BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Remember how the media not too long ago rationalized Pope Francis's last-minute decision not to attend a concert in his honor at the Vatican by saying he was too distraught over reports he had been told by some Apostolic Nuncios who came to Rome for the Year of Faith about the unseemly conduct while in Uruguay of the man he had chosen to be his 'personal representative' at IOR, Mons. Battista Ricca, who happened to also be the director of the three Vatican-owned hotels for visiting prelates in Rome, including Casa Santa Marta, now the papal 'residence'?

Not surprisingly in this Pope-indulgent media world today, few in the media picked up the story or even sought to check out the reports independently. An utter dereliction of journalistic duty which would never have occurred if Benedict XVI were still Pope: Every newsman and his grandmother would have rushed to Montevideo (directly across the River Plata from Buenos Aires) not just to check out the Nuncios' allegations but also to uncover what headline-making facts they could to substantiate a whopping nomination error with which to slap Benedict in the face, much as they did in the Wielgus and Williamson cases?

But no one did follow up except Sandro Magister for L'Espresso, and a detailed article in this week's issue about the results of his investigation has just been dismissed baldly by Vatican Press Director Fr. Federico Lombardi as 'not reliable'...

This development comes just when one was wondering, "Whatever happened, BTW, to the case of Mons. Ricca, and why has Pope Francis not revoked his nomination as 'IOR Prelate'?" - a function that MSM were quick to inflate as 'the ultimate overseer/reformer' of IOR in behalf of the Pope.

Magister's story, however, has too many details that are plausible and deserve a more considered reaction from the Vatican than just 'The story is not reliable'. And while the Italian media today seemed unwilling to pick up Magister's lead, that has not stopped foreign media from running with the story, as the UK Independent does, with a typically eye-grabbing headline...


Pope's bank clean-up man was once
'found stuck in lift with a rent boy'
by Michael Day

July 19, 2013

As the man charged with cleaning out the stables at the scandal-struck Vatican bank, Monsignor Battista Ricca will need Machiavellian cunning, good fortune and a whiter-than-white record to have even a fighting chance.

[The lead synthesizes the general perception about the IOR that MSM has been peddling for decades and has not been changed a whit by Moneyval's generally positive repoert about the IOR in the Council of Europe's fine-tooth-comb scrutiny of Vatican financial operations to determine whether the Holy See is compliant with international banking standards. At the same time, it inflates beyond objective fact the role of the 'IOR prelate', as I remarked earlier. In both instances, the lead is false and misleading where IOR is concerned.]

But Pope Francis’s new banker[More inflation - and the man in question is certainly no banker!] appears to possess none of these attributes after it was reported yesterday that he was found stuck in a lift with a rent boy.

Msgr Battista Ricca, as Francis’s new primate with responsibility for the troubled financial institution [NO AND NO AND NO!], known officially as the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), is supposed to usher in new transparency and badly needed reforms after years of financial scandal.

Earlier this month, a major report from finance police and magistrates warned that a lack of checks and controls by the IoR and the Italian financial institutions it had dealings with made the Vatican’s bank a money-laundering hot spot. [A deliberate mis=statement of the Italian report, which also omits the fact that the Italian banking authorities have been inexplicably hostile to IOR in recent years, engaging in flagrant acts against a sovereign state, the Vatican, like sequestering some $24 million in IOR funds for a few months, claiming that the IOR purchased bonds from a German bank in the institution's name although it was purportedly for a 'protected' client; and last Christmas season, shutting down cash machines and credit-card transactions at the Vatican on some equally outrageous pretext.]

It is claimed that Msgr Ricca, 57, impressed Francis with the way he ran three key residences used by cardinals, bishops and priests visiting Rome. {Other rumors claim that he thereby facilitated homosexual trysts and happenings for some of his Roman-collared hotel guests.]

But detailed claims have emerged detailing how in 1999, Ricca took a Vatican diplomatic posting in Uruguay and moved his lover, Patrick Haari, a Swiss army captain, in with him, to the outrage of church figures and locals in the conservative South American nation. Captain Haari was forced out by the hardline Polish nuncio Janusz Bolonek in 2001.

But there were more problems for Ricca when he was attacked in a cruising ground in Montevideo (the Uruguay capital) that year, and soon after firemen had to rescue him from a broken lift, in which he was trapped with a youth known by local police [to be a male prostitute].

The weekly news magazine L’Espresso claims that Msgr Ricca was able to get the position as IoR prelate because the supposedly powerful “gay lobby” in the Vatican airbrushed his colourful CV. [That is, of course, sheer speculation, but obviously, either nothing suspicious was in the Ricca dossier sent to Pope Francis before he made the nomination, or the Pope did not ask to see any dossier at all, but went by his gut feeling of 'trust' in Ricca from getting to know him in his function as manager of the Vatican hotels, including Casa Santa Marta.]

