Celebrating 50 years, Special Olympics athletes meet with Pope Francis

Vatican City, Feb 14, 2017 / 02:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his preface for a book written by a survivor of clerical sex abuse, Pope Francis once again lamented the “monstrosity” of the act, calling the author, Daniel Pittet, courageous for his willingness to forgive his abuser and to share his story with the world.

“For those who have been victims of a pedophile it is difficult to talk about what they have been through and describe the trauma that still persist after many years,” the Pope said in the preface, published earlier this month.

Because of this, “Daniel Pittet’s testimony is necessary, treasured and courageous.”

In his 240-page book, titled “I Forgive You, Father: Surviving a Broken Childhood,” Pittet shares the story of his difficult childhood, during which he and his siblings were shuffled around different foster homes after their parents’ separation before eventually meeting the friar who would abuse him.

At the age of nine, Pittet was lured by a Capuchin friar into the convent attached to his parish, where he would from that day be raped on a weekly basis for four years, with those around him in denial.

Pittet’s book details not only the tragic suffering he endured, but also the long path he has taken to forgiveness, culminating in the civil and ecclesial recognition of his abusers’ crimes, and his own ability to move forward in building a family and a professional career.

Not only is the book unique for the author of its preface, but it ends with an interview conducted with the friar who abused Pittet, marking one of the rare occasions when a pedophile speaks publicly.

In his preface, Pope Francis thanked Pitett for sharing his story, “because testimony like his breaks down the wall of silence that covered scandals and suffering, shedding light on a terrible dark area in the life of the Church.”

These types of testimonies, he said, “open the way to a just mending and to the grace of reconciliation, helping pedophiles to become aware of the terrible consequences of their actions.”

Francis said he had originally met Pittet at the Vatican during the Year for Consecrated Life in 2015, and that the author had wanted to give heavy promotion to a book called “To Love is to Give Everything,” which was a collection of the testimonies of priests, religious and consecrated men and women.

At the time, “I could not have imagined that this enthusiastic and passionate Christian man had been the victim of abuse by a priest,” Francis said, adding that “yet this is what he told me, and his suffering struck me very much.”

In hearing Pittet’s story, the Pope said he saw once again both “the tremendous damage caused by sexual abuse” and the “long and painful journey that awaits the victims.”

“I am happy that others can read his testimony today and discover how far evil can enter the heart of a servant of the Church,” he said, asking how a priest committed to serving Christ and his Church can “cause so much harm.”

“How can someone who devoted their life to lead children to God, end up instead to devour them in what I called ‘a diabolical sacrifice’ that destroys both the victim and the life of the Church?”

Francis noted that some victims of abuse have committed suicide. “These deaths weigh on my heart, on my conscience and that of the whole Church,” he said, and, addressing their families, said “I offer my feelings of love and pain and humbly, I ask forgiveness.”

Clerical sex abuse “is an absolute monstrosity, a horrible sin, radically against everything that Christ has taught us,” the Pope said, and pointed to his June 4, 2016, motu proprio “Like a loving mother.”

In the document, in which the Pope deemed that negligence on the part of a bishop in handling cases of abuse is enough to oust him from office, it was stressed that the Church “must take care and protect with special love the weak and the helpless” with the tenderness of a mother.

“We have stated that it is our duty to be extremely strict with the priests who betray their mission, and with their hierarchy, bishops or cardinals, who might protect them, as has happened in the past,” Francis saod.

However, the Pope noted that despite the various trials Pittet endured as a child, he also “met another face of the Church, and this allowed him to not lose hope in men and in God.”

“(Pittet) tells us of the power of prayer that he has never abandoned, and that has comforted him in the darkest hours,” he said, pointing to the fact that the author chose to meet his “tormentor” 44 years later, wanting “to look into the eyes of the man who has hurt him in the depths of his soul.”

Instead of condemning the friar, Pittet “lent him his hand,” Francis said, noting that “the wounded child is now a standing man, fragile but standing.”

Pointing to a line written by Pittet in the book, the Pope said he was impressed by the author’s declaration that “many people fail to understand the fact that I do not hate him. I have forgiven him and I built my life on that forgiveness.”

Francis closed his preface saying that he prays for Pittet and “for all those who, like him, were wounded in their innocence, may God lift them and heal them, and give us all his forgiveness and mercy.”

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Alessandro Diddi addresses Pope Francis during the opening of the Vatican City State court’s 93rd judicial year on March 12, 2022. / Vatican Media.

Vatican City, Sep 23, 2022 / 08:10 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of the chief prosecutor of the Vatican City State court, Gian Piero Milano, and named a new prosecutor.

Milano, who will turn 75 in November, has been the Vatican tribunal’s prosecutor, also known as the promoter of justice, since October 2013.

As Vatican promoter of justice, Milano oversaw the investigations that led to the two “Vatileaks” trials and the prosecution of a priest and former Holy See diplomat for the possession and distribution of child pornography, among other cases. He was formerly a professor of canon and ecclesiastical law.

The pope on Friday appointed Alessandro Diddi as new head prosecutor. An adjunct prosecutor for the Vatican since 2015, Diddi is lead investigator for the Vatican’s major finance trial against defendant Cardinal Angelo Becciu and nine others. He also has a background as a criminal defense lawyer in Rome.

