Tag: vatican

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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Abusive Priest Exposed in Netflix Series Was Trained Under CIA’s Operation MK-ULTRA

Investigators starring in the Emmy Award-nominated Netflix documentary, The Keepers, interviewed many women and at least one man reporting that Father Joseph Maskell raped them, and appeared to play a part in the murder of teacher Cathy Cesnik.

After The Keepers aired in 2017, Cesnik’s student in 1969, Gemma Hoskins, and a former Baltimore Sun reporter, Tom Nugent, found that Maskell worked at the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade and reportedly sold sex with teen girls to police and politicians, using CIA’s MK-ULTRA techniques.

Award-winning syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Edwin Black detailed in his book, War Against the Weak, how White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families started the eugenics movement in the early 1900s, paying professors at top universities to state that social issues such as poverty and “imbecility” were genetically caused.[1]

According to Black, these wealthiest families, including the Rockefellers, (JP) Morgans, Carnegies and Harrimans etc., had their hired scholars who classified 89% of Blacks (and other people of color) as well as 70% of Jews and a lesser percentage of Catholics as genetically inferior based on “IQ tests” that were extremely biased in using wealthy people’s activities.[2]

These families also paid for influence amongst politicians who passed eugenics laws in 31 states. NBC News reported how this led to the sterilization of a vast number of Americans, particularly people of color, at least until the 1970s.[3]

Black noted how eugenics doctors, celebrated in a prominent movie of the late 1910s, The Black Stork (1917), killed babies from “defective” mothers upon birth. Many people were sent to state hospitals where they were fed milk from tubercular cows, killing up to 40% of the patients.[4]

Many of those oligarchical families then funded eugenics’ rise in Germany that evolved into Nazism. U.S. intelligence further gave refuge to Nazi scientists through Operation Paperclip, which brought some of them into Project MK-ULTRA by 1953.[5]

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Vatican investigating ‘sex party’ in cathedral

The Catholic Church is investigating allegations of a “sex party” that took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle while the rest of the UK was under strict lockdown rules, the Sunday Times reported. The probe is part of a wider Vatican inquiry into the diocese, involving multiple cases of sexual abuse.

In a letter reported by the newspaper on Sunday, the Archbishop of Liverpool said that he had been asked by the Pope’s advisers to compile “an in-depth report” into events leading up to the resignation of Robert Byrne as the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle in December.

Byrne was made bishop in 2019, and immediately appointed Father Michael McCoy as the Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle. 

When the UK was placed under strict lockdown rules the following year, McCoy allegedly approached several parishoners and asked them to attend “a party” at the cathedral, a source told the Times. This event was described by the source as “a sex party taking place in the priests’ living quarters attached to Newcastle cathedral.”

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Evidence suggests Pope John Paul II knew about abuse of minors decades before becoming pope

A Dutch journalist based in Poland revealed evidence on Friday that Pope John Paul II was involved in covering up the abuse of minors while he was the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Krakow. The journalist, Ekke Overbeek, spent the last two years combing through archives in Poland, where he resides, and found several cases where the prominent Catholic Church figure knew about priests who abused children and helped them evade punishment, including transferring them to other parishes.

“I found concrete cases of priests who abused children in the Archdiocese of Krakow, where the future pope was archbishop. The future pope knew about it and nevertheless transferred those men. That led to new victims,” Overbeek said to Nieuwsuur. The journalist studied publicly available documents from the secret services about the future pope from during his time living and working in Poland. He wrote a book about his findings, Maxima Culpa, which will be published next year in Polish.

“The documents that have been collected directly about Wojtyla have almost all been destroyed, but he is mentioned very often in other documents that have survived. And if you put them all together, they are puzzle pieces that form the picture of how he handled child abuse by priests, and how that has been dealt with.”

Born Karol Józef Wojtyła in Wadowice, Poland in 1920, Pope John Paul II was canonized as a saint after his death in 2005. He began studying to become a priest in a hidden seminary during World War II, and was ordained as a priest in 1946. Within eight years, while working in and around Krakow, he earned his doctorate as a student and teacher of ethics.

He climbed the ranks of the Catholic Church to become an auxiliary bishop in Krakow in 1958. He was appointed archbishop in 1964 and became a cardinal a few years later. By the time he became pope in 1984, the Catholic population of the Krakow Archdiocese had grown from over 1.2 million to over 2.1 million.

It was believed that he only first learned about sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church after receiving a report from an American priest in 1985. But Overbeek found documents from decades earlier about a priest named Eugeniusz Surgent, who was accused of abusing children.

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Mysteries & Dark Conspiracies of The Vatican’s Forbidden Archives

Secretive places closed off to the world invite rumour, intrigue, and mystery. These are places where anything could be lurking within their halls, and they attract conspiracy theories like moths to a flame, fluttering about bashing up against them but never gaining access and never finding the answers they seek. One such place that has long been a wellspring of strange theories and speculation lies squarely within Vatican City, and besides being one of the most forbidden places in the world is also one of the most mysterious.

