Posted in category "Politics"
Raffaello Follieri, 29, chairman and chief executive of The Follieri Group, was charged last week in an 18-page complaint with persuading investors he had a special relationship with the Vatican and was able to purchase church properties at below-market prices. 
For two years beginning in June 2005, the complaint alleges, Follieri “operated a fraudulent real estate investment scheme” by which he gained access to investors’ money by falsely representing his connections with high Vatican officials, including the pope.
Follieri used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a luxury apartment in Manhattan, expensive restaurants, clothes, dog walking services, and “flights on privately chartered planes to various locations around the world” for himself and his live-in girlfriend, actress Anne Hathaway.
According to the criminal complaint, Follieri went to great lengths to promote the idea that he was a trusted Vatican associate, traveling with two monseigneurs and keeping a cardinal’s ceremonial garb in his U.S. office in case one of them needed to change into something more impressive.
Writer Joe Feuerherd first reported on the activities of The Follieri Group in a cover story for NCR on March 3, 2006. The entire article can be found here.
The Follieri Group saw a golden opportunity to acquire valuable real estate from dozens of dioceses and religious communities that needed to shed assets because of shifting demographics or sex abuse awards.
The Wall Street Journal covered the breakup between Follieri and his U.S. investors, including Los Angeles billionaire Ronald Burckle, a friend of former president Bill Clinton and owner of the closely held Yucaipa Cos. The scheme unraveled with Burckle asked for an audit.
The Follieri Group had a simple business plan: exploit their connection to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, to gain access to church officials in the U.S. They told investors their key relationships in the Vatican would give them substantial advantages in obtaining properties owned by the Catholic Church in the United States. 
“Andrea Sodano, the cardinal’s nephew, is a Follieri Group vice president, a fact widely known in U.S. church real estate circles,” Feuerherd wrote.
The federal prosecutors claim Andrea Sodano played a crucial role in Follieri’s scheme by accepting payment to arrange for him to meet with bishops, cardinals and other clergymen.
But our U.S. clergy had sharper noses then some sharp-toothed investors. The Follieri Group was stopped at the door. They only obtained a handful of properties, and never developed them as promised. The audiences with U.S. prelates seem to have petered out.
The company made an awkward attempt at schmoozing at a National Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting, when their offer of placing fruit baskets in the hotel rooms of the 350 bishops was rebuffed. The company ended up handing out the baskets near the conference registration desk.
“This group has tried persistently to be part of the conference and was not permitted,” said Sister Mary Walsh, a spokesperson. “They’re not a church organization.”
Raffaello Follieri’s last hurrah was a 2008 Easter announcement of the advent of an internet-based newspaper, Catholic Decisions. This publication was going to be “an independent voice for diverse Catholic communities,” and focus on “religious, political and social justice issues as they related to the Catholic Church.” He also promised, as a Catholic publication, “we will be found to fidelity to the Catholic message as it comes to us through the Church.”
The Federal complaint mentioned a “pitch book to start up a new media company called Follieri Media.” The pitch book had been distributed to several potential investors. The presentation claimed that Follieri Media had a “unique relationship with the Catholic Church,” and it planned to acquire such assets as National Catholic Reporter, Legionnairies Radio and EWTN. NCR publisher Sr. Rita Larivee, said, “We never heard anything from the Follieri Group.”
In the center of Rome, near the Piazza Navona, is the church of Saint Apollinare. It houses a crypt where popes, cardinals and martyrs are interred.
Also buried there is Enrico De Pedis, also known as Renatino, one of the most powerful bosses of the Magliana gang. He was assassinated on February 2, 1990. De Pedis’ internment at the church is unusual procedure for a common citizen, and even more so since he was a gangster. 
Authorizing the internment at the time was Cardinal Ugo Poletti, then Vicar of Rome, who gave his permission. Cardinal Poletti died in 1997, and was eulogized by Pope John Paul II. 
Former members of the Magliana gang have said De Pedis was “very religious” and gave “huge donations” to the Church before he died, perhaps to atone for his crimes.
The church is next to a building that houses the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. On June 22, 1983, a young girl was kidnapped after her flute lesson at the Institute. Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was 15 years old when she disappeared. She was spotted by a policeman getting into a dark green BMW with a man, the last time she was seen alive. Her body was never found. 
In 2006 an anonymous caller told an Italian tv program on missing persons to “take a look” at the tomb of De Pedis in the Saint Apollinare crypt. There is a persistent theory that the tomb contains the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, or some clue to her disappearance.
