Europe or North America in relation to defendants’ rights to choose their defence lawyers or to have prior knowledge of the testimony against them.1 There currently seems to be some relaxation, or at least partial concessions to external, more bourgeois-liberal norms, largely because, now that the possibility of completing proceedings and reaching a verdict before the start of the latest Papal Jubilee in December 2015 has disappeared, it may have been judged politic to postpone the trial proper until there is less international attention focused on the papacy.

http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1090/vaticans-dodgy-goings-on/
 
Journalists acquitted, priest jailed at ‘Vatileaks’ trial

Two investigative journalists accused of publishing stolen papers which exposed scandal in the Vatican were acquitted Thursday, while a whistle-blowing Spanish prelate was sentenced to jail time in the Vatileaks trial.

The drama of sex, greed and press freedom which had gripped the tiny city state for months peaked with the surprise verdict given by presiding judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre "in the name of his Holiness Pope Francis".

Italians Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who had published books based on the documents at the heart of the trial, were not considered to have committed a crime on Vatican territory and therefore were outside the judges' territorial authority.

Spanish prelate Lucio Vallejo Balda, who had admitted to leaking secret papers, was handed an 18-month prison sentence while his assistant, who prosecutors admitted had had little to do with the affair, was acquitted.

Italian PR expert Francesca Chaouqui, who had been involved in a review of Vatican finances and is accused of both "inspiring" and being ultimately responsibility for the leaks, was given a 10-month suspended sentence. ...

http://www.france24.com/en/20160707...ref=partage_user&aef_campaign_date=2016-07-07
 
"Details emerged of alleged sexual affairs, glitzy parties and secret plots in the corridors of power."

Not yet, or at least not in that account.

A pity, really. It's a while since we had a really juicy Vatican tale. All ears! :evil:
 
In the (excellent) film Spotlight, about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, there was the fact that about 50% of priests are sexually active, though it didn't say whether that was with each other (the estimate that 6% of those thousands of priests were paedophiles is chilling).
 
Cardinal George Pell: Vatican official charged with multiple sexual offences

Thursday 29 June 2017 08.07 BST

Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic and the third-ranking official in the Vatican, has been charged with multiple sexual offences by police.

The charges were served on Pell’s legal representatives in Melbourne on Thursday and they have been lodged also at Melbourne magistrates court. He has been ordered to appear at the court on 18 July.

“Cardinal Pell is facing multiple charges … and there are multiple complainants,” Victoria police’s deputy commissioner Shane Patton said. The charges were “historical sexual assault offences”.

In a statement released by the Catholic archdiocese of Sydney 90 minutes after the charges were announced, Pell announced he would “return to Australia, as soon as possible, to clear his name”.

Pell is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged in the Catholic church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal.

Pell’s statement, issued at 4.30am Rome time, said: “Although it is still in the early hours of the morning in Rome, Cardinal George Pell has been informed of the decision and action of Victoria police. He has again strenuously denied all allegations.

“Cardinal Pell will return to Australia, as soon as possible, to clear his name following advice and approval by his doctors who will also advise on his travel arrangements.

“He said he is looking forward to his day in court and will defend the charges vigorously.”

It is so far unclear just what allegations Pell has been charged with. Pell was due to make a further statement in Rome later on Thursday.

Detectives from Victoria police’s Sano taskforce, established to investigate allegations that emerged during a parliamentary inquiry in Victoria and the later royal commission, interviewed Pell in Rome in October about allegations against him.

Last year, citing ill health, Pell declined to return to Australia to give evidence to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in person last year and instead gave evidence by videolink from Rome.

More text at https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ge-pell-charged-with-multiple-sexual-offences
 
Was he infuriated because he wasn't asked to the party JOKE!

Pope ‘infuriated’ after cops raid drug-fueled ‘gay orgy’ at Vatican priest’s apartment: report
05 JUL 2017 AT 08:04 ET

The Vatican is facing fresh embarrassment after police broke up what’s being described as a drug-fueled gay orgy at one of its priest’s apartments.

