Rome Watch International May/June 2006

For the Downing Street services, Seed normally dresses in the dark brown habit of a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement, over which he wears vestments. A chalice and paten for the bread are placed on a table covered by a white cloth in the Blairs' sitting room. Members of the family are understood to take part in readings in the services. Private services of mixed denominations are rare, although an increasing number of non Catholics attend mass in churches. There has never been a Catholic British prime minister and Cherie is the first Downing Street spouse to be a member of the Roman church.

The Blairs have made similar private arrangements at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire. The family previously worshipped at the Catholic church in nearby Great Missenden, where they were regularly treated to the anti war opinions of Father Timothy Russ, the parish priest. Russ has also conducted services inside Chequers. Other priests conducting masses at the weekend retreat include a Royal Air Force chaplain and a Dominican from Oxford.

The Blairs first had to modify their church going in the security alert that followed the Al Qaeda attacks on America on September 11, 2001. They then visited a range of London churches on Sundays and holy days in a “random rotation” so no regular pattern of attendance could be detected by potential assassins. The switch to masses at Downing Street occurred because of raised security following the invasion of Iraq.

Seed declined to comment this weekend on his contacts with the Blairs. Downing Street also refused to comment on “a private matter”.

SHE has sometimes been accused of acting like Britain’s ‘first lady’ and the latest appointment in Cherie Blair’s diary will do nothing to disabuse her critics of the notion. For I hear that the Prime Minister’s wife is next month to have an audience with the Pope, which, significantly, will come before the pontiff meets the Queen or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

It will be Pope Benedict XVI’s first official meeting with a senior British figure and Church sources say Lambeth Palace will feel irritated because Dr Williams was hoping for an invitation to the Vatican. One year after attending Pope Benedict's installation, he is still awaiting an indication that a religious ‘summit’ might be possible. His predecessor Lord Carey managed half a dozen trips to see the previous pontiff, John Paul II, but disarray among Anglicans over women bishops and gay clergy is thought to have made the new Pope's advisers uneasy. I understand Mrs Blair’s audience will coincide with a private visit to Rome. A prominent Catholic, Cherie had a high profile meeting with John Paul II three years ago.

The State has begun a legal action against the Franciscan Brothers order to force it to pay a proportion of a compensation bill to two men abused by a Franciscan brother at a primary school in the 1970s.

The unprecedented move marks a tougher approach by the State towards church authorities and orders in relation to abuse compensation claims that are not covered by the controversial indemnity deal. The new approach has been instigated by the State Claims Agency, which in September took over the handling of 200 compensation claims from victims of child abuse, mostly relating to primary and secondary schools.

“The State Claims Agency will be protecting the interests of the taxpayer in ensuring that they are not paying out in respect of abuse claims where the abuse has been by committed by members of religious orders, congregations and the church generally,” a spokesman for the agency told The Irish Times.

He confirmed that as part of this approach the agency was now pursuing the Franciscan Brothers for costs in relation to compensation claims involving a former brother, John Hannon, who served eight years for child sexual abuse at two schools in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was the first time the State had initiated such proceedings against a religious order, he said. The State has admitted partial liability, as the Department of Education was aware of complaints dating back to the early 1970s against Hannon before the two men were abused as boys in Co Offaly. It has now made six figure compensation payments to both.

It has since issued a notice of “indemnity and contribution” against the order, based at Mountbellew, Co Galway, which has consistently denied any liability and refused to pay significant compensation to victims of Hannon. The State will be asking the High Court to adjudicate on whether the order has a shared liability in the case. The two day hearing is due to get underway in the coming months.

The new approach is in marked contrast to the controversial indemnity deal, where the State agreed to underwrite all ongoing compensation claims from former residents of religious run children’s homes in return for a contribution to the State’s redress scheme. Victims’ groups welcomed the new approach, but warned that the State should not be allowed to deny liability in all cases. Colm O'Gorman of One in Four said the policy “marked an extraordinary departure that will be welcomed not just by taxpayers but by victims as well as it will hold church authorities and religious orders to account”. He urged the State Claims Agency to adopt a “sensitive approach” towards victims, warning that a complete denial of liability in all cases would be unrealistic and unfair.

