Rome Watch Summer 2006

Pope Benedict XVI and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, holding their first private talks Saturday, discussed the role religion could play in politics and society, including the battle against terrorism.

Blair, his wife and their children were received in a private audience in a visit to the Vatican that lasted about an hour.

It was Blair’s first private meeting with Benedict, elected last year, although Chene Blair had met the Pope in April when she participated in a Vatican conference on children.

Smiling broadly, Blair shook hands with the Pope and sat in the Papal study for what the Vatican described as “cordial” talks.

The two explored “the contribution which common values between religions can give to dialogue, in particular with moderate Islam, above all on the themes of solidarity and peace,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls said.

A British government spokesman said Blair and the pope discussed the need for moderate religious leaders around the world to work against extremism and terrorism.

Also discussed was the need to help Africa with development and peace efforts, as well as Northern Ireland's peace process, Navarro Valls said.

He said: “The Vatican is an influential player on the world stage and, through all the Catholic communities around the world, has a significant influence on international opinion.

The Prime Minister will be interested in the Pope’s views on key foreign policy issues.

In particular he will want to discuss with the Pope inter-faith relations and how best interfaith dialogue can help with conflict resolution and how the moderate voices of the world’s main religions need to work together to tackle and confront extremism and terrorism.”

The British media reported before the meeting that Blair might invite the Pope to visit Britain. John Paul made a visit in 1982.

Official British government sources said there already was an “open invitation” for Pope Benedict to visit Britain but would not speculate on when such a visit could take place.

Italian state TV said Blair encouraged the Pope to visit Britain, although there was no mention of that in the Vatican statement.

Recently, Blair held talks in Rome with Italy’s new premier Romano Prodi about the Italian troop withdrawal from Iraq, which Prodi has said will be completed this year.

Blair also prayed at the tomb of Pope John Paul II, according to Britain’s Press Association. When Blair met privately with John Paul in 2003, the pontiff had stressed that everything possible must be done to avoid a war in Iraq.

We see in this meeting a fulfilment of The Revelation, chapters 17 & 18 which state that “The Kings of the Earth” - this world’s political leaders have comitted spiritual fornication with the Harlot on The Seven Hills of Rome - grovelling to and taking orders from the Vatican.

Isaiah 30:1-2 “Woe to the rebellious children saith the Lord that take counsel but not of me that cover with a covering but not of my spirit that they may add sin to sin that walk to go down to Egypt but have not asked at my mouth to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharoah and trust in the support of Egypt.”

We are told Blair is an Anglican with a Roman Catholic wife. In British history King Charles II was said to be an Anglican with a Roman Catholic queen - yet for years he was a secret papist who received the last rites from a Roman Catholic priest on his death bed. Does it not make you wonder?

A Police crackdown on child pornography netted 96 suspects in Austria alone, including a Catholic priest who confessed, police said recently. The operation was part of an international effort to purge cities worldwide of child porn. Officers seized 2,700 CD’s and DVD’s, another 2,700 video cassettes and numerous computer discs and hard drives containing images of underage children in sexual situations. The raids were carried out in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK.

Catholic leaders in Limerick are under a cloud over allegations that they gave work to a paedophile priest who had been rejected by two other dioceses.

The diocese of Limerick has admitted it did not do enough to prevent the late Fr Denis Daly, who died in 1987 aged 61, from abusing an altar boy in Caherdavin 25 years ago.

It has been claimed that Daly, originally from Co Clare, had initially failed to get work in the dioceses of Dublin and Down and Connor, before being given a post as a substitute priest in the mid west. No one from Down and Connor was available to comment on the matter but it is understood background checks on the priest in Sydney revealed he left his previous posting after coming to the attention of police.

Daly returned to Ireland in 1978 after 30 years in Australia, where records indicated that he had been involved in a “moral lapse” in 1963. He had also suffered alcoholism. He secured a place as a substitute priest in Limerick under the late bishop Jeremiah Newman where he went on to rape 10 year old altar boy Peter McCloskey in 1980/81.

Mr McCloskey, aged 37 and a father of three, died by suicide on April 1, within days of meeting diocesan officials to discuss the terms of a compensation package. It has also emerged that two Limerick priests became aware of a second child abuse accusation against Daly but failed to act. Mr McCloskey’s family has called on Bishop Donal Murray to resign, claiming the actions of the Limerick Diocese were directly responsible for Mr McCloskey's death.

His mother Mary has accused the bishop of failing to show “proper Christian love or even basic humanity” to the victim. Dr Murray became bishop of Limerick in 1996, nine years after Daly's death.

Eight men whose tarnished careers in the Boston clergy date as far back as 1957 have been defrocked over allegations of child sexual abuse in a vast house cleaning by the Vatican, the Archdiocese of Boston said.

“The violations of childhood innocence, under the guise of priestly care, are a. source of profound shame,” said Boston Archbishop Sean P. OMalley. “I pray and hope that the emotional, physical and spiritual wounds carried by survivors will be healed and their trust renewed.”

