Tag: vatican

Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border

The Vatican City State has enacted stiffer penalties on anyone entering its territory or violating its airspace without permission, threatening offenders with fines and jail time.

The Vatican has hiked both monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate its tight security regulations, Catholic News Agency reported Wednesday.

Through a recent decree, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, violators will face monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros and prison sentences from one to four years.

The Vatican City State, the world’s only completely walled-in sovereign territory, has several entry points, all but one of which — the Saint Anna gate — are locked tight from dusk until dawn. The gates are manned by the Swiss Guard, with gendarmes carrying firearms not far off.

“Unless the act constitutes a more serious crime, anyone who enters the territory of Vatican City State with violence, threat, or deception is punished with imprisonment from one year to four years and a fine from € 10,000.00 to € 25,000.00,” the Italian-language text reads.

The document goes on to clarify that sneaking into Vatican territory is included in its understanding of entering by “deception.”

“Entry by fraudulent circumvention of the State’s security and protection systems or by evading border controls shall be deemed to have occurred ‘by deception,’” the decree elucidates.

Penalties will be more severe if illegal entry is carried out with the aid of weapons, dangerous substances, or as a group. In addition, they are increased by two-thirds if there is forced entry through the border control while driving a vehicle, the text stipulates.

In May, 2023, a driver stormed the border of the Vatican City State in his car, sailing through two security check points before eventually being apprehended.

The 40-year-old man was initially denied entry at the Vatican’s Saint Anna gate by the Pontifical Swiss Guard, after which he maneuvered his car away from the gate only to return at high speed, dispersing the sentries who leapt out of the vehicle’s path.

The new decree also introduces new provisions concerning unauthorized overflight of Vatican airspace, including with the use of drones, with penalties of up to three years in prison.

Last August, Pope Francis suggested that immigration laws should not be made stricter but rather looser, to allow more immigrants to cross international borders, adding that turning away migrants is a “grave sin.”

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The Day the Pope Met a Psychedelic Evangelist

The pope met an emissary from the psychedelic world at a “holy meeting” at the Vatican, where a Jesuit lawyer named Brian Muraresku presented Pope Francis with a manifesto for a psychedelic “New Reformation.”

Popes and reformations do not historically get along, but Francis accepted a copy of Muraresku’s 2020 book The Immortality Key at the meeting, which took place in late 2021 or early 2022. The book argues that psychedelics might rescue a “dying faith” and save Western civilization.

Though the science journalist Michael Pollan has called it “groundbreaking,” The Immortality Key is largely a rehash of others’ work shaped into a dubious Da Vinci Code–style thriller. Trade publishers would otherwise have little interest in a 400-page goose chase for what intoxicants the oracles and prophets might have been smoking or sipping, and so the book begins with a message for today. Western civilization, Muraresku argues, is in the grip of a cataclysmic “spiritual crisis” that can be remedied only through a “popular outbreak of mysticism,” the result of retrieving what he says are the Eucharist’s ancient, and until now secret, pharmacological roots.

And what are those roots? Muraresku is convinced that Christianity evolved from pagan mystery cults whose most sacred ritual involved the ingestion of a psychedelic fungus—and that this sacrament, the kykeon, eventually became the Holy Eucharist.

A protégé of Graham Hancock (an Economist reporter turned conspiracy theorist who has made a fortune writing speculative bestsellers about purported lost civilizations), Muraresku has written that “about seventy-five percent would leave the FDA-approved house church permanently transformed. And ready to begin a lifelong spiritual journey that could, once again, make life livable on this planet. This should begin happening by 2030, if not sooner.”

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US Catholic diocese agrees $320mn sex abuse payout

A US Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, New York has announced a massive bankruptcy settlement under which it will pay out $323 million to hundreds of alleged survivors of sexual abuse by clergy members.   

The Rockville Center reached a preliminary settlement on Thursday with about 600 plaintiffs who claimed abuse by priests as children, according to a law firm representing the survivors.   

The diocese had previously offered the survivors a $200 million settlement, which they reportedly rejected.  

“After nearly four years we do have a global resolution,” Corrine Ball told US Bankruptcy Court Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan. Glenn said the deal represented “enormous progress” and that it came “within a hair’s breadth” of failure.

Rockville Center will contribute $234.8 million to the settlement fund, while four insurers will contribute $85.3 million, a spokesperson for the diocese said.  

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Group of scientists and researchers seeks access to Vatican archives on the UFO phenomenon

A group of scientists and researchers are seeking access to the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives to uncover information about UFOs and the paranormal, believing there may be traces among the 50 miles of shelves that contain everything from handwritten papal notes to presidential missives.