According
to the New Zealand Herald, Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano is reporting that Vatican police raided an apartment in June at the former palace of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to break up an orgy taking place.

“The occupant of the apartment is alleged to be a priest who serves as a secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and a personal adviser to the Pope,” the New Zealand Herald explains.

Police were alerted to the alleged orgy after neighbors became suspicious about the behavior of people going into and out of the apartment. When police entered the apartment, they discovered illegal drugs, as well as men engaging in sexual activity.

Il Fatto Quotidiano reports that Pope Francis was “infuriated” by news of the alleged orgy, and the publication suggested that the scandal may force Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio into retirement. ...

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/pop...gay-orgy-at-vatican-priests-apartment-report/

Cardinal Coccopalmerio had hoped to get his secretary appointed as a Bishop. I guess that won't be happening now.
 
So those priests are getting promoted, then?
Probably not wise to bash the bishop.
 
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican court on Saturday convicted the former president of the pope’s children’s hospital of diverting some $500,000 in donations to renovate a cardinal’s flat and gave him a one-year suspended sentence.

The original charges against ex-hospital president Giuseppe Profiti had been embezzlement. But the court convicted him of a lesser offense of abuse of office after the defense argued the money was intended as an investment to benefit the hospital.

https://apnews.com/ed6e8fcc7b5146ea...convicts-ex-hospital-chief-in-housing-scandal
 
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican court on Saturday convicted the former president of the pope’s children’s hospital of diverting some $500,000 in donations to renovate a cardinal’s flat and gave him a one-year suspended sentence.

The original charges against ex-hospital president Giuseppe Profiti had been embezzlement. But the court convicted him of a lesser offense of abuse of office after the defense argued the money was intended as an investment to benefit the hospital.

https://apnews.com/ed6e8fcc7b5146ea...convicts-ex-hospital-chief-in-housing-scandal
A one year suspended sentence for nicking $500,000? Bargain.
 
S02E11-KBS6iYfm-subtitled.jpg
 
This is all part of a push for the Church to divest itself of assets before the next round of pedophile cases strip it bare.
 
The constructive dismissal of whistleblowers.

The all-women board on the Vatican women's magazine have resigned citing a campaign to discredit them and put them "under the direct control of men".

Founder Lucetta Scaraffia said pressure on staff at Women Church World had intensified after it had published reports about sexual abuse of nuns by other members of the clergy.

The magazine comes as a monthly supplement in the Vatican daily paper.

Her criticism was made in an open letter to Pope Francis.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47704995?ocid=socialflow_twitter
 
Only one parish but I can report great consternation in the pews here.....
 
Another whistle-blower punished.

An Indian Catholic nun expelled after she spoke out against a bishop accused of rape says she has been "denied justice" by the Vatican.

Sister Lucy Kalappura said she was disappointed by a Vatican decision to reject her appeal against her dismissal from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) in Kerala state. She said she would not leave the convent and now plans to go to court. Sister Lucy took part in protests against Bishop Franco Mulakkal in 2018.

He was later arrested over allegations he repeatedly raped a nun between 2014 and 2016. The bishop denies all the charges against him. ...

Other nuns who protested against the bishop have accused the church in Kerala as well as Vatican officials of turning a blind eye towards the rape allegations. They say they sent a letter to the Vatican's ambassador to India and even wrote to the Vatican but did not receive a response from either.

There have also been a number of punitive measures taken against the nuns who protested, including disciplinary warnings and transfer notices. While testifying in a local court, one of them told the judge that the church was attempting to "sabotage" evidence in order to protect the bishop.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50079286
 
More villains about to be uncovered?

An auditor sacked from the Vatican has claimed that he was targeted after investigating secret funds linked to a west London property investment that are now at the centre of an internal inquiry.

Libero Milone, who was hired by the Pope as chief auditor in 2015, said that he was ousted two years ago after stumbling across millions of dollars secretly held in Swiss accounts by the Vatican. “Some people got worried I was about to uncover something I shouldn’t see,” he told the Financial Times. “We were getting too close to information that they wanted to be secret. They fabricated a situation for me to be thrown out.”

