A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Latest Atrocities Regarding Francis of Rome – Corrupt Donation, Seeking to Sack Raymond Arroyo February 21, 2018

A couple of recent items regarding the man inexplicably elected pope in 2013, Jorge Bergoglio.  One involves a massive and unusual donation from a US source to a corrupt Italian hospital apparently made at the pope’s direct request, and the other is the working out of a personal vendetta by one of the closest of Francis’ advisers (Anthony Spadaro, SJ) against an unlikely target – Raymond Arroyo of EWTN News, who has, it must be said, been quite willing to air negative opinions regarding Francis and his pontificate over the past several years, and especially the disastrous papal document Amoris Laetitia, apparently ghost-written by Spadaro himself.  Spadaro has been waging a PR campaign to have Arroyo fired, and now wants EWTN anathematized, an action which would surely scandalize and anger millions of the few remaining faithful American Catholics (not to mention being incredibly hypocritical, seeing how much heresy and error is tolerated and even promoted by this pontificate).

First on the donation, from LifeSiteNews and with additional commentary by Bishop Gracida:

Leaked documents obtained by LifeSiteNews connect the Pope himself to a new Vatican financial scandal and raise serious questions about his global reputation as the “pope for the poor.”

LifeSiteNews has obtained internal documents of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, a charity with a stellar history of assisting the world’s poor, showing that last summer the Pope personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant to 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 grant has lay members of the Papal Foundation up in arms, and some tendering resignations. Responding to questions from LifeSiteNews, Papal Foundation staff sent a statement saying that it is not their practice to comment on individual requests………

………However, the majority of the board is composed of U.S. bishops, including every U.S. Cardinal living in America. 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.

Despite opposition from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an $8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds, but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl brooking no dissent. [Clouds of intrigue and immorality have swirled around Cardinal Wuerl for decades]……..

…………The lay members of the board have good reason to be concerned about the supposed recipient of their generosity. Pope Francis asked for the funds to be directed to the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI), a dermatological hospital in Rome that has been plagued with corruption and financial scandal for years.

On May 15, 2013, ANSA, the leading news wire in Italy, reported “police confiscated over six million euros worth of property and bank accounts as part of investigations into alleged corruption at the Italian hospital group Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI).”

The news of Vatican financial corruption connected to the IDI hit international headlines in 2015 with a June 20 Reuters article showing the Italian magistrates suspected Vatican Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi diverted 30 million euros destined for a Church-owned children’s hospital to the Church-owned IDI.

Another ANSA piece from 2016 reported, “Finance police discovered IDI was 845 million euros in the red and 450 million euros in tax evasion while 82 million euros had been diverted and six million euros in public funds embezzled.”

In May 2017, La Repubblica – the only newspaper Pope Francis says he reads – reported on court rulings revolving around the IDI detailing twenty-four indictments, leading to a dozen convictions, some of which carried over three years in prison. The court recognized the evidence from the financial police including “about 845 million euros in balance sheet liabilities and over 82 million in diverted funds, plus the undue use of another 6 million public funds.”………

So it seems a typically corrupt Italian enterprise.  Why would the pope demand a $25 million donation from an unusual source, one that typically gives donations orders of magnitude smaller and typically only in third world countries mired in extreme poverty?  It seems the cardinals on the board – which does not include Raymond Burke, since he does not reside in the US – pushed this donation through over the objections of the lay people who both fund and partially direct it (with final determinations being made by the cardinals, when they see fit to exercise their authority).

Bishop Gracida adds more, reminding us of other financial scandals:

First, what happened to the $140,000,000 left to the Knights of Malta which led Francis to fire Cardinal Burke as the Cardinal Protector of the Knights and to fire the Supreme Knight and to replace him with one of the Friends of Francis.

Second, was Francis involved in the ‘loan’ of $400,000 to Cardinal Sodano for the ‘remodeling’ of his apartment.  A loan made by the Bambino Children’s Hospital in Rome.  Was the money passed through the Hospital in a money laundering operation?  The Italian Government thinks it was and has launched an investigation,   the results of which will probably never be made public.

Cardinal Sodano is Borgia-esque in his personal corruption and immorality.  Benedict XVI spent years trying to drive him from the Vatican and finally succeeded, only to have Sodano – probably – play a role in his downfall through the manipulation of Vatican accounts and the Italian government.  Rorate Caeli has hinted for years there is much to be found in investigating the St. Gallen group, the Vatican bank “scandal,” and Benedict’s abdication and Francis’ subsequent election, but has remained mum on the details.  Apparently there is some connection between Sodano, money laundering, the St. Gallen group, and Francis.  Thus, the Leftist Catholic, the self-mortifying friend of the little man, always concerned about the poor and always living a penniless ascetic existence.  Not.

Onto Spadaro’s patent vendetta, as I said above, he seeks to have Arroyo fired, for criticizing himself, Francis, and Amoris Laetitia – if they do not, he calls for them to be interdicted and shut down:

 Papal confidante Father Antonio Spadaro retweeted a call for EWTN to be severely censured “until they get rid of Raymond Arroyo.”

The call for an “interdict” to be imposed on the Catholic media empire started by Mother Angelica came from Anthony Annett, Assistant to the Director at the International Monetary Fund’s Communications Department. [This is a rather odd matter for a major figure at the IMF to comment on, is it not?  Notice the connection to the worldwide financial network, however, along with the revelations above]

An interdict is essentially one step short of excommunication. It bans a person or people from accessing most Church Sacraments.

Annett called for an interdict to be imposed on EWTN because of a February 15 World Over segment.

“Make no mistake,” tweeted Annett, the show’s discussion of a recent Spadaro speech and ultra-liberal Cardinal Blase Cupich “represent ‘total war’ on the papacy of Pope Francis.”……..

………..Spadaro, a Jesuit who is often called the pope’s “mouthpiece,” frequently criticizes critics of Amoris Laetitia’s ambiguity or the Francis pontificate. He is the editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica. [Well, he would lash out at critics of Amoris Laetitia, since he wrote it.]

Here is the world over segment, which discussed Francis’ plan to support Leftism worldwide and give a massive rebuke and infinite wound to the faithful souls of China’s underground Church, who have labored under the most severe persecution for decades, by sacking all the faithfully consecrated bishops and priests and substituting them with those approved by the communist government in Beijing (segment starts at 6:47):

The Vatican’s “diplomacy” regarding the Church in China is something I hope to write about soon.  It is an unspeakable betrayal and something that is unjustifiable and frankly even rises to the level of sin, I would argue.  I have long been a supporter and advocate for the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which helps the true Church in China survive by financial and other means.  They have been covering this seductive dance between the Chicoms and Francis’ pontificate for  years, and have rightly prognosticated that Francis seeks to sell out the Church in China.

This betrayal involves no concrete reward to the Church or souls, but only an ideological victory for Francis and his allies in removing a thorn from the side of fellow Leftists around the world, in this case, China.  Unbelievable, but hardly surprising.

Spadaro is essentially Francis’ mouthpiece, so when he exalts Francis as being “light years ahead” of basically every non-communist-appeasing person on the planet, we know what the Pope of Humility thinks of himself.  He’s so far above us peons that we don’t even register on his radar.

And this is the Vatican that has Cardinal Secretaries hosting cocaine-fueled sodomite orgies directly adjacent to St. Peters.  This is their vision for the Church.  It is always sin that drives heresy, and generally sins of the flesh, though those of love of money also often figure in.  These things are all tied together.