Cardinal George Pell, prefect emeritus of the Secretariat of the Economy, speaks with EWTN News in Rome, Dec. 9, 2020. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Denver Newsroom, May 6, 2022 / 15:40 pm (CNA).
Cardinal George Pell said Friday that the recent testimony of Cardinal Angelo Becciu at the Vatican finance trial “was somewhat incomplete.”
He drew particular attention to a lack of evidence regarding payments of more than $1.6 million made to Neustar Australia, an information services firm, in 2017 and 2018.
Becciu, who was the second-ranking official in the Secretariat of State from 2011 to 2018, was questioned May 5 about investments during a hearing in the Vatican trial. The cardinal has been charged with embezzlement, abuse of office, and witness tampering.
In a May 6 statement, Pell said Becciu had given “a spirited defence of his blameless subordinate role in the Vatican finances” during his testimony.
As prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, Pell led an effort called for by Pope Francis to bring order and accountability to the Vatican’s finances, which have long lacked centralized procedures, controls, and oversight.
Pell clashed in that role with Becciu, who as sostituto of the Secretariat of State served effectively as the pope’s chief of staff. Becciu at one point acted to cancel a contract Pell had made for an external audit of Vatican finances.
Reflecting on Becciu’s statement at the trial, Pell said he wanted to focus “on Cardinal Becciu’s final remarks on the AUD 2.3 million [$1.6m] paid to Neustar for the internet domain ‘.catholic’ on 4/9/2015. Was the payment from the Council for Social Communications or from the Secretariat of State? The introduction of this claim only deepens the mystery.”
Pell added that Becciu’s statement to the court differed from what he had told him in December 2020, “that the destination of the funds from the Secretariat of State to Australia was none of my business, but was known to the Holy Father.”
It is undisputed, Pell said, that the Pontifical Council for Social Communications made large payments to Neustar Australia and a domain name registry “for the reservation of the title “Catholic” in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.”
“Doubts, of course, are removed by facts, by evidence, not assertions. Unfortunately, I do not have information on payments to Neustar Australia in 2015 beyond USD 150,000 the Council for Social Communications paid as a deposit. It was not my usual practice to sign off on payments from the Secretariat of State,” Pell wrote.
Pell stated: “My interest is focussed on four payments with a value of AUD 2.3 million made by the Secretariat of State in 2017 and 2018 to Neustar Australia.”
He said two of these, with a value of $874,000, “were authorised by Monsignor Becciu on 17/5/2017 and 6/6/2018.”
“Obviously,” Pell wrote, “these are different payments from those of 11/9/2015 which I allegedly authorised. What was the purpose? Where did the money go after Neustar?”
At the time those payments were sent, Pell was being investigated and and was then on trial for sex abuse in Australia. The coincidence has led to suggestions that the funds were related to Pell’s trial in some way. Pell was convicted, but was subsequently acquitted by a unanimous judgement of the High Court of Australia.
Pell also noted in his statement that Becciu’s testimony failed to “explain the Secretariat of State’s rejection of the papally approved supervisory role of the new Council and Secretariat for the Economy.”
“He did not explain his role in the sacking of the auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and in the resignation of the Auditor, Libero Milone; both mandated to investigate Secretariat of State finances. His bizarre account of how the Secretariat of State spent the entire amount of Peter’s Pence (“Cosa mai restava quindi dell’Obolo? Niente!”) is at odds with the official publicity for the fund, the Catholic people’s understanding and the annual Vatican financial reports,” the Australian cardinal stated.
He added that discussion of APSA is “irrelevant,” as it “never had a supervisory role with the Secretariat of State finances.”
Pell concluded his statement suggesting that knowledge of the nature of Vatican finances under Becciu will come eventually: “Let us see. Truth is the daughter of time.”
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A sonogram picture of a fetus in the second trimester of a woman’s pregnancy. / Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 8, 2023 / 12:35 pm (CNA).
A group of abortion-rights activists is working to enshrine the right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution, hoping to get the measure on the state’s ballot ahead of the 2024 elections.
The political action committee Arizona for Abortion Access on Tuesday filed the Arizona Abortion Access Act, a “proposed constitutional amendment that will enshrine the fundamental right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution for generations to come,” the group said in a press release.
