Vatican May Resist US Court Order

This article comes from the National Catholic Reporter.
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Vatican may resist judge's order for documents
A ruling on Thursday from a federal judge in Oregon marks the first time that an American court has ever issued an order requiring the Vatican to hand over documents in a sex abuse case.
Whether that actually happens, however, depends on how the Vatican responds, including whether it tries to persuade either the Oregon judge or an appeals court that it shouldn’t have to comply.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman on Thursday granted a limited number of requests for discovery put forward by attorney Jeffrey Anderson, representing a man who says he was abused by Andrew Ronan, a former Servite priest who was laicized in 1966 and who died in 1992.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the main advocacy group in the United States for victims of clerical abuse, hailed the order as a “historic achievement.”

“Many clergy sex abuse victims are distraught that thousands of Catholic officials who ignore and conceal heinous crimes escape any consequences for their corruption,” said a statement from Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, California, the western regional director of SNAP.

“We are confident that this court ruling will give many victims some sorely-needed hope,” she said.

Since the core issue in the Oregon case is whether Ronan was an “employee” or “agent” of the Vatican, Mosman limited the requests to documents related to the Vatican’s laicization process, its policies regarding sexual abuse and its regulation of priests’ conduct, as they relate specifically to Ronan.

By granting only those requests, Mosman effectively rejected other requests from Anderson, including the idea of taking depositions from senior Vatican personnel, up to and including Pope Benedict XVI.

Attorney Jeffrey Lena, who represents the Holy See in American civil litigation, released a brief statement Thursday night in response to Mosman’s order.

“As a factual matter, Ronan was not a Holy See employee, and the Holy See was not aware of Ronan's misconduct until after Ronan had abused the plaintiff,” Lena said.

Beyond that, Lena declined to comment on what the Vatican’s strategy might be. In general, the Vatican has resisted such demands for discovery, both on First Amendment grounds and because of its status under international law as a sovereign state. Mosman’s ruling on Thursday didn’t directly address those arguments.

In that light, most observers believe it’s unlikely that the Vatican will simply hand over the requested documents. Instead, it’s likely that the Vatican will either file an objection with Mosman, or perhaps appeal the ruling to a higher court.

In the past, Vatican spokespersons have insisted that their reluctance to turn over documents is a matter of principle. In reality, they say, any documents in their possession would show that Ronan was never supervised by the Vatican and that Rome became aware of the charges against him only after the fact.

In comments to the Associated Press, Anderson nevertheless insisted the ruling is a breakthrough.

“It’s the first time anyone's laid a glove on them to the extent they had to turn documents over,” Anderson said.

Vatican Enacts New Financial Reform Law

This article comes from the Chiesa website.
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Vatican and Finance. The April Revolution

Full power of control for Cardinal Nicora and his sidekicks De Pasquale and Condemi. The IOR will become a bank like many others, with the same rules and restrictions, in a competitive scenario. Will it succeed in keeping its traditional clientele?

by Sandro Magister

ROME, March 21, 2011 – Starting at the beginning of April, the Holy See will return to using a sanction that had practically fallen into disuse in the practice of canon law: prison.

This penalty is provided for by law no. 127 of the state of Vatican City, promulgated last December 30, which will go into effect next April 1.  A law aimed against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

But beyond this, the new norm will bring much more substantial novelties in the practices of the Vatican institutes that operate in the financial field, beginning with the one that most resembles a bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

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Until now, the IOR has enjoyed broad autonomy of action. It worked outside of the international norms that regulate, standardize, and supervise the activities of the banks in various countries.

For the depositors of the IOR, mainly dioceses and religious institutes, this autonomy was seen as an advantage. The procedures for depositing and managing money were simple and confidential, like in a family. Secrecy was guaranteed. Interest rates were higher than in other financial institutions.

This absence of external supervision enjoyed by the IOR was, however, also very attractive to less virtuous subjects, tempted to use the Vatican bank for illicit operations, using religion as a cover, disguising themselves as benefactors or exploiting the naivety of depositors.

One suspected case of wrongful use of the IOR is, for example, the one that has been under investigation by the Roman authorities since last summer. At issue are operations totaling 23 million euro, in an IOR account deposited with an Italian bank, Credito Artigiano. First Credito Artigiano itself, then the Bank of Italy which it informed, and finally the public prosecutor's office in Rome suspected that the operation was intended to launder money from illicit sources. The 23 million euro were confiscated, and the president and director general of the IOR were put under judicial investigation.

