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Vatican Report and the Pope’s Resignation: “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ February 24, 2013Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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COMMENT: We’ve post­ed sev­er­al times in con­nec­tion with the res­ig­na­tion of Bene­dict XVI. Media spec­u­la­tion has cen­tered on a report sub­mit­ted to Ratzinger/Benedict detail­ing black­mail of a pow­er­ful “Vel­vet Mafia” of gay prelates inside the Vat­i­can.

Appar­ent­ly black­mailed by out­siders over their exten­sive and rel­a­tive­ly vis­i­ble liaisons, this group appears to have had deal­ings with the Vat­i­can bank–long a focus of intrigue and covert fas­cist machi­na­tions.

One can but won­der what “out­side” inter­ests have been doing the black­mail­ing? Was it just the Vel­vet Mafia that was the focus of the black­mail or did the exten­sive priest molesta­tion scan­dals fac­tor in as well?

In this con­text, it is worth remem­ber­ing that cen­tral to the exer­cise of the Catholic faith is the rit­u­al of con­fes­sion. 

Secrets of the con­fes­sion­al have long been sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal cap­i­tal, of inter­est to intel­li­gence ser­vices and/or poten­tial black­mail­ers.

The lat­est dis­clo­sures call to mind a joke by the San Fran­cis­co-based come­di­an Will Durst. In the 1980’s, he observed that the dis­clo­sure that Catholic priests were at “high-risk” for AIDS has cre­at­ed a cri­sis at the Vat­i­can. 

The curia is afraid that they are final­ly going to have to admit that priests are shar­ing nee­dles!

“Papal Res­ig­na­tion Linked to Inquiry into ‘Vat­i­can Gay Offi­cials’, Says Paper” by John Hoop­er; The Guardian [UK]; 2/21/2013.

EXCERPT: A poten­tially explo­sive report has linked the res­ig­na­tion of Pope Bene­dict XVI to the dis­cov­ery of a net­work of gay prelates in the Vat­i­can, some of whom – the report said – were being black­mailed by out­siders.

The pope’s spokesman declined to con­firm or deny the report, which was car­ried by the Ital­ian dai­ly news­pa­per La Repub­bli­ca.

The paper said the pope had tak­en the deci­sion on 17 Decem­ber that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier com­piled by three car­di­nals del­e­gated to look into the so-called “Vatileaks” affair.

Last May Pope Benedict’s but­ler, Pao­lo Gabriele, was arrest­ed and charged with hav­ing stolen and leaked papal cor­re­spon­dence that depict­ed the Vat­i­can as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infight­ing.

Accord­ing to La Repub­blica, the dossier com­pris­ing “two vol­umes of almost 300 pages – bound in red” had been con­signed to a safe in the papal apart­ments and would be deliv­ered to the pope’s suc­ces­sor upon his elec­tion.

The news­pa­per said the car­di­nals described a num­ber of fac­tions, includ­ing one whose mem­bers were “unit­ed by sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion”.

In an appar­ent quo­ta­tion from the report, La Repub­blica said some Vat­i­can offi­cials had been sub­ject to “exter­nal influ­ence” from lay­men with whom they had links of a “world­ly nature”. The paper said this was a clear ref­er­ence to black­mail. . . .

“Did a Secret Vat­i­can Report on Gay Sex and Black­mail Bring Down the Pope?” by Alexan­der Abad-San­tos; The Atlantic Wire; 2/22/2013.

EXCERPT: Pope Bene­dict XVI has claimed that he’s resign­ing the papa­cy next week because of old age. But accord­ing to the major Ital­ian news­pa­per La Repub­blica, the real rea­son he resigned is because he did not want to deal the reper­cus­sions of a secret 300-page Vat­i­can dossier that alleged­ly found, among oth­er things, an under­ground net­work of high-rank­ing gay cler­gy, com­plete with sex par­ties and shady deal­ings with the already scan­dal-rid­den Vat­i­can bank. Here’s what we know:

- The report sounds men­ac­ing. Accord­ing to La Repub­blica, the dossier comes in two vol­umes, “two fold­ers hard-bound in red” with the head­er “pon­tif­i­cal secret.”

- Pope Bene­dict asked for the inves­ti­ga­tion. “The paper said the pope had tak­en the deci­sion on 17 Decem­ber that he was going to resign — the day he received a dossier com­piled by three car­di­nals del­e­gated to look into the so-called ‘Vatileaks’ affair,” accord­ing to the The Guardian’s trans­la­tion of the report.

- The Vat­i­can has a Vel­vet Mafia — and the Vel­vet Mafia is being black­mailed. The dossier alleges that a gay lob­by exists with­in the Church, and has some sort of con­trol on the careers of those in the Vat­i­can. The dossier also alleges that this group isn’t as covert as it thinks — and got black­mailed by peo­ple on the out­side.

