Pope Francis Backs The Wrong Horse....Again

 

If you care about the Church, you're probably struggling a bit at the moment for lots of reasons. With Jorge Bergoglio at the reins as Pope Francis, it feels like a mad old parish priest well past his sell by date is running things. He doesn't care about theology, canon law, doctrine, or the effect his decisions have. He supports and promotes the UN, which has at its' heart a dubious strategy of population control. Most of his teaching seems troublingly pantheistic, and occasionally contains more than a feint whiff of direct opposition to Catholic teaching, and I quote:

Today we hear the voice of creation admonishing us to return to our rightful place in the natural created order – to remember that we are part of this interconnected web of life, not its masters. #SeasonOfCreation

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) September 3, 2020

However perhaps the most troubling dimension to Jose Bergoglio's reign as the supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church is his consistent association with men of dubious moral character. Not only does he associate with them, he saves them, he defends them, sometimes vociferously to the point where he gets himself into trouble, and worse of all, he promotes them to important and influential positions.

A lot of people who speak to me about the faith say that he's "nice". Their impression is that he is a "nice" man. Someone said to me last week "He's such a nice man", but they're blind. Perhaps their blindness results from the much commented on disinterest from the secular press.

Here are a few examples:

Cardinal "nighty-night baby" Tobin, promoted by Pope Francis, a Cardinal who stated that Church teaching on homosexuality is "unfortunate". It is beyond me frankly to understand how one can be a Cardinal in the Catholic Church and consider its' main teaching document "unfortunate" - doesn't anyone else see a problem here? Tobin, who recently endorsed Joe Biden for the presidency of the United States of America, also allows a Satanic music station operating under his authority in his Diocese.

The archbishop of Bruges, Jozef De Kesel, was known to promote the ordination of women and the making voluntary of priestly celibacy, and was credibly accused of knowingly appointing a pastor who had molested a child. Francis made him a cardinal. 

There was the archbishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, who ignored calls to investigate a paedophile priest for years. The victim was told to go see a therapist instead. Arborelius is sympathetic to the idea of creating a female version of the College of Cardinals. Francis made him a cardinal.

Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer summoned to stand trial in France for his role in covering up a child-sex-abuse scandal in Lyon. Francis made him the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which adjudicates abuse cases.

Cardinal Blaise Cupich ninth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago. He is also a member of the Roman Curia's Congregation for Bishops, which plays a role in advising on bishop appointments and episcopal matters, as well as a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Cupich was the choice of Pope Francis to succeed Francis Cardinal George as Archbishop of Chicago on September 20, 2014. Needless to say he is a big backer of everything FrancisChurch. More details on him here.

Father James Martin, a notorious Jesuit with a big media presence who has used his favour with Pope Francis to great effect, touring and spreading his counter-Catholicism all over the world.

Father Thomas Rosica  Vatican spokesman & CEO of Canadian Salt & Light TV, who seems unable to avoid embroiling himself in what can best be described as embarrassing polemics. He infamously made a legal threat against a small part-time blogger who wants to defend Church teaching. He has a long record of dodgy pronouncements and quasi-theology (for another example see here and here).
As LifesiteNews recently reported, Rosica also is notorious for his pro-homosexual views. He defends LGBT activist Fr. James Martin, rejects the Catechism’s description of the homosexual inclination as “objectively disordered,” and says the phrase “intrinsically disordered” is “harsh.” Rosica was a longtime admirer of the late Gregory Baum, a homosexual dissident former priest whom he interviewed on Salt and Light in 2012. More recently, Rosica was scheduled to say Mass for the pro-LGBT All Inclusive Ministries in Toronto but cancelled after news of the event was widely published (so a heretic and a coward). Rosica has preached a “mission” at the LGBT-friendly parish Most Holy Redeemer in San Francisco. Such proclivities are particularly significant at a synod that many observers fear will be used to push for a change in Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Those fears appeared justified when the synod working document released in June included the term “LGBT,” which had never before appeared in a Vatican text. Top synod organizer Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri said youth used the term in pre-synodal documents, but when LifeSiteNews debunked that claim, he said the acronym would remain despite the fact he lied.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, promoted to camerlengo at the same time that his mentor Theodore McCarrick was defrocked. Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s office of Laity, Life and Family, was consecrated as a  bishop by McCarrick in 2001 after McCarrick was installed as Archbishop of Washington. Farrell was a close collaborator with McCarrick during his time as the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, having served as McCarrick’s archdiocesan chancellor and living in the same house with McCarrick for six years. He has also said that he knew nothing about the misconduct of the late Father Marcial Maciel, although he also worked closely with Maciel in his days as an official of the Legionaries of Christ.

