Tag: vatican

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News

Vatican Apologizes to LGBTQ Lobby for Removing Pro-Gay Group Resources from Website

The Vatican has apologized for removing a link to a prominent pro-LGBTQ advocacy group from their website after a bunch of rainbow-stained outrage, restoring the URL and offering a ‘mea culpa’ that they ever removed it in the first place.

On the Vatican webpage under a ‘resources” page, there was a link to a webinar from New Ways Ministry, a controversial pro-LGBTQ organization that has spent the last 35 years fighting for gays, lesbians, and transgender folk to receive full acceptance into the church.

Their stated mission is to foster dialogue among groups and individuals, identify and combat personal and structural homophobia and transphobia, work for changes in attitudes and promote the acceptance of LGBTQ people as full and equal members of church and society.” Wiki notes that “They are a frequent partner Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholics who support full LGBT equality, and the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics”

A cursory glance at their website shows how the depths of sinful theology they’ve descended into.

Someone at the Vatican removed it, they screamed bloody murder, and within days it was back. The Synod’s communications director, Thierry Bonaventura, apologized for the lapse and once the link to their treacherous teaching was restored, they accepted the apology, writing on their website:

New Ways Ministry warmly accepts the apology of Thierry Bonaventura, the Communications Manager of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, for removing from their website a link to our video encouraging LGBTQ people to participate in synod consultations. We thank him for recognizing the harm that such a slight would have caused LGBTQ people and the entire church.

and in another post

“New Ways Ministry has accepted the apology of a Vatican official who removed a link to New Ways Ministry’s webinar on synodality from the Synod office’s resources website last week. The link has since been restored.”

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Roman Catholic Stuff

Report: Vatican Showing Excessive Use of Hookup Apps like Grindr

According to reports from The Pillar, a Roman Catholic news organization that specializes in investigative journalism, through a 26-week period in 2018 their team pulled the signal data from mobile phones in cloistered parts of the Vatican. This showed dozens of devices were “emitted serially occurring hookup or dating app data signals from secured areas and buildings of the Vatican ordinarily inaccessible to tourists and pilgrims” with an emphasis on the gay hookup app Grindr.

According to the data set, which the Pillar confirms is “commercially available and contains location and usage information which users consent to be collected and commercialized as a condition of using the app” their analysis reveals the following:

“Extensive location-based hookup or dating app usage is evident within the walls of Vatican City, in restricted areas of St. Peter’s Basilica, inside Vatican City government and Holy See’s administration buildings including those used by the Vatican’s diplomatic staff, in residential buildings, and in the Vatican Gardens, both during daytime hours and overnight. “

With the concern from the Pillar that this information could be used to blackmail certain individuals, including high-ranking officials within the church, they had a meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State as well as Dr. Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican’s dicastery for communications, to present its findings They report that “The meeting’s discussion was agreed by all parties to be mutually confidential, but the fact of the meeting was not itself off-the-record.”

However, when the news broke last week that the high ranking general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill used Grindr all the time, wherever he went, the Vatican clammed up and refused to grant the Pillar any more promised meetings or conversations to review their findings, choosing to circle the wagon rather than to allow an outside news agency to share further findings and risk being exposed to more scandal.

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abortion News Roman Catholic Stuff

LifeSite News Launches Petition To Cancel Pope’s ‘Morally Rotten’ Conference

LifeSite News has launched a petition against the Vatican for hosting a “Health” Conference on “Exploring the Mind, Body, and Soul,” explaining, “Everything about the conference is rotten — morally, scientifically, and culturally,” and amassing over 22,000 signatures calling for its cancellation.

Despite being populated by Roman Catholics and having an entire variant of their website designed as the “Catholic Edition,” that promotes and reports Catholic news, Lifesite has been notoriously critical of Pope Francis, deigning him to be dangerous and likely one Papal Bull shy of being an anti-pope. As for the problems with the conference, they explain:

Incredibly, the conference organizers have listed huge numbers of globalist and abortion-promoting speakers such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, vaccine developers, Mormon elders, pro-abortion Chelsea Clinton, population control advocate Jane Goodall, a New Age activist, a prominent UK Muslim scholar, and pro-abortion American actress Cindy Crawford, among others.

The logo for the conference is a circle of people linking hands, colored in the tones of the LGBT rainbow flag, and positioned next to the crossed keys and Papal tiara of the Pontiff.  In the ten goals listed for the conference, the Pontifical Council for Culture makes no reference to God or the Catholic Church.