Discussion

2 comments for “Vatican Report and the Pope’s Resignation: “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!””

  1. Was it Ger­man intel­li­gence doing the black­mail­ing?

    Bio-lever­age is a favourite of Ger­man intel­li­gence...

    http://www.germanywatch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/popes-dont-resign.html

    Posted by GW | February 25, 2013, 8:13 am

  2. I’m sure there’s noth­ing to all these “Vel­vet Mafia” rumors:

    UK Car­di­nal Skips Con­clave Amid Priest Accu­sa­tions

    By NICOLE WINFIELD and GREGORY KATZ Asso­ci­at­ed Press
    VATICAN CITY Feb­ru­ary 25, 2013 (AP)

    Car­di­nal Kei­th O’Brien, Britain’s high­est-rank­ing Catholic leader, recused him­self on Mon­day from tak­ing part in the con­clave to elect the next pope after being accused of improp­er con­duct with priests — an unprece­dent­ed first head to roll in the mud­sling­ing that has fol­lowed Pope Bene­dict XVI’s deci­sion to resign.

    O’Brien also resigned as arch­bish­op of St. Andrews and Edin­burgh, though the Vat­i­can insist­ed that Bene­dict accept­ed his res­ig­na­tion pure­ly because he was near­ing the retire­ment age of 75 — not because of the accu­sa­tions. But O’Brien him­self issued a state­ment Mon­day say­ing he would skip the con­clave because he did­n’t want to become the focus of media atten­tion at such a del­i­cate time for the Catholic Church.

    O’Brien has said through his spokesman that he is con­test­ing alle­ga­tions made Sun­day in a British news­pa­per that three priests and a for­mer priest had filed com­plaints to the Vat­i­can alleg­ing that the car­di­nal act­ed inap­pro­pri­ate­ly with them. The Observ­er news­pa­per did not name the priests, but it said their alle­ga­tions date back to the 1980s. There were no details about the alleged inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior.

    It is the first time a car­di­nal has recused him­self from a con­clave because of per­son­al scan­dal. It comes in the wake of a grass-roots cam­paign to shame anoth­er car­di­nal, retired Los Ange­les Car­di­nal Roger Maho­ny, into refrain­ing from par­tic­i­pat­ing because of his role pro­tect­ing sex­u­al­ly abu­sive priests.

    Maho­ny, how­ev­er, has defi­ant­ly said he would par­tic­i­pate in the vot­ing for the new pope.

    The dif­fer­ence in cas­es boils down to the fact that O’Brien him­self was accused of improp­er behav­ior, where­as Maho­ny has been shown to have cov­ered up for oth­er priests who raped and molest­ed chil­dren — a dis­tinc­tion that has long shield­ed bish­ops accused of cov­er-up from Vat­i­can sanc­tion.

    ...

    And in anoth­er devel­op­ment Mon­day, Bene­dict decid­ed that the con­tents of a secret inves­ti­ga­tion into the 2012 leaks of Vat­i­can doc­u­ments won’t be shared with the car­di­nals ahead of the con­clave. Bene­dict met Mon­day with the three elder­ly car­di­nals who con­duct­ed the probe and decid­ed that “the acts of the inves­ti­ga­tion, known only to him­self, remain sole­ly at the dis­po­si­tion of the new pope,” a Vat­i­can state­ment said.

    Spec­u­la­tion has been rife in the Ital­ian media that the three car­di­nals — Julian Her­ranz, Jozef Tomko and Sal­va­tore De Gior­gi — would be autho­rized to share the infor­ma­tion with fel­low car­di­nals before the con­clave. That assumed the car­di­nal elec­tors would want to know details about the state of dys­func­tion in the Vat­i­can bureau­cra­cy and on any poten­tial­ly com­pro­mised col­leagues before pos­si­bly vot­ing one into office.

    Bene­dict appoint­ed the three men last year to inves­ti­gate the ori­gins of leaks, which revealed pet­ty wran­gling, cor­rup­tion, crony­ism and even alle­ga­tions of a gay plot at the high­est lev­els of the Catholic Church. The pope’s but­ler was con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed theft in Octo­ber for hav­ing stolen the papers and giv­en them to a jour­nal­ist who then pub­lished them in a block­buster book.

    While the three car­di­nals can­not share the full con­tents of their inves­ti­ga­tion, it’s unclear if they could give sub­tle hints about poten­tial papal can­di­dates to the elec­tors. The Vat­i­can’s asser­tion that only the pope knew the con­tents of the dossier was a clear mes­sage to read­ers of Ital­ian news­pa­pers, which have run sev­er­al arti­cles pur­port­ing to know the con­tents of the report.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 25, 2013, 12:21 pm

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