Currently there are a number of scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church falling into the lap of Pope Francis. The Pope is rushing to cultivate a reform spirit in order to win back the hearts and trust of the growing 1.2 billion Catholic membership which is faltering in its faith toward Church leadership. The Pope is aggressively moving in the ecumenical spirit of John Paul II, trying to unite all religious and secular humanists around the globe to come into his One World camp.

Anyone who has studied basics of church and world history recognizes that improprieties and corruptions amidst the Catholic Church are nothing new. It has a history of holding sway over souls, monarchies, and governments. Historically, Church reactions to the cries of indignation of scandals and misdeeds have been typical and somewhat predictable. Confusion and time sweep things away and leave them unfinished and forgotten, left to dissolve into thin air. This is a “tried and true” method of Machiavellian politics at the Vatican. (See – An Historic View of Catholic Church Reaction to Scandals)

Francis I stands head and shoulders above his two former predecessors as a reformer. He has made unprecedented statements, trying to quell a din of disgruntled believers while steering the Roman Catholic Church into a more peaceful religious port from which he can launch out into the high seas of world politics.

Scandals Abound

Headlining all the egregious outrages is the decades long priest pedophile scandal that has seen the pathetic reaction of the last two popes over the last 20 years. There is the Vatican Bank scandal brought to the world by “Vatileaks”. Then there continues to loom over Francis’ reign the scandalous news that pours out from Ireland and Spain over infant deaths, death holes at charity homes, and babies for sale. And then, curiously, there is what Francis’ has named a “scandal” with the Anglican church which is just his putting political pressure on another Christian denomination.

“As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.
   They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.” Jer. 5:27-28

The Vatican Bank Scandal

The Pope’s image of a humble pope with practical approaches to poverty was one of the pontiff’s first orders of business when he took the throne. He chose to make a show that he was going to reform the money system. Right away, Francis initiated changes in the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as, The Vatican Bank. Founded in 1942 it has been dogged for decades with allegations of accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy, covertly channeling funds for the CIA, violation of anti-money laundering laws, and other general financial corruptions.

In a much needed PR move, Francis named a special commission to investigate charges of corruption and money laundering and appointed a trusted aide to help supervise the bank. He has since made action to overhaul the bank through means of full financial transparency and new leaders that he hopes will provide a face-lift of trust for the Bank.

So threatening and revolutionary are these money reforms that two organized crime experts reported the pontiff has put himself into the Italian Mafia’s crosshairs. Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-mafia prosecutor in Italy, was reported to have said “The strong will of Pope Francis, aiming to disrupt the gangrene power centers, puts him at risk. He disturbs the mafia very much.”

He recently took his bank reform to the next level when he gave a homily at an outdoor Mass in Piana di Sibari, Calabria, the epicenter of the Italian Mafia. “Those who in their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the mafia are not with God, they are excommunicated”, he threatened. Never mind that Francis knew it was only an empty PR grandstand play, empty because without naming names and due process of ecclesiastical and official canonical procedure nothing will ever be done about it.

Pope Francis has been carefully playing his every move like the politician he is. He said, “St. Paul did not have a bank account” as he attempts to create the image that he is the poor-man’s pope, simultaneously distancing himself from all material wealth while dealing with corruption and criminal connections of the Vatican Bank. His strategy is to put the dimmers on the glittering shine of the obscenity of the wealth of an organization supposedly representing the humble carpenter, Jesus Christ.

Priest Sex Abuse Scandal

These days we watch and listen as Pope Francis, who appears to be working harder than John Paul II and Benedict XVI ever did at pushing the priest sexual abuse scandal out of the limelight. So far he has apologized saying “I feel called to take responsibility for all the evil that some priests — large in number, but not in proportion to the total — have committed and to ask forgiveness for the damage they’ve done with the sexual abuse of children.” He has given audience to a paltry few victims and family members as a PR show to say that he is for abuse prevention and continued healing. In a scandal where it has been revealed that the cover-ups have often been as bad as the crimes he recently said in a homily “I beg your forgiveness, too, for the sins of omission on the part of Church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members, as well as by abuse victims themselves.” Catholic bishops he claims, “will be held accountable” for failing to protect children from sexual abuse. None are doing time in jail, that we know of, however.