Comprised of approximately 53 miles of labyrinthine aisles of shelving harbouring rows upon countless rows of texts, books, and scrolls ranging from the more modern to fragile, time-worn manuscripts reaching back 12 centuries into the shadows of time, the Vatican Archives, officially known as the Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum, was originally constructed in 1612 by Pope Paul V and is a truly a huge treasure trove of information collected by the Church over hundreds of years. This vast repository of knowledge holds state papers, Holy See paperwork, papal correspondence and personal letters, and countless historical records, documents and texts accumulated by the Vatican from every corner of the known world that date back to the 8th century, all housed within a massive, carefully climate-controlled structure adjacent to the Vatican Library that is designed more like a fortress than a library, replete with impenetrable underground bunkers and with only one known heavily guarded entrance.

The list of known contents of the archives is far too long to completely cover here, but includes a wealth of historical documents including handwritten letters to the Pope from such important figures such as Mary Queen of Scotts asking for a pardon before her execution, King Henry VIII, Michelangelo asking to be paid for his work on the Sistine Chapel, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Grand Empress Dowager Helena Wang of China in the 17th century, one written on birch bark by the Canadian Ojibwe tribe in 1887, and many, many others. Here there are official edicts by Popes through the centuries, including excommunications such as that of German religious heretic and founder of Lutheranism Martin Luther, official papal decrees such as the one made in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI that split the entire known world among Spain and Portugal, as well as personal communications from popes throughout history. Here one can also find such gems as a nearly 200-foot long scroll containing details of the trials of the Knights Templar for heresy and blasphemy dating to 1307, as well as a handwritten transcript detailing the trial of astronomer Galileo Galilei in the 17th century, as well as the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary was conceived without sin, scrawled out on a piece of parchment dating to 1854.

The Vatican Archives are often referred to as the Vatican Secret Archives, mostly due to a mistranslation of the Latin words secretum, which is actually closer in meaning to “personal” or “private” rather than “secret” or “confidential” as many think, but it could also have to do with the archive’s history of strict inaccessibility and reclusiveness from the outside world. They had been for centuries practically completely forbidden and closed off from nearly everyone, even Church officials, with not even Cardinals allowed access to their treasure trove of information, and it was not until 1881 that Pope Leo XIII allowed limited access to outsiders, yet this does little to dispel the secrecy surrounding the archives and it is still no small feat to enter this inner sanctum of all of the Vatican’s knowledge.

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FBI investigating Catholic Church in New Orleans for child sex abuse

The FBI has launched a sprawling sex abuse investigation into the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans that’s targeting predator priests who may have taken kids across state lines to molest them and were never reported to law enforcement, it was revealed Wednesday. 

So far this year, more than a dozen alleged victims have been interviewed by federal investigators and some of the cases include allegations that clergy members abused kids during trips to amusement parks in Texas and Florida and camps in Mississippi. 

“It’s been a long road and just the fact that someone this high up believes us means the world to us,” a former altar boy, who claims he was abused beginning in the 1970s while in the fifth grade and on trips to Colorado and Florida, told the Associated Press. 

The probe, which is a rare undertaking for federal investigators, is examining whether aging members of the clergy can be charged with violating federal law, including the Mann Act — a 1910 anti-sex-trafficking law that prohibits bringing people out of state for illicit sex. 

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Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers ‘Flabbergasting’ Secrets

David Kertzer put down his cappuccino, put on his backpack and went digging for more Vatican secrets.

“There’s an aspect of treasure hunting,” said Mr. Kertzer, a 74-year-old historian.

Moments later he cut through a crowd lined up to see Pope Francis, showed his credentials to the Swiss Guards and entered the archives of the former headquarters for the Holy Roman Inquisition.

Over the last few decades, Mr. Kertzer has turned the inquisitive tables on the church. Using the Vatican’s own archives, the soft-spoken Brown University professor and trustee at the American Academy in Rome has become arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican’s hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II.

The son of a rabbi who participated in the liberation of Rome as an Army chaplain, Mr. Kertzer grew up in a home that had taken in a foster child whose family was murdered in Auschwitz. That family background, and his activism in college against the Vietnam War, imbued him with a sense of moral outrage — tempered by a scholar’s caution.

The result are works that have won the Pulitzer Prize, captured the imagination of Steven Spielberg and shined a sometimes harsh light on one of earth’s most shadowy institutions.

Mr. Kertzer’s latest book, “The Pope at War,” looks at the church’s role in World War II and the Holocaust — what he considers the formative event of his own life. It documents the private decision-making that led Pope Pius XII to stay essentially silent about Hitler’s genocide and argues that the pontiff’s impact on the war is underestimated. And not in a good way.

“Part of what I hope to accomplish,” Mr. Kertzer said, “is to show how important a role Pius XII played.”

The current pope, Francis, said “the church is not afraid of history,” when in 2019 he ordered the archives of Pius XII opened. But as Francis wrestles with how forcefully to condemn a dictator, this time Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Kertzer has unearthed some frightening evidence about the cost of keeping quiet about mass killings.

Mr. Kertzer makes the case that Pius XII’s overriding dread of Communism, his belief that the Axis powers would win the war, and his desire to protect the church’s interests all motivated him to avoid offending Hitler and Mussolini, whose ambassadors had worked to put him on the throne. The pope was also worried, the book shows, that opposing the Führer would alienate millions of German Catholics.

The book further reveals that a German prince and fervent Nazi acted as a secret back channel between Pius XII and Hitler, and that the pope’s top Vatican adviser on Jewish issues urged him in a letter not to protest a Fascist order to arrest and send to concentration camps most of Italy’s Jews.

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