Carmelite priest, others arrested in Bolivia on sex abuse charges

St. Peter’s Basilica / / Bohumil Petrik/CNA

Rome Newsroom, Jul 19, 2022 / 05:42 am (CNA).

A Vatican policy published Tuesday says that the Holy See’s financial investments cannot contradict Catholic teaching.

The policy stipulates that Vatican investments should “be aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church, with specific exclusions for financial investments which contradict its fundamental principles, such as the sanctity of life or the dignity of the human being or the common good.”

The guidelines also say that investments of the Holy See and related entities should aim to contribute to a more just and sustainable world and to generate sufficient return in a sustainable way.

The policy, which continues Pope Francis’ reform of Vatican finances, goes into effect Sept. 1.

Investments will be made through APSA, the Holy See’s treasury and sovereign wealth manager, and overseen by an ethics committee of four financial professionals headed by Cardinal Kevin Farrell.

According to the policy, the Vatican and related entities may not invest in products and technologies related to “pornography and prostitution; gambling; weapons and defence industry; pro-abortion health centers; and laboratories or pharmaceutical companies that manufacture contractive products and/or work with embryonic stem cells.”

Industries which the policy says should be avoided for investment, but are not prohibited, include oil and mining, nuclear energy, and alcoholic beverages.

There will be a one year grace period for Vatican entities to divest of existing investments not in conformity with the new policies.

In April 2021, an Italian investigative news program accused the Vatican’s treasury of investing 20 million euros (then around $24 million) in several pharmaceutical companies involved in making the “morning-after pill.”

Investments, the policy says, should be evaluated to ensure they comply with the principles of the Catholic Church’s social doctrine on human dignity, the common good — including the universal destination of goods — subsidiarity, and solidarity.

The guidelines also exclude investments designed to be speculative or of a speculative strategy “unless necessary for the efficiency of investment transactions or to hedge risk.”

“The decision to invest in one place rather than another… is always a moral and cultural choice,” the policy says.

Investments will be approved through an oversight committee, which was formed last month after nearly two years in the making.

On June 7, Cardinal Kevin Farrell was appointed president of the new oversight committee, a body established by the Vatican’s new constitution, Praedicate evangelium.

Farrell, 74, will lead a committee of four finance professionals: John J. Zona, chief investment officer of Boston College; Jean Pierre Casey, founder and manager of RegHedge; Giovanni Christian Michael Gay, managing director of Union Investment Privatfonds GmbH; and David Harris, portfolio manager of Skagen Funds.

Since 2020, the Irish American cardinal has also led a committee to monitor internal Vatican financial decisions which fall outside other accountability norms.

According to the committee statutes, published July 19, members are appointed by Pope Francis for a five year term, with possibility of re-appointment for a second term.

The committee will operate ad experimentum for five years.

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Chilpancingo, Mexico, Mar 31, 2017 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A bishop in Mexico’s Guerrero state, which suffers the most from drug- and gang-related violence, recently met with gang leaders in order to protect priests who were receiving death threats.

Bishop Salvador Rangel Mendoza of Chilpancingo-Chilapa told Radio Fórmula March 27 that since he came to the diocese in June 2015 his great concern has been to “promote peace, harmony, dialogue.”

“When I saw that some priests had been threatened by them, including one quite seriously, I took up the task of going to go see these people (the gang leaders) and talking with them,” he said.

Bishop Rangel related that he made the contact through third persons, and in his meetings he told the leaders of these gangs that “with the death (of a priest) we’re not going to be able to settle anything,” and that the situation in Guerrero will only deteriorate.

“As a bishop I must seek dialogue and peace,” he said.

He clarified that he has not met with all the violent groups present in the area and that there is a need “to engage in dialogue.” He recalled that “almost all of Guerrero is in the hands of drug traffickers” and that the solution also involves social development of the poorest population, with whom the authorities need to get involved.

Regarding the  local authorities’ request for him to provide them information on these groups, the bishop pointed out that “I’m doing my pastoral work. I’m the bishop, I’m not the prosecutor. I think it’s up to him to investigate.”

“I’m a simple instrument of dialogue, of reaching out, because it’s not my obligation to bring people in or report on people. If they have opened up with me, if they’ve been sincere with me, I have to be loyal to them,” he said.

Fr. Benito Cuenca Mayo, spokesman for the Chilpancingo-Chilapa diocese, told CNA that more than one priest “has been caught up in this situation of the lack of security” and therefore the bishop “had to reach out to some crime group to dialogue with them.”

“Thanks to those meetings for dialogue he’s had with them, it has been possible to not have these lamentable incidents of death threats against some of our brother priests,” Fr. Cuenca said.

The spokesman noted that since his arrival at Chilpancingo, one of Bishop Rangel’s main pastoral actions “was to get to know the actual situation in the diocese and slowly he became more and more advised that violence in fact was a very delicate issue to address.”

In this regard, he recalled that more that once the bishop has stated his willingness to be an intermediary between the authorities and the criminal groups to bring about peace in the area, provided that “the parties to the conflict agree”

“A lot of progress would be made in the process of pacification in this area of Guerrero, but it’s not easy, it is a very delicate issue,” Fr. Cuenca pointed out. “He is willing to be an intermediary, which he has stated more than once.”

Earlier this month, the attorney general of Guerrero, Xavier Olea, acknowledged that the crime rate has gone up in Guerrero due to organized crime.

According to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, in January there were 165 murders throughout Guerrero, while in February, the number was 175, making this state the most violent in the country.

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U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), who is a strong supporter of legalized abortion, speaks in a campaign ad with a statue of Jesus and a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the background. / Screenshot from Twitter video

Washington, … […]