'IL PAPOCCHIO' or 'THE BERGOGLIO IMBROGLIO' - One of his new cardinals in a financial scandal
If Benedict XVI had gone ahead and conferred the red hat on a bishop who faces a financial embarrassment to the tune of 12 million euros
deposited in his name in Swiss bank accounts – something he first denied and then had to admit but feigning implausible explanations -
the media would have ended his papacy there and then. The story would have fed media headlines for days, if not weeks, on end, and
a cottage industry would have been born to hound Benedict out office worse than what the New York Times, AP and Der Spiegel had launched
in 2010 to do just that, over his alleged direct and indirect personal involvement in the sex abuse scandals.
The worst financial question raised by Vatileaks-1 had been that a contractor was overpaid a million euros more than the usual payment
to put up the Vatican crèche on St. Peter’s Square, even if it had been explained that the extra money paid for permanent steel modular
structures to be used annually instead of building temporary wooden frames and bases every year.
The media and his detractors reviled and undermined Benedict XVI enough for relatively minor questions like Mons. Wielgus’s past
as a Communist spy in Poland, Mons. Williamson’s stupid Holocaust denial (which has nothing to do with why he was excommunicated
and why Benedict lifted the excommunication after 20 years) and Mons. Linz’s reported statement that hurricane Katrina was a form of
punishment from God.
But the media and the world have two measures for Benedict XVI, who stood for everything they detest, and for Bergoglio, who has been
doing their work for them since he has destroyed more of the Catholic Church in four years than all that her opponents have tried to do
for three centuries…
Aldo Maria Valli tackled the question of the financial embarrassment involving the new cardinal from Mali the day before he got the red hat.
Otherwise, there has been minimal media mention of the Mali anomaly, much less any serious coverage of it. Valli wondered
whether the pope would go ahead and make him cardinal anyway. He did, without any reservations expressed by the Vatican, except not
to have Zerbo deliver the address of thanks in behalf of the new cardinals at the ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica on June 28.
Those millions weighing down on
Monsignor, now Cardinal, Zerbo
Translated from the blog of
ALDO MARIA VALLI
June 27, 2017
A few days ago, when I telephoned Bamako [capital of Mali] to request an interview with Mons. Jean Zerbo, the nun who answered all but covered me with insults.
“His Eminence is sick! He cannot answer. Leave him alone!,” she screamed, obviously agitated.
[But poised enough to refer to the monsignor as ‘His Eminence’ even before he had been formally consecrated.] It did nothing to reassure her that I did not intend to discuss anything ‘in the news’ during the interview. Her answer was adamant:
«Son éminence est très malade! Très malade!».
[French is an official language in the former French colony.]
Now we must see whether His Excellency Jean Zerbo, Archbishop of Bamako in Mali, will really become ‘His Eminence’.
[He did, right on schedule!] We are told that Pope Francis was very upset when he learned about the 12 million euros that Zerbo had hidden in some Swiss banks.
So will the Archbishop of Bamako show up at the cardinal-making consistory tomorrow? Initially, it looked like no, but now, it seems yes. We will see.
The investigation conducted by
Le Monde is quite straightforward.
In the HSBC Private Bank in Geneva, there are various current accounts totaling 12 million euros whose access codes are all in the hands of Mons. Zerbo.
The Mali bishops’ conference had reacted angrily, speaking of
‘tendentious news reports’ intended to damage the Church in Mali ‘at the very moment when it has been honored to have its first cardinal’, a news operation, they said, aimed at soiling the image of the Church in Mali and to destabilize her”.
“God, who sees and knows everything, will one day establish the truth,” said Mons. Zerbo’s confreres, who said that Zerbo had always acted ‘with total transparency’.
Fine,
but no rebuttal was offered to the results of the journalistic investigation by David Dembélé and Aboubacar Dicko for Le Monde, who have since been subjected to anonymous violent threats by telephone and Internet, such that they have had to seek police protection in Mali.
When the Vatican learned of the Swiss bank accounts, pressure was immediately exerted advising Mons. Zerbo not to take part in the cardinal-making consistory. Especially since Zerbo, considered senior among the five cardinal candidates, was supposed to deliver the address of thanks in St. Peter’s Basilica, which would have piled embarrassment upon embarrassment.
[Zerbo was present at the consistory, but the new cardinal from Barcelona, delivered the address of thanks instead of him.]
But questions remain.
How are bishops and cardinals chosen? Is it possible that an embarrassment like that in which Zerbo is involved could have been totally unknown to the Vatican?