THE last Pope’s bodyguard, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, linked to a Mafia money laundering scandal which ended in a mysterious murder in London, has taken his secrets to his grave.

Chicago born Marcinkus, 84, protected Pope John Paul II on trips abroad but also headed the Vatican's bank, the Institute for Religious Works. He died on Monday without talking about the death of financier Roberto Calvi 25 years ago.

Calvi, 62, dubbed “God's Banker” because of his closeness to the Vatican, was found hanging from a Thames bridge. A suicide verdict was later overturned by High Court judges. Four Mafia men and a woman are currently on trial for his murder.

A Rome court has been told Calvi was “hit” after losing Mafia drugs money when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed with £800million missing. The money was on loan to fake companies in Latin America under guarantees from the Vatican. Although sought for questioning, the Vatican claimed immunity for Marcinkus, who denied any wrongdoing. He retired to the US In 1990 and died in Arizona.

Former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti, who had close ties to the Vatican, said: “I believe he didn’t leave one lira, he didn’t get rich and he merits all respect.”

From 1999 to 2003, government money flowed to Mt. Carmel Guild Hospital like never before, a total of $40 million extra the Newark hospital used to help poor people with mental health issues. But officials in the state Attorney General’s Office say Mt. Carmel’s windfall was crooked, the result of a fraudulent Medicaid reimbursement scheme that boosted the finances of the hospital, which is affiliated with Catholic Charities, the social services arm of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.

Not only did the agency’s former chief financial officer plead guilty last month to fraud, but Catholic Charities now needs to repay the government tens of millions of dollars it received in those years, plus interest.

A PARISH priest who had a bit too much wine to drink has been banned from the roads.

Fr Michael Eugene Murray was stopped in May this year by police in Newcastle, Co. Down after leaving a family function in the town. The 50 year old priest, who serves a number of rural communities in the Kilkeel area, told police he had taken a glass of wine with dinner during a family celebration.

He said he believed it was safe for him to get behind the wheel when he decided to drive back to his Greencastle Street home in Kilkeel. However, a blood sample revealed a reading of 88mgs which is just eight micrograms over the legal limit. Banning the parish priest for one year and fining him £100, the magistrate said he accepted that the alcohol reading was not the highest to come before his court.

The Vatican has signalled a new approach to the Crusades by sponsoring a conference that aims to rehabilitate the Crusades and portrays them as wars “fought with the noble aim of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity”.

At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

Followers of Osama bin Laden frequently claim to be taking part in a latter day “Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders [Christians]”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim Christian reconciliation by asking ‘pardon’ from Muslims for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. He apologised for the “past errors of the Church” including the Inquisition and anti Semitism. According to many Vatican observers, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, dissented privately from this public apology.

Pope Benedict has given mixed messages to the Muslim world since his election. He reached out to Muslims and Jews soon after he became Pope, calling for dialogue. But the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has opposed Turkish admission to the European Union and suggested that Turkey's Muslim culture “is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots”.

The fact that Turkey was regarded until recently as the last closed land to the Gospel was in large measure due to the Crusades and their memory is still a major stumbling block to the progress of the Gospel there.

Limbo, the resting place for the souls of unbaptised children, is being written out of Catholic tradition.

The concept, which developed during the Middle Ages, was never official doctrine and now Pope Benedict XVI will abolish it. According to sources reported in London’s The Times, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission will recommend that it be replaced by a more compassionate doctrine that children who die do so “in the hope of eternal salvation”.

The Pope is expected to agree because, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he presided over the first sessions of the commission, which had been asked to examine the matter by the late pope John Paul II. And as long ago as 1984 the then Cardinal told Catholic author Vittorio Messori that limbo had “never been a definitive truth of the faith”.