Given that LifeSite News focuses on anti-abortion work, they note that the conference is having the following speakers, among others.

  • The CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, the former of which produces abortion pills;
  • The Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, who advocates using fetal tissue in research projects;
  • Chelsea Clinton, a strong advocate for abortion;

LifeSite concludes their petition with a call to action, noting, “this conference contains such a high concentration of poison for the Faith and the faithful that it should be canceled, not only for the contents itself, but also for the grave scandal it will (and is already) cause” and asking signers to “contact the following Church authorities to politely, but firmly, voice your dismay and displeasure at the anti-God, anti-life, and anti-faith conference which the Vatican has scheduled for the beginning of May. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi – Head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. Email: cultura@cultura.va; Phone: [+39] 06 6989 3811.”

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Coronavirus Featured Roman Catholic Stuff

Vatican Invites Clinton, Faucci, Aerosmith Guitarist and Deepak Chopra to Speak on ‘Health’ and ‘Soul’

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture has invited a series of pro-choice guests to speak at their May conference, an event that features “the world’s leading physicians, scientists, leaders of faith, ethicists, patient advocates, policymakers, philanthropists, and influences” who will “engage in powerful conversations on the latest breakthroughs in medicine, health care delivery, and prevention.”

They say the event will be “moderated by renowned journalists, who will explore the role of religion, faith and spirituality, and the interplay of the mind, body, and soul – and ultimately, search for areas of convergence between the humanities and the natural sciences.”

Who better to speak on the health and the soul of humanity than a bunch of pro-choice atheists? [Editor’s note: Lord, have mercy on us all…we have to read all the garbage they will produce…]

The conference, which will close with a message for the participants from Pope Francis, has a speaker list that skews heavily with medical and technology experts. Not only does it feature CEOs of several major pharmaceutical companies like Stéphane Bancel of Moderna or Francis Collins, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, it also includes characters such as Chelsea Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Deepak Chopra, supermodel Cindy Crawford, Muslim scholar Shaykh Asim Yusuf, anthropologist Jane Goodall, and Aerosmith Guitarist Joe Perry, among others.

Some of the topics listed are Sustainable Health Care: Protecting Our Environment, Religious Dietary Practices and Health, A New Generation of Vaccines; Religion, Spirituality, and Health: The Importance of Dialogue; The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion; Building A More Equitable Health System for All; and How Do You Define the Soul?

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News

Amid Financial Scandal, Vatican Released First Budget in Years – It’s a lot of Money

In a move that would have Tetzel spinning in his grave, the Vatican has released their budget, balance sheet, and earnings statement for the first time in nearly 5 years, a move prompted by the insistence on more financial transparency after several high-profile financial scandals.

The Economy Prefect Rev. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, commented publicly that faithful Roman Catholics have a right to know they are spending their money and utilizing their vast holdings, quoted Pope Francis that “the economy of Holy See must be as transparent as a glass house,” acknowledging:

It’s possible that in some cases, the Holy See has been not only poorly counseled but also defrauded. I think we’re learning from the errors or imprudent (decisions) of the past.

The move comes as the Roman Curia deals with a major scandal, with the third-highest ranking Cardinal resigning after being accused of spending over $900,000 of Vatican funds to bribe witnesses in a sex abuse case against one of his rivals.

According to RNS:

The report shows the Vatican Curia earned more than $360 million in 2019, with an expenditure of almost $374 million, leaving a deficit of about $14 million, which is an improvement from the over $88 million deficit it incurred the previous year. 

The net assets reported in the budget amount to more than $1.6 billion (with the vast majority of assets never being appraised – if they were, estimates would add another $7 billion to that number).

The official numbers refer specifically to the Roman Curia, which comprises the 60 institutions and departments charged with administering and enacting Pope Francis’ goals for integral human development, evangelization and education projects.

The figures do not include the budgets of the Vatican Museums, donations to the Peter’s Pence charitable fund, the Vatican bank or numerous other funds and institutions, which together brought in over $4.7 billion in 2019.

The total assets of the Roman Catholic Church, and not just the Vatican, however, has long been considered impossible to assess, though certainly, it would be one of, if not the wealthiest entities on earth.

The Church has an estimated 620,000 sq miles of land that they own, having embassies, convents, churches, cathedrals, monasteries, schools, and other private holdings. They have an estimated 10 billion in investments in foreign companies, have art, gold, statues, priceless books, and enormous funds. The church paid out nearly 3 billion dollars in sex-abuse cases in the United States alone.