The paradox of the affair is that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the banker who has been head of the IOR since September 23, 2009, was called to this role by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, precisely in order to complete the work of cleaning up and modernizing the IOR undertaken by his predecessor, Angelo Caloia, removing the last stains, real or suspected.

Evidently, the operational machinery of the IOR does not yet meet these criteria. It still continues to function, in part, according to the old logic detached from any supervision.

But this is precisely what is about to end.

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The first act of this change goes back to December 17, 2009. It is the convention with the European Union by which the state of Vatican City took the euro as its own currency. The act required the Vatican to adhere to European norms on financial instruments and the circulation of money.

The second act is from December 30, 2010, and is precisely the execution of the commitment made one year earlier. Benedict XVI, with an apostolic letter in the form of a "motu proprio," instituted a Financial Information Authority with full powers of supervision over all the institutes and offices of the Holy See, the Roman curia, and Vatican City, including the IOR. And he imposed four laws on these institutes and offices, promulgated on the same day and intended to prevent and combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

These laws are similar to the ones already in effect in the "White List," meaning the states most diligent in preventing and combating financial crimes. They will go into effect in the state of Vatican City next April 1.

In the meantime, the new Financial Information Authority which will have to oversee the application of these laws has become operational, with the appointment of a president, a director, and four board members.

So all of the instruments have been provided so that the state of Vatican City may also be admitted onto the "White List" and that as a result the IOR may conform its activities to international standards and controls.

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The president of the new Financial Information Authority is Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who also remains president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, a person of proven competence in the legal and financial fields.

The four board members are Marcello Condemi, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, Claudio Bianchi, and Cesare Testa.

Of the four, the first is the key man. Condemi is a professor of banking law, has worked as an appeals attorney with the Bank of Italy, and was a member of the Italian delegation to the GAFI, the Financial Action Task Force against money laundering, which is the institution that will evaluate the Holy See's request for admission onto the "White List."

The director of the new Vatican organism is Francesco De Pasquale, appeals attorney, also a leading expert on financial irregularities.

Condemi and De Pasquale are the authors of the directory that the Bank of Italy published in 2008 on the matter, entitled "Lineamenti della disciplina internazionale di prevenzione e contrasto del riciclaggio e del finanziamento del terrorismo [Features of the international discipline on prevention and opposition of money laundering and the financing of terrorism]."

Their book was condensed in 2010 by another expert in the field, Manlio d'Agostino, in a manual of practical guidance for use by bank employees, published by the Italian Banking Association: "Antiriciclaggio. Vademecum per l'operatore [Anti-laundering Employee Handbook]."

Manlio d'Agostino is national vice-president of the Unione Cristiana Imprenditori Dirigenti and president of its youth section.

In reading his manual, one intuits that the application of international anti-laundering standards will involve a small revolution not only for the IOR, but for all Vatican administrative offices.

Every operation, in fact, even the smallest, must be subjected to very stringent controls and verifications. And the slightest suspicion of irregularity must be reported immediately to the Financial Information Authority headed by Cardinal Nicora.

This, in turn, is endowed with very broad powers, which no official secret can resist.

For the IOR, it will be the end of its autonomy. It will have in the organism headed by Nicora a permanent "tutor," which will watch over every one of its operations.

That is, what happens inside the Vatican walls will have to be the same as what happens in the countries of the "White List."

Italy is one of these. In the first six months of 2010 – the most recent available data – Italian banks sent the Guardia di Finanza 10,347 notifications of suspected money laundering operations. Another 2,622 notifications were sent from financial intermediaries, another 1,759 from post offices, and another 200 from professional offices and insurance companies.

Of this mass of notifications, the Guardia di Finanza has investigated 9,752. In 447 of these, it has identified illicit operations for 3.2 billion euro. 447 people have gone to jail.

*

Against the background of this obligatory and increased supervision in  Italian banks against suspected money laundering operations, one can perhaps reinterpret – and better understand – the departure of board member Giovanni De Censi from the supervisory board of the IOR.

De Censi is president of Credito Valtellinese, which in turn is the owner of Credito Artigiano. For the IOR, Credito Artigiano has traditionally been a friend. And yet, it was precisely a notification from Credito Artigiano that began the judicial investigation referred to above, which is now pending against the Vatican bank for suspected laundering.