“Personally I would let it drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis,” he said.

Australian Catholic University professor Neil Ormerod called the move a piece of “theological housekeeping”.

“A lot of Catholics, especially those of an older generation, would have grown up with the notion of limbo in their catechism teaching but it was never an official teaching of the church,” Professor Ormerod said. “It was a theological position.”

The old catechism, adopted under the papacy of Pius V from 1903 to 1914, defined limbo as a place where the dead “do not have the joy of God but neither do they suffer ... they do not deserve Paradise, but neither do they deserve Hell or Purgatory”. It takes its name from the latin word limbus, meaning hem, edge or boundary.

The Pope has dashed hopes that England might get a second Catholic cardinal with the shock ‘sacking’ of the man widely tipped for promotion.

Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, was Britain's highest representative at the Vatican and was expected to be among a new batch of cardinals to be named by Pope Benedict XVI next month.

Instead the 68 year old has been given the lesser post of nuncio, or papal ambassador, to Egypt.

The Pope, known as ‘God's Rottweller’ because of his hardline defence of the Catholic faith, is believed to have been unimpressed with the English cleric’s comparative warmth towards Islam.

Pope Benedict is steadfastly opposed to what he believes is the threat of ‘religious pluralism’, the idea that all faiths can lead to salvation.

One English priest close to the Vatican, who did not want to be named, said that Archbishop Fitzgerald’s removal from Rome was ‘definitely a real demotion’.

The house where Pope Benedict XVI was born in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, has become a tourist attraction.

The tourists descend daily on the little Bavarian town to gaze at the birthplace of Josef Ratzinger born on 16 April 1927. Some pray in front of it. Others ring the doorbell and try to enter. It is actually the private residence of Claudia Dandl, a 39 year old mother of two, who is a physiotherapist. She has had to disconnect the doorbell and wants to sell the house as soon as she can in order to get some peace. The local town council is considering turning the house into a museum.

The house, is also a stop on a 224 kilometre hiking and cycling trail running through the Bavarian towns where Ratzinger lived in the days of his childhood and youth. The “Benediktsweg”, the Benedict Cycle trail, was officially opened and blessed on 13 August at Altoetting by Cardinal Fnedrich Wetter, Archbishop of Munich. [ENI] Romewatch 4/21/06 12:00 AM Page 3

We have all been told repeatedly how the Irish Republic and Dublin, the Capital City have changed in the last decade. We were told that Dublin was a multi-cultural city at the heart of a new pluralistic Republic, where everyone was welcome to come and be free to express their viewpoint; why in recent years Roman Catholic Dublin had even welcomed large Gay Pride marches along O’Connell Street.

Saturday 25th February nailed that lie, once and for all - there is one group of people not welcome in Dublin. Loyal Ulster Protestants, British citizens, the victims of a thirty year campaign of IRA terrorism. They cannot have a peaceful march along O’Connell Street with their flags and emblems. The truth is that everyone nowadays is welcome in Dublin except they “DON’T WANT A PROD ABOUT THE PLACE”

The “I love Ulster Parade and Rally” was to be led and addressed by Victims' spokesman William Frazer of FAIR; Jeffrey Donaldson the DUP MP for Lagan Valley and Danny Kennedy MLA of the Unionist Party. Now by referring to the newspaper account let us see what happened.

"THE ‘Love Ulster’ rally In Dublin descended in total anarchy as republican rioters went on the rampage In protest at the loyalist parade."

The city’s prestigious O’Connell Street teeming with Saturday shoppers was plunged into chaos as gardai fought running battles with protestors. The sheer scale of the riot which lasted for more than two hours shocked television viewers around the globe. Gardai in riot gear were drafted in as youths threw literally everything they could get their hands on at police lines.

The anarchy, was fuelled by a ready made arsenal of weapons in the form of building materials from construction sites lining the thoroughfare, the widest street in the Republic. Everything from bricks, steel fences, pieces of machinery and fireworks were hurled at members of the gardai.

