BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The following was big news in the Italian media yesterday but since it was Ash Wednesday (and I was gone most of the day, as well), I did not give it any priority. Now, however, it has been reported in the UK Daily Telegraph - which spares me some translating and summarizing of material that is really peripheral but is presented by the MSM - especially in Italy - as though it had the news significance and the moral equivalence of a major statement by the Pope.

The fact that the TV program even considered the cloak-and-dagger stratagem of having someone completely disguised and anonymous as the protagonist of this latest attempt to throw mud at the Vatican is, in itself, most reprehensible. But for the MSM to pay attention to it at all is even worse. The fact that the person brings up past scandals that took place in the previous Pontificate makes it all the more dubious, because as in the pedophile 'scandals', they have nothing to do with Benedict XVI's Pontificate, which is the target of all this recent disgustingly sanctimonious muck-raking...

Disguised 'leaker' gets
primetime treatment
By Nick Squires

February 23, 2012

The Vatican is ruled by a climate of fear and an 'omerta' code of silence, a whistle-blower has claimed.

The mole claims to be one of more than 20 people within the Holy See who have leaked sensitive documents to the Italian media in the last few weeks, in an affair that has been compared to the WikiLeaks scandal and dubbed "Vati-leaks". [There certainly have not been 20 separate documents disclosed by the media in recent weeks - so either the self-proclaimed mole is exaggerating, or the moles have not been coordinating with each other and have all been leaking the same documents! Anyway, those are 20 too many weasels. Paging Cardinal Bertone and Inspector Giani: Any luck so far in ferreting out the ferrets??? Isn't there a a real-life Father Brown in the Vatican who could put his common sense and intuitive reason to what appears to be a problem that could be approached immediately by a a process of elimination (reducing the possible suspects to the known universe of those who have means and opportunity to access such documents)?]

The unidentified man, who said he had worked in the Vatican for more than 20 years, made the claims in an interview aired on Italian television on Wednesday night.

His face was hidden and his voice digitally distorted when he appeared on the TV channel, La7 [the same channel that first leaked the Vigano letters]. [In other words, the man could have been anyone picked off the street and he could have claimed anything the producers wanted him to say. No way to establish his bona fides at all, is there? If this were someone with the courage of his convictions, he ahould have appeared openly and declared his wllingness to resign instead of continuing to work for such a den of such a criminal organization! Why should anyone in his right mind treat his 'testimony' seriously at all?]

According to extracts of the interview, the whistle-blower said the Vatican was engulfed in intrigue, secrecy and a climate of intimidation.

"Maybe there is a kind of omerta to prevent the truth from surfacing. Not because of a power struggle but maybe because of fear," he added.

He claimed to have worked in the State Secretariat, which is led by the powerful but unpopular Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, who is reported to have fallen out of favour with the Pope and his supporters. [Rumors of Bertone's disfavor with the Pope appear to be completely speculative.]

The whistle-blower said the Vatican is a place where "you can commit a murder and then disappear into the void" – a reference to a murky scandal in the Swiss Guard in 1998, when a young soldier shot dead the corps' commander and wife before apparently committing suicide.

The mother of Cedric Tornay, 23, the alleged assassin, has never accepted that her son would have committed suicide and has called on Pope Benedict XVI, 84, to reopen the case, amid speculation that the real killer of the three may never have been caught. [The official verdict was that the young man killed the couple and then killed himself. What business does Benedict XVI have to order a re-investigation of a 1998 criminal case which took place and was officially 'resolved' under his predecessor, who presided at the funeral Mass for the Swiss Guard commander? See the New York Times report about the crime when it happened:[/DIM} http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/05/world/chief-guard-is-killed-in-vatican-along-with-wife-and-a-2d-man.html?ref=aloisestermann
and look up Alois Estermann in Wikipedia for the various theories on the case as advanced in several books.

There have been long-standing accusations of an official cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church, with numerous conspiracy theories put forward for a possible motive. {DUH! As if it's the first time that the 'Roman Catholic Church' has been accused of a grievous crime and an official cover-up! As if that has not been the SOP in the media. As if that has not been the entire anti-Church media strategy in the child abuse cases! Anytime anything bad happens that involves anyone in the Vatican, the immediate assumption is that it must be a crime that the Church has to cover up at all costs. In the decades since it established its monopolistic grip on public opinion, MSM has never once concded good faith to the Church on anything! Everybody else is right, never the Church.]

The leaks have embarrassed the Vatican in recent weeks, with claims of corruption and nepotism, questions over the transparency of the Vatican bank and unconfirmed reports of an assassination plot against the Pope within the next 12 months. [Why does MSM assume that the leaks have necessarily 'embarrassed' the Vatican? That's projecting secular behavior on the Church. The leaks have definitely been unpleasant, but the Vatican can be 'embarrassed' only if it accepts the truth of everything that the leaks attribute to it! On the contrary, it has replied point by point to factual errors and misrepresentations made in these leaked documents. The fact is MSM constantly do want to embarrass the Vatican and the Church, and if they have to say it themselves to underscore the point, then they do, as often as they can as in this par-for-the-course mindless article.]

The whistle-blower dismissed suggestions that documents were being leaked in exchange for money. [As if that had ever been made a major consideration in all this. Bad people do not always have to be paid to advance their evil designs!]

"Something like that is inconceivable for me. That would mean betraying what we believe in," he said.

[Now here comes another non-sequitur that has nothing to do with the recent leaks at all, but is simply literal muckraking from the 1980s to suggest an even more criminal, lurid and sinister picture of the Vatican:]

He urged the Vatican to re-investigate "with zeal" one of its most enduring mysteries – the kidnap of teenager Emanuela Orlandi nearly 30 years ago.

Over the years it has been claimed that Miss Orlandi was kidnapped so that she could be used as a bargaining chip for the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill John Paul II in St Peter's Square in 1981.

Another theory is that the girl's father, a Vatican employee, had stumbled on documents that connected the Vatican bank with a criminal gang in Rome and that she was kidnapped in a bid to silence him.

It has even been suggested that the kidnapping was carried out on the orders of a Catholic archbishop, Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced head of the Vatican bank, known as the 'Istituto per le Opere di Religione'. Marcinkus, an American, died six years ago.

[Hey, anyone is free to construct conspiracy theories, no matter how loony, and peddle them, but they should not be peddled by supposedly respectable publciations.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/02/2012 21:14]