Christmas card from Dominican Nuns to their victims: what the Pope doesn’t want you to know.

I received a card of Christmas Blessings: the Dominican nuns at Sparkill, NY are praying for children who lived at the St. Agnes Home.  They say living at the home deepened our faith in God.  I lived at the home when I was 3 and a half years old. They beat me every day and when I was too damaged to respond, one of them smothered me with a pillow. I was in a coma for almost a year.  Yes, living there deepened my faith in God because I lived. The power of God was stronger than their murderous hands.  

Let them pray for their sins and the sins of the pope and the rest of his henchmen who allowed and covered up widespread child abuse by nuns and clergy.  Do they send the cards to remind us of what they did? Do they think we will donate to support their evil habits? We can better use our resources to stop the church’s continued abuse of children around the world.  We can work together to stop them.  We need a reckoning.

Pope Francis in good company with Hitler, Stalin, Khrushchev and the Ayatollah Khomeini

So Pope Francis made the cover of Time magazine.  As Jeff Schweitzer says in his Huffington Post article (see link), so did Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin twice (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957), and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979).  It is time that everyone realizes what Mr. Schweitzer is saying –that Pope Francis has been giving us circuses (without the bread) and cares more for his image than the lives of people who suffer worldwide.  His continued support of pedophile priests rubs salt into the wounds of those of us, like myself, who were victims of rapist priests and abusive nuns.  I try my best to get the message to you the readers of my blog.  As survivors, we need journalists like Mr. Schweitzer to open the eyes of those blinded by photo ops and magazine covers.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/not-anywhere-close-to-per_b_4429185.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Vatican eats cake and dodges United Nations Child Sex Abuse Questions

With so much practice dodging questions about who in the catholic church is responsible for sexually abusing children it was easy for the vatican to do it again. On Tuesday the vatican dodged questions from a United Nations committee on clerical sexual abuse. The Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield who has followed vatican escapades in the past said that this time the Holy See claimed that it doesn’t control the actions of every Catholic in the world, and every Catholic priest, parish or school. They said that local bishops are ultimately responsible for keeping children safe from pedophile priests.

But the vatican flip flops:  whichever statement fits the purpose of the day is what you hear. In 2001, the vatican took over handling of abuse cases because it said that bishops were failing to do their jobs. Now they are back to insisting that the ultimate responsibility still lies with the bishops. But if the vatican doesn’t control them why does it fire bishops – at least some bishops: In July 2012 (Winfield, AP), the previous pope fired a Slovak bishop for mismanaging his diocese and other bishops in Australia the Congo and Italy who wanted the church to ordain women and married men. But would he fire bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests asked Winfield?  We don’t see that happening.

Even while defending itself against lawsuits and accusations that it was church policies and a culture of secrecy that allowed thousands of children to be abused by priests over decades the vatican is still claiming that they were not to blame.

We can see how much they are not concerned about protecting children: the UN in 1989 implemented the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the main UN treaty guaranteeing a full range of human rights for children.  It wasn’t until 1990 that the Holy See endorsed the convention and they waited until 1994 to submit their first report on what they were doing to comply with the treaty. Then for almost a decade there were no reports. Finally, after media pressure due to the 2010 explosion of child sex abuse cases in Europe and around the world they waited until last year and submitted one report.

So while children were continuing to be sexually abused, the vatican took its time. They actually said that the only country they are responsible for is the vatican state in the center of Rome where a total of 31 children under age 18 currently live. Given their lack of responsibility and history of child abuse there should be a law that no child should live that close to them.

David Clohessy of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) said that the vatican wants "to have their cake and eat it too" by changing their definition of the church, sometimes saying it was run from the top-down  and other times stating that only local dioceses have control over their employees.

"It's a shame that, once again, top Catholic officials successfully exploit legal technicalities to keep clergy sex crimes and cover ups covered up," Clohessy said. "The truth is that the Vatican oversees the church worldwide, insisting on secrecy in child sex cases and stopping or delaying the defrocking of pedophile priests."

Pope Francis: stop giving the faithful bread and circuses – give the children justice!

 

 

Pope Francis in mafia crosshairs

In our September 9, and October 20 posts we talked about the Vatican Bank and its dealings with terrorists and the mafia.  The cozy history of the vatican and the mafia is coming back to bite or do worse to pope francis.  Since the money laundering schemes have been in the news so often and because an investigation is ongoing by the European anti-money laundering committee Moneyval, pope francis has been verbal about how he will clean up the bank.

Francis called on the mafia to repent for “exploiting and enslaving people” in his sermons. Of course he “forgets” that under vatican protection abusive pedophile nuns and priests have been exploiting and enslaving children for 2,000 years. He never talks about those facts.

The pope’s defenses are supposed to be the best – he spends enough of our money on personal guards – but that might not be enough to prevent him from being a mafia target.

One of Italy's best known anti-mob prosecutors Nicola Gratteri, who has lived under police protection for nearly 25 years, said the “Jesuit Pope's” clean-up plans were upsetting powerful Italian crime organizations in Italy.