The group claimed that Arizona’s current 15-week ban constitutes “a significant barrier between patients and essential care,” one that allegedly “deprives pregnant [women] of their liberty and autonomy to make choices about their own health care.”
The proposed amendment, a copy of which was obtained by CNA, would forbid any abortion regulations from being imposed prior to “fetal viability,” or the ability of the unborn child to survive outside of its mother’s womb. At current levels of technology and health care, viability is usually at about 22-24 weeks.
Among the groups supporting the effort are Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, NARAL Arizona, and Healthcare Rising Arizona.
These groups, the PAC says on its website, have partnered “to begin collecting signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot.” Arizona requires nearly 400,000 signatures for an amendment to appear on a ballot.
Group chair Candace Lew said in the press release that the coalition “will power this grassroots effort to not only pose this question to voters but ensure it passes next November.”
The pro-abortion effort in Arizona comes after over a year of GOP-led legislatures passing major abortion restrictions around the country in the wake of the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
The landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision stipulated that states could not outlaw abortion at all in the first three months of pregnancy and only minimally thereafter. The ruling was binding on all 50 states.
The overturning of Roe returned the power of abortion regulation to individual state legislatures, leading many state houses to enact significant restrictions on abortion, with some outlawing the procedure after as early as six weeks of pregnancy.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, meanwhile, signed an executive order in June directing the state “not to assist in any investigations” related to legal abortion services there; Hobbs said the state would also “decline extradition requests from other states seeking to prosecute individuals who [obtain abortions]” in Arizona.
Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia (left), speaking during a Catholic conference in Warsaw in May 2022 on the natural law legacy of John Paul II (right.) / Photos by Lisa Johnston and L’Osservatore Romano
Warsaw, Poland, Jun 9, 2022 / 09:17 am (CNA).
Constant cooperation and dialogue among Catholic, Lutherans, Orthodox, and other Christian denominations have been crucial to protect life and family in the Baltic nation of Latvia, Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia, said during a recent Catholic conference in Warsaw.
In his speech, Stankevičs shared his personal ecumenical experience in Latvia as an example of how the concept of natural law proposed by St. John Paul II can serve as the basis for ecumenical cooperation in defending human values.
The metropolitan archbishop, based in Latvia’s capital, is no stranger to ecumenical work and thought. In 2001, he became the first bishop consecrated in a Lutheran church since the split from Protestantism in the 1500s. The unusual move, which occurred in the church of Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral in Riga, formerly the Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary, signaled the beginning of Stankevičs’ cooperation with the Lutheran church in Latvia, a cooperation that would ultimately become a partnership in the cause of life and the family. Since 2012, the archbishop has served on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
“I would like to present this ecumenical cooperation in three experiences in my country: the abortion debate, the civil unions discussion, and the so-called Istanbul convention,” Stankevičs began.
Entering the abortion debate
Ordained as a priest in 1996, Stankevičs struggled to find proper consultation for Catholic couples on natural family planning. It was then that he decided to create a small center that provided natural family planning under the motto “let us protect the miracle [of fertility].”
This involvement in the world of natural family planning would lead him into the heart of the abortion debate in Latvian society, and, ultimately, to the conclusion that moral discussions in the public square benefit from a basis in natural law, something emphasized in the teachings of John Paul II.
“I knew that theological arguments would not work for a secular audience, so I wanted to show that Catholic arguments are not opposed to legal, scientific, and universal arguments, but rather are in harmony with them,” Stankevičs said.
“[A] few years later our parliament introduced the discussion to legalize abortion. No one was doing anything so I decided to do something. I consulted some experts and presented a proposal that was published in the most important secular newspaper in Latvia,” the archbishop said.
Stankevičs’ article, “Why I was Lucky,” used both biological and theological arguments to defend human life. He noted that his own mother, when pregnant with him, was under pressure to get an abortion; “but she was a believer, a Catholic, so she refused the pressure.”
After the Latvian parliament legalized abortion in 2002, the different Christian confessions decided to start working together to protect the right to life and the family.
In Latvia, Catholics comprise 25% of the population, Lutherans 34.2%, and Russian Orthodox 17%, with other smaller, mostly Christian denominations making up the remainder.
“We started to work together by the initiative of a businessman in Riga, a non-believer who wanted to promote awareness about the humanity of the unborn,” the archbishop recalled.