Police said the church was under Vatican control and therefore considered “extraterritorial” Vatican property. Permission for the white marble tomb to be opened would therefore have to be given not only by the Rome diocese but also by the Holy See, as well as by De Pedis’ widow, Carla Di Giovanni.
But the investigation into her disappearance was reopened last week following the leaked testimony of Sabrina Minardi, ex-wife of Italian soccer star Bruno Giordano and later girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis.
Minardi, who the press painted as a “recovering drug addict,” alleged in a statement to Italian police that De Pedis had kidnapped Orlandi, put her in a sack and threw her into a cement mixer in Torvaianica, an area of sand dunes on the coast near Rome.
Minardi also alleged that Orlandi had been seized and killed on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, then then head of the Vatican Bank “to send a message to someone,” she said, without revealing more. She claimed that De Pedis had taken her to lunch in Torvaianica and told her he had two sacks in the car.
“He said he had the body of Emanuela Orlandi with him,” Minardi claimed in the police statement.
De Pedis and his driver “went to a building site. I stayed in the car. They threw it all into a cement mixer. That’s how they got rid of all the proof.”She added: “This was not a killing for money, it was a symbolic kidnapping. They seized Emanuela to give someone a message.”
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus’ catchall phrase - “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys” - must have served him well as president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, also known as the Vatican Bank, which he headed from 1971 to 1989. He died in Sun City, Arizona in February 2006. 
As head of the Vatican Bank, Marcinkus became embroiled in legal trouble and sensational speculation because of his business ties to two notorious Italian financiers: Michele Sindona, who was poisoned while serving a jail term for fraudulent transactions; and Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
The Vatican angrily reacted to the news the investigation was being reopened. A Vatican spokesperson said “defamatory and baseless accusations” had been made against the Archbishop, “who has been dead for some time and is unable to defend himself.” The Vatican went on to criticize the media outlets reporting the story.
“We in no way wish to interfere with the duties of the magistrates in their rigorous verification of the facts and responsibilities. But at the same time, we cannot but express our extreme regret and reproof at methods of information that owe more to sensationalism than to the requirements of seriousness and professional ethics.”
Huh?
A a further postcript, Lorenzo Radogna, lawyer for the De Pedis family, announced on Italian tv channel La7 News ”the corpse of Enrico De Pedis will be cremated and removed from the grave in the Sant’Apollinare’s church,” but he did not provide any further information regarding the future place of the remains.
There was no mention if the police would be able to examine the coffin before it (and any evidence) was turned into ashes.
Prominent special interest lobbyist and evangelical preacher, James C. Dobson, is back in the news. He sharply attacked presidential candidate Barak Obama, accusing him of having “a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution” and twisting the meaning of both the Old and New Testaments. 
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology,” Mr. Dobson said in one of the recent radio broadcasts for the group he leads, Focus on the Family.
He’s some kind of Biblical authority?” Mr. Dobson also asked.
Mr. Dobson’s remarks focused on a June 28, 2006 speech in which Mr. Obama mentioned passages from the Bible that he suggested were in conflict with present-day practices. Mr. Dobson made his criticisms shortly after Joshua Dubois, the Obama campaign’s religious affairs director, offered to meet with Focus on the Family leaders.
“Young conservative evangelicals seem more open to Obama’s ‘Christian’ message of caring for the poor, fighting genocide, health care for all and climate change,” David Brody, senior national correspondent of the Christian Broadcasting Network noted.
But so far, the attack seems to have backfired. Obama issued a strong response, and one supporter quickly created a website - jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com - that quotes Old Testament prophets, giving Dobson a Biblical wallop of his own.
It seems as if the Democrats have finally figured out what to do, when the Dobsons of the world try to paint them as faithless or anti-religious.
In the words of Jim Wallis, a politically liberal Christian activist, you have to go toe-to-toe with fundamentalists, carrying a Bible in one hand, and the Constitution in the other.
The June 9th New York Post ran the opinion piece “Marriage Fight Wastes Gay Dollars” by a man named David Benkof, who was identified as a “columnist for several gay newspapers and a blogger at GaysDefendMarriage.com. 
Benkof, 38, wrote he was against spending gay community dollars on the upcoming California vote on marriage. He believes the gay community, and the Human Rights Commission in particular, should use the cash they have raised for California PR to “achieve rights for same-sex couples who live in states that are much more hostile to gays and lesbians than California.” He dismissed the marriage initiative battle by saying “HRC is pushing for gays in San Francisco to be able to use their favorite term for their relationship.”
