Posted in category "Scandals"
On April 23, 2008 the Vatican approved the beatification of John Henry Newman, of one of the most significant Anglican converts to Catholicism. But, before he can be canonized, a few things need to occur: namely, a second miracle, and removing his body from a grave he shares with his beloved–a fellow priest, Ambrose St John.
In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano shortly before Newman’s beatification, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, said Cardinal Newman was “a man of thought, an emblematic figure of a conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism.” The Cardinal added, “Personally, I hope that such a beatification may occur truly within a short time because it could be very important at this moment for the path of ecumenism.” 
If so, Newman’s beatification is certainly ironic.
The Anglican Communion is tearing itself up over homosexual clergy and solemnizing the relationships of its gay communicants. Several Anglican bishops from North America have already or are in the process of seeking reception into the Catholic Church.
It’s most famous convert–John Henry Newman–was most certainly a gay man. Converting in 1845 at the age of 44, he chose to live a celibate life as an Anglican priest. However, his strong and intimate emotional attachments were with men–Richard Hurrell Froude and then, Ambrose St John. When St John died, Newman clung to the body all night.
It was Cardinal Newman’s dying wish that he be buried with his closest friend in the grounds of the house they shared as priests. The cardinal repeated on three occasions his desire to be buried with his friend, including shortly before his death in 1890.
“I wish,with all my heart, to be buried in Fr Ambrose St John’s grave - and I give this as my last, my imperative will,” he wrote, later adding: “This I confirm and insist on.”
Newman wrote after the death of St John in 1875: “I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or anyone’s sorrow greater, than mine.”
Ambrose had also become a Roman Catholic around the same time as John Newman, and the two men have a joint memorial stone, inscribed with the words Newman had chosen:
“Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem”, which translates as “Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth”.
But now, nearly 120 years after his death, Newman is to be reinterred in a sarcophagus in preparation for his becoming a saint, leaving the remains of his friend behind.
The decision to separate the remains of John Henry Newman and Ambrose St John has led some people to question whether the Church is embarrassed about their relationship and doesn’t want to raise attention to it at the time of Newman’s beatification. 
These priests are so handsome and seductive I’m thinking about becoming….a gay man!
The publication of Mormons Exposed had me wondering if Catholics had anything similar…and we do! Calendario Romano publishes an annual calendar of hunky seminarians and priests at the Vatican. The calendar also includes some helpful notes of places to see and things to do while you’re there….My advice: Guys, buy the calendar AFTER church so you’re still in a state of grace for Communion. 
I may order a copy for my sister. Fr. March may be enough to get her back to church again. Fr. October, who is also the Cover priest, certainly would have been labeled “Father-What-A-Waste” when I was growing up. 
Lesbians, as usual, have some catching up to do. The publisher would probably have to go through six thousand reprints if they printed a calendar of twelve handsome sisters looking soulfully in our eyes with all kind of promises in theirs….
Just in time for World Youth Day, the casting for Calendario Romano 2009 is about to begin. Want to get boys and girls back to the Church? Hunky seminarians may be the answer. Boring homilies about following rules are not.
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.
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, the retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Australia, and former head of a panel investigating sexual abuse in that country, wrote a book in which he explores what he sees as the roots of abuse in the Church. Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church was published in the fall of 2007.
The book’s genesis, according to Robinson, came from his work as a member and then chairman of the Australian bishops’ commitee charged with addressing the sexual abuse crisis.
“For nine years it completely dominated my life,” he said of his committee work from 1994 to 2003. “It was an experience that changed me in so many ways that even if I wanted to, I could not now go back to being the person I was before.” 
Meeting and speaking with abuse survivors and their families convinced him that the roots of clergy sexual abuse lay in fundamental church attitudes toward power and sex, and that the only solution was first to examine and then to change those attitudes.
“Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so to counter abuse, we must be free to ask serious questions about power and sex in the institution of the church,” he said. “Without this freedom, we would be attempting to respond to abuse while handcuffed and blindfolded.”