The highest ranking priest to lose his collar, Msgr. Frederick Ryan, was suspended four years ago from his job as vice chancellor, third from the archbishop in control of the archdiocese, when two former Catholic Memorial High School athletes alleged he plied them with alcohol then performed sexual acts on them more than two decades ago.

“It's a great feeling. It's a fight, but it's worth the fight,” said Dave Carney, one of Ryan's alleged, victims. “He’ll die as a regular joe, like the rest of us. Not that he was anything above us as a priest, but that's how society saw him. Now he’s just a sex offender.”

The former priests will no longer be allowed to perform public ministry and have lost all financial support of the church. Also defrocked were:

• The Rev. Anthony Buchette, who was accused of molesting two teenage brothers after using trophies to lure them to his room at St. Hugh’s in Roxbury in the late 1970s, according to records.

• The Rev. Thomas Forey, suspended in 2002, who carried on an affair with a married woman and molested her son, according to church documents.

• The Rev. Patrick Tague, who was accused of abusing a former Department of Youth Services client when on the staff of a Hyde Park facility in 1971. The archdiocese said Tague had not worked as a priest since 1969.

• The Rev. Paul Finegan, who was accused of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with minors. The archdiocese suspended him in February 2002.

• The Rev. Robert Morrisette, who worked in Lynn and BelIingham and took leave in 1993.

• The Rev. Ernest Tourigney, who worked in Weymouth, Holliston, Revere and at Matignon High in Cambridge. He retired in 2000.

• Deacon Joseph Crowley, who was a deacon in Readville, and at Boston Children’s Hospital from 1998 to 2003.

A 68 year old Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Gerald Robinson, was found guilty of murder 26 years after he killed an elderly nun in what prosecutors said looked like a ritualistic killing. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The crime occurred in Mercy Hospital, inside the sacristy adjoining the hospital chapel in downtown Toledo on the day before Easter in 1980. Investigators said the nun, Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, was strangled and then stabbed repeatedly.

According to court testimony, the investigation in 1980 initially centred on Robinson, the hospital's chaplain and a priest of the Toledo diocese who was deeply resentful of what he saw as domineering behaviour from the nun. A retired police detective testified that his interrogation of Robinson was interrupted by a superior officer, who ordered Robinson, who has always protested his innocence, to be released. Subsequently, nobody was charged and Robinson presided over Pahl's funeral Mass.

The case was, however, reopened in 2003. Investigators again turned to Robinson whom they claimed killed the nun because she complained how he had conducted a Good Friday service the night before the murder. There was also testimony that the murder included elements of Satanic ritual. The jury deliberated less than seven hours. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair said in a statement that he hoped the trial's conclusion “will bring some measure of healing for all those affected by the case”.

“I had come to the conclusion that all these British soldiers from working class backgrounds that we were shooting and blowing up in Northern Ireland were deemed expendable by the British Government,” he later said.

“The idea was to have those in high places in British military and political circles face the consequences of occupying Ireland.”

Doherty drew up his list of targets from a copy of Who’s Who. One of his bombs injured Reginald Maudling, the British Cabinet member in charge of security on Bloody Sunday. He also sent a letter bomb to number 10 Downing Street during the period when the late Ted Heath was Prime Minister of the country.

It did not explode, but his ability to breach security at the heart of Government caused nationwide shockwaves. Other bombs sent by him exploded in the London Stock Exchange and the Bank of England. The injured included secretaries and a security guard.

Doherty only began to question his actions after he learned that a secretary had been left blinded by one of his bombs and a security guard had a hand blown off and an eye blown out. Another man lost the tip of his fingers.

It emerged during his trial that he had been the IRA’s chief bomb maker in Derry.He turned his back on terrorism after being released from jail in 1989.

He later took part in a television documentary during which he returned to Derry to talk about life as an IRA man.

In the programme, he said he was explosive officer for the IRA in Derry at the age of just 19 and revealed that his bomb making factory was based in a “nice looking” house in the city.

During the interview he said: “Sometimes, when you were standing with a 1,000 pound bomb or truck bomb, you know, it would occur to you, what would it be like if this went off?”

O’Doherty became one of the first IRA men to apologise to his victims, doing so while he was still in jail. He never heard back from them, though one, the security guard who lost an eye, later opposed the prospect of him being released from prison.

O’Doherty married an American woman, Michelle Sweeney, in the early 1990’s, but they separated some years later after she moved back to the United States.

The man on the left, the one wearing a fabulous vintage chiffon lined Dior gold lame gown over a silk Vera Wang empire waist tulle cocktail dress, accessorized with a 3 foot beaded peaked House of Whoville hat, and the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the Wizard of Oz, is worried that The Da Vinci Code might make the Roman Catholic Church look foolish.