The chronology of the matter is instructive.

On January 18 of 2010, the Bank of Italy asked Credito Valtellinese and its subsidiary Credito Artigiano – as it did other banks – to demand from the IOR detailed information on the ownership and movements of the accounts deposited with them.

On April 19, Credito Artigiano froze account number 49557 of the IOR, about which it evidently had suspicions that the IOR could not evade. At this date, the account held deposits of 28.3 million euro.

On September 6, with two faxes, the IOR nonetheless ordered Credito Artigiano to make two transfers with the money of that same account, for a total of 23 million.

On September 14, Credito Artigiano informed the Bank of Italy of the transfers ordered by the IOR and of the continuing absence of information about their ownership.

On September 15, the Office of Financial Information of the Bank of Italy notified Roman authorities of a possible violation of anti-laundering norms on the part of the IOR.

On September 20, the magistrature of Rome ordered the preventive confiscation of the entire sum deposited in the account of the IOR,and issued two notices of investigation against the president and director general of the Vatican bank, for omission of the procedures against money laundering.

It was gathered from this that the IOR operated, in this case, in a way different from how the Italian banks have operated since they have adhered to the stringent anti-laundering laws.

Between the traditional "friendship" with the IOR and respect for national and international rules, for Credito Artigiano the choice was obligatory.

Since last summer, De Censi – who has a Salesian brother, Ugo, a missionary in Peru – has not taken part anymore in the board meetings in supervision of the IOR. It was said that this was for health reasons, and it was true. But maybe not only for these.

Today, in fact, De Censi has resumed his activity in full, which includes being president of the Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari. In this garb, he has given two extensive interviews, on February 18 and 23, with "Avvenire" and "Corriere della Sera."

To the question about way he left the IOR, he replied:

"My mandate expired on December 31. I have been operated on, triple bypass, and someone, certainly with reason, believed it was opportune for me to rest."

The fact is that in the 2011 edition of the Annuario Pontificoio, released at the beginning of this month of March, De Censi is no longer listed on the supervisory board of the IOR. In his place is Antonio Maria Marocco, 77, from Turin, a notary by profession, administrative board member and president of the supervisory body of Unicredit, one of the biggest Italian banking groups.

*

Last January 15, in the inauguration address of the judicial year, the promoter of justice of the tribunal of the state of Vatican City, Nicola Picardi, dedicated ample space to the new Financial Information Authority headed by Cardinal Nicora.

"It constitutes the hinge of the entire normative framework" against money laundering issued by the Holy See at the end of 2010, he said. "It is invested with very broad powers, including that of conducting verifications and checks on the cash entering or leaving the state." And it will work "in close collaboration with the Vatican judicial authority."

DREAM Act Fails in Senate

 

This article comes from America.

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DREAM Act Fails to Pass 111th Congress; Back in 112th?

From CNS, staff and other sources

 
The Senate's inability to overcome a threatened filibuster Dec. 18 scuttled passage of the DREAM Act, prompting immigrant advocates to pledge to push forward on immigration reform next year with a new Congress and fight for what one immigrant leader termed the "respect we deserve."

The bill would have given young people brought to the United States as children by their undocumented parents a path to citizenship under a strict set of requirements. Under the measure, an estimated 2.1 million children of undocumented parents would have had an opportunity to go to college or join the military and legalize their status.

The U.S. bishops had long been supporters of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which passed the House Dec. 9. Four U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, took part in a Dec. 17 conference call with reporters to argue for passage in the Senate.

The Senate needed 60 votes to break the filibuster, but fell five short, with 55 against it and 41 for it.

"Catholic Charities USA is deeply disappointed that the Senate rejected the vote on this important piece of legislation," said a Dec. 20 statement from Father Larry Snyder, Catholic Charities' president and CEO.

"Honor students, class presidents, athletes and responsible community members who desire a brighter future by continuing their education came up short this past weekend. Now, having entered our country as small children, they will continue to be cast into the shadows until, as a nation, we can find a way to address our broken immigration system," Father Snyder said.

"Today's vote on the DREAM Act, which ironically was held on the very day in which migrant communities around the world commemorate international migrant's day, represents the latest example of a failed political and legislative strategy when it comes to immigrant rights and immigration policy," said Oscar Chacon, executive director of the National Alliance for Latin American and Caribbean Communities, in a Dec. 18 statement.