On a personal note, Robinson said his work with abuse survivors created an inner conflict between his loyalty to the pope and his “loyalty to that portion of God’s people that the Australian bishops had assigned to me, the victims of abuse.”
“It was the conflict between being a pope’s man and a victims’ man,” he said with emotion. “At all times, I would have loved to be both.”
“The conflict eventually became a genuine crisis for me when the pope of those years (Pope John Paul II) gave no real leadership in relation to abuse,” he said. 
In a May 8 statement, the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference listed its concerns with the book. The bishops said that “after correspondence and conversation” with Bishop Robinson, “it is clear that doctrinal difficulties remain.” Chief among them, they said, is Bishop Robinson’s “questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively.”
In a brief statement dated May 15, Robinson responded, “In their statement, the bishops appear to be saying that in seeking to respond to abuse, we may investigate all other factors contributing to abuse, but we may not ask questions concerning ways in which teachings, laws, and attitudes concerning power and sex within the church may have contributed. This imposes impossible restrictions on any serious and objective study, and it is where I have broken from the bishops’ conference,” he said.
Before he left Australia for a book tour, Bishop Robinson sent a letter notifying several U.S. bishops of his speaking engagements in their dioceses. His May 16-June 12 tour included stops in Pennsylania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Ohio, Massachusetts, Washington State and California.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and 10 U.S. bishops asked him to cancel his speaking tour. Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, CA and Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles refused him persmission to speak in their dioceses.
Bishop Robinson said the call in his book for confrontation is a “confrontation of issues, not of people,” adding that “confronting bishops will not achieve change.”
“The major changes we seek cannot at present come from any source other than the pope, and we must be aware of the relative powerlessness of the bishops before the power of the papacy and the Vatican systems that support it,” he said.
“I suggest that we must, therefore, learn to work with the bishops rather than against them,” he said. “It will be a lengthy process in which we engage them in conversation, gradually show them there are problems in the culture they have been living in and that the new culture we would like to introduce to them has a real beauty and freedom in it.”
His book, he contended, was not an attack on the church, “but the beginning of a debate which will eventually lead to a better church.”
“This is a truly naughty book, but it is also a strangely moral one.” Talk
That was the description of Joe Eszterhas’ book, American Rhapsody, with its globs of dirty gossip about Hollywood celebrities and the Clinton presidency, including the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But the point isn’t about the book, its about the writer. It seems to me, that many times the person who leads an envied sex life, has all kinds of colorful exploits, drinks, smokes, ingests, lives life like a wild man or woman, ends up with religion. Look at St. Augustine. Or, a person who makes a living writing about these people. Look at Anne Rice.
Joe Eszterhas has written screenplays for 16 films that have made more than a billion dollars at the box office. Among them are Basic Instinct, Flashdance and Showgirls.
A former editor at Rolling Stone, he is the author of six books, including American Rhapsody, Hollywood Animal and Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse, which was nominated for the National Book Award.
Joe Eszterhas looks like his reputation. Thick, grizzled mane of hair, biker brawler face, ex-boozer–my father would have called him, “a man’s man.” 
Eszterhas left Hollywood and returned to the home of his youth–Ohio. He lives with his second wife, Naomi, and their four sons just east of Cleveland.
He has just finished a book about himself and his relationship with Jesus, called Crossbearer. The title refers to himself, not Jesus; Eszterhas carries the cross at Mass at his church.
He came close to dying from his additions to drinking and smoking. The contracted cancer, struggled with a tracheotomy. He had an epiphany. It is this transformation that he describes in his new book, along with differing on what he sees as the church’s “wimpification” of Jesus.
