Friday, March 29, AD 2024 10:14am

PopeWatch: Money

[10] For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6: 10

Saint Paul knew what he was talking about:

 

.- Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick intervened to pressure members of the U.S. Papal Foundation to support a controversial grant request, intended to repay an illicit loan from APSA, the Vatican’s central bank. McCarrick met privately with the leadership of the bank in the months leading up to his intervention. 

McCarrick made the intervention in December 2017, after objections were raised to the Vatican’s request of $25 million from the Papal Foundation, for a bankrupt Italian hospital, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI). 

The grant request from the Vatican Secretariat of State was, according to the minutes of a December Papal Foundation board meeting, first made in June 2017 as “an emergency request” from the pope, and was said to be intended to cover a short term cash crunch at the IDI.

The Papal Foundation is a charity that confers grants to charities at the request of the Holy See. Grants do not ordinarily exceed $300,000, which made the request for $25 million unusual. In autumn 2017, several board members objected to the request because they had discovered that the hospital was financially insolvent, and not merely in a short term cash crunch, as Vatican officials had led them to believe.

Among those who objected was James Longon, chairman of the foundation’s audit committee, who described the request in a memo to board members as a “disaster for the Papal Foundation. Not only is the decision process flawed, but the recipient has a dubious past.”

In early December 2017, another board member sent a letter to the entire board, raising objections to the grant request and outlining the financial problems of the IDI.

McCarrick responded to that board member by letter Dec. 14, 2017. He copied his letter to the cardinals on the foundation’s board.

“Some of your own recent actions may have caused harmful injury to the Foundation itself,” the cardinal wrote to the board member, mentioning previous incidents of “unfortunate publicity” and “division” at the foundation, and suggesting that criticism of the grant request might cause more of the same. 

“The assertions and allegations that are mentioned in your letter were unfortunately based on anonymous sources ‘inside and around’ the Vatican. It is a shame that they do contain material that is demonstrably false, irresponsible, and seriously harmful to The Papal Foundation,” McCarrick wrote. 

“Many of the assertions supposedly supported by ‘an anonymous source” can be disproved by documentation that is readily available and public. It was unfortunate that you were not able to verify the information from your anonymous source before you disseminated it.”

“My objection is not to your disagreement with the grant request, but rather that your disagreement seemed to call into question the very integrity of the Papal Foundation itself,” McCarrick wrote, apparently suggesting that raising questions about the Vatican request was inappropriate.

Go here to read the rest.  McCarrick would still be a power player on Team Francis but for the bad publicity.  Protecting priests and others from a predator Cardinal was of absolutely no concern at the Vatican.  All they cared about was that McCarrick was a Church liberal, useful to Pope Francis, and he had a talent for extorting money from the faithful.  Simony, the patron sin of the Vatican.

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John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Monday, November 11, AD 2019 6:20am

From what I understand the Foundation may have broke several state regulatory laws. There was some calls for a state investigation. I hope the do and Mccarrick goes to jail.

Ranger01
Ranger01
Monday, November 11, AD 2019 2:56pm

Average grant <$300K. Grant requested by Bergoglio…$25MM.
Indeed, nothing would be more pleasing than to see Mr. McCarrick in the dock and then in prison…where he belongs.

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