THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Read this for a tangled web of personal, financial and homo-episcopal interests revolving around McCarrick and involving new accused abusers in the imbroglio:

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/09/the-papal-foundation-mccarricks-conflict-of-...

An update about the Papal Foundation:

Papal Foundation's prelate trustees
are a Who’s of sexual abuse cover-up


Most of us learn early on in life that we are often judged by the company we keep. We can have the best intentions at doing the right thing, but our efforts can be thwarted if we collaborate with the wrong kind of people. Sometimes we might associate with an individual who appears to share our values, only to later learn we have been deceived and betrayed.

The lay members of the [increasingly infamous McCarrick-Wuerl-backed] Papal Foundation are findint this out now. The Papal Foundation was founded in 1988 as a response to the desire of Catholic clergy and laity in the United States for a unique, sustainable way to support the Holy Father and his witness in the world.

The Foundation has grown to over $215 million with a total of $121 million awarded in grants and scholarships. Income generated from the investment of capital creates a perpetual source of revenue.

The foundation’s executive committee of the board of trustees is composed of active and retired cardinals who live in the US, along with eight laymen. In 2016, it received contributions of $6 million, $3 million of that from new “stewards,” and granted out almost $10 million. In order to be considered a steward of the foundation, one must commit $1 million to be paid in no more than ten years, at least $100,000 a year.

Members include some of the largest Catholic donors in the United States (see the Foundation’s annual report). Members have the opportunity each year to meet as a group with the Pope in Rome.

In February this year, leaked internal documents revealed that Pope Francis personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant for a corruption-plagued, Church-owned dermatological hospital in Rome accused of money laundering. Records from the financial police indicate the hospital has liabilities over one billion USD – an amount larger than the national debt of some 20 nations.

The foundation customarily gives grants of $200,000 or less to organizations in the developing world (see a grant list for 2017 here) via the Holy See. According to the internal documents, the Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.

On January 6, the steward who until then served as chairman of the Foundation’s audit committee submitted his resignation along with a report of the committee’s grave objections to the grant.

“As head of the Audit Committee and a Trustee of the Foundation, I found this grant to be negligent in character, flawed in its diligence, and contrary to the spirit of the Foundation,” he wrote in his resignation letter accompanying the report. “Instead of helping the poor in a third-world country, the Board approved an unprecedented huge grant to a hospital that has a history of mismanagement, criminal indictments, and bankruptcy.”

“Had we allowed such recklessness in our personal careers we would never have met the requirements to join The Papal Foundation in the first place.”

In June, the New York Times reported that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been removed from ministry due to credible accusations of sexual abuse. The public later learned that McCarrick had a history of sexual predatory behavior that spanned several decades. Public scrutiny soon fell on McCarrick’s long list of associations, including the Papal Foundation which he co-founded in 1988.

In August, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury published the results of a 2-and-a-half year investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in six dioceses. The scathing report revealed that over 1000 children had reportedly been abused at the hands of 300 priests over the course of the past 50 years.
- The report specifically identified Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the current Chairman of the Papal Foundation Board of Trustees, as having been responsible for covering-up multiple cases of abuse when he was Archbishop of Pittsburgh.
- The report also mentioned that Archbishop David Zubik, the current Archbishop of Pittsburgh and a current Trustee of The Papal Foundation, was responsible for covering-up cases of sexual abuse. - In addition, the report identified that the Rev. Thomas Benestad, the first Executive Director of The Papal Foundation, had been accused of sexually molesting a 9-year-old boy.