"In particular, Latino immigrant communities must be creative and effective when it comes to our own organizing, empowerment and alliance building capacity in order to achieve the respect we deserve, but that so far has been denied to us," Chacon said.

Republican opponents of the DREAM Act saw the measure was a backdoor into granting amnesty for all illegal immigrants. "Treating the symptoms of the problem might make us feel better ... but it can allow the underlying problem to metastasize. Unfortunately, that's what's happening at our border," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz, said in a statement.

But Kjersten Forseth, executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, said: "The DREAM Act is a sensible and compassionate solution to a major problem in American immigration law, which has been routinely held hostage by the right wing and used in their campaign to demonize their political opponents."

"Fixing unintended problems in the law with regard to children in America, so they can attend college or serve our country, is good for our economy," Forseth said in a Dec. 18 statement.
The 55-41 Senate vote was largely along party lines. Five Democrats voted to support the filibuster, and three Republicans voted to block it.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka call the filibuster "a disappointing endorsement of injustice and inequality."

Irish Investigators: Vatican Protected Rapist

This article comes from the Irish Times.
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Scale of Walsh cover-up by church breathtaking

Mary Raftery


THE SCALE of the cover-up by the Catholic Church of the crimes of Fr Tony Walsh, as finally revealed in chapter 19 of the Murphy report, is breathtaking. It is more extensive than any other single case dealt with in the main body of the report.

Archbishops, bishops, chancellors, vicars general, parish priests – the list of senior clerics who knew of Walsh’s serial sexual abuse of children is virtually endless. From the very first complaints brought to the archdiocese, a bare two days after Walsh’s ordination in 1978, and for the succeeding 17 years, these pillars of the church sat on their detailed knowledge of Walsh’s abominable predations on children, shielding him from the law, deliberately deciding to keep his crimes hidden from the civil authorities. In the course of those 17 years, until the archdiocese finally decided in 1995 to co-operate with Garda investigations, Walsh abused well over 100 children according to the chapter published yesterday. Here we find out that archbishops Dermot Ryan, Kevin McNamara and Desmond Connell all had detailed knowledge of Walsh’s criminal activities.

Chapter 19 is full of references to discussions about Walsh at the monthly meetings of the Dublin bishops – during the years in question, they include auxiliary bishops Donal Murray, Dermot O’Mahony, James Kavanagh and Eamonn Walsh, together with Brendan Comiskey, Laurence Forristal, James Moriarty, Joseph Carroll, Patrick Dunne and Desmond Williams.
Of these, most are retired or deceased. bishops Murray and Moriarty resigned on foot of the publication of the substantive Murphy report last year. In fact, the only one still in office is Bishop Eamonn Walsh.

He and fellow auxiliary Ray Field famously tendered their resignations – with great reluctance – on Christmas Eve 2009. It emerged several months later the Vatican had refused to accept them and the two bishops remain in situ.

Bishop Walsh defended himself last December by claiming that “as far back as 1990, I wasn’t a month in the job as a bishop, and I stood up at a meeting and I said that not alone should the police, who were already informed about an individual, but we should say where he was living and the number of his car, because I felt he was a danger”.

That individual was Tony Walsh and this incident does indeed appear in chapter 19 of the Murphy report, where it is described as “the first time that the possibility of reporting to the gardaí was raised”. The suggestion was shot down by the archdiocese’s leading canon lawyer at the time, Msgr Gerard Sheehy, who described it as “an outrageous suggestion”. Also present at that meeting were archbishop Connell and bishops Kavanagh, O’Mahony and Murray.

Two key points emerge: first, that Bishop Eamonn Walsh (a trained barrister, incidentally) was sufficiently well-aware of the criminal nature of Walsh’s activities to know that he should be reported to the Garda; and second, that Bishop Walsh did not report him, and nor of course did any of his fellow bishops. It consequently shows an extraordinary detachment from reality for Bishop Walsh to have claimed last year that merely suggesting that gardaí be informed of crimes committed in some way excuses or exonerates him from responsibility for his part in the culture of cover-up in the Dublin archdiocese. The only other serving bishop involved in the Walsh case is John McAreavey of Dromore. While still a priest, he was one of the judges who sat on the internal tribunal in 1992 which decided to laicise Walsh.