Dozens of empty soft drink bottles looted from a nearby pub were also hurled at cops and journalists covering the mayhem.

Earlier, the ‘Love Ulster’ parade which was due to start at 12.3Opm looked like it would pass off peacefully. Around 50 Republican Sinn Fein protestors holding placards had gathered, but just 30 minutes later, thousands had gathered and completely blocked the road. From that moment on, the future of the loyalist march was in doubt.

Lagan Valley DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson one of the rally organisers told marchers: “It’s a sad day when, in the 21st century, republicans can’t stand to have a unionist about the place.”

After Gardai told organisers they could not guarantee the parade’s safety, bandsmen played the Sash before reboarding their buses with the Union Flag. As they climbed onto the coaches, protestors chanted, “Cheerio, cheerio” and “Where's your march now, Jeffrey?”

“What did they expect? They think they can come here and march past the spot where loyalists killed dozens of Irish people? Emotions are running very high. Would republicans get to march up the Shankill? No, I don't think so.”

RIOTERS turned Dublin city centre into a warzone in an orgy of violence, vandalism and looting. Hundreds of thugs brought anarchy to the streets of the capital, hurling bricks, stones, golf balls, pickaxes, shovels, fireworks and petrol bombs at Gardai. Riot police fought running battles through the centre of the city for three hours with around 300 rioters as terrified shoppers, children and tourists ran for cover. The riots erupted after members of Republican Sinn Fein turned up in O’Connell Street to halt a loyalist march to the Dail.

Much of upper O’Connell street provided ready made ammunition for hundreds of rock throwing thugs who attacked baton wielding Gardai. Dozens were injured and arrested in the mayhem which broke out at lunchtime and lasted most of the afternoon. But around 300 Republican protesters, some of whom were bussed in from Ulster, had assembled on O’Connell Street outside the GPO.

Remember readers these fanatical Republican rioters were all born Romanists and educated in Rome’s school system - even if not all are currently practicing Romanism look at the pictures and ask yourself what life would be like in an all Ireland Republic.

Roman Catholic Church leaders in Croatia have denied accusations by a United Nations war crimes prosecutor that a fugitive general, Ante Gotovina, is sheltering in one of the country’s monasteries.

“The leadership of the Catholic Church in Croatia has no knowledge whatsoever or any indication where the fugitive General Gotovina could be,” the Croatian Bishops’ Conference said in a statement.

The Conference was reacting to claims by Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, who was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying that the general, indicted for crimes against humanity in 2001, was being shielded by the Croatian church and the Vatican. General Gotovina, now aged 49, faces charges of overseeing the killing of at least 150 Serb civilians during the Croatian army’s 1995 operation to regain control of the Serb occupied Krajina region, and the forced deportation of tens of thousands of people.

Del Ponte was quoted by the newspaper saying she believed the Vatican could pinpoint which of Croatia’s 80 monasteries was involved “in a few days”. She said she had decided to go public after receiving no reply to a direct appeal to Pope Benedict XVI. She noted that she had travelled to Rome in July to meet a senior Vatican official, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the secretary for relations with states. He had insisted the Holy See was not a state and thus had “no international obligations” to help the hunt for war criminals, Del Ponte said.

“I have information he is hiding in a Franciscan monastery and so the Catholic church is protecting him. I have taken this up with the Vatican and the Vatican refuses totally to cooperate,” Del Ponte said. “They said they have no intelligence and I don't believe that. I think the Catholic Church has the most advanced [of] intelligence services.” (ENI)

After World War II the Vatican notoriously assisted and shielded war criminals. Croatia is a Roman Catholic country which was used by the Vatican and Germany in World War II, and again in the recent Balkan conflict, to further the Vatican's purpose of striking at the Orthodox Serbs.

While priestly vocations fall dramatically in the west, Poland's Roman Catholic Church is reporting a sharp rise in trainee priests since the death of Pope John Paul II, with seminary applications doubling in some dioceses.