The church has been accused of being seriously amiss and resistant to levying harsh penalties of a satisfying degree against priests and bishops who were proven to be involved in sexual abuse, whether they were the molester or they were hiding one. In response to this sentiment it was reported this year, by the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations before a U.N. committee in Geneva, that since 2004 the Vatican handled more than 3,400 cases of sexual abuse. In the past decade, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi reported the Vatican defrocked 848 priests. It also sanctioned an additional 2,572 clergymen with lesser penalties, including “a life of prayer and penitence.” Critics not satisfied with the released statistics say unless more transparency is offered in the form of names and dates and locations of these criminals there will remain a degree of skepticism of whether the claim given by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi is even true. For those with watchful eyes of papacy maneuverings, this is information offered under the direction of Pope Francis that is not like the outright denial or silence that has been echoed in the past.

In a lame PR move the Pope tried to make it look like he was taking a hard-line stance on all this sex scandal. Out of all the criminal sex abusers known to the Vatican (including tens of thousands of Dutch files of documented priest sex abuse on children) only one, only one high level priest has been convicted by the Roman Church. Józef Wesołowski, a former Roman Catholic bishop from Poland and former Holy See ambassador to the Dominican Republic, was defrocked for sexually abusing teenage boys. This made him the most senior Vatican figure to be punished for such a crime. The Bible which they claim to follow says that this is worthy of death, Wesolowski remains in Vatican custody. That’s it. Some believe the former Catholic archbishop should face a criminal trial by civil authorities rather than a behind-closed-doors Vatican judicial process. If the Pope was not being disingenuous he would turn him over to the civil authorities where the crime took place. The Pope would pay remuneration to all the hundreds of thousands without hesitation.

These sex abuse crimes, especially upon young boys and defenseless girls and women are heinously criminal, some even capital crimes in the countries in which they were perpetrated. The Papacy continues to protect and be protected from the law that other religions would not be privileged to allow. If the Pope was sincere he would be a very busy man turning these devils over to the proper judgment; but he uses Papal subterfuge, its stock-in-trade, hiding behind a mask of benevolence and promises of reform.

Magdalene Laundries Still Linger; Mother and Baby Homes Scandal

Ireland’s Mother and Baby homes were operated by various Catholic religious orders under state funds and monitoring. Similarly are the Magdalene Laundries that were run throughout Europe, North America and Ireland. The fallout of these government/church run institutions has surged to newer heights in recent years.

The infamous Magdalene Laundries that began in the mid 1700’s, have an Anglican and Catholic history that eventually degenerated from a rescue mission for wayward women to prison like workhouses for sinful penitents. Most notably is Ireland’s Mother and Baby homes of similar sort, run by Catholic nuns, which have recently had the attention of world press and even the United Nations.

Much is being said today against these joint collaborations of government and the Roman Catholic church run institutions that exploited the misfortunes of young women and their children for decades until the last one was closed in 1996. These “homes” soon became a place for single mothers detained through the courts or often moved in by their family or clergy for being sexually active and they have come under close scrutiny for a number of serious accusations. The Irish state has recently appointed a committee head to investigate issues such as unusually high mortality rates for children in the homes, circumstances and location of the burial of babies who died in the homes, the use of infants in clinical drug trials at some homes and the number and manner of adoptions from the homes.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture has submitted a report to the Holy See alleging, with testimony and evidence to support, that under the church direction, mothers were forced to work in slavery-like conditions and were often subject to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment as well as to physical and sexual abuse, while escape was routinely blocked. They were deprived of their identity, of education and often of food and essential medicines and were imposed with an obligation of silence and prohibited from having any contact with the outside world while being told they had to serve a life of penance for the sins they had committed. The report alleges unmarried girls who gave birth before entering or while incarcerated had their babies forcibly removed from them by the nuns while the institutions profited from the adoptions arranged with Catholics from around the world seeking children.

Church response concerning these matters has been little. As far as things go in regards to the demands put on Pope Francis by the UN human rights committee back in May 2014, that he must launch an investigation into decades of abuse of girls and young women at Catholic-run workhouses in Ireland, the Vatican said it would study the report and reiterated its commitment to defending and protecting children’s rights.

