Infinite Unknown

- Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope’s Adviser (TIME, May 19, 2011):

(GENOA) — The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.

Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said.

Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

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Tags: Abuse, Catholic Church, Crime, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Sex, Vatican

- Dutch priest belonged to paedophile club (New Zealand Herald – AP):

May 21 (AP) — The head of a Catholic religious order in the Netherlands has confirmed one of his subordinate priests served on the board of an organisation that promotes paedophilia.

Herman Spronck, head of the Dutch arm of the Salesian order, said in a statement Friday the priest served on the board of the “Martijn” organization, which is widely reviled but not illegal.

“Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative” on the part of the priest, Spronck’s statement said.

“Membership in such organizations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order.”

However, RTL Nieuws, which broke the story, published interviews both with Spronck and the priest, identified as 73-year-old “Father Van B.,” in which they defend some paedophile relationships.

“Society thinks these relationships are harmful. I disagree,” RTL quoted Van B. as saying. He served on Martijn’s board from 2008 until 2010, when the organization’s founder was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography. That case is ongoing.

RTL quoted Spronck as saying that “formally I always say that everyone must obey the law. But these relationships do not necessarily have to be damaging.”

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Tags: Catholic Church, Crime, Global News, Holland, Pedophile, Religion, Society

See also:

- Seymour Hersh: Many Within Joint Special Operations Command ‘Are All Members Of, Or At Least Supporters Of, Knights Of Malta’, ‘Many Of Them Are Members of Opus Dei’ … ‘It’s A Crusade, Literally’

(from left to right) Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy magazine and The Washington Post, along with fellow FP editors Joshua Keating and Blake Hounshell all rushed to discredit Hersh and the contents of his January 17th, 2011 speech.

It seems unusual for a staid, respected publication (one that has received three National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) to start treating a celebrated journalist (who himself has won two National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) as if he were nothing more than a paranoid crank.

It seems unusual, but it’s exactly what the staff of Foreign Policy has done to Seymour Hersh, following a lecture the venerated reporter gave at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. You may know Hersh as the dogged investigator who exposed the My Lai Massacre during Vietnam. You may know him as the staff writer for The New Yorker who published some of the earliest pieces on Abu Ghraib in May 2004. You might even know him as the man derided and then vindicated for claiming that Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination squad right out of the Vice President’s office. (In truth, the squad was and is a bipartisan affair, initiated under Clinton and still operative under Obama.)

Yet, given the Foreign Policy staff’s derisive commentary on Seymour’s January 17^th talk, you would think he was some credulous rube midway through his first Dan Brown novel.

Hersh “delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday,” Blake Hounshell reported on the magazine’s Passport blog. His delusional fantasia: The existence of ties between the U.S. Military’s Joint Special Operations Command and a secretive Catholic order called the Knights of Malta. As Hounshell elaborates:

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Tags: Catholic Church, CIA, Global News, Government, Islam, Knights of Malta, Knights Templar, Politics, Religion, Seymour Hersh, Society, U.S.

Related info:

- And Now: iPhone Confession App – ‘Forgive Me iPhone, For I Have Sinned’

Louche bash: Father Michael Seed

- Blair’s priest parties with transvestite ‘nuns’ (Daily Mail)

He is the best-known Catholic priest in ­Britain after Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the former Archbishop of Westminster.

So it was only fitting that Father Michael Seed, 53 — the man who helped convert former Prime ­Minister Tony Blair to Catholicism — should mark 25 years in the priesthood with a mass at the Church Of The Immaculate Conception in Mayfair earlier this month.

So far, so acceptable. I can reveal, however, that Seed also had a second, rather less devout celebration — a ­champagne-fuelled party with entertainment provided by ­transvestites dressed as nuns.

A close friend of Father Seed’s arranged the bash at the Pigalle Club — housed in a pink basement in London’s Piccadilly and known for racy floor shows — to mark the anniversary of the well-connected priest’s ordination into the Franciscan Friars Of The Atonement.

The 200 guests, many of them ­fellow clergymen, were startled to be greeted at the door by four burly transvestites, who took their coats.

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Tags: Catholic Church, Church, Global News, Religion, Society

Amazon.com: America’s Nazi Secret: An Insider’s History

Amazon.de: America’s Nazi Secret: An Insider’s History

Product Description

Fully revised and expanded, this stirring account reveals how the U.S. government permitted the illegal entry of Nazis into North America in the years following World War II. This extraordinary investigation exposes the secret section of the State Department that began, starting in 1948 and unbeknownst to Congress and the public until recently, to hire members of the puppet wartime government of Belarus—a region of the Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany. A former Justice Department investigator uncovered this stunning story in the files of several government agencies, and it is now available with a chapter previously banned from release by authorities and a foreword and afterword with recently declassified materials.

