I was an altar boy for one mass at age 12, and left the Church at 14 because it meant nothing to me. Maybe I dodged a bullet or a pedophile priest or two by doing so, without even knowing it. But it’s not just the pedophilia. There’s way more rot.
None of this gives me pleasure in reporting. My great-aunt had a very hard life and the Catholic Church was her rock. How do we judge that against this sewer of slime:
A Catholic nun in 1871 was briefly excommunicated because her order exposed a pedophile priest. So, the pedophilia has been going for a very long time.
Nuns stole thousands of babies from hospitals in Spain, told parents the babies had died. The babies were put up for adoption and sold. This started with Franco and continued into the 1990’s. This is just flat evil and grotesque moral corruption.
Many thought Godfather 3 with the corrupt Vatican Bank was a ridiculous plot. It wasn’t. It happened. It was and is a very dirty bank.
Excommunicated nun:
Mary MacKillop‘s name was announced earlier in the Mass, evidence of the significant turnout of flag-toting Australians celebrating the humble nun who was briefly excommunicated in part because her religious order exposed a paedophile priest.
As a young nun, MacKillop and 47 other nuns from her order were briefly dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church in a clash with high clergy in 1871. In addition to bitter rivalries among priests, one of the catalysts for the move was that her order had exposed a pedophile priest.
Stolen babies:
Throughout much of 20th century Spain, a criminal network of doctors and nuns stole anywhere from 40,000 to 300,000 babies from their mothers at birth, constituting one of the most horrific yet least known events of the Franco dictatorship.
Following the requests of families who could not have children, a corrupt web of nuns, priests, doctors and nurses went to great lengths to steal babies — most of whom came from low-income families or single mothers — on their behalf or provide them with illegal adoptions
Vatican Bank crimes from Gerald Posner’s God’s Banker’s. Oh yes, the bank has been getting right on reforming itself for at least 40 years now. Really, it’s at the top of the list of things they need to get done.
Making money directly off the murder of Jews during the Holocaust (by investing in insurance companies that kept financial assets from murdered Jews. The bank was fully aware of what was happening.
Trying to buy fake securities from a Mafia-linked counterfeit ring
A Vatican cardinal planned to use the faked securities as collateral in order to obtain financing. The counterfeit bonds would be undetectable unless the Vatican Bank lost money on its investments and was unable to pay back the loans, at which point the Vatican could claim ignorance of an outside scam.
Using $5 million to cover up monks who were squandering donations
Smuggling gold into Poland to overthrow the communist regime
Laundering money for the Mafia and other Italian elite
In the 1970s, the bank bought a stake in the Italian bank Ambrosiano, which was led by the banker Calvi. For two years, the Vatican Bank moved money around Ambrosiano’s accounts, to allow banks and companies to pass financial inspection. Then they’d withdraw the money right after inspection, and keep a cut of the sum.
Ambrosiano later crashed in a massive scandal, and the Vatican paid a $244 million settlement without admitting to any wrongdoing.