In June, 2014 in Tuam, Co. Galway, Ireland, an unmarked infant mass grave, involving an abandoned septic tank, supposedly for the unbaptized, was discovered on property of a discontinued Mother and Baby home. As a result the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has called for a properly constituted independent commission to examine issues throughout the Irish State, of allegations that medical trials were carried out on children and all the issues about forced adoptions. He also suggested the commission should investigate whether similar burials took place at other Mother and Baby homes in Ireland and has called for religious orders involved to cooperate.

The Irish Times quoted Archbishop Martin as saying “that those who were running those institutions didn’t understand and did not want to understand how you look after children and how you examine the special care that children need at that early stage”. We can deduce that Martin, who has been vocal in this way in past years with Ireland’s church scandals (Mother and Baby Homes and Priest Sexual Abuse), has been receiving direction by the new Papal regime to continue.

In February 2014, at Pope Francis’ invitation, the actual Philomena Lee, of the 2013 movie that tells her real-life drama about the young, unwed mother in 1950s Ireland whose 3-year-old son was taken by the Catholic Church and given up for adoption, was given a personal audience with Francis. Later that day Philomena, and Steve Coogan who co-wrote the script, co-produced the film, and stars opposite Judi Dench, attended a screening of the movie for a group of senior Vatican officials: The pope did not attend. After the screening Coogan shared that in conversation with Bishop Sanchez (Chancellor of The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences) and the Pope’s private secretary, he was told that the film was “entirely in keeping with the tone of the Pope’s approach” and  Coogan said “The message of the film is in line with the values of Pope Francis”. In contrast to the harsh criticism first offered by Catholic movie critics of Philomena, Francis is making gestures that ought to surprise many of the “faith”.

Spain’s Stolen Babies Scandal

Spain conducted a covert operation of the theft and trafficking of thousands of babies by nuns, priests and doctors for decades. How was this accomplished?

After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, which took the lives of one million people, General Francisco Franco became the autocratic dictator of Spain’s new government. Franco had received military support from Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. Franco, much like Hitler, had an ideology of building a superior race. After the civil war it became state policy to collect orphaned children and place them in the care of his conservative supporters. Children were taken from parents who had been assassinated, jailed, or had disappeared and a system for taking children away from families deemed politically dangerous to the regime of General Franco began operating.

As of 2012 there have been over 2000 official reports of parents or single mothers going into Catholic hospitals to give birth, and after giving birth the nuns would return to them and tell them that their babies died or were born dead. In many cases the nuns would not let the parents see the body of the dead child. The babies, being stolen at birth, were most often sold for adoption. These criminal adoptions were guided by the principle that the children were better off being raised by affluent, conservative and devout Roman Catholic families. This system, that outlived Franco’s death in 1975 and carried on into the early 1990’s, was made possible by enacting new laws concerning birth certificates and adoption papers. A network of co-conspirators involving doctors, nurses, priests, nuns and midwives scheming together convincing poor or unwed mothers their babies had died at birth kept the wheels of deception going for nearly 50 years.

Today, under accusations of Spain’s judiciary foot-dragging, the courts have been stalled by a paper trail that renders it nearly impossible to follow back to the actual mothers who gave birth. This is due to the past practice of falsifying birth certificates and adoption papers or finding that records themselves have been destroyed or mysteriously disappeared. Some babies’ graves have been exhumed, revealing bones that belong to adults or animals and in one case DNA of a baby exhumed is not that of a missing twin. It is estimated this could be the case for as many as 300,000 mothers.

To date the only one subpoenaed to testify in connection with Spain’s kidnapping/baby trafficking ring has been a nun whose signature has appeared on hundreds of adoption documents from where she worked in the maternity ward of a Madrid clinic. Sister Maria Gomez exercised her right not to speak in court and remained silent. The 87-year-old nun has since died in January 2013. No official statement has come forth from the Vatican as they remain as quiet as Sister Mary.