Gay sex scandals at the Vatican have made the headlines before. In 2010 it emerged that one of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers [The man was not 'Pope Benedict's' exclusively - he was named to his honorary and unpaid position in the previous Pontificate, part of a group called 'Gentlemen of His Holiness' who take turns serving as ushers to papal liturgies and perform other ceremonial functions {they were pallbearers at John Paul II's funeral, for example] and a member of the Vatican choir were involved in a gay prostitution ring.

Vatican spokesman Padre Federico Lombardi sought to dismiss the claims about Msgr Ricca’s private life. “What has been claimed about Msgr Ricca is not reliable,” he said.

Msgr Ricca himself has not yet responded to the allegations. ButLa Repubblica noted that the Vatican had emphasised that his appointment as prelate for the IoR was technically an interim one, thus raising the possibility that the job might not last long. [Interim or not, there ought to have been a Vatican statement earlier responding to the story that Pope Francis had been informed by other Nuncios of Ricca's questionable activities that had led to his recall from diplomatic assignment in 2001 to work at the Secretariat of State, from where, eventually, he was appointed to run the Vatican 'hotels'.

The lack of any Vatican reaction at the time gave credence to the story, while raising the question of why apparently, no action was being taken to investigate the reports, or to 'hold' Ricca's nomination pending such an investigation. The entire world media would have been howling with feigned outrage if this had happened to a Benedict nominee, but in yet another show of utter indulgence for any perceived fault or mis-step by Pope Francis, all the media, Catholic and secular, chose to shut down the issue, except Magister.]

Here's John Allen's take on Magister's story. When the story about Mons. Ricca's bad rep first came up, I wondered why Allen - or other news agency correspondents, for that matter - did not rush to Montevideo to check out the Nuncios' supposed report to the Pope about Ricca...Apparently, none in media felt it was necessary to check it out at all - which means they either believed 'the nuncios' story' or they thought it was best not to embarrass the Pope by paying any attention at all to what could be a potential huge nomination error on his part! Not an indulgence they ever conceded at all to anything Benedict did, in their manic obsession to notch yet another 'bad mark' for him.

Vatican denies scandal report
on Vatican bank prelate
by John L. Allen Jr.

July 19, 2013

ROME - A Vatican spokesman today called a report "not credible" charging that a cleric hand-picked by Pope Francis to reform the troubled Vatican bank [Even John Allen, who certainly knows better, now seems to lay the entire burden for 'reforming' IOR on the 'prelate' who is, at best, the Pope's eyes and ears to the deliberations of the IOR's lay excutive board and its cardinals' oversight commission, and while he has access to all IOR documentation, which he can then pass on to the Pope, he has no specific powers to do anything directly at the bank] led a double life while serving as a papal diplomat in Uruguay a little more than a decade ago, including having a live-in male companion and visiting gay bars.

The charges appeared in a report published today by veteran Italian journalist Sandro Magister for the magazine L'Espresso. They concern Msgr. Battista Ricca, a veteran Vatican diplomat appointed June 15 to serve as the Pope's "prelate," or representative, at the Vatican bank.

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, issued a statement to journalists calling the report "not reliable."

L'Espresso swiftly replied with an acerbic statement "confirming point by point" the details in Magister's story, which it said had been "confirmed by primary sources."

The magazine's statement also claimed the charges in Magister's piece were judged by the Vatican at the time to be sufficiently serious as to warrant Ricca's removal from Uruguay.

On background, a senior Vatican official told NCR this morning that "the Pope has listened to everyone and has confidence in Ricca." [Ah so, there's an answer as to why nothing has been done since the story first surfaced at the time of the Vatican concert that the Pope decided not to attend! In effect, he has dismissed whatever the Nuncios told him about Ricca. My, my! If Benedict XVI had done anything similar, we would never have heard the end of it - as it is, we never even heard anything officially about teeh Pope's decision on Ricca until Lombardi's flat-out rejection todsy of the charges against him.]

Ricca, 57, is a veteran Vatican diplomat who served in a variety of posts before returning to Rome and taking over as the director of Vatican residences, including the Casa Santa Marta, where Pope Francis now resides.

The Magister report focuses on Ricca's brief period in Uruguay in the late 1990s and early 2000s. According to the report, when Ricca arrived, he arranged for a male friend and captain in the Swiss army to live with him in the embassy. The report says the "intimacy" of their relations created a scandal.

Magister also suggests Ricca visited "meeting places" for homosexuals in Montevideo, at one point getting beat up, and that on another occasion he brought a "young man" back to the embassy and ended up getting trapped in an elevator with him overnight. [This came to be known because firemen had to be called to come to their assistance! - and Montevideo police/firemen report is the source for this story.]

None of the accusations in Magister's report appear to constitute criminal conduct or sexual abuse, and there is no suggestion Ricca ever faced civil charges in Uruguay. {My goodness, John Allen! When a Vatican prelate is involved in such unseemly conduct, it is not about whether it is criminal - but about whether it is morally right at all! Suddenly, a Vatican diplomat living in with his male lover in a Vatican embassy abroad - and, according to Magister, a lover that Ricca lobbied to get a position in the embassy as a paid employee - is no big desl, just because none of it constitutes 'criminal activity'??? Compare that to FSSPX Mons. Williamson's Holocaust negationism - an erroneous personal opinion, not a lifestyle, that hurt no one except for offending some Jewish sensibilities - for which Benedict was pilloried merciless;y and relentlessly!