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper reported that record applications had been filed in the Polish Pope’s one time Krakow diocese, as well as in nearby Katowice and Tarnow. Several other dioceses have cited a doubling in numbers.

More than 6,700 priesthood candidates, 7 per cent of the world total, were studying at Poland’s 86 Roman Catholic seminaries in 2004, according to the Vatican’s Annuario Pontificio yearbook.

The country provides almost a third of all European seminarians, after a yearly rise since 2000, with only Ukraine citing a parallel recent increase.

Vocations doubled after John Paul II’s 1978 election, peaking in 1985-7, and 12 per cent of Roman Catholic clergy working in Western Europe are currently from Poland.

However, the Polish church’s national vocations director, Marek Dziewiecki, cautioned: “Once the emotions after the pope’s death diminish, they could yearn for the secular life again.”

Polish newspapers have also reported a sharp increase in young people attending summer vacation programmes with the Jesuit, Franciscan and other religious orders.

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A religious order issued an unconditional apology to all the children who suffered abuse in its orphanages and industrial schools throughout Ireland.

The Sisters of Mercy, who ran the notorious Goldenbridge Orphanage in Dublin, issued a statement admitting that past apologies had been “less than complete” for those “hurt and damaged while in our care”. “Now without reservation we apologise unconditionally to each one of you for the suffering we have caused. We ask forgiveness for our failure to care for you and protect you in the past and our failure to hear you in the present,” the order said.

Previous statements by the order had attempted to blame a lack of resources for the suffering experiences by children in its institutions. “We recognise that this statement may be considered too little too late. We make it in the hope that it will be a further step in the long process of healing the pain that we as a Congregation have caused,” the sisters said.

The Sisters of Mercy also apologised to nuns who had been put in a situation of caring for children without adequate support or resources.

Former Goldenbridge resident Christine Buckley said that the statement would bring hope and healing to thousands of people all over the country who had been under the sisters’ care. Ms Buckley, who spent 18 years in the orphanage and is the spokeswoman for the Aislinn survivors group, said she felt a sense of “disbelief” after reading the statement, adding: “This is the first time they have made an unconditional apology and they also said they believed that people had suffered physical and emotional trauma.”

“This opens the door, hopefully, for apologies in person from our abusers. It vindicates us completely. It is a very positive and very brave statement because it must have taken a lot of negotiations to get all the members of the order to agree to it.”

Ms Buckley, the unwanted baby of a Nigerian medical student and a married Dublin woman, was abandoned at three weeks and raised in Goldenbridge where she suffered regular beatings and humiliation. She made public the horrors suffered by children held in the sisters’ orphanages when she was featured on the 1996 ‘Dear Daughter’ television documentary.

The programme sparked legal action against the state and the Sisters of Mercy. The Conference of Religious Superiors set up a helpline that received 1,000 calls in its first year. The One in Four group also said it wanted to acknowledge and commend the courage and vision of yesterday's statement and the unambiguous nature of the apology.

“We look forward to hearing how the Congregation propose to find a way to ‘bring about healing’ to all of those individuals hurt and we are committed to assist and cooperate appropriately in whatever process that is put in place,” it added.

Roman Catholic bishops from Slovakia and Hungary have apologised for priests who acted as Communist agents after clergy names appeared on new lists of former collaborators with the secret police.

A Slovakian government funded Institute said the names of the Archbishop Jan Sokol, and the retired Bishop Jan Hirka, appeared on a list of former secret police agents, along with the head of the country’s Orthodox church, Metropolitan Nikolai. The Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference acknowledged that “various clergy” had collaborated for “careers and money”. The bishops said the Church asked forgiveness from those harmed by church collaborators, and would require an “explanation and atonement” from those involved. Later, the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference also asked forgiveness in a 1 March statement after a list of 219 former agents, including several clergy, appeared on the Internet. One in 10 priests are believed to have acted as agents and informers in the then Czechoslovakia. We note that there is no apology for priests who collaborated with Hitler and Nazi Germany - especially “Father” Tiso, puppet ruler of Slovakia - executed at the end of World War II.