He chided the gay community for not routinely raising funds like “Catholics and African-Americans” to help out the poorest members of their communities. “We in the gay and lesbian movement have done a lousy job of paying attention to people who share our identify but lack the resources to hobnob at fancy diners.” He insinuated that now that the faces of AIDS and HIV infections are not wealthy white men, but poor and black men, the movement has moved on to other “more relevant” issues.
Since Mr. Benkof did not say anything about himself or his experiences in the article, one would assume, as I did, that he is a regular gay guy, someone active in the movement as a columnist, but who chooses to sound ideologically out-of-step, peevish or both. Since his righteous attitude both annoyed and piqued my interest, I decided to dig. Here’s what I found:
-David Benkof (born David Bianco) is not a columnist for several gay newspapers. He’s a freelancer who submits articles and opinion pieces. He does not have a regular gig with anyone, including the Dallas Voice.
-In 2003 Benkof, who had been raised as a Conservative Jew, became Orthodox. He stopped saving sex with men, and professed that “the liberal…approach to homosexuality and Judaism was completely bankrupt.”
-He now identifies not as a gay man, but as bisexual. “I believe that within a couple of years I’m probably going to be married with a growing family.”
-Benkof views heterosexuality as an integral part of the teachings of Judaism. “I rejected all the unsuccessful attempts to reconcile traditional Judaism with gay sex and gay relationships. And I decided to take more seriously the demands that I believe G-d has made on the Jewish people in terms of how we live out our sexual feelings.”
“I happen to believe that G-d has been clear to the Jewish people that we should be pursuing opposite-sex relationships, and particularly not having intercourse between two males.”
Since his orthodox awakening Benkof has become a strong opponent of same-sex marriage: “It insults the millions of Americans whose traditional faiths call on us to defend marriage as a central institution in society defined as a union between a man and a woman.”
Why didn’t he raise any of this in the Post article?
If it’s not made-up, Benkof has at least one Christian that agrees with him. “Mark” writes:
“David-thank you for creating this website and putting into words exactly what my partner and I believe. I am so sick of “gay” people acting like gayness is our one defining attribute. I am also an American and a Christian, to name a few. Demanding that marriage, which is a religious institution, be afforded to gay people regardless of the wishes of a vast majority will only cement in the minds of many that gays care only about their own self interests regardless of the potential or perceived damage our behavior and pet issues might have on society. Such egocentricity, thus, could lead to a great backlash by the vast majority of people, who regardless of what we want and hope, still find homosexuality disgusting on a personal level–not to mention immoral on a religious level–I fear that someday, in the not too distant future, my partner and I will have to pay a great price for the indulgences and egotism of the annointed leaders of today’s gay movement.”
Note: I haven’t been able to google any articles by David, five years now as a self-identified bisexual, on how the love and physical intimacy with a woman has been a gift of God for him.
Read more on David Benkoff here and here and here.
For Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional lawyer who often writes on religion in the public square, the situation had uncomfortable echoes of the last presidential election cycle –a priest refusing to give Communion to someone based on their political views.
This time, though, the stunned Massgoer turned away by a priest was Kmiec himself.
The former dean of Catholic University Law School was an architect of the Reagan administration’s stance against abortion. His pro-life credentials include serving as a keynote speaker at March for Life’s annual Rose Dinner a few years ago.
The story begins with Kmiec’s March 2008 endorsement of Barak Obama for president in an article published in Slate magazine.
“I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation from beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights,” Kmiec wrote. He noted that he and Obama disagree on “important fundamentals” including legislation about traditional marriage and that life begins at conception.
He followed up that piece by writing May 15 for Catholic Online. There Kmiec said his Obama endorsement “baffled my political pals; it infuriated some of my fellow Catholics.” Some bloggers declared he was “self-excommunicated,” he wrote, and Kmiec went on to describe being denied Communion at a meeting of a Catholic business group.
At the event, Kmiec wrote, the priest “excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of Communion.”
He said he was pleased to hear that Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony had weighed in on the matter, in comments by his spokesman, Tod Tamberg, first included in a National Public Radio report.
Tamburg told Catholic News Service that the priest’s action in refusing Communion to Kmiec “was absolutely indefensible” both as a matter of canon law and the policies and practices of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “The archbishop’s office is well aware of the situation and will be responding in an appropriate manner,” he added.
