Fr. Piero Gheddo, envoy to the peripheries, dies at 88

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 10, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- A leading Catholic scholar has said that former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was able to deceive St. John Paul II to secure his own promotion, despite allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct. The Vatican’s report on the career of McCarrick, published Tuesday, identifies accusations against McCarrick which were known at the time he was appointed Archbishop of Washington and named a cardinal.

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a biographer of St. John Paul II, told CNA that McCarrick was a “pathological personality,” and that his ability to lie to, and deceive those around him was a “hallmark” of his career and rise in the Church.

The Vatican’s McCarrick Report, more than 400 pages and released Nov. 10, includes details of accusations made against McCarrick over the course of several decades, beginning in the 1980s. The report noted that it was John Paul II, who served as pope from 1978 to 2005, who appointed McCarrick as bishop of Metuchen in 1981 and archbishop of Newark in 1986, based on his “background, skills, and achievements.”

The report said it was likely that John Paul II personally decided to appoint McCarrick to Washington, even after allegations against the American archbishop were shared with him in 1999, and after earlier allegations and concerns resulted in McCarrick’s disqualification from consideration to lead the archdioceses of Chicago and New York.

“Information regarding McCarrick’s conduct led to the conclusion that it would be imprudent to transfer him from Newark to another See on three occasions, namely Chicago (in 1997), New York (1999/2000 and, initially, Washington (July 2000),” the report said.

“However, Pope John Paul II seems to have changed his mind in August/September 2000, ultimately leading to his decision to appoint McCarrick to Washington in November 2000.”

The report offered a series of reasons as to why John Paul II may have changed his mind.

The first reason is that the pontiff received “inaccurate information” from several U.S. bishops familiar with McCarrick’s record. In fact, three bishops who had received multiple allegations against McCarrick or personally witnessed him sexually assaulting a young cleric told the Holy See in 2000 that they had no concerns about McCarrick’s suitability as a bishop, and no reason to suspect him of misconduct. 

The report added that St. John Paul had known McCarrick since the mid-1970s, and that McCarrick’s denials were considered plausible by the pope. 

“The report speaks of McCarrick’s own personal relationship with St. John Paul,” Weigel told CNA, “and certainly his ability to gain and abuse the trust of others is now known to be a hallmark of his method of operation.” 

In 2000, shortly before his appointment to the Archdiocese of Washington, McCarrick wrote a letter to St. John Paul’s personal secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, denying several accusations brought to the pope’s attention over the years.

“Sure,” McCarrick wrote, “I have made mistakes and may have sometimes lacked in prudence, but in the seventy years of my life, I have never had sexual relations with any person, male or female, young or old, cleric or lay, nor have I ever abused another person or treated them with disrespect.” 

McCarrick insisted he was happy to either remain in Newark, where he was then archbishop, or to resign, should the pope ask him to.

“McCarrick’s letter to then-Bishop Dziwsz, John Paul’s secretary, is a lie and a terrible example of his abuse of a relationship,” Weigel said.

The report also highlighted the former pope’s experiences as a bishop in Poland during the Soviet era, during which baseless accusations of sexual misconduct were used by Communist authorities to discredit the Church.

“Though there is no direct evidence, it appears likely from the information obtained that John Paul II’s past experience in Poland regarding the use of spurious allegations against bishops to degrade the standing of the Church played a role in his willingness to believe McCarrick’s denials,” the report said.

Weigel told CNA that both the pope’s previous experiences and McCarrick’s well-established ability to deceive those around him contributed to McCarrick’s ability to rise in the Church.

“St. John Paul II’s experience in Poland and with the USSR gave him more than a passing familiarity with the use of baseless slanders and slurs against priests and bishops as a tactic against the Church,” Weigel said.

“In the case of McCarrick, the simple fact is that pathological personalities lie and deceive people – even intelligent and saintly people – and that’s what McCarrick was able to do.” 

St. John Paul II’s apparently personal decision to promote McCarrick and to disbelieve mounting allegations made against him – anonymous in some cases and from named accusers in others – raise questions about the legacy of St. John Paul.