To fill the spot left by Diddi’s promotion, Pope Francis on Sept. 23 named Settimio Carmignani Caridi adjunct prosecutor. Caridi, 68, is a professor of canon and ecclesiastical law at Rome’s Tor Vergata University. He also teaches Vatican law at the private Catholic LUMSA University in Rome.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- New details have emerged about the links between the two Italian businessmen at the center of the Vatican financial scandal.

In the months before Gianluigi Torzi was asked by the Holy See to act as middle man for the final purchase of the London property at 60 Sloane Ave. from Raffaele Mincione, a company owned by Mincione secured a multi-million-euro loan from a company controlled by Torzi.

Last month, Torzi was arrested by the Vatican and charged with a range of financial crimes. The following day, Vatican-state media accused Mincione of a “conflict of interest” in his management of investments for the Secretariat of State.

The Financial Times reported on July 30 that in January, 2018, Sunset Financial, a Malta based company controlled by Torzi, provided a 26.4 million euro line of credit to Pop 12 Sarl., a Luxembourg company owned by Mincione.

Corporate filings in Luxembourg, examined by CNA, show that the credit line, from which Mincione’s company borrowed nearly 14 million euros in January 2018, was secured against an investment in the Italian Banca Carige.

The filings also show that in 2018, Pop 12 paid Torzi’s company more than 700,000 euros for the arrangement of the loan and for other “legal consulting fees” related to its Carige shares.

In February 2018, Mincione’s company borrowed an additional 12 million euros from a line of credit extended Global Prime Partners, Ltd (GPP), a European prime broker. The line of credit was secured with the same collateral as the credit line from Sunset Financial: the Carige bank shares. 

According to filings by Pop 12, since the GPP credit line was secured against “all the Carige shares held by the company,” the Sunset debt was subordinated to the GPP debt – meaning that, if necessary, Torzi could be repaid only after GPP.

Over the course of 2018, the share value of Carige collapsed, and Pop 12 reported a loss of nearly 17.5 million euros on the value of 24.9 million euro holding in the bank, leaving it unable to cover the loans from GPP and Sunset.

In November 2018, Torzi was asked by the Vatican Secretariat of State to broker the final purchase of the London building from Mincione.

Corporate filings in Luxembourg examined by CNA show that weeks after the final sale of the building to the Vatican, Mincione loaned millions of euros from his Athena Capital Real Estate and Special Situations Fund 1 (through which he owned and sold the building) to Pop 12 to repay part of the loan from GPP, which, because of the company’s debt structure, made it more likely Pop 12 could eventually repay its debt to Torzi’s company.

Both men have denied that the Pop 12 – Sunset loans played in Torzi’s role in the Vatican’s purchase of the London building from Mincione.

A spokesman for Mincione told CNA that “the suggestion that any commercial relationship between Pop 12 and Sunset Financial had any influence on the Vatican’s decision to appoint Mr Torzi as agent, is entirely wrong.”

CNA asked Mincione if Torzi, or Sunset Financial Ltd., were involved in Pop 12 securing the line of credit from GPP, and if there was any discussion, professional or social, between Torzi and Mincione of the Vatican’s investment in the London property prior to November 2018.

Mincione’s spokesman characterized the dealings between Pop 12 and Sunset as “a very usual commercial arrangement” and said “it doesn’t seem necessary for us to respond to [these] points.”

Details of the pre-existing business relationship between Mincione and Torzi come nearly two months after Torzi was arrested by Vatican authorities on charges of “extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and self-laundering,” in relation to his part in the deal.

Following Torzi’s arrest, Mincione said that Torzi’s involvement in the London deal came at the instruction of the Secretariat of State without any input from him.

Speaking to ADN Kornos in June, Mincione said Torzi was a “counterpart,” not a “partner,” and characterized their personal connection casually as “two Italians in London.”

While dismissing their personal acquaintance, saying they knew each other slightly since their offices were off the same square in London, Mincione also told AN Kornos that he had in his possession a photograph of Torzi with Pope Francis. A similar image was subsequently released online.

The building at 60 Sloane Avenue was bought by the secretariat in stages between 2014-2018 from Mincione, who at the time was managing hundreds of millions of euros of secretariat funds. CNA has previously reported that Mincione also invested Vatican funds in other companies and projects owned by or connected to him.

The Vatican cut ties with Mincione in 2018, acquiring the whole of the London property and withdrawing its remaining investment with Athena, asking Torzi to broker the final transfer of ownership, which he did using his own Luxembourg holding company, Gutt SA, as a pass-through, earning Torzi some 10 million euros in the process.

Before Torzi’s arrest, CNA reported that Fabrizio Tirabassi, a lay secretariat official who oversaw investments, was appointed a director of Torzi’s company while the businessman was finalizing the Vatican’s purchase of the London property from Mincione.

On June 6 this year, Vatican News described Mincione’s management of Vatican investments as “speculative” and a “conflict of interest.” Later that month, Mincione, through two of his companies, filed lawsuits against the Secretariat of State and the holding company which controls the London building, and which he sold to the secretariat.

Earlier this month, Vatican prosecutors, working with Italian authorities, executed a search and seizure warrant against Mincione. Italian media reported that Mincione, accompanied by his lawyers, presented himself to police by prior arrangement, who seized electronic devices, including cellular phones and iPads.

Vatican action against Mincione was the latest development in a 18-month-long ongoing investigation into financial dealings by the Secretariat of State.

A series of raids by Vatican authorities, beginning in October last year, have resulted in the suspension of several serving and former employees at the secretariat, including Tirabassi, as well as Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, whose home and office were raided earlier this year.

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