The Priestly Prince Of Kiddie Porn: A Josef Wesolowski Update

Sometimes when taking aim at a person, it's just too hard to put the gun down. I wrote about Josef Wesolowski last week thinking that one post would be enough, but the EXTENT of his child porn addiction was just recently made public:

The defrocked bishop and former Papal Nuncio arrested by Vatican officials last week reportedly had more than 100,000 child pornography images on the hard drive of his computer. Jozef Wesolowski is the highest-ranking Vatican official ever to be investigated for sex abuse.

Vatican detectives examined the computer that Wesolowski used in his office in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic when he was the Vatican ambassador from 2008 to 2012, and made the discovery. Another 45,000 photos reportedly had been deleted and a second stash of illicit photos was on a laptop computer Wesolowski used while traveling, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The time it took to collect such a stash (and there may be more to discover) is the key: he was nuncio for Bolivia back in 1999, then the countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2002 before becoming apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic in 2008. How could he function in any position while having time to download thousands of pics? How many computers did he use in those countries? How many files were deleted? Even his native Poland wants to know.

They want him extradited as well as the Dominican Republic.

The largest recorded stash of child porn was 1 million videos owned by John Edward Shearen of Florida (4/13), but he was not only a collector, but a distributor. Wesolowski's may just be the largest stash of any clergy in the world.

It boggles the mind.




Poor Francis.

Vatileaks Or VatiGAYte? Which Resignation Reason Do You Prefer, Il Papa? And Does It Really Matter?

Organized Religion May Be Satan's Greatest Masterpiece - Anon

Pope Benedict XVI has unloaded the heaviest burden on any one man in Christendom: with a papacy wracked with scandals and corruption, "Il Papa" has managed to shrug off a mountain of ills to his successor. Take your pick as to the reason for his resignation: pedophile priest cover-ups, Vatican bank money-laundering, Time Lord (see below) or ...

The latest:

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.

The pope's spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair.

And the infamous dossier in question has been sealed - ready for the next pontiff to deal with. It's three hundred pages of Vatican in-fighting, factions, bank improprieties, sexual abuse and secret, blackmailed gay networks. The last facet of the dossier was fueled years ago with aspersions implicating the pope himself and his involvement with his private secretary.

And, of course, the American media has made the most of it.

Denials - Sort of:

     Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said it was "deplorable" that as the time for the Roman Catholic cardinals to elect a new pope approaches, a rash of "often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories" has appeared.
Such unfounded stories "cause serious damage to persons and institutions," he said, and are an attempt to influence the cardinals' free will in the election "through public opinion."

Influence Of Free Will.

The makeup of the cardinal electorate is stunningly conservative: with over half of them elevated to cardinal by Benedict himself, and the other half made cardinal by John Paul II (also a conservative), the chances of a progressive pope being elected are exceedingly slim.

And "moderate" might not make it, either, because a "moderate" might not be able to clean up the scandals and give the papacy what it really needs: transparency. The dossier holds too much for conspiracy theorists to ruminate about and the "deplorable" "unverified" aspects of it. And those aspects may never be revealed to the satisfaction of the rest of the world. The cover-ups in the Catholic Church seem too pervasive to instill confidence in any moderate protecting even a small portion of the papacy's secrets.

And Ratzinger's will must be considered as well: with half of the electorate beholden to him for their positions, it is unlikely that the cardinals will dismiss any "favorite" off hand. The position of "dowager" pope has never been tested as to influence, and working behind the scenes as puppeteer is not without credibility.

Reasons For Resignation

So do the reasons given for resignation - old age, burden of scandals, passing on the problems of the Vatican to another prelate - really matter? Do Vatileaks or VatiGAYte count in the scheme of things to come? They may count to the Catholic laity who need to question in order to bring about reforms, but to the "faithful" - (those in third world countries in particular, where "liberation theology" has suppressed, for example), the reasons for resignation matter very little - only the election of a continuing, conservative pope matter to carry on all-important "tradition". Front-runners for pope like Timothy Dolan of New York, Peter Turkson of Ghana and Francis Arinze from eastern Nigeria are all conservatives. Although Dolan has the burden of his pedophile cover-up story as Archbishop of Milwaukee, the strength of traditionalism may yet again gloss over this negative. Turkson and Arinze have the masses of faithful in Africa much like the Musevenes in Uganda have, although Nigeria is considered to be the most corrupt nation in the world.