Perhaps most infamously, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick whose activities and ministry was restricted by Pope Benedict XVI but was rehabilitated by Pope Francis who recruited him to broker the despicable deal with China which has sold out the Church there.

Cardinal Godried Danneels rehabilitated by Pope Francis and selected as one of his personal choices for the 2014 Synod on the family. The selection was, frankly, remarkable, not only because Danneels was actually caught on tape in 2010 urging a victim who had been sexually abused by a bishop-friend of his to be silent. But also because He praised as a “positive development” that states were opening up civil marriage to homosexuals.

Argentine bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who resigned suddenly in 2017 stating poor health and then landed a top administrative job at the Holy See and then promptly had to return to Argentina after three priests of the diocese of Orán had accused him (their own bishop) of the sexual abuse of a dozen seminarians and other misconduct.

Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, the man known as the “vice pope,” - the one being charged by seminarians in Honduras with allowing a culture of predation to flourish. Rodríguez Maradiaga first became famous across the Catholic world for saying that the Church scandals in Boston in 2002 were the invention of Jewish-controlled media who were avenging themselves on the Catholic Church for “confirm[ing] the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state.

Monsignor Battista Ricca, reportedly Francis’s “eyes and ears at the Vatican Bank.” Ricca was widely known for engaging in affairs with men at different posts during his clerical career. He was attacked in an area of Montevideo known for cruising, and he had to be rescued from an elevator in which he was trapped with a rent boy. (It was a question about Ricca that Francis made the occasion of his headline-grabbing statement “Who am I to judge?”).

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia who commissioned a homoerotic mural in his former Italian cathedral in which he is portrayed as clasping a semi-naked man. While Catholic critics have called the work “blasphemous," "disgusting," and even "demonic,”  Paglia explained the mural was meant to be an “evangelising” tool. Right-o Vincenzo!

Notorious anti-theologian & Francis apologist Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, who, it has now been revealed, was actually present at a homosexual drug-fuelled party raided by the Vatican police in the summer of 2017 at which his secretary, Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, was arrested. Just as Cardinal Ouellet was wheeled out to defend Francis against Archbishop Viganò, so Cardinal Coccopalmerio was wheeled out to defend Francis against criticism of Amoris Laetitia. The only difference was the inept Cardinal failed to turn up to his own presser.

Back in 2018, I first read about one Giovanni Becciu. Beccui, Prefect of the Congregations of the Causes of the Saints, who was made a Cardinal by Pope Francis in 2018. Before then he was working for the pope’s secretary of state. When the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers began uncovering financial fraud in the Church, Becciu suspended its audit. The auditor general from PwC later said he was forced out on trumped-up accusations; Becciu accused that accountant of being a spy. 

I always thought it was quite surprising how little attention was paid to the fact that Cardinal Becciù launched the Vatican Police on the Vatican’s auditor-general and then sacked him saying, “He was even investigating me!” https://t.co/J9m6gYNKLJ

— Marcus Walker (@WalkerMarcus) September 24, 2020

Cardinal Pell was shipped back to Australia on trumped up charges and Francis then made Becciu a cardinal. Last night, the news broke that Giovanni Becciu had resigned and given up his rights as a cardinal. You can read a full run down on the story from CNA here.

Wow. Becciu was one of Francis's leading advisers, already deeply implicated in corruption when the Pope disgracefully made him a cardinal. https://t.co/rbOWwHuQUj

— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) September 24, 2020

This list is by no means exhaustive (I haven't even mentioned Cardinal Kasper). Why does he keep picking and promoting these characters? His choices seem to consistently be the worse possible choices for stability and sanity! 

If you want a tip on a future one to watch, Pope Francis has just appointed +Mario Grech, bishop of the tiny Maltese Island of Gozo as Synod of Bishops Secretary General, replacing +Lorenzo Baldisseri (the one who nicked all the books, remember?) The appointment was expected after Grech was made Pro-Secretary General last year. Grech is renowned for being extremely ambitious and was the main author of Maltese bishops’ controversial guidelines on #AmorisLaetitia in 2017 which were widely criticised for having over-stepped the mark massively, but, of course, welcomed by the Pope. Bishop Grech also has serious and longstanding allegations to answer regarding abuse committed by his clergy. These allegations have been widely reported in the Maltese press, although the bishop strongly denies the allegations. His lack of action with respect to priests accused of abuse led to Gozitan clergy writing to Pope Francis calling for a Vatican investigation of Grech’s ‘professional misconduct’ - in this Pontificate, it seems that gets you promoted!

What a slap in the face for all the faithful clergy of Malta!

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