Weigel told CNA that misjudgments by John Paul II need to be seen in the context of all the people McCarrick was able to deceive about his true nature, over a period of years.

“McCarrick lied to and fooled much of the U.S. episcopate,” said Weigel. 

“He lied to and fooled many lay Catholics, including those who funded his activities, and many on the Catholic left, for who he was a hero. And he lied to and fooled St. John Paul II.” 

“It is the eternal paradox of the Church, one Christ speaks about in the Gospel, that her greatest saints and worst sinners CAN live and work side by side in the same field.”

[…]

L’Osservatore Romano.

Vatican City, May 20, 2021 / 11:29 am (CNA).

The Vatican is observing Laudato si’ Week to mark the sixth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for our common home. The week includes an online climate summit.

 “The Laudato si’ action platform will be launched at the end of this week that offers the Church and all religious bodies a huge range of activities that they can join in order to move further away from fossil fuels,” Lindlyn Moma, Director of Advocacy for the Global Catholic Climate Movement, said during day three of the summit.

Father Augusto Zampini, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is overseeing the May 16-25 Laudato si’ Week.

Fr. Zampini told Crux May 17 he hopes the Laudato si’ action plan will create “a massive movement” of organizations throughout society and the Church. 

“The idea is that everyone commits to the seven Laudato Si resolutions, which are easy,” he said.

A conversation during the summit’s third day, Laudato Si Dialogue on Energy and Fossil Fuels: Global Catholic Divestment Drumbeat, featured six panelists discussing fossil fuels and plans for reduction in their use.

Day three of the summit brought in 1,100 views on YouTube and nearly 240 on Facebook. The previous day, the summit attracted 3,000 viewers on YouTube and 500 on Facebook. On the first day, the summit brought 4,000 views on YouTube, and almost 560 on Facebook.  

The summit will continue to feature discussions of the pope’s call for ecological responsibility in the face of climate change. 

Laudato si’ Week is the conclusion of a year-long observance of the fifth anniversary of the encyclical. The year has included numerous activities to encourage the others.

In June 2020 the Vatican encouraged Catholics to put their faith into action to promote integral ecology and care of creation with the release of a 200-page document. 

The introduction of On the Journey for Care of the Common Home said, “the intention is to offer an orientation to the action of Catholics (but not only) in the secular dimension and to ask every Christian to examine their own behavior, also in everyday life…”

During the launch of the Laudato si’ year in May 2020, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development commented that five years from Pope Francis’ signing of the document, the “encyclical appears ever more relevant.”

“We hope that the anniversary year and the ensuing decade will indeed be a time of grace, a true Kairos experience and ‘Jubilee’ time for the Earth, and for humanity, and for all God’s creatures,” the dicastery said at the time.

[…]

Vatican City, Oct 30, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Angelo Becciu has denied any impropriety in a real estate investment made with Vatican funds and insisted that he only acted in the best interests of the Holy See.

In an interview with Italian media published Tuesday, the former deputy at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State rejected any wrongdoing in the authorization of a $200 million property deal to develop a building in London. 

Responding to what he called “slanderous charges” that he had “played with and tampered with the money of the poor” in the 2014 transaction, the cardinal defended the investment, saying it was “accepted practice.”

Speaking to ANSA, the cardinal said “My conscience is clear and I know I have always acted in the interest of the Holy See and never in my personal one. Those who know me well can attest to that.”

Becciu served as “sostituto,” or second-ranking official at the Secretariat of State from 2011-2018, when Pope Francis named him a cardinal and moved him to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

The interview came in response to media coverage of an ongoing investigation by Vatican criminal and financial authorities into a 2014 $200 million investment made through Athena Capital, a Luxembourg investment fund, which financed a stake in the development of a luxury apartment project in London.

Details of the investment were first reported by the Financial Times earlier this month. The money was taken from Swiss bank accounts under the control of the Secretariat of State and kept separately from other curial accounts held at the Vatican.