Kmiec has drawn attention as one of the nation’s leading “Obamacons”-conservatives who find Obama’s call for a new approach to politics appealing.
Kmiec started life as a Democrat, but like many Catholic Democrats, he said he was profoundly attracted to Ronald Reagan. For Kmiec, five words in Reagan’s 1980 acceptance speech summarized the essence of a Catholic view of politics: “family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom.”
But Kmiec has expanded that original view: “To think you have done a generous thing for your neighbor or that you have built up a culture of life just because you have voted for a candidate who says in his brochure that he wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade is far too thin an understanding of the Catholic faith,” he said.
A critic of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, Kmiec added that Catholics should heed “the broad social teaching of the church,” including its views on war.
Kmiec said his pastor convinced him not to let the Communion incident go unanswered.
“He told me, ‘You may be resilient, but another person to whom this happens, it may destroy their entire faith,’” Kmiec said.
By a vast majority, he said, most U.S. bishops and church leaders are consistently good teachers on the range of political responsibilities expected of Catholics. However, he added, “if we continue to use religion as a political weapon than we’ve failed.”
The charismatic Rev. James Lisante, a religion commentator for Fox News Network and pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in West Hempstead, Long Island, came under fire for endorsing presidential candidate John McCain during his invocation at a Republican fund raiser. “One final thing, Lord, I promise,” said Lisante, dressed in his clerical collar, “this November could you keep an eye on all of us and see that the change that we embrace comes from Arizona and not Illinois?
He also made disparaging comments about Barack Obama, including him for criticizing him for failing to distance himself from his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.
Lisante acknowledged that while he supports McCain, his endorsement came at the wrong moment. “In hindsight I would have separated out the invocation, the prayer, from my commentary.”
“I do not as a priest forfit my right as a citizen to a point of view, even when it comes to standing by a particular candidate,” he said.
Some church experts and fellow priests said Lisante went over the line with his endorsement. They said church tradition and practice prohibits priests from endorsing candidates and parties, although the church can be and is active in pursuing causes that align with Gospel values.
“U.S. bishops have been pretty strong in saying their clergy should stay away from partisan politics,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, former editor of the Jesuit weekly magazine, America. “It’s OK to talk about issues. But to get into endorsing candidates crosses the line in terms of church practice.”
I am not a member of St. Thomas the Apostle, so I can’t say if the Democractic parishioners are uncomfortable with Msgr. Lisante. I hope he’s warm and kind and evenhanded with everyone, regardless of their point of view on U.S. politics and candidates for office. If not, then there’s a pastoral problem.
I agree with him 100% that he has a right to express his own point of view. But a media-savvy priest like Msgr. Lisante should know better to be careful when praying for Republican candidates (only) at a podium, pulpit, or anyplace where it can be recorded and splashed all over the internet.
On Friday Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George sharply critized the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabrina’s Church for launching a “personal attack” on Hillary Clinton from the pulpit of Barack Obama’s former Chicago church.
“While a priest must speak to political issues that are also moral, he may not endorse candidates nor engage in partisan campaigning,” Cardinal George said. “Racial isues are both political and moral and are also highly charged. Words can be differently interpreted, but Father Pfleger’s remarks about Sen. Clinton are both partisan and amount to a personal attack. I regret that deeply.” George concluded: “To avoid months of turmoil inthe church, Father Pfleger has promised me that he will not enter into campaigning, will not publicly mention any candidate by name and will abide by the discipline common to all Catholic priests.”
Cardinal George is quite right that the church should stay out of politics. But we don’t. Some bishops deny the sacrament of communion to Catholic politicians because they support same-sex marriage or women’s reproductive rights. Why do some bishops and priests lend their pulpit in support of Republican candidates and administration by focusing on abortion and gay marriage, instead forcefully demanding good health care and education for working people and the poor, economic justice for immigrants, and an end to the thousands of lives and billions of dollars lost in a failed Middle East foreign policy?
The Cardinal’s rebuke comes after Pfleger’s ridicule of Clinton was captured on video and circulated on You Tube. Pfleger made the remarks as a guest preacher at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the home of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
In his Sunday sermon, Pfleger mocked Clinton for shedding tears on the campaign trail before her win in the New Hampshire primary. “I really believe that she just always thought, ‘This is mine! I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white, and this is mine! I just gotta get up and step into the plate.’ And then out of nowhere came Barack Obama, and she said, ‘Oh, I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’”he said.