Last month Vatican police seized computers and documents from the secretariat of state — the Holy See’s de facto government — while investigating alleged irregularities in the purchase of the building in Chelsea.

When Mr Milone was dismissed in 2017 he was accused of spying by Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, second in command at the secretariat of state at the time. Now, after the Vatican’s decision to start an investigation into the Swiss funds, Mr Milone has claimed that it was his digging into those same accounts — which had been overseen “by a nun and a pencil” — that got him sacked. “They are nice nuns, but they didn’t have a clue,” he said.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six...-vatican-after-finding-secret-funds-vvr0wm2qs
 
More villains about to be uncovered?

An auditor sacked from the Vatican has claimed that he was targeted after investigating secret funds linked to a west London property investment that are now at the centre of an internal inquiry.

Libero Milone, who was hired by the Pope as chief auditor in 2015, said that he was ousted two years ago after stumbling across millions of dollars secretly held in Swiss accounts by the Vatican. “Some people got worried I was about to uncover something I shouldn’t see,” he told the Financial Times. “We were getting too close to information that they wanted to be secret. They fabricated a situation for me to be thrown out.”

Last month Vatican police seized computers and documents from the secretariat of state — the Holy See’s de facto government — while investigating alleged irregularities in the purchase of the building in Chelsea.

When Mr Milone was dismissed in 2017 he was accused of spying by Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, second in command at the secretariat of state at the time. Now, after the Vatican’s decision to start an investigation into the Swiss funds, Mr Milone has claimed that it was his digging into those same accounts — which had been overseen “by a nun and a pencil” — that got him sacked. “They are nice nuns, but they didn’t have a clue,” he said.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six...-vatican-after-finding-secret-funds-vvr0wm2qs
Who needs the mafia when you got the Vatican?
 
Who needs the mafia when you got the Vatican?
Hey, be reasonable, the MAFIA don't rape your kids unless you have a really huge debt to them that you refuse to repay, and have done something to REALLY piss them off. Even then they tend to prefer to just break your kneecaps rather than get your family involved.

Clearly, considering that organized crime is less socially pernicious than the Catholic church, but we ban organized crime, isn't it about time that we criminalize the Catholic Church?
 
More villains about to be uncovered?

An auditor sacked from the Vatican has claimed that he was targeted after investigating secret funds linked to a west London property investment that are now at the centre of an internal inquiry.

Libero Milone, who was hired by the Pope as chief auditor in 2015, said that he was ousted two years ago after stumbling across millions of dollars secretly held in Swiss accounts by the Vatican. “Some people got worried I was about to uncover something I shouldn’t see,” he told the Financial Times. “We were getting too close to information that they wanted to be secret. They fabricated a situation for me to be thrown out.”

Last month Vatican police seized computers and documents from the secretariat of state — the Holy See’s de facto government — while investigating alleged irregularities in the purchase of the building in Chelsea.

When Mr Milone was dismissed in 2017 he was accused of spying by Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, second in command at the secretariat of state at the time. Now, after the Vatican’s decision to start an investigation into the Swiss funds, Mr Milone has claimed that it was his digging into those same accounts — which had been overseen “by a nun and a pencil” — that got him sacked. “They are nice nuns, but they didn’t have a clue,” he said.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six...-vatican-after-finding-secret-funds-vvr0wm2qs


More on the dodgy London property deal.

An Italian businessman who helped the Vatican to buy luxury property in London in a controversial deal has been arrested by Vatican police.

Gianluigi Torzi is accused of extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and money laundering in relation to the $200m (£160m) deal. He is being held in Vatican police barracks, and faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty. The 2018 purchase of the building is subject to an ongoing investigation. The apartment block on Sloane Avenue, in London's exclusive Chelsea, had been bought with church money by the Secretariat of State, the body charged with the Vatican's diplomatic and political functions. But it is alleged the price was greatly inflated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52949421
 
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