The identification that three Papal Foundation associates had been involved in sexual abuse and/or cover-up prompted a review of current and past clerical members of the Foundation to see if any additional individuals may have been involved in these types of behaviors. Below is a list of the findings:
- Rev. Thomas Benestad (born 1945), Original Executive Director: Accused of repeatedly abusing a 9-year-old boy, including forcing the boy to perform oral sex and then instructed him to rinse his mouth out with holy water.
- Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua (born 1923), Former Chairman: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Archbishop of Philadelphia.
- Bishop Michael Bransfield (1943-present), Current President: Accused of sexually fondling a high school student in the 1970s and reportedly linked to sexual abuse incident in early 1980s.
- Edward Cardinal Egan (1932-2015), Former Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while bishop of Bridgeport bishop and Archbishop of New York.
- Timothy Cardinal Dolan (born 1950), Current Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Archbishop of Milwaukee.
- William Cardinal Keeler (1931-2017), Former Vice-Chair: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Bishop of Harrisburg and Baltimore, including the case of Father A. Joseph Maskell, on which the documentary, The Keepers, is based.
- John Cardinal Krol (1910-1996), Co-Founder, Former Chairman: Accused of covering-up hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse while Archbishop of Philadelphia.
- Archbishop William Levada (1936-present), Former Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse by priests in Portland and San Francisco.
- Roger Cardinal Mahony (born 1936), long-time member of the Board of Trustees: Barred from public ministry for failure to protect young people from sexual abuse while Archbishop of Los Angles.
- Archbishop Adam Maida (born 1930), former Trustee: Accused of financial mismanagement associated with the John Paul II Center while Archbishop of Detroit.
- Archbishop Theodore McCarrick (born 1930), Co-Founder and long-time President: Accused of sexually abusing minors, seminarians and priests over several decades.
- Seán Cardinal O’Malley (1944-present), Current Trustee, Archbishop of Boston, President, Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors: Accused of failing to act on letter detailing abuses by Theodore McCarrick.
- Archbishop Justin Rigali (1935-present), Current Trustee: Accused of mishandling sexual abuse scandal in Philadelphia.
- Archbishop John J. Myers (born 1941), Former Trustee: accused of covering-up sexual abuse, including a financial payout involving abuse claim against Theodore McCarrick.
- Kevin Cardinal Farrell (born 1947), Former Trustee: Lived with Theodore McCarrick for 6 years in Washington, D.C. Appointed vicar-general for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. by McCarrick in 2001. McCarrick supported Farrell’s promotion to Bishop of Dallas and Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. Farrell designed his Dallas crest in tribute to McCarrick. Farrell claims to know nothing about McCarrick’s history of abuse.
- Joseph Cardinal Tobin (born 1952), Current Trustee: Author of the notorious “Nighty Night” tweet. Denied knowledge of gay subculture in Archdiocese of Newark. Dissident priest in his diocese allowed to celebrate Gay Pride Mass.
- Donald Cardinal Wuerl (born 1940), Current Chairman: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while bishop of Pittsburgh and then lying about it.
- Archbishop David Zubik (born 1949), Current Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse in Pittsburgh by state’s attorney general.


From the Papal Foudation's Annual Report for 2017.

Molester McCarrick lives in comfort near
near a grammar school in Kansas:
Here's why he has been untouchable
by JOHN ZMIRAK

September 30, 2018

What does a priest have to do in today’s Church to get in really serious trouble? Recent events have made that clear.

If you’re a Catholic priest, you’re courting doom if you try any of the following:
- Give a sermon criticizing the pope’s handling of sex abuse. That might get you thrown out of your parish at a moment’s notice, then ordered out of town. That happened to Juan Carlos Gavancho, a priest in Santa Barbara, California.
- Refuse Holy Communion to a vocal, self-styled “Lesbian Buddhist.” Doing that won Fr. Marcel Guarnizo a suspension from the priesthood, ordered by Cardinal Donald Wuerl and enforced by (now-bishop) Barry Knestout.
- Take down and burn the blasphemous banner linking the cross and the gay “rainbow” flag which the priest before you hung in the church’s sanctuary. That was before the previous priest died by auto-erotic asphyxiation when attached to a “sex machine.” The Chicago Archdiocese told parishioners he’d had a heart attack, and threw him a hero’s funeral. Fr. Paul John Kalchik allowed his long-suffering parishioners to burn that banner. (The archdiocese had already removed and burned that pastor’s “massive gay porn collection.”)
That lost Fr. Kalchik his parish and got him a visit from two menacing Church officials, who made vague threats against his life, and tried to bundle him off to the booby hatch. Convinced they’d use the police to have him committed against his will to an apparently gay-run Catholic psychiatric institute, Fr. Kalchik fled the scene and remains in hiding.

Okay, so you know to avoid all that.