Yeah, he is pretty blunt and fiery. He spoke with language, gestures and a preaching style the folks in the pews at Trinity and St. Sabrina’s may expect and appreciate, but other Christians would find outrageous or upsetting. Liberation theology in America would have that effect on most wealthy, middle class and upper middle class white Christians.
Pfleger had some pretty tough things to say about “white privilege” and economics. Poking fun at Hillary Clinton’s frustration was simply an example of when entitlement didn’t win out.
I don’t agree with every word he says but I think Fr. Pfleger is a stand up guy.
Two best-selling authors have accused the Vatican of blacklisting them in Italy after they discovered secret documents that suggest a 17th century pope had funded the Protestant hero William III (William of Orange).
Rita Monaldi and her husband, Francesco Sorti, have sold more than a million copies of their historical novel Imprimatur. The novel tells the story of Atto Melani, an Italian castrato, probable lover of nobleman Mattias de’Medici, and spy at the court of King Louis XIV of France.
Imprimatur was dropped by its Italian publisher, Mondadori, despite reaching No. 4 on the bestseller list on its release in 2002. Mondadori decided not to reprint the book because of pressure from the Vatican, Sorti said.
Mondadori, which is owned by media magnate and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, refused to comment.
The authors said they found documents from a papal envoy discussing the “large sums” that William III owed Pope Innocent XI. Documents from Innocent’s family records show the Holy See sent 150,000 scudi (about $7.5 million today) to William via an intermediary.
“When we found the documents we had already started to write the book, but we decided to include the discovery as part of the storyline,” Monaldi said.
The documents appear to indicate that Pope Innocent XI bankrolled William of Orange in order to help him defeat the French under Louis XIV, whom he hated. Innocent stood by as Catholic king, James II of England as overthrown. He did nothing to aid him because of James’ support of Louis XIV in matters of collecting revenues from church properties.
With James II gone, England was firmly established as a protestant nation; and the Catholics in Ireland were dispossessed and eventually descimated by protestant overlords.
The revelation by the book that Innocent XI supported a heretic and enemy of the church to carry out a personal vendetta–and to collect the debt of his family’s money–embarassed the Vatican and derailed his case for canonization once again.
Instead of “fish on Friday” we’ll enjoy “film on Friday” courtesy of You Tube. Clips might be funny, outrageous, silly, strange or provovative.
That We Would Be Heard includes the love story of two Catholic lesbians who went to a retreat looking for peace, and came away with one another. One of the women, Molly, speaks out about the church:
“I don’t understand how the church can continue to close their ears to the stories and the lives and the experience of people who are gay and lesbian and bisexual.”
See the video here.
Back when I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my Congressional representative was a young man with a good future. His name was Vito Fossella, and he was known as a staunch family values conservative. He voted against gay marriage and for posting the Ten Commandments in public places. Fossella and his wife had three children. She was a stay-at-home mom, and they were communicants at St. Clare’s Church on Staten Island. Staten Island is home to many socially conservative Catholics, so Fossella was a perfect fit.
On May 1, 2008, he was arrested for drunk driving, and his life totally unraveled. It turns out he was on the way to visit his second family. 
Fossella had fathered a three-year-old daughter with Laura Fay, a former Air Force colonel The Republican congressman was a regular visitor to Fay’s tidy townhouse - taking strolls around the Alexandria, VA neighborhood with his second family like any other dad in apple-pie America.
Fossella met the mother of his love child during a Congressional junket. She isn’t a stranger to adultery herself–her first husband divorced her for running around; with the second they both had outside affairs.
Now, let’s examine his record on preserving “the sanctity of marriage.”
In 2004, Fossella voted for the Marriage Protection Act, which essentially would have prevented courts from striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That bill passed the House by a vote of 233-194 and later died in the Senate.
Later in the same month in 2004, , Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have amended the U.S. Constitution to explicitly ban marriages for same-sex couples in any part of the United States. It would have been the first time that discrimination was to be enshrined in the Constitution. That bill passed the House by a vote of 236-187 and later died in the Senate.
In 2006, Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, make it the third time he chose to stand up and firmly deny same-sex couples the thousands of rights and protections that come with a federal and state marriage license.
I find it interesting that Fossella had such strong feelings about an institution that apparently didn’t have much meaning to him in the end.