A Paedophile priest who has already served a seven year jail term for indecently assaulting nine boys was today back behind bars. Daniel Curran was also given an 18 month suspended sentence last year for indecently assaulting a tenth boy on two occasions when he was a priest at St Paul's Parish in Belfast and chaplain of the local boy scouts.

Jailing the 56 year old for 14 months, Belfast Crown Court Judge Tom Burgess said he should be “returned to prison to reflect the damage he has done” to his victim and ordered him to sign the sex offenders register for ten years. Curran, from Bryansford Avenue, Newcastle, pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault between 1977 and 1982.

Fifteen other counts of indecent assault against the same victim who is now in his 40s, were left on the books. Prosecution QC Jim Lavery told the court that the victim was “abused on a regular basis” by the priest over the five year period and the charges were “sample counts” to reflect each year of the abuse. He told the court that Curran formed a relationship with his victim's mother and “used this relationship” to come to the house regularly.

Mr Lavery said Curran would drink with members of the family then stay in the house overnight and this is when the abuse began. He told the court that the victim made a statement to police in April 2004 but Curran did not accept his guilt when he was arrested and questioned. Mr Lavery said the victim has “done all he can to come to terms with his problems” and is getting counselling but “still has many difficulties facing him.” He added that the man wanted “closure” and did not make his statement against the priest for revenge or punishment.

Defence QC Jim Gallagher told the court that before Curran was jailed for seven years in 1995 for indecently assaulting nine boys the priest had received therapy for “excessive drinking and sexual matters” and did not require further treatment. The lawyer also revealed that since his release from prison the priest had been monitored on a monthly basis and had not come to the notice of the police. Mr Gallagher said Curran had shown “great remorse” and believed his victim was “totally justified bringing this complaint.”

The BBC has retreated under sustained pressure from the Roman Catholic Church to drop an “offensive” television cartoon, which features corrupt cardinals and an infantile Pope on a pogo stick.

It has declined to confirm that the cartoon, Popetown, with a reported cost of more than £2m, would be broadcast.

BBC executives close to the project, however, claim it has been quietly axed. Ruby Wax, the comedian and writer, provides the voice of the pontiff and Jerry Hall, the model, portrays a fame obsessed nun.

Catholic leaders welcomed the BBC’s response to a campaign of more than 6,000 letters of complaint. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, who led protests against the BBC, said: “I am very glad to learn that the BBC are reconsidering their attitude to Popetown.”

Kieran Conry, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, said: “This is a very good message for Christians at Easter. It demonstrates respect for religious feeling [which] it seemed was being treated casually.”

The BBC’s concession to the religious lobby follows its dismissal of the talk show host Robert Kilroy Silk after he offended Muslim leaders with hostile comments about Islam and the Arab world. In its original announcement of the cartoon in November 2002, the BBC seemed determined to cause offence. It described the “insane and chaotic bureaucracy of Popetown, where Cardinals are sinister, corrupt and mysteriously wealthy, and the Pope is a . . . childish 77 year old whose every fickle whim must be indulged”. The cartoon was to have been broadcast last autumn on BBC Three, with a later re run on BBC Two. Stuart Murphy, controller of BBC Three, had announced the programme, saying: “Having had a Catholic upbringing myself, I believe Jerry Hall will make an excellent nun, and hope Ruby Wax, being Jewish and female, may bring something to the role of the Pope which the Catholic Church may have so far overlooked.”

Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, summed up the religious objection: “Many Catholics view this as an irreverent, gratuitous and publicly funded attack on their faith. It is impossible to imagine a similar irreverent approach being taken to Islam or Judaism.”

Rev Michael Graham of St Peter’s Church of Ireland and Fr Iggy O’Donovan OSA celebrating the Easter Sunday Eucharist Mass in the Augustinian church - COLIN BELL

A Church of Ireland clergyman - Rev. Michael Graham of St. Peter’s Church of Ireland in Drogeda - concelebrated the Roman Mass with three priests of Rome - Iggy O’Donovan, Richard Goode and Noel Hession at the Augustinian Priory in Drogeda, County Louth - The Mass was held to commemorate (and we presume - to celebrate) the 1916 - IRA uprising in Dublin against British Rule.

Let the Roman Catholic hierarchy fret as much as they want, about inter communion. We, as Protestants, are more concerned that a Church of Ireland Minister celebrated Mass. When the Thirty Nine Articles of The Anglican Communion of which Rev. Graham is a member say that masses are “Blasphemous Fables and Dangerous Deceits.”

To celebrate or commemorate the 1916 rebellion is to insult the memory of every British Soldier killed by this Act of Treason. It is an insult to every other victim of IRA terrorism in the last ninety years.

It shows just how low Ecumenists will sink: never forget that the then Pope Benedict sent his Apostolic blessing to the rebels in Dublin. We ask - will the Church of Ireland take action against Rev. Graham; and if not what will real Protestants in the Church of Ireland think?

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.