[Yes! And this time, perhaps, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of Bishops – unless he has been totally emasculated in his role and is no more than a figurehead now – would be guilty of the same negligence and failure to do due diligence as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was Prefect of Bishops at the time of the Wielgus nomination and the lifting of Mons. Williamson’s excommunication.
In the Wielgus case, the Secretariat of State under Cardinal Bertone was equally negligent because the Nuncio in Poland (nuncios recommend to the pope a short list of three candidates they consider qualified for an episcopal nomination) ought to have informed the Vatican what was public knowledge in Poland - that documents in the once-secret archives of Communist Poland showed Wielgus had informed on fellow priests to the Polish Secret Services. In the case of Mons. Williamson, whoever was in charge of Ecclesia Dei – the commission that liaises and coordinates with ‘traditional’ communities like FSSPX - ought to have known that Williamson had previously expressed skepticism that the Holocaust happened as reported in the history books, and informed Benedict XVI accordingly. Not that this would have stopped Benedict XVI from lifting his excommunication, but the Vatican would have been able to appropriately prepare the media and the public beforehand.
When new cardinals are named, does the Congregation for Bishops not perform the same due diligence to make sure they pass every smell test as they ought to do for everyone who is nominated to be a bishop??? Or do they simply take the word of the pope who decides he wants to name some bishops cardinals on the word of those around him who recommended the new cardinals?]
After having first denied he knew anything of the Swiss accounts, Zerbo then sought to defend himself by saying that those accounts were the result of long-ago operations carried out by missionaries – an answer representing a remedy worse than the disease! Especially if one thinks that
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual per capita income of 930 US dollars, and that Catholics represent only 2.4 percent of Mali’s 17 million population.
At the time the accounts were opened, Monsignor Zerbo was in charge of finances for the Episcopal Conference of Mali (CEM). Also involved in the problem are Mons. Jean-Gabriel Diarra, Bishop of San, and Mons. Cyprien Dakouo, who was secretary-general of CEM in 2004, along with industrialist Gérard Achar and businessman Modibo Keita.
Before the funds reached HSBC in Switzerland, CEM accounts had been circulating through different banks, while there were numerous meetings between the three Cem officials and their bankers. A high-level prelate in Mali, who has remained anonymous, has admitted he was aware the funds were being moved around, but
the origin of the 12 million euros remains a black hole. In any case, Mons. Dakouo thought it fit to leave Mali secretly in 2012.
[And is he still at large and AWOL since then???]
In the Le Monde investigation, the person currently responsible for finances in the CEM, Fr. says he has not had time to review old account books, but admitted that “we have accounts in many places”. Obviously, these have not been declared to the government.
Last May 14 (Pope Francis would announce his choice of Zerbo to become a cardinal exactly one week later, on May 21), the two investigative journalists lay in wait for Mons. Zerbo at 7 a.m. to ask him questions after he celebrated Mass and to inform him of their findings.
“You mean I have a Swiss bank account?”, he replied. “Then I am rich and I do not know it!” Later however, confronted with proof, he said these were old accounts from “a system we inherited from the Order of African Missionaries, and which the Church managed”.
Granted things are as Zerbo said,
12 million euros, tax-exempt, is quite a sum. Mali, where 80% of the people are Sunni Muslims, has for years been in the grip of a crisis which ahs brought the country to its knees. The civil war which started in 2012 officially ended three years later, but assassinations and violent encounters continue to torment the country, in which at least 5 Al-Qaeda offshoots have been operating and have recently announced they wish to unite under the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen movement.
The Church in Mali, led by Mons. Zerbo, had been carrying on difficult mediations towards a reconciliation, and therefore he pope must have had thins in mind when he decided to make Zerbo a cardinal.
Christelle Pire, who works for Vatican Radio as well as Moroccan Radio Medi1, told
Vatican Insider:
“I know the two journalists who carried out the investigation, and I know them as professionals who do serious and careful work. They had been working on this investigation for months, and I believe their sources are reliable. They have definite proof of meetings that took place between the three Mali prelates named and bank officials.
But it still remains to find out where the money came from. Are they personal funds? Why were they transferred to Switzerland? In any case, I think the Church should clear this up as soon as possible, because up to now, very little has been said about the money, and it appears that none of the financial authorities in Mali knew of the fund transfer to Switzerland.”
It’s an ugly story for the “poor Church and Church for the poor’ that Pope Francis vouches for so often.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/07/2017 03:17]