About the Author

John Loftus is a former U.S. government prosecutor, a former Army intelligence officer, and the author of numerous books, including The Belarus Secret; The Secret War Against the Jews; Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets; and Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks. He has appeared regularly as a media commentator on ABC National Radio and Fox News. He lives in St. Petersburg,  Florida.

Tags: Banking, Books, Catholic Church, Fascism, Global News, Government, Nazi Germany, Nazis, Politics, Society, U.S., Vatican

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A new app for devices like the iPhone and iPad aims to take the intimidation factor out of Confession for Catholics — and the Church is giving it the thumbs-up.

Forgive Me iPhone, For I Have SinnedYou’ll still have to tell a priest your sins in person, but “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” holds your hand through the process via your hand-held.

Katie, a Temple University sophomore, likes how the app takes you step-by-step, preparing you for the sacrament by asking questions that might point out a sin or two you’ll want to divulge.

“I like how you have the ‘in the name of the Father’ — like what they should say,” Katie said.

Teresa, a senior at Temple, says that’ll help — as long as you’re not blasting Jay-Z when you enter the confessional.

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Tags: Catholic Church, Religion, Society

Just go over the headlines of the related articles at the end of the following article.

DUBLIN (AP) — A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims’ groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.

The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland’s first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church’s right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than give that power to civil authorities.

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II’s diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature.”

Storero wrote that canon law, which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed.” Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome, he wrote.

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Tags: Abuse, Catholic Church, Children, Crime, Global News, Ireland, Pedophile, Pope John Paul II, Rape, Religion, scandal, SEC, Society, Vatican

The Vatican Bank is under new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.25m) in September.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a “misunderstanding” and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But fresh court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital”. The documents also reveal investigators’ suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.

The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew €650,000 from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.

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Tags: Banking, Catholic Church, Global News, Mafia, Society, Vatican

Related article:

- Wikileaks: A US Government Con Job

Leaked cable lays bare how Irish government was forced to grant Vatican officials immunity from testifying to Murphy commission

A WikiLeaks cable details the behind-the-scenes diplomacy before Cardinal Seán Brady met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, after which the pope said he shared the ‘outrage, betrayal and shame’ of Irish Catholics. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal.

Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy “offended many in the Vatican” who felt that the Irish government had “failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations“, a cable says.

Despite the lack of co-operation from the Vatican, the commission was able to substantiate many of the claims and concluded that some bishops had tried to cover up abuse, putting the interests of the Catholic church ahead of those of the victims. Its report identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese.

A cable entitled “Sex abuse scandal strains Irish-Vatican relations, shakes up Irish church, and poses challenges for the Holy See” claimed that Vatican officials also believed Irish opposition politicians were “making political hay” from the situation by publicly urging the government to demand a reply from the Vatican.

Ultimately, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (equivalent to a prime minister), wrote to the Irish embassy, ordering that any requests related to the investigation must come through diplomatic channels.

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Tags: Abuse, Catholic Church, Children, Global News, Government, Ireland, Politics, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Sex, Vatican

Divide et impera! Criminal elitists love Wikileaks!

- Wikileaks: A US Government Con Job

-  Wikileaks: Brought to you by the CIA or Mossad

Why is it that all leaked information supports the elitist agenda?

Vatican diplomats also lobbied against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and wanted ‘Christian roots’ enshrined in EU constitution

A WikiLeaks cable reports that Pope Benedict XVI, seen here being received by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara in 2006, ‘might prefer to see Turkey develop a special relationship short of EU membership’. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images

The pope is responsible for the Vatican’s growing hostility towards Turkey joining the EU, previously secret cables sent from the US embassy to the Holy See in Rome claim.

In 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, spoke out against letting a Muslim state join, although at the time the Vatican was formally neutral on the question.

The Vatican’s acting foreign minister, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, responded by telling US diplomats that Ratzinger’s comments were his own rather than the official Vatican position.

The cable released by WikiLeaks shows that Ratzinger was the leading voice behind the Holy See’s unsuccessful drive to secure a reference to Europe’s “Christian roots” in the EU constitution. The US diplomat noted that Ratzinger “clearly understands that allowing a Muslim country into the EU would further weaken his case for Europe’s Christian foundations”.

But by 2006 Parolin was working for Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and his tone had distinctly chilled. “Neither the pope nor the Vatican have endorsed Turkey’s EU membership per se,” he told the American charge d’affaires, “rather, the Holy See has been consistently open to accession, emphasising only that Turkey needs to fulfil the EU’s Copenhagen criteria to take its place in Europe.”

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Tags: Catholic Church, EU, Europe, Global News, Politics, Pope Benedict XVI, Turkey, Vatican, WIKILEAKS