The decades-long effort gained momentum in 2023 following congressional testimony by former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch alleging the Vatican’s involvement in an international cover-up of alien secrets.

Grusch claimed that Pope Pius XII “back-channeled” information to the United States about a crashed UFO recovered by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

“I don’t know where [Grusch] got this information,” Marco Grilli, the mayor’s secretary for archives, told Catholic News Service on June 11.

Grilli said the archives received emails asking about the veracity of Grusch’s claims, but compared them to requests to read personal letters from Pontius Pilate or the Virgin Mary.

“You can laugh at that,” he said.

However, discoveries like those reported in Diana Walsh Pasulka’s 2019 book “American Cosmic” suggest to UFO enthusiasts that the archives contain more than meets the eye.

Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said the archives are full of reports of paranormal events, such as nuns witnessing orbs entering their cells, flying houses and other aerial phenomena.

She argues that these events can be better understood as UFO-type occurrences rather than miracles as Catholics traditionally understand them.

“The historical record is full of these types of events,” she told CNS on May 30; “people in the Vatican don’t even know where to look; It’s in their basements.”

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THE VATICAN HAS UPDATED ITS GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING APPARITIONS AND SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA. HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS.

The Vatican has updated its process for evaluating visions of the Virgin Mary and other alleged supernatural phenomena in a new effort to prevent abuses and modernize its approaches amid the proliferation of digital technologies.

The announcement, made during a press conference in Rome last week, represents the first update to the Vatican’s procedures since 1978 and highlights growing concerns about the exploitation of people’s beliefs using technology. However, the new guidelines presented on Friday emphasize caution against making definitive declarations that discount such phenomena unless clear indications of fabrication can be discerned.

The revised norms presented on Friday focus on the moral issues involved in the exploitation of people’s faith through the presentation of alleged supernatural experiences, which can be punishable under canonical law.

Traditionally, the Catholic Church has investigated claims involving various forms of supernatural phenomena, some of which have historically impacted the faith. Among the most famous examples include a series of purported Marian apparitions witnessed by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal, in 1917.

Decades later, a group of six children in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed to have also seen and communicated with the Virgin Mary over several days in the summer of 1981, during a series of apparitional visions in which she purportedly appeared with the Infant Christ in her arms.

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Vatican preparing ‘guidelines’ for ‘apparitions’, ‘other supernatural phenomena’

The Vatican is preparing to release a document giving guidance on how to discern supernatural phenomena. 

The Holy See Press Office announced the upcoming document will be published May 17 with a live-streamed press conference featuring Prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.

Fernández has previously said the dicastery is “in the process of finalizing a new text with clear guidelines and norms for the discernment of apparitions and other phenomena,” according to the National Catholic Register.

An “apparition” refers to an instance in which a divine entity — such as a saint, the Virgin Mary, or Christ himself — makes itself known to a person on Earth. The concept is a recurring theme in the Bible and most Christian denominations affirm the belief that such brushes with the supernatural can still occur today in various capacities.

The Catholic Church urges “extreme prudence” before ascribing phenomena to a supernatural force, warning that being too quick to attribute divine origin to explainable occurrences can damage the faith and warp belief.

Alleged apparitions are usually documented and scrutinized by the diocesan bishop’s office and then forwarded to Rome for further investigation.

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Archdiocese of New Orleans Suspected of Child Sex Trafficking, Warrant Shows

A criminal investigation into the Archdiocese of New Orleans is based on a suspicion that it may be linked to child sex trafficking, according to allegations presented in a search warrant granted to Louisiana State Police.

The affidavit requesting the search warrant, first obtained by the New Orleans-based WWL Radio, alleges that multiple sex abuse victims provided statements that claim they were transported to other parishes and outside of Louisiana, where they were sexually abused. It further alleges a scheme within the archdiocese in which abused children were instructed to provide “gifts” to certain priests, which were meant to signal that the children were targets for sexual abuse.

According to the allegations in the affidavit, multiple victims reported that they were brought to the New Orleans Seminary, where they were instructed to “swim naked in the pool and would be sexually assaulted or abused.” It also alleges that investigators found that this was “a common occurrence” and that other members of the archdiocese were present. 

“Based on these findings, as well as the allegations of previous widespread child sexual abuse, it was determined that further investigation into the Archdiocese of New Orleans was necessary,” investigator Scott Rodrigue wrote in the affidavit. 

Judge Juana Lombard granted police the search warrant last week, but the allegations in the warrant were not made public until Tuesday, April 30. It allows police to search personnel files, financial records, communications, and other documents related to allegations of sexual abuse.

The warrant acknowledges that the police have probable cause to suspect felony violations of the law that prohibits the “trafficking of children for a sexual purpose.”

