Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:10am

PopeWatch: The Huns Again

Sandro Magister gives us the latest on German machinations:

Published as received. The author is a prominent Knight of Malta, of the wing that supported the penultimate Grand Master of the Order, Fra’ Matthew Festing, overthrown in January of 2017 by his internal opponents, with the decisive backing of Pope Francis and of the Vatican secretariat of state.

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Dear Magister,

in the Order of Malta, an age-old hospitaller, military, and chivalric religious order, there is growing fear that it will not survive the subversive pressure of some of its German representatives, led by Albrecht von Boeselager [in the photo] – its current Grand Chancellor and previously the head of aid services when contraceptives were distributed -, with the full support of the Holy See.

To understand what is happening, it could be instructive to “follow the money.” The affair is rather complicated and it is not easy for everyone to disentangle the trusts and foundations in New Zealand, Liechtenstein, and Panama, with assets held in Switzerland. On the basis of documents, investigations, audits, and access to the books of the companies implicated, one can however simplify as follows.

It all starts with a donation in Switzerland that was frozen in 2013 by the criminal court of Geneva, on the petition of the beneficiaries, dissatisfied with its management.

Among the beneficiaries of the donation under seizure, which totaled 120 million Swiss francs, was none other than the Order of Malta.

In the course of 2013 and 2014, nonetheless, Boeselager and three other leading exponents of the Order – Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, a former Holy See observer at the United Nations in Geneva, Marc Odendall, a Franco-German financier, and Marwan Sehnaoui, president of the Knights of Malta in Lebanon – continued to maintain relations with the fiduciary of the trust, one Ariane Slinger, with the objective of obtaining those funds anyway, to be disposed of according to their discretion.

The Grand Master at the time, Matthew Festing of England, wanted instead for the Swiss court to complete its process, investigating the origin of the funds and their management. The open proceeding in fact concerned the crimes of money laundering, exploitation of a disabled person, and administrative mismanagement.

After the 2014 elections within the Order, the German faction headed by Boeselager acquired greater power, but Grand Master Festing preserved the majority in the Sovereign Council. Boeselager and company made insistent attempts to arrive at the signing of a transaction with the fiduciary of the trust, something that would have extinguished the criminal action. But the Grand Master always opposed this step.

At the end of 2016, however, after the discovery of the distribution of condoms, contraceptives, and abortifacient pills by auxiliary organizations of the Order under Boeselager’s control, the saga took shape that led to the ouster of Festing as Grand Master, with a decisive contribution by the Holy See.

Festing’s defenestration took place on January 25 of 2017. And twenty days later, on February 15, the transaction was signed with Ariane Slinger, with tremendous publicity hype by the new management of the Order. In effect it was a matter of a very hefty donation, of 2.7 million euro per year for 7 years.

Shortly afterward, however, the story broke of the preceding freeze of the donation by the Swiss court, for an audit of the correctness of its origin. And this cast a shadow over the management of the Order, which to demonstrate the licit provenance of the funds commissioned an investigation by the Promontory Financial Group, a company that had already been called to the rescue by the Vatican to fix up its “bank,” the IOR, Institute for Works of Religion.

But the Promontory report does not appear conclusive in the least.

The report was prepared in less than two months by Louis-Victor Douville de Franssu, son of Jean-Baptiste, president of the IOR, the advisers of which include Boeselager’s brother, Georg.

But there is much more than these curious kinships. In the composition of the report, most of the information, according to Promontory itself, was furnished by Ariane Slinger. And to those who were able to read and analyze it carefully, it appeared full of inaccuracies, if not of falsehoods.

Go here to read the rest.  More skullduggery than in the Maltese Falcon.  Dark and corrupt forces are having their way with the Church.

 

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Mary De Voe
Friday, July 26, AD 2019 7:30am

and then we have Cardinal George Pell.

John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Friday, July 26, AD 2019 12:16pm

How else could you buy “a” seat on St. Peter’s Chair?

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