H. Jeffers - Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

“The Vatican said its financial investments were hurt ‘principally by the sharp and rather marked inversion in exchange rates, above all for the U.S. dollar.’ The Vatican said rents and other income from its vast real estate holdings helped its finances. The Vatican Museums, which include the Sistine Chapel, a top tourist attraction, also helped the Holy See’s finances.”

“The Vatican ’s annual Peter’s Pence collection worldwide found that the U.S. faithful were the most generous in absolute terms of the amount donated, more than $18.7 million.”

“No nation of Catholics gives more than Americans. A cardinals’ advisory committee on Holy See finances released a report in 2008 that showed the U.S. was the top contributor nation ($19 million, or 29% of the total) to the Holy See’s charitable spending in 2007, and came in second (after Germany) in contributions to the support of the Holy See itself.”

In 2007, the Vatican decided to “give financial rewards to employees who were doing a good job.” “It said it would take into account employee ‘dedication, professionalism, productivity and correctitude’ when awarding a pay rise… More than 4,000 people, from cardinals to cleaners,” were employed by the Holy See in the Vatican. “Base pay across a broad spectrum of jobs reportedly ranged from 1,100 euros ($1,634) to 2,200 euros ($3,268) a month.” A recent account gave the number of employees at 2,659, of which 744 were diocesan priests, 351 men and women in religious orders, and 1,564 laity.

When Pope John XIII was asked how many people worked in the Vatican, he quipped, “About half.”

Naughty Priests

When a Texas lawyer was digging in Vatican archives in 2003 in the pursuit of cases on behalf of American victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, he found a document titled De Modo Provedendi di Causis Crimine Soliciciones (On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of the Crime of Solicitation). Bearing the signature and seal of Pope John XXIII, it was written in 1962 by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and distributed to senior clerics all over the world with an order that it was to be kept secret.

The sixty-nine-page document dealt primarily with any priest who tempted anyone in the act of sacramental confession “towards impure or obscene matters.”

Bishops who received the order were instructed to pursue these cases “in the most secretive way.” Everyone involved, including the alleged victim, was sworn “to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office” under penalty of excommunication. The “worst crime” was defined as “any obscene external deed, gravely sinful,” carried out by a cleric “with a person of his own sex.” The document was described as “strictly confidential” and was not to be published.

Seven centuries before Pope John XXIII authorized the Vatican ’s cover-up of sexual abuse of boys and young men by priests, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) stated “right reason declares the appointed end of sexual acts is procreation,” and declared that homosexuality was one of the gravest of the peccata contra naturam or “sins against nature.” But buried in Vatican archives are records of papal misbehavior that included Pope Clement VII having sex with page boys, Benedict IX engaging in both bestiality and bi-sexual orgies, and Boniface VII being described as a “monster” and a criminal. Leo I was a sadist and torturer, Julius III sodomized young boys, Clement VI frequented prostitutes, Anacletus raped nuns, and Paul II liked watching naked men being put on the rack and tortured.

Vatican archives and Church records attest to the problem of priestly sexual misbehavior, the Church’s struggle to stamp it out, and instances of covering it up. One week after the election of the present Pope, Benedict XVI, in 2005, it was reported that in his previous position as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he had issued an order ensuring that investigations into sex abuse claims against priests be carried out in secret. It was alleged “in a confidential letter which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. It asserted the Church’s right to hold inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to ten years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the Pope’s name before he was elected as John Paul II’s successor).

“Lawyers acting for many abuse victims claimed that the letter was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accused Cardinal Ratzinger of committing a ‘clear obstruction of justice.’

“The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins,’ was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition… It spelled out to bishops the church’s position on a number of matters ranging from celebrating the Eucharist with a non-Catholic to sexual abuse by a cleric ‘with a minor below the age of eighteen years.’ Ratzinger’s letter stated that the church could claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse had been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric.’ The letter stated that the church’s jurisdiction ‘begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age’ and lasts for 10 years. It ordered that the ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office, which had the option of referring them back to private tribunals…

“Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,” Ratzinger’s letter concluded. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order was operating carried penalties, including threat of excommunication.

“The letter was referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claimed, the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice. Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. It’s an obstruction of justice.’…

“Shea criticized the order that abuse allegations should be investigated only in secret tribunals. ‘They are imposing procedures and secrecy on these cases. If law enforcement agencies find out about the case, they can deal with it. But you can’t investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10 the priest will get away with it,’ Shea added.”

When Pope Benedict XVI made his first visit to the United States in April 2008, he told reporters on his plane on the way to Washington, DC, that the sexual abuse of children “is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen.” He said, “As I read the histories of those victims, it is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future.”

Drawing a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, the pontiff said, “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

Asserting that anyone guilty of pedophilia “cannot be a priest,” he said that church officials were going through the seminaries that train would-be priests to make sure that those candidates have no such tendencies. “We’ll do all that is possible to have a strong discernment, because it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests,” he said. “We hope that we can do, and we have done and will do in the future, all that is possible to heal this wound.”