Magister asserts all this was well known in Uruguay but was deliberately omitted from Ricca's Vatican record, so Francis learned of the charges only after appointing Ricca to his position at the Vatican bank.

Magister also links the alleged scrubbing of Ricca's file to the purported existence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican -- a phrase reportedly used by Francis himself in a June 6 private session with leaders in religious life from Latin America.

The L'Espresso statement this morning said that rather than issuing "improbable and improvident denials," the Vatican should consult its own documentation as well as materials from the civil authorities in Uruguay. The statement also said "numerous bishops, priests, religious and laity" in Uruguay were "direct witnesses" to Ricca's behavior and "are ready to give testimony."

If the charges against Ricca are confirmed, it could be an embarrassment for Francis' reform efforts. [In other words, Allen is hereby giving both the Pope and Ricca the benefit of the doubt! How will the stories about Ricca ever be 'confirmed' if the Vatican itself does not announce it has investigated the allegations made against him and found them all unsubstantiated? Failing that, would Andrea Tornielli, for example, call up his many contacts at the Secretariat of State and find out if and how Mons.Ricca's dossier had been 'scrubbed', and would Allen himself not get one of his contacts (or himself) to call the Montevideo fire department and check out the elevator story? Where are AP, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, who moved heaven and earth to dredge up any smoking gun they could possibly find against Joseph Ratzinger in 2010-2011? They would not even have to spend so much in this case because Magister has done the spadework and all they need to do is obtain independent confirmation - or lack thereof - of Magister's claims. Is the personal background of a man who represents the pluperfect Pope in 'policing' the IOR not important enough to warrant their investigation? And yet, they considered Benedict XVI's failure to be informed about Mons. Wulliamson's negationism as so monumentally 'wrong' it fueled a media campaign against Benedict for months???]

On background, some Vatican sources this morning suggested the leaks about Ricca's past may be coming from people opposed to reform, describing Ricca as "non-ambitious" and sincerely interested in implementing the pope's vision. [Really! Why didn't anyone say so right away at the time everyone in the media made it appear that Francis's decision to snub the Year of Faith concert was because he was so worked up about hearing negative things about Ricca from some Nuncios! And of the Pope's apparent decision consequently not to believe the Nuncios. But perhaps the Vatican media know-alls thought - rightly, it seems, given the general media indulgence towards this Pope - that the Vatican did not have to say anything since the media promptly 'forgot' about 'the Nuncios' story' anyway. But now, it
s back...]

So, the Pope did look into the charges
made against Mons. Ricca and
has decided to keep him as IOR prelate

Update: Apparently, it is official. Italian journalist journalist Matteo Matzuzzi twits that Fr. Lombardi said: "The Pope has had the chance to verify whether the accusations against Msgr. Ricca were consistent or not," and that "Pope Francis is aware of the accusations made against Msgr. Ricca but has decided to keep him in his position".

[My, my, again!!!... No one is reacting, because no one has reported this formally, to begin with, as the media circles its wagons to shield Pope Francis. But just imagine all the screaming headlines by now if it had been Benedict who so summarily and all by himself exculpated someone who has been accused of specific malfeasances by Nuncios in the know - 'Benedict stands by gay prelate he named to the IOR, dismisses tales told by Nuncios, succumbs to pressure by gay lobby', and worse things I am unable to imagine... To get to the truth about Ricca, and in fairness to him, I expect Andrea Tornielli, no less, to file a report that will rebut the claims made by Magister point by documented point.

One has to ask: What could have prompted Nuncios to tell tales on Ricca to the Pope no less, if the tales were false or less than credible? Envy that someone who had not even reached the position of Nuncio was suddenly a major figure in the brave new world and dreamtime spring of the Church under Pope Francis? Or a genuine desire to rectify what they perceive to be an erroneous, unwise and ultimately counter-productive nomination by the Pope?

A Rorate caeli reader had an interesting hypothesis: Suppose, he writes, Ricca had decided to come clean with Pope Francis about his past and anything else that the latter ought to know about him, and suppose that, in effect, the Pope's reaction was a magnanimous "Then go, and sin no more - and I will keep you in the IOR", thus demonstrating a variant of what he loves to preach: If God in his infinite mercy can forgive sinners again and again, then the Pope must follow his example. All very well, but even far more than Caesar's wife, should not the Vicar of Christ not be beyond reproach in this case? (Think of the universal outrage that would have ensued if Benedict XVI had persisted in naming Mons. Wielgus to be Archbishop of Warsaw after Wielgus openly admitted, which he did, to his collaboration with the Communists in spying against his fellow clerics!) The very appearance of impropriety ought not to be an issue at all with regard to the Pope's 'eyes and ears' in an institution already racked, fairly or not, by other scandals, real and presumed!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/07/2013 11:25]