“I didn’t even really know how to pray…Part of it was that I felt myself to be presuming God’s favor in our new relationship. I thought to myself: Yeah, right, I reject Him so long ago, and then, after forty years of not just ignoring Him but trashing Him in my writings, I’m suddenly back and talking to Hi as though nothing had interrupted our relationship, syaing “How ya doing, God? Haven’t seen you in a while..what up? Everything cool?…”
“And now here I was trying to speak to God whom I had marginalized and mocked and lampooned. How do you approach someone to whom you’ve done that? I didn’t know what to say, so one of the first things I said was ‘I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a colossal A-hole. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but please try to forgive me.”
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.
Jason Berry, the renowned Catholic journalist who wrote a groundbreaking investigative report on a priest abuser in New Orleans in 1985, hoped that his findings would lead to reform in the Catholic church. He made his book, Vows of Silence, into a film. It’s now available on DVD.
It chronicles the history of Father Marcial Maciel, who won the favor of Pope John Paul II despite years of pedophilia accusations. The greatest fundraiser of the modern church, Maciel founded the Legionnaires of Christ, a religious order with a $650 million dollar budget and history of controversial tactics.
The film tracks 1998 abuse charges against Maciel filed with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, tried to abort the case. In 2004, with Pope John Paul dying, Ratzinger takes action.
Vows of Silence documents the church’s coverup as well as Maciel’s predatory trail of seeking out and abusing young men and youths aspiring to the priesthood. While John Paul II refused to investigate the allegations, then Cardinal Ratzinger took up the investigation. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow through, citing Maciel’s age.
Berry interviewed former members of the order and used the Maciel saga as a metaphor for the larger sex abuse crisis in the Catholic church. Berry rightly points out that the real culprit in the priest sex abuse crisis are the bishops who are not held accountable for their refusal to act against priests who abuse children and teenagers.
Former Legionary and 1984 Marquette alumnus, Christopher Kuzne, said Legionary members who were victims of sexual abuse didn’t readily come forward because initiation into the order required them to vow they would not speak against superiors and report any who did. Kuzne said rumors suggest that Pope Benedict eradicated that vow, but there has been no public statement from the Vatican or the order.
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.
The Most Rev. Geoffrey James Robinson, former Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Australia, will be making a stop near my home during his upcoming book tour. I want to go meet him, buy the book, shake his hand and thank him. I also want to be in the presence of someone whose faith is so important–so pure and strong–that they will face anything to proclaim it. To me, that will be the closest I’ll probably ever get to someone who is like the old-time saints.
Bishop Robinson headed the Australian bishops’ committee that developed guidelines and procedures for dealing with clergy sex abuse. He retired in 2004 when, he said, the burden of his “profound reservations” about the church he loved became too strong to be ignored. Actually, what he found, and the response of the church to the sex abuse crisis, made him sick.
In November 2007 he emerged from retirement to promote his new book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” and to demand a better church.
Robinson says the church–especially the hierarchy in Rome–must tackle the twin problems of sex abuse and power.
In the book, he writes that the church has not confronted the sex abuse crisis; it’s simply managing it. He blames the late John Paul II, in particular, for failing to exercise the leadership demanded by the sex abuse crisis, allowing it instead to ravage the church.
He criticizes the church’s teaching on sex and sexuality, which are based on offences against God, as outmoded and inadequate. He suggests a sexuality morality based on human relationships.
Bishop Robinson told the National Catholic Reporter that he sees a fractured church with a major division between the “proclaimers of certainties and the seekers after truth,” with the proclaimers of certainties seeming to be in the favored position.
“This has left many people feeling a sense of alienation, of being marginalized, of no longer quite belonging to the church that had given them much of their sense of belonging, meaning and direction throughout their lives.”
“In writing the book I became aware that I was writing a book for these people, that I was trying to tell them that there is a church for them and that it is fully in accord with the mind of Jesus. I was telling them that there are basic certainties, but there is also abundant room for search, for taking personal responsibility and growing through that process to become all we are capable of being, all God wants us to be.”
“I became aware that it was important for many that there should be a bishop saying these things. At moments I felt that the needs of these many people were so great that it is perhaps true that I have never been more of a shepherd. I have never been more justified in carrying around a pastoral staff than I have in this.”