The London investment, along with a nearly $50 million 2018 investment in the same property, has raised questions about the internal control of Vatican money held in international banks and investment vehicles, especially after repeated efforts to bring financial practices into line with international practices and standards.

On Tuesday, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the investment was a one-off, and the fund in question appeared to be “well managed.” He said that he was working to clear up questions about the project.

“We are working to clear up everything. This deal was rather opaque and now we are trying to clear it up,” Reuters quoted Parolin as saying.

Becciu told ANSA that there is a difference between Vatican funds intended for the benefit of the poor and the proceeds of the annual Peter’s Pence collection taken up in every parish in the world and sent to Rome.

“It is accepted practice for the Holy See to invest in property, it has always done so: in Rome, in Paris, in Switzerland and also in London,” Becciu said, insisting that the deal was “regular and registered according to law.”

“In the Secretariat of the State we had a fund entitled ‘money of the poor’. And it was destined for the poor. If, on the other hand, for money of the poor they want to refer to Peter’s Pence, we have to clarify,” Becciu said.

“The Pence is not only for the pope’s almsgiving but also the funding for his Pastoral ministry,” Becciu said, suggesting that the Secretariat’s two investments in the luxury apartment development were an appropriate use of donated funds.

Becciu did not address his reported involvement in other complicated Vatican transactions during the interview.

On Oct. 29, CNA reported that Becciu was involved in a complicated series of events and financial transactions around the purchase of the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI), an Italian hospital that collapsed in 2013 under 800 million euros of debt through theft and fraud. 

As sostituto, sources told CNA, Becciu was the “driving force” behind requests for a $25 million grant from the U.S. based Papal Foundation, ostensibly to supply short-term liquidity to the hospital, but actually intended to help remove a 50 million euro bad loan from the books at the Vatican’s central bank, APSA.

While the balance of the grant was cancelled after pushback from Papal Foundation board members, $13 million dollars was initially sent to the Secretariat of State, though how the money was used has not been reported.

Becciu told CNA that although he had been involved in the purchase of the IDI by a partnership created by the Secretariat of State, “Cardinal Parolin assumed the office of Secretary of State [in 2013] and I no longer concerned myself with IDI.” 

In early 2019, Cardinal Parolin, wrote to the Papal Foundation saying the $13 million would be reclassified as a loan, rather than a grant, and would be repaid. 

Two sources within the Papal Foundation told CNA that the Vatican has proposed the loan be repaid through “discounts” applied each year to the list of grants requested of the Papal Foundation by Vatican offices and Catholic apostolates.

“The poor will end up paying the debt,” a source close to the Papal Foundation told CNA.

Becciu’s role in authorizing the $200 million investment, and the potential focus on his time at the Secretariat of State by Vatican investigators have placed his tenure there under renewed scrutiny. While there, he was responsible for the cancellation of an external audit of all curial finances, intended to centralize information and details of Vatican assets and funds held away from the Vatican and unavailable for scrutiny.

On October 1, Vatican prosecutors raided the Secretariat of State’s offices. Documents and devices were seized. Although the Vatican did not indicate what exactly had prompted the investigation, subsequent reporting has indicated the London property investment and Cardinal Becciu were being looked into.

The next day, a confidential memo was leaked announcing the suspension of five Vatican employees, including two officials: Msgr. Mauro Carlino, who oversees documentation at the Secretariat of State, along with layman Tomasso Di Ruzza, director of the Vatican’s Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF). Di Ruzza was subsequently cleared to return to work following and internal AIF investigation.

Becciu’s interview came two days after the same paper reported that Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had been hired to consult on the deal in May, 2018, just weeks before taking office.

Conte has since distanced himself from the Vatican-backed deal and ensuing investigation.

On Monday, his office released a statement in response to the FT’s story saying “it should be noted that Mr. Conte only gave a legal opinion and was not aware of, and was not required to know, the fact that some investors were connected to an investment fund supported by the Vatican and now at the center of an investigation.”

[…]