Vatican accepting Mob Money... You can't make up this stuff. ::o

[Bro.David Drake DeLaurento]

Vatican ‘accepted one billion lire’ to bury crime boss in basilica next to former popes

POSTED ON APRIL 30, 2012

The Vatican is facing a deepening controversy over the burial 22 years ago of a notorious crime boss, with reports emerging that the church accepted a one billion lire (£407,000) payment from the mobster’s widow to allow his interment in a basilica.

A source at the Holy See told the Ansa news agency that “despite initial reluctance” the then vicar-general of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, “in the face of such a conspicuous sum, gave his blessing” to the controversial interment of Enrico De Pedis, the former boss of Rome’s notorious Magliana gang. The money was reportedly used on missions and to restore the Basilica of St Apollinare, where the mobster was laid to rest next to popes and cardinals after his death in 1990.

The claims, which the Vatican has not commented on, may explain how such a reviled criminal was buried in such a hallowed site. Last week, to deflect growing criticism and to help resolve a 30-year-old murder mystery, it emerged that Vatican officials had decided to move the remains of De Pedis from his special crypt.

Pressure mounted earlier this month when a prosecuting magistrate, Giancarlo Capaldo, claimed senior officials at the Vatican knew much more than they were letting on about the Magliana gang’s links to the Holy See, and the gang’s suspected kidnap and murder of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican official, in 1983. “There are people still alive, and still inside the Vatican, who know the truth,” he said. Some believe Emanuela’s father had evidence linking the Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, to organised crime, and that she was snatched to keep him silent. The theory is that De Pedis, who was shot dead in 1990, organised the kidnapping.

For the past two decades, there has been speculation that Emanuela’s remains were put in the tomb alongside De Pedis. The girl’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, has joined those calling for the tomb to be opened.

The Vatican – under heavy scrutiny after a set of scandals – denies the claims and has hinted that investigators will be able to witness the re-opening of the crypt, in a bid to quash the rumours. “It seems that nothing has been concealed and there are no Vatican secrets to reveal,” said a spokesman for Vatican, Father Federico Lombardin.

It is likely that the body of De Pedis will be moved to a less high-profile place of rest. The location may be decided at an upcoming meeting. Even if the girl’s remains are not found in the crypt, the mystery surrounding her disappearance will remain.

Other theories surrounding her fate are not in short supply. One, more palatable for the Vatican, suggests that Magliana gang members snatched her at the behest of Turkish extremists, who wanted to use her as a bargaining tool to win the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

But others have implicated Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced and deceased former head of the Vatican bank, which was involved in the bankruptcy of Italy’s largest private bank, the Banco Ambrosiano, in 1982.

Soon after the news of the scandal became public, the president of Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London.

The Independent | Michael Day | Monday 30th April 2012

[Dages]

The Harlot is going to have a very bad time

[rbrown1205]

There was a time, and some of us who may have read about the history of popes know it, when this kind of thing took place frequently - intigues, murders, popes and antipopes, and so on. The recent feelings about such things stem from the fact that the news is so quickly and explicitly brought to the public, and because of the recent scandals regarding priests' behavior with child parishioners.

I can understand why people remain Catholic thinking that they personally are not involved with these things, and what they think is Catholic behavior is what they personally do. I can also understand why other Catholics are more distant with their church. Some might have heard that Roman Catholics will say that if they follow a certain prescribed Mass, that God forgives the church and sancitifies it. I don't know a lot about that, but that is the opinion about many in that church.

I know this has to be painful for many people who try to do what is right, and try to be faithful to what they were raised as. This is the reason why Jehovah has preserved his word the Bible, and has commissioned us to go to everybody, so that they can learn what God wants.

[retroHelen]

Years ago I read a book that was written by a widow of a Mafia Boss from Sicily to expose their crimes from what she knew and had witnessed. She said that the Mafia started in Italy & Sicily centuries ago as secret spies for the Vatican, searching out heresy for the Inquisition and aiding the Inquisition in bringing out heretic's confessions. They built up quite a bit of power and secret networks that stood them in good stead to carry on as a criminal underworld - (extorting for themselves instead of for the Church) when the Vatican no longer needed their services and that of the Inquisition.

The Mediterranean in the past had been a busy place with secret spies on Sicily for the Vatican and the biggest slave market for the Vatican on Malta - selling captives from Muslim ships the Knights of Malta's fleets had captured as the Pope's pirates.

Giving the Mafia lavish funeral rites in the best burial places is nothing new for the Vatican, I witnesses enough of them on the TV news from when I was very young. The history of the scandal of the Banco Ambrosiano was exposed in the 1984 bestseller paperback: "In God's Name" by investigative reporter David Yallop and the scandal was ongoing even after the book was finished as more arrests took place and more evidence came out about the corruption of the Vatican banking system. Yet still people said they would support the Church, even if they did not like what it was doing with it's finances from them.

[Hallett 82]

. . . . . . . .. . . The history of the scandal of the Banco Ambrosiano was exposed in the 1984 bestseller paperback: "In God's Name" by investigative reporter David Yallop and the scandal was ongoing even after the book was finished as more arrests took place and more evidence came out about the corruption of the Vatican banking system. Yet still people said they would support the Church, even if they did not like what it was doing with it's finances from them.

I remember all that history. I still have a copy of that book. To this day there are a handful of fugitives from that banking crisis who cannot emerge fromVatican City because they will face immediate arrest.

Can you imagine such a wanted criminal getting 'asylum' within the Patterson or Brooklyn Bethel? . . . an accused would be handed over in a blink so a trial could be conducted.

( and people still think WE are a wierd sect )