As we have learned with the Ireland’s Mother and Baby homes, silence may not prevail in the Spain scandal. Three years ago a precedent was set in Australia for Francis to easily follow of which he might choose to make even bolder statements and gestures. In 2011, following an Australian Broadcasting Corporation investigation into the practice of the Roman church’s nearly 150,000 forced adoptions, the church, through several Catholic entities in Australia, issued a national apology. They said its history of forced adoptions was “deeply regrettable”. “We acknowledge the pain of separation and loss felt then and felt now by the mothers, fathers, children, families and others involved in the practices of the time,” and  “For this pain we are genuinely sorry”.

Set on his current course, Pope Francis may surprise the world with innovative public relation tactics. We watch if Francis will make an appeal for church transgressions in a way that has never been done before.

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Divisions Between Christians:

Francis’ Concocted Scandal to Put Pressure on Those Resisting Ecumenism
In January 2014 Pope Francis defined the current scandal he is facing as being the divisions between Christians. In a general audience in St. Peter’s Square he called for unity between Christians. In June he welcomed the head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. Ironically the archbishop was in Rome on a three-day tour that included a review of the progress made by the Global Freedom Network, a joint Catholic-Anglican project for countering human trafficking. It’s been one of the areas of greatest cooperation between the two Churches. Archbishop Welby introduced his delegation, which included two female priests. Pope Francis said; “We cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world.”On July 14 The Church of England voted to allow women bishops. With more than 26 million baptized members, the Church of England is the largest of the Anglican Communion which represents more than 85 million people in 165 countries, including the U.S. Episcopal Church. The Anglican Communion has already had women bishops in New Zealand, Polynesia, Australia, Canada, The Episcopal Church, Cuba, Southern Africa, Ireland and South India. The Church of England broke from the Catholic church in the 16th century. On its website, the Church of England says it “consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Church of the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice”.Some Anglican conservatives, Anglo-Catholics, believe a woman cannot be a valid bishop and ordaining women prevents unity with the Roman Catholics but in contrast Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who has just met with Pope Francis with a hope of unity and communion between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, said he was “delighted” with the decision on women bishops; Welby is the symbolic spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, so him being “delighted” certainly means something to Pope Francis. It was little less than one year ago when the Pope, under his authority, had Father Greg Reynolds, an Australian Catholic priest excommunicated. Why? “the decision by Pope Francis to dismiss Fr Reynolds from the clerical state and to declare his automatic ex-communication has been made because of his public teaching on the ordination of women contrary to the teaching of the Church and his public celebration of the Eucharist when he did not hold faculties to act publicly as a priest.” (from the dismissal letter sent by the Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart) It has only been a short time since the Church of England’s historic move but leaders from Rome have already said this will strain relations between the two churches. In a statement read by Catholic Archbishop Bernard Longley, chairman of the Department for Dialogue and Unity and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, he said “The decision of the Church of England to admit women to the episcopate therefore sadly places a further obstacle on the path to this unity between us. Nevertheless, we are committed to continuing our ecumenical dialogue, seeking deeper mutual understanding and practical cooperation wherever possible.” The pressure is on Francis; how will he respond to such a “scandal”?Keep an eye on Rome to see the Pope’s reaction generated by the scandals he faces. It probably won’t be long before we hear from Francis about the move made by the Church of England knowing there are already forces upon him from within the Roman church to allow women into the priesthood and to end the tradition of celibacy within the priestly orders.

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The contemporary scandals mounting upon Pope Francis have already elicited surprising gestures and shocking attitude changes from the Holy See. The Pope’s policies are aimed at public relations to change the image of the Church. His main objective is to pick up the scepter of the movement for a One World Church that the Papacy has been promoting and working towards since the end of World War II. This movement had stalled because of the host of scandals the Church has been embroiled in for the last three decades. Whether Francis I is the man, or if the Papacy will have to wait on another to become the False Prophet, we do not know.

Francis’ first order of business is to clean up the scandals that make it harder for the Vatican to promote its position as The Prophet who will be the main public relations guy for the Antichrist. Francis I’s bold reforms are intended to address these problems and to raise expectations that he can bring major change to the Roman Catholic Church and enhance their relationship with other religious and political powers. No one else at this time is in the position of power and holds the charisma of the Pope. He has the influence needed in ecumenical and humanistic circles to be heard among the various voices of unity that presently flood the world of politics and religion everywhere.