Although the allegations contained in the warrant do not indicate when the alleged trafficking occurred, the information that led to a suspicion of sex trafficking was obtained by police during an earlier investigation into a retired priest named Lawrence Hecker, who is accused of raping an underage teenage boy in the 1970s. Father Hecker was indicted for the alleged crime but has not yet been tried.

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The Medieval Crushing of the Cathars and Sexualizing of Witches

Many Christian writers identified the gods and lesser spirits of the Greek and Roman world with demons. This ushered in the Christian practice of demonizing those they perceived as their opponents. One of those opponents to the Catholic Church was the Cathars, whose persecution set the stage for many of the horrors committed by the church – in the name of God.

Who were the Cathars?

In the 12th to 14th century, the Cathars emerged as a medieval sect, who questioned many tenets of the Catholic Church. For instance, they believed that there were two gods: one a god of good, and the other a god of evil. They also preached about poverty, and rebelled against the Catholic Church’s corruption and exploitation of the poor. As a result, they were first branded as heretics, and ultimately as devil worshippers and practitioners of witchcraft. The tales circulated about the Cathars would make Frankenstein look like a comedian. All the horrors and sexual fantasies imaginable by a Bosch or Bruegel were heaped on these miscreants, who dared to follow too closely in the steps of Jesus.

According to some medieval writers, the susceptible were lured into a religious building and introduced to the devil. Those who agreed to join his following were made to take an oath of fidelity. They vowed to kill as many children under the age of three as possible, and take their bodies to the religious building. They swore to impede sexual intercourse among married people wherever possible, and to bequeath some part of their body to the devil at their time of death. So was said by the medieval propaganda machine.

To celebrate new members, the sect supposedly ate a meal prepared from the flesh of dead children. After dinner, the devil ordered the lights out. Then, at his command, the witches engaged in orgiastic sex: men with women or men or in groups, sometimes father with daughter, mother with son, or brother with sister. When the party was over, people were given a jar of magic ointment, supposedly made from the fat of incinerated children, to rub on the tip of their walking sticks and speed them on their journey home (Almond, 98).

These were the reasons given by the Church to torture the Cathars, and confiscate, destroy, and appropriate their property, along with that of others.

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Catholic Elites Wage War on the Freemasons

In 1738, Pope Clement XII banned Catholics from becoming Freemasons, and in 1983 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reminded Catholics that being a Freemason placed them “in a state of grave sin.” Now Rome is having another go at one of the world’s most famous brotherhoods. This comes as more Catholics are flocking to what is known as “the craft,” a term encompassing the ritual, principles, and teachings of the Freemasons.

While nobody is saying it, this story is about a modern act of “anti-Freemasonry,” a movement so old that it has its own Wikipedia page. Anti-Masonry is not a globally organised movement, and it consists of differing criticisms from political institutions and organized religions, that have elite members who despise Freemasonry.

In this recent display of persecution of Freemasons, the Vatican has published a new document, signed by Pope Francis and DDF Prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, in response to concerns raised by a bishop in the Philippines. The paranoid holy man warned Rome about increasing numbers of Catholics in his diocese enrolling in Freemasonry, and he asked for advice from the top of the Catholic hierarchy.

An article on the Catholic News Agency website explains that the dicastery responded to the Philippines bishop on Nov. 13, suggesting “a coordinated strategy” to address the masonic menace. So dramatic was Rome’s response that they called for “all of the bishops” in the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to “promote catechesis in all parishes regarding the reasons for the irreconcilability between the Catholic faith and Freemasonry.”

Read that last line again. It’s a modern witch hunt. Right? Rome is not asking its bishops for reports on the numbers of its members who are also Freemasons, but for reasons to support the predetermined notion that Catholicism is incompatible with it’s old rival, Freemasonry.

The traditional claim that Catholicism and Freemasonry are incompatible is a demonstrable farce. For if this was the case, why then are so many Catholics joining Freemasonry? The problem in this instance negates the problem!

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REPORT DETAILS ‘STAGGERING’ CHURCH SEX ABUSE IN MARYLAND

More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability, according to a long-awaited state report released Wednesday that revealed the scope of abuse spanning 80 years and accused church leaders of decades of coverups.

The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004. One deacon admitted to molesting over 100 children. Another priest was allowed to feign hepatitis treatment and make other excuses to avoid facing abuse allegations.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released the findings of their yearslong investigation during Holy Week — considered the most sacred time of year in Christianity ahead of Easter Sunday — and said the number of victims is likely far higher. The report was redacted to protect confidential grand jury materials, meaning the identities of some accused clergy were removed.

“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”

Disclosure of the redacted findings marks a significant development in an ongoing legal battle over their release and adds to growing evidence from parishes across the country as numerous similar revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.

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