Tag: vatican

Vatican Accepts Resignation of Jailed Bishop, Raising Questions About Religious Freedom in China

The Vatican replaced detained underground Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu in the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang with Bishop Francis Li Jianlin in a December 5 ceremony, drawing praise from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but serious concern from China’s underground Catholic community.

Zhang, secretly ordained in 1991 with Vatican approval but never recognized by Beijing, has been detained since May 2021 and his whereabouts remain unknown. He was arrested just after recovering from cancer surgery, along with priests and seminarians, for allegedly violating regulations requiring clergy to register with the state. Chinese authorities barred him from attending his successor’s ordination.

China officially recognizes only five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism. These groups operate under state-sanctioned patriotic religious associations supervised by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the CCP’s propaganda and influence arm. In 2018, the State Administration for Religious Affairs was absorbed into the UFWD, bringing all religious affairs under direct Party control.

The constitution protects only “normal religious activities,” without defining what “normal” means, and forbids religion from disrupting public order, impairing citizens’ health, or interfering with education. Clergy must support CCP leadership and adhere to the Sinicization of religion. Religious activity is restricted to approved premises, and the state maintains control over clergy appointments, publications, finances, and seminary enrollment. Minors are forbidden from entering places of worship, and pastors and imams have been instructed to emphasize socialist values in their teachings.

Under the Sinicization campaign, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Christian Council drafted a five-year plan to retranslate the Old Testament and provide new commentary on the New Testament to align scripture with socialist ideology. A 2020 university textbook even rewrote the Gospel account of the woman caught in adultery, replacing Jesus’ mercy with a fabricated story in which he stones the woman and declares, “I am also a sinner.”

Across Henan province, officials forced Protestant churches to replace the Ten Commandments with Xi Jinping quotes. Authorities have ordered the removal of crosses and replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with portraits of Xi. These campaigns censor religious texts, compel clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandate the display of political slogans.

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Italian Court Orders Google to Restore Banned Catholic Blog

Google has been compelled by the Tribunale di Imperia to restore Messainlatino.it, a major Italian Catholic website that, as you may remember, the company had abruptly taken down from its Blogger platform in July.

The ruling, issued against Google Ireland Limited, the firm’s European branch, also requires payment of approximately €7,000 (about $8,100) in court costs.

The blog’s editor, Luigi Casalini, filed legal action after Google deleted the site without warning, claiming a violation of its “hate speech” rules.

The company’s notification consisted of a short, generic email and provided no explanation or chance to appeal.

For Casalini, whose publication had accumulated over 22,000 articles since 2008 and reached around one million monthly readers, the removal appeared to be less a matter of policy enforcement and more an attempt to silence dissenting religious opinion.

Messainlatino.it was well known for covering issues surrounding traditional Catholic liturgy and had been cited by major outlets.

Following Google’s action, questions were raised in both the European Parliament and Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.

Legislators noted that the deletion “raises serious questions about the respect for freedom of expression, speech and religion” as guaranteed by Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

They also pointed to the Digital Services Act (DSA), which, despite being a censorship law, obliges platforms to apply their moderation policies with “due regard” for fundamental rights.

Casalini’s legal case focused on that provision. He argued that Google’s decision breached Article 14 of the DSA, which calls for a balance between policy enforcement and the user’s right to free expression.

As Casalini stated to LifeSiteNews, “Google acted in this way in violation of the Digital Services Act.”

Google responded through five lawyers based in Milan. The company claimed that an interview with Bishop Joseph Strickland, who opposed the ordination of women as deacons, violated its hate speech policy.

When the defense team countered that the post merely reported the bishop’s words and contained no discriminatory content, Google’s attorneys maintained in court documents that “it does not matter the source, more or less authoritative (bishop, Pontiff) of the post, if it violates the Policy.”

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Alert: Spanish Priest Facing Years in Prison for Comment That Offended Muslims

If you pay any attention to American ideological discourse, you’ve no doubt heard the one about “Christian nationalism.”

It’s this bogeyman idea that Christians are trying to take over the world politically, culturally, and spiritually (as if that’s a bad thing).

For anyone paying attention to the world, however, you’re no doubt aware of just how perilous — and powerless — life is for Christians outside of America’s protection.

Father Custodio Ballester, a Catholic priest in Spain, is facing the possibility of very real prison time on charges of “Islamaphobia,” according to a harrowing report from The Christian Broadcasting Network.

Ballester is facing up to three years in prison for this charge, as well as fines.

The big crime? Answering a question about the possibility of an interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

(It can’t be stressed enough that this happened in 2016, nearly a full decade ago.)