Pope Benedict XVI has dropped one of his official titles that of “Patriarch of the West” in a move the Vatican says may help church unity but which has been criticised by a prominent Russian Orthodox bishop.

In a 22 March statement, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity said the title first used by a pope in AD 642 had been abandoned because it had become “obsolete and practically unusable”. Some analysts speculated it was intended to help the Vatican’s dialogue with Eastern Orthodox churches which is seen as one of Pope Benedict’s priorities. The role of the papacy is a key stumbling block in the relations between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox. They are scheduled to restart theological talks in September after a six year break. However, Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, warned that it was not clear “how the removal of the title could possibly ameliorate Catholic Orthodox relations”.

The Pope's other titles included that of “Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church”, and Hilarion suggested the Pope was seeking to confirm a claim to universal church jurisdiction over the patriarchates of the Eastern Orthodox church.

“With relation to the pope of Rome the title ‘Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church’ points to the pope's universal jurisdiction which is not and will never be recognised by the Orthodox Churches,” Hilarion noted in a statement “It is precisely this title that should have been dropped first, had the move been motivated by the desire for amelioration of the Catholic Orthodox relations.” (ENI)

Education Minister Ruth Kelly’s grandfather was a prison ship Provo. The Sunday World can reveal that the beleagured Minister of State for Education has an IRA quartermaster grandad considered too dangerous to be let out for his father's funeral.

Philip Murphy spent two years on the prison ship Argenta moored in Belfast Lough. Murphy, from Castlecoole, Enniskillen, was Quartermaster of the West Fermanagh IRA Battalion, during the Irish War of Independence which was fought from 1919-21.

A file held at the Public Records in Belfast and seen by the Sunday World, reveals Murphy, who worked as a railway porter, was arrested on May 23,1922.

In his role as Quarter Master, Phil Murphy was responsible for the safe keeping and distribution of all IRA weapons in his ‘Brigade’ area. He was one of hundreds of nationalists rounded up on the instructions of Northern Ireland Home Affairs Minister Sir Richard Dawson Bates.

Murphy was taken to Derry Prison and then to the workhouse in Larne before being transferred to the prison ship S.S. Argenta, when he was interned on July 3. The Argenta was a leaky barge moored at the mouth of Belfast Lough where untried prisoners were kept in horrendous conditions in cages below decks. Disease and illness were rife with around 100 men being housed together in close and cramped conditions.

The file further reveals, that throughout his incarceration on the Argenta, the Labour Minister’s grandfather fought a constant battle with the Unionist establishment until he was released unconditionally on June 24, 1924.

Phil Murphy’s father died a few months before his release, but despite writing a polite letter to the Prison Governor respectfully asking permission to attend the funeral, his request was personally turned down by Sir Dawson Bates. A few weeks later, Phil Murphy wrote a lengthy letter to a friend named Michael, in which Murphy expresses the sadness he felt at the loss of his father and his concern for his grief stricken mother.

The Fermanagh man was one of a group of IRA men on board the Argenta,who went on hunger strike as a protest at their continued detention without trial. As his health deteriorated rapidly, the authorities feared for Murphy's life and he was eventually released unconditionally from prison on June 24,1924.

On his release Phil Murphy went back to Tempo, Co. Fermanagh and resumed his work as a porter on the guard's van of the Great Northern Railway. Phil Murphy married and fathered three children, one son and two daughters, all of whom became teachers. His son, Kevin became the headmaster of a Catholic school in Loughmacrory. And one of his girls, Gertrude, is the mother of Labour Minister Ruth Kelly.

It is not the aim or intention of Rome Watch to incite hatred of Roman Catholics but rather, by use of International Press reports already carried in newspapers, to show the religious and political advances of the Papacy in the light of Bible Prophecy, which foretells an end-time World Religion, Government and Economy.