So whatever the reason for resignation, enacting reform isn't one of them. The papacy may continue on its course of Vatican II reversals.

At any rate, it doesn't look good for the future of the Vatican ... or Catholicism.

The Vatican's Golden Toilet Flush: Mussolini's Millions Point To Greater Secret Papal Wealth

The newest Vatican financial revelation brings about one very important point: no one knows just how much the Vatican is worth except the pontiff himself and some very close-lipped minions.
The Guardian, London:

        "Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.

Since then the international value of Mussolini's nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James's Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland."

A widely-read OpEdNews article (The Vatican's Fake Occupy Implodes: Documents Evoke A History Of Money Laundering, Sexual Terrorism, And Even ... Murder) focused on the financial wrong-doings of the papacy, but only featured the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and its history in relation to John Paul I and his untimely death. This latest revelation, however, demonstrates the extent of holdings of the Vatican: secret holdings which may only be the tip of the iceberg. Holdings which maintain an extravagant lifestyle that John Paul discovered to his horror.

Pope John Paul I:

      “. . . this morning, I flushed my toilet with a solid gold lever edged with diamonds and at this very moment, bishops and cardinals are using a bathroom on the second floor of the papal palace which trappings, I am told, would draw more than fifty million dollars at auction . . . Believe me, one day, we who live in opulence, while so many are dying because they have nothing, will have to answer to Jesus as to why we have not carried out His instruction, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ We, the clergy of the Church together with our congregations, who substitute gold and pomp and ceremony in place of Christ’s instruction, who judge our masquerade of singing His praises to be more precious than human life, will have the most to explain.”

Bernadino Nogara - The Man Behind The Vatican Empire




To understand the complex and secretive roots of the Vatican's financial empire, it's necessary to look back to 1929, when the papacy's finances were less than stellar. Financial advisor Bernadino Nogara had been a good friend of several papacies (of his many siblings, two were archbishops, another was superintendent of the Vatican Museums, and his sister the mother superior of a nunnery), it was he who, as Director of the Special Administration of the Holy See, engineered the vast financial settlement of the Lateran Treaties with Mussolini.

Astronomical

$92 million may not seem to be a significant amount of money, but in the context of Depression Era Italy, the sum is staggering and could have accounted for a huge chunk out of Italy's impoverished economy. Seeding the Vatican's finances with that amount (almost half of it in cash, the remainder in government bonds) was akin to bankrolling a small country. Indeed, that was the purpose: the Vatican acquired a measure of independence with its recognition of Fascism.

And Nogara made the most of the Mussolini millions in his 35-year tenure as chief financier:

     "Under Pius XI, Nogara made large investments in firms contrary to Catholic social teaching and made direct loans to Mussolini's government prior to Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia.[6][7] Under Pius XII, Nogara routinely invested in firms that profited from and enabled the war effort of the Axis powers during World War II. Though these investments were hidden from the Allies (with whom Nogara also transacted), through the use of holding companies and offshore banking centers, under Nogara "like water finding a downhill path, Vatican money found its way to the grisly side of the Holocaust".

Nogara's anti-Semitic dealings under Pius XII were only brought about years later: all of his personal meetings with the Pope were in private and no notes were taken.

Secrecy reigned.

Just as it does now.

The Guardian asked the Vatican's representative in London, the papal nuncio, archbishop Antonio Mennini, why the papacy continued with such secrecy over the identity of its property investments in London. We also asked what the pope spent the income on. True to its tradition of silence on the subject, the Roman Catholic church's spokesman said that the nuncio had no comment.

More Money Than God

Forget the stories of the value of the Vatican's porn library. Or of its art collection. Those are pittances: the known holdings of the Catholic Church in the U.S. tops $500 billion. Combine it with holdings in Catholic Countries such as Italy (now the 8th strongest economy in the world), Mexico, Brazil, and the Filipines, companies and industrial complexes and in secret secular real estate, the worth of the Church reaches into the trillion$. It could be argued that the Vatican controls an economy larger than the U.S.

And what of more secret holdings? 

God only knows.

And maybe He's pissed. He may tipped off the Guardian.