“This renewed revival of Christian-Muslim dialogue, paralyzed by the alleged ‘imprudence’ of the beloved Benedict XVI, is far from a reality,” Ballester wrote in a letter, responding to the question. “Islam does not allow for dialogue. You either believe or you are an infidel who must be subdued one way or another.”

The Christian Broadcasting Network added: “In a 2017 YouTube video, Ballester expanded on his 2016 remarks, warning that Islam not only poses a threat in Europe, but also that in many Muslim-majority countries, Christians face persecution.”

Despite the rote — and fairly accurate — description of Islamic culture, Ballester incensed the Association of Spanish Muslims Against Islamophobia.

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Bolivia sentences priests for concealing decades of child sex abuse

A Bolivian court sentenced two elderly Spanish Jesuit priests to a year each in prison on Tuesday for concealing decades of child sex abuse committed by their colleague in the church.

The convictions of the priests, Marcos Recolons, 81, and Ramon Alaix, 83, mark Bolivia’s first successful criminal prosecution against high-ranking members of the Catholic Jesuit order implicated in concealing abuse cases.

Prosecutors argued that Recolons and Alaix led the Jesuit order in Bolivia while the abuse occurred. They were aware of the allegations against a priest, Alfonso Pedrajas, but failed to report them to police, allowing him to continue contact with children, according to the prosecution.

The case came to light in 2023 with the publication of a diary belonging to Pedrajas, who died in 2009. In it, he wrote about abusing at least 85 minors between 1972 and 2000, many of whom were indigenous students on scholarships at a prominent boarding school.

The diary entries sparked international outrage and intensified the debate over the Catholic Church’s accountability in child sex abuse scandals across Latin America.

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Politico: Former Vatican Auditor Alleges System Enabled Money Laundering

Politico has published new claims from Libero Milone, a former auditor from Deloitte who was appointed by the Vatican in 2015. Milone alleges that the Vatican’s payroll agency was able to change names and account numbers on transactions after they were processed, allowing funds to be sent to private clients without revealing their identities.

According to Sleuth News, the U.S. intelligence community may have been involved. Sleuth News did not provide evidence to substantiate this claim but linked it to past reporting on Neustar’s role in projects tied to the 2016–2017 investigation.

Sleuth News specializes in deep dives into Russiagate, FOIA litigation, and related political and legal documents.

Vice President Vance told Gateway Pundit Publisher Jim Hoft that investigations related to the 2016 efforts to undermine and subvert Trump’s victory and first term are underway.

Revelations about Russiagate have been spilling out for weeks, even though the mainstream media has refused to cover it. Former CIA Director John Brennan has been caught lying about the releases. Law Prof Jonathan Turley suggests part of the motivation for their silence, is they don’t want to admit the role the media played in the Russiagate hoax against President Trump and his 2016 election victory.

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway’s summary of the releases so far is that “Democrats should be scared.”

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Nearly 800 infant remains found in septic tank at nun-run Irish unwed mother and baby home

Crews in Ireland began work this week to excavate the site of a former church-run home for unmarried women and their babies to identify the remains of around 800 infants and young children who died there.

Many of the remains were found in a septic tank, according to authorities. 

The backstory:

The long-awaited excavation at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway in western Ireland, is part of a reckoning in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a history of abuses in church-run institutions.

The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.

Finding a mass grave

Dig deeper:

Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewage structure on the grounds of the home. DNA analysis found that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.

A major inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes found that in total, about 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes, with major causes including respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.

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Catholics fight government surveillance in confession after wins against abortion mandate, tax

Catholic physicians and social service workers won over the Trump administration and Supreme Court, respectively, last week against their compelled participation in emergency room abortions and a state unemployment compensation program that costs more than their own church’s.

Bishops hope to make it a trifecta against a Washington state law that violates the seal of confession, threatening priests with imprisonment and fines if they don’t report suspected child abuse or neglect when “penitents” confess, but not lawyers who learn the same from clients.

Diocesan leaders filed a motion for preliminary injunction Thursday against Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nicholas Brown and county prosecutors in federal court in Tacoma to block SB 5375 at least 10 days before it takes effect July 27.

The Justice Department also quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the law as a prima facie First Amendment violation after Ferguson signed it, expanding the category of mandatory reporter to “member of the clergy,” defined as any regularly licensed, accredited or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.

Denial of an injunction would likely fast-track the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if also rejected by the historically most liberal appeals court, to SCOTUS, which has rarely struggled to reach lopsided rulings upholding religious liberty.

The high court Thursday unanimously overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court‘s ruling that found that a local Catholic Charities bureau’s work is primarily secular and hence it can’t get a religious exemption from paying into the state unemployment compensation system.