What’s a safer course of action? Let’s say that you’re homosexual, with a taste for young seminarians and even the occasional teenage boy…. If you rise in the ranks, keep copious files on other gay clerics so they won’t rat you out, and rise to the rank of cardinal, you’re probably pretty safe. That’s the lesson of the fate of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

He was widely known to be a practicing homosexual for decades. To single out handsome seminarians and bring them into his bed. Then promote their careers, and stymie the men who’d turned him down. Some bishop might end up hanging from a bridge, like one-time Vatican banker Roberto Calvi.

But none of that stopped McCarrick’s rise to the most prominent position in the U.S. Catholic Church: Archbishop of Washington. And none of his flaws might have mattered, if it hadn’t come out that he molested a teenage boy whom he’d baptized himself. That really did cross the line.

Because, and only because, that fact got out to the press, Pope Francis cancelled McCarrick’s status as cardinal. But he still remains a priest. Indeed, he’s still an archbishop. He still lives in comfort with a Church stipend, free healthcare, free housing, and presumably free legal counsel. Church authorities just moved him to a well-appointed monastery in walking distance of a grammar school. And locked away from reporters.

Now you might be a little confused as to why a known molester is getting such kid-gloves treatment. I know I was. Why not follow Canon Law and remove him from the priesthood? Cut off his cash, cancel his insurance, and drop him off by the side of the road like a convicted sex criminal who just got out of prison?

I think have the answer. It comes in the form of a really fine piece of journalism over at First Things magazine.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/09/the-papal-foundation-mccarricks-conflict-of-interest
[The article can be accessed through the above link with which I started this post two days ago.]

Allow me a short digression here:
The pastor died by auto-erotic asphyxiation when attached to a “sex machine.” The Chicago Archdiocese told parishioners he’d had a heart attack, and threw him a hero’s funeral.

There’s a journalism deficit. No, not the breathless recycling of half-baked partisan rumors you see in the mainstream media. (That goes all the way up the feeding chain nowadays to The New Yorker.) Nor the lackluster pabulum of press releases from bishops that makes up most of the output in the “mainstream” Catholic press. Nor even well-crafted opinion columns like those by … well, let’s not name any names. We’re all stocked up on those.

I mean the real deal, the slow-worked, carefully researched reporting pieces that outfits like the New York Times used to boast of. Stories that take weeks or months to finish. Done by reporters who talk to dozens of sources. Sift through hundreds or thousands of documents. Coax unwilling sources to tell the truth.

Not many outlets are paying people to do that anymore, so not many writers do it. I’ve done it just a few times myself, and let me tell you: it’s grueling labor. The kind of thing nobody does for fun. You’re essentially doing the kind of work an FBI agent should. But you have no power of subpoena, no access to search warrants, no jail time to threaten liars with.

But God bless him, Matthew O’ Brien did just such work over at First Things. (I hope he was well-compensated.) And he gave us, I think, the answer to why McCarrick was given a lavender velvet parachute. McCarrick knows too much.

It turns out that Theodore McCarrick, when he wasn’t treating future priests like rent boys and slurping daiquiris in the hot tub, was running the $200 million Papal Foundation. And apparently that Foundation served as a secret slush fund for corrupt Vatican enterprises, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The Foundation’s records are shoddy and full of holes. Its directors could face legal trouble for allowing things to get that bad.

Meanwhile, there’s a Catholic dermatological hospital in Italy that keeps mysteriously losing vast sums of money. (To whom, one wonders? Maybe organized crime figures?) Pope Francis demanded that the Papal Foundation bail it out. (What would we do without specifically Catholic dermatological hospitals, that offer Christian answers to ethically fraught issues like skin peels?)

And over the protests of laymen on the Foundation’s board, it duly paid up.

If the Church gave McCarrick the kick to the curb he deserves, he could bring down other bishops. Cardinals. Officials inside the Vatican. Clerics from the Papal Foundation’s board. And that might earn the ire of Mafia figures who lurk behind the scenes. Some bishop might end up hanging from a bridge, like one-time Vatican banker Roberto Calvi.

I won’t try to unpack O’Brien’s dense, scrupulously reported story on the Papal Foundation. Please go read it yourself. It’s dense with carefully vetted, unsettling facts.

It helps explain why well-connected, corrupt priests like McCarrick get sweetheart deals from cardinals like Donald Wuerl. It’s the Lavender Mafia’s version of the Witness Protection Program. In return for a cozy retirement, they’re protected from being witnesses.

McCarrick needs a golden cage to stop him from singing.