"I don't know if organised crime is in a position to do something, but certainly they are thinking about it. It could be dangerous (for the pope).” If the bosses could take him down they would not hesitate,” Gratteri told 'Il Fatto Quotidiano', an Italian daily newspaper.

The mafia donates money to the church, they sponsor catholic religious festivals and pay for local church repairs. They even pay to be buried on church property (see post August 10). So the mafia has always expected the church to keep silent and support their money laundering and other banking activities.

Asked if the mafia would dare try to assassinate the pope, Antonio Nicaso, an expert on organized crime in Italy told CNN, "There are so many ways to kill a pope. They have to be careful. But in the history of organized crime, whenever they had to remove an obstacle, they never thought about the consequences." 

What does the shooting spree at Los Angeles International airport have to do with pedophile catholic priests?

Today John (Kip) Heeney passed away. He was a survivor that lived a troubled life as a result of being sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a student at Salesianum High School in Wilmington, Delaware.  

Today a young man, 23 yrs. old shot and killed a transit officer at Los Angeles airport and wounded two others.  This what the article said about the killer:

He was identified later by the FBI as Paul Anthony Ciancia, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles. He graduated in 2008 from Salesianum School, an all-boys Catholic school in Wilmington, Delaware, according to school President Brendan P. Kennealey.

I wonder if going to that school had anything to do with what this person did.  It seems like more than a coincidence.  What do you think?

Leader of Poland’s Catholic Church blames children for being sexually abused by priests

Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Poland said that a child from a troubled family "seeks closeness with others and may get lost and may get the other person involved, too."  This is the mindset of the catholic hierarchy and it is not the first time the children have been blamed. How can we stop these crimes when their minds are warped?

Of course when there was an outcry from citizens and prominent politicians expressing outrage Michalik said he was misunderstood and apologized. According to reporters, Michalik had supported a parish priest convicted in 2004 of child sex abuse. One of the priest's victims said she was horrified by Michalik's latest remarks. "Archbishop Michalik's words make us feel fear and revulsion," Ewa Orlowska said.

Poland's church has been hiding cases of sex abuse since 2001. Some 27 Polish priests have been tried for sex abuse since 2001, but most of them had their prison terms suspended. Can victims get justice in Poland where there is no need to report priests to state investigators?

Over and over we hear a familiar cry from the church's defenders. They say that priests are being singled out for blame while teachers and sports coaches also sexually abuse children. Do they realize that statement is basically an admission that they are pedophiles? They are saying, “We do it but so does everyone else” – does that make it less of a crime?

The catholic clergy are experts at denial and lies. Dominican Republic investigators recently accused two Polish clergymen of child sex abuse: Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican's ambassador who was then removed by the vatican, and Rev. Wojciech Gil, a parish priest. Gil denied sexually abusing children and said that the Dominican drug mafia was taking revenge on him for his educational work.

Do all these child molesters think that we are naive and out of touch with reality? Do they ignore the growing global network that now watches every move they make? They are on a slippery slope that can only lead down to where they belong.

 

Iran and Iraq and other high risk countries have accounts in the Vatican Bank

In the September 9^th  blog (below) I explained how the Vatican bank was laundering money and having dealings with criminals and other suspicious characters.  Now, we get more information from Reuters reporters that the scandals in the Vatican books are even worse than expected.

The Vatican bank is supposed to hold accounts only for organizations and individuals related to the catholic church or Vatican City. But there are accounts that should never have been opened: those of foreign embassies such as Iran, Iraq and Indonesia who regularly make large cash deposits and withdrawals. When the embassies of these high risk countries were questioned, they had vague explanation about why they were doing such transactions. In one case, a large cash withdrawal was said to be for "refurbishment" -- is that another name for supporting terrorists?

Iran, Iraq and Indonesia are classified by international institutions and governance bodies as countries at high risk of financial crimes. The Iranian and Iraqi embassies to the Vatican said they had no comment on the cash movements or the concerns raised by regulators. The Vatican bank also had no clear explanations.   I think these discoveries are only the tip of the iceberg – how many other “high risk” countries are involved with the Vatican bank and its political schemes?

 

Suffering and pain is an art form for the vatican

I was recently in an art museum that had an exhibit by artists that were commissioned (paid) to create art work by the vatican. Looking at a large number of paintings there seemed to be a common theme: people suffering.

In countries where the vatican did not support artists, the paintings showed people doing everyday things like baking bread, sewing and tending sheep.  Why was there so much suffering and punishment in the church-directed paintings?  It’s because the church wants to frighten everyone – children and adults. Then they can more easily rape and abuse the children and rob the adults.

They were arrogant enough to write down what they did. In 1578 the church’s Inquisitors Handbook stated that punishment is not designed to correct the behavior of the person being punished – it is done in public so others “may become terrified.” Nuns and clergy with the pope’s “blessing” made examples of children, beating them in front of other children so that they are all terrified. A terrified child will submit more easily to further abuse. Worship of God should be joyful and make people happy.  The vatican hides behind God to further its own interests:  the use of children for their perversions and the misuse of donations from the faithful.  Let’s terrify the church by exposing the criminals and bringing them to justice.