“Bringing all Christians together in a truly ecumenical effort ended up bearing good fruits because we worked together in promoting a culture of life: From more than 7,000 abortions per year in 2002, we were able to bring it down to 2,000 by 2020,” he said.
Map of Riga, the capital of Latvia. Shutterstock
Ecumenical defense of marriage, family
Regarding the legislation on civil unions, another area where Stankevičs has rallied ecumenical groups around natural law defense of marriage, the archbishop said that he has seen the tension surrounding LGBT issues mount in Latvian society as increased pressure is brought to bear to legalize same-sex unions.
Invited to a debate on a popular Latvian television show called “One vs. One” after Pope Francis’ remark “who am I to judge?” was widely interpreted in Latvian society as approving homosexual unions, Stankevičs “had the opportunity to explain the teachings of the Catholic Church and what was the real meaning of the Holy Father’s words.”
After that episode, in dialogue with other Christian leaders, Stankevičs proposed a law aimed at reducing political tensions in the country without jeopardizing the traditional concept of the family.
The legislation proposed by the ecumenical group of Christians would have created binding regulations aimed at protecting any kind of common household; “for example, two old persons living together to help one another, or one old and one young person who decide to live together.”
“The law would benefit any household, including homosexual couples, but would not affect the concept of [the] natural family,” Stankevičs explained. “Unfortunately the media manipulated my proposal, and the Agency France Presse presented me internationally as if I was in favor of gay marriage.”
In 2020, the Constitutional Court in Latvia decided a case in favor of legalizing homosexual couples and ordered the parliament to pass legislation according to this decision.
In response, the Latvian Men’s Association started a campaign to introduce an amendment to the Latvian constitution, to clarify the concept of family. The Latvian constitution in 2005 proclaimed that marriage is only between a man and a woman, but left a legal void regarding the definition of family, which the court wanted to interpret to include homosexual unions.
The Latvian bishops’ conference supported the amendment presented by the Men’s Association, “but most importantly,” Stankevičs explained, “we put together an ecumenical statement signed by the leaders of 10 different Christian denominations supporting the idea that the family should be based on the marriage between a man and a woman. The president of the Latvian Jewish community, a good friend, also joined the statement.”
The Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia, honors soldiers who died during the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920). Shutterstock
According to Stankevičs, something strange happened next. “The Minister of Justice created a committee to discuss the demand of the constitutional court, and it included several Christian representatives, including three from the Catholic Church, which worked for a year.” But ignoring all the discussions and proposals, the Minister of Justice ended up sending a proposal to parliament that was a full recognition of homosexual couples as marriage.
The response was also ecumenical: Christian leaders sent a letter encouraging the parliament to ignore the government’s proposal.
According to Stankevičs, the proposal has already passed one round of votes “and it is very likely that it will be approved in a second round of votes, with the support of the New Conservative party. But we Christians continue to work together.”
Preventing gender ideology
The third field of ecumenical cooperation mentioned by Stankevičs concerned the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty which the Latvian government signed but ultimately did not ratify.
The treaty was introduced as an international legal instrument that recognizes violence against women as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women.
The convention claims to cover various forms of gender-based violence against women, but Christian communities in Latvia have criticized the heavy use of gender ideology in both the framing and the language of the document.
The word “gender,” for instance, is defined as “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men,” a definition that allows gender to be defined independent of biological sex and therefore opens the document to the question of whether it really is aimed at the protection of women.
Christian communities also question the biased nature of the committee designated to enforce the convention.
The governments of Slovakia and Bulgaria refused to ratify the convention, while Poland, Lithuania, and Croatia expressed reservations about the convention though it was ultimately ratified in those countries, a move the government of Poland is attempting to reverse.
“When we found out that the Latvian parliament was going to ratify it, I went to the parliament and presented the common Christian position,” Stankevičs explained. As a consequence of that visit, the Latvian parliament decided not to ratify the convention, Stankevičs said, crediting the appeal to the unity provided by the common Christian position argued via natural law.
“In conclusion,” the archbishop said, “I can say that in Latvia we continue to defend the true nature of life and family. But if we Catholics would act alone, we would not have the impact that we have as one Christian majority. That unity is the reason why the government takes us seriously.”
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