Justices unanimously ruled for Gerald Groff two years ago after the U.S. Postal Service threatened to fire the evangelical Christian for refusing to work Sundays under an Amazon delivery agreement, junking the “de minimis cost” standard that let employers easily deny religious exemptions but only appeared in a footnote in a 1977 ruling.

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Pope Leo’s Childhood Home Faces Eminent Domain as He Relocates to a More Eminent Domain

“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own,” wrote Pope Leo XIII, in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, laying down the basics of Catholic social teaching.

The plans of contemporary socialists to seize private property, Leo XIII denounced as “emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.”

The last Pope Leo’s defense of private property adds no small amount of irony to the small Chicago suburb of Dolton, Illinois’ plan to honor the new American-born Pope Leo XIV by seizing his childhood home from its private owners.

Yesterday, Chicago-area media reported that Dolton officials plan to use eminent domain to take the home where Leo XIV, formerly Robert Francis Prevost, was raised from its current private owners to create a publicly accessible historic site.

At present, the owners are auctioning off the small, 1949-built home for a reserve price of $250,000.

In a Tuesday letter to the auction house running the sale, Dolton attorney Burton Odelson cautioned buyers against purchasing the house.

“Please inform any prospective buyers that their ‘purchase’ may only be temporary since the Village intends to begin the eminent domain process very shortly,” reads Odelson’s letter, per NBC Chicago.

Odelson told Chicago’s ABC7 that the village had initially tried to voluntarily purchase the home but had snagged on the sale price.

“We’ve tried to negotiate with the owner. [He] wants too much money, so we will either negotiate with the auction house or, as the letter stated that I sent to the auction house, we will take it through eminent domain, which is our right as a village,” Odelson said.

One wonders how outrageous the owners’ offered sale price was given its current auction price of $250,000.

The fact that the home was once lived in by the current pope surely doesn’t enable the owners to command that much of a sale premium on what is undeniably a quite modest dwelling.

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Chicago priest accused of molesting kids makes bombshell claim against Pope Leo

A defrocked priest who was accused of sexually abusing at least 13 children has made a bombshell claim against the new pope. 

Robert Prevost, who was named the new head of the Vatican earlier this month, has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Church’s sexual abuse scandal in Chicago when he served as the head of the Midwest Province of the Catholic Church’s Augustinian order.

Now, former priest James M Ray also claims Prevost signed off on his move to a Hyde Park monastery near a Catholic elementary school – despite the fact that Ray had already been accused of molesting children.

‘He’s the one who gave me permission to stay there,’ Ray recently told the Chicago Sun-Times. 

The priest is included on an Archdiocesan list of accused sexual offenders, which claims he was subject to ‘limited ministry with restrictions’ starting in 1990 following sexual abuse allegations.

Still, he worked for three parishes – and in 2000, the Archdiocese of Chicago stepped in to help him find a place to live where he would not pose a threat to the public.

However, they ultimately let Ray stay for two years at the St. John Stone Friary – which is less than one block from the St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School and across the ally from a child care center. 

The school was never notified that Ray – who has never been convicted of any crime and is not included on any government sex offender registries – was moving into the area, and there is no indication that the child care center was notified either.

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Pope Leo XIV ‘looked the other way’ when confronted with child sex abuse allegations against priest in his Chicago church

The newly-elected Pope Leo XIV is facing accusations of ‘looking the other way’ when confronted with child sex abuse allegations against a priests in his Chicago and South American churches, it has emerged.

Robert Prevost, who became the first North American pontiff on Thursday, was accused by a survivors’ group of failing to act upon allegations of abuse in the U.S. and in Peru – concerns they relayed to the cardinals who selected him.

‘Staying silent is a sin. It’s not what God wants us to do. Jesus wants us to stop these things, not make a heathy garden for sexual abuse to grow,’ Lopez de Casas, a victim of clergy abuse and national vice president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told DailyMail.com.

Prevost was said to have looked past allegations in Chicago, where he grew up, after Augustinian priest Father James Ray was allowed to live at the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park despite having been removed from ministering to the public years prior over accusations of abusing minors.

The new pope allegedly didn’t notify the heads of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, an elementary school half a block from the friary because, the church said at the time, Ray was supposed to be closely monitored in the friary.

Prevost also faced criticism for not having opened a formal church investigation into alleged sexual abuse carried out by two priests in the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, which he led from 2014 to 2023. 

SNAP and other groups say they had made the 135 eligible cardinals who selected him well aware of Prevost’s alleged inaction on the allegations.

‘This person will be scrutinized from left to right,’ said Lopez de Casas, who hopes Prevost’s election will shine a brighter light on abuse within the Church.

‘That’s helpful for victims everywhere because we have this pope who will be under the public eye in terms of things he was involved with in the past,’ he said.

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