Neither he nor his fellow judge, the now retired bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh, saw fit to report to gardaí their knowledge of the crimes of Walsh.

Although Bishop McAreavey is not specifically named or criticised in chapter 19, it will be interesting to see if he can continue to maintain his stony silence on the matter.

And what are we to make of another senior cleric’s matter-of-fact reporting that he “evaded” questions from a garda? This was the chancellor or chief administrator of the archdiocese, Msgr Alex Stenson, recording his conversation with a garda about Walsh in 1991. A parent had contacted the garda, concerned about Walsh but with no hard evidence of a crime committed. Msgr Stenson had heard that the garda was asking around and rang him to find out how much he knew. In the course of the conversation, the garda asked Msgr Stenson if Walsh had a past record. “I evaded that,” recorded Msgr Stenson in his 1991 memo.

The chancellor’s evasion meant that the Garda Síochána remained in the dark about Walsh and his crimes. There is at the very least an argument to be made that this amounts to an obstruction of justice.

After all, who knows better than a cleric that a sin of omission is every bit as serious as one of commission? And lying (by omission) to the police should rank high on anyone’s scale of wrongdoing, even more so where the safety of children is concerned.

The gardaí themselves also stand condemned in chapter 19 for their failure to pursue investigations of Walsh in 1991 and 1992 on foot of concerns expressed by parents about contact between the priest and their children. In their defence, the Murphy report points out that there was no specific evidence of crime brought to their attention at this stage, and further that the archdiocese did not share any of its extensive information on Walsh.

Nonetheless, it is profoundly disturbing to read, for instance, that Msgr Stenson records in 1991 that a garda “assured me that there was ‘no question of prosecution’ ”. This same garda gave evidence at the internal church tribunal hearings on the laicisation of Walsh, and had dealings with the then Fr Willie Walsh (later of course bishop of Killaloe), when he arrived at Whitehall Garda station “stating that he had been appointed to carry out an internal investigation into the paedophile activities of Fr [Walsh]”.

It is clear that the Garda should now extend its own internal inquiries to include the Walsh case among the others unearthed by the Murphy commission where Garda investigations into clerical child abuse were inadequate. The results of these inquiries should be published in full.

It is vital for public confidence in the force that its past failures in this area be thoroughly exposed, and that rigorous procedures be in place to detect and guard against shielding either institutions or individuals from the full force of the law.

Vatican Bank Let Clergy Act as Front for Mafia

This article comes from The Independent.

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Vatican Bank 'allowed clergy to act as front for Mafia'

Victor Simpson

The Vatican Bank is under new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.25m) in September.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But fresh court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.

The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew €650,000 from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.

The new allegations of financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered paedophile priests. The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.

Yet the scandal is hardly the first for the bank, already distinguished from other banks by the fact that its cash machines are in Latin and priests use a private entrance.

In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another, Roberto Calvi, was found dangling from a rope under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, his pockets stuffed with money and stones. The incidents blackened the bank's reputation, raised suspicions of ties with the Mafia, and cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars in legal clashes with Italian authorities.

On 21 September, financial police seized assets from a Vatican Bank account. Investigators said the Vatican had failed to furnish information on the origin or destination of the funds as required by Italian law.

The bulk of the money, €20 million, was destined for the American JP Morgan bank branch in Frankfurt, Germany, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino, an Italian bank.

Prosecutors alleged the Vatican ignored regulations that foreign banks must communicate to Italian financial authorities where their money has come from. All banks have declined to comment.

When the law really is an Ass

Michael Harris at Left Foot Forward is spot on here with his analysis about the recent twittergate debacles. Paul Chambers and Tory Cllr Gareth Compton are stupid, arrogant and thoughtless - but not criminals.

"Even free speech fundamentalists agree with US Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s point that free speech would not protect an idiot who shouted fire in a crowded theatre and caused a panic. Though as one of the most ardent free speech campaigners alive today, Aryeh Neier, points out in Index on Censorship magazine (“Radio Redux”):

“… the stress on circumstances is crucial. If the theatre were empty at the time, there would be no panic and, therefore, in Holmes’s judgement, no basis for punishing the false shout of fire.”

English law now seems to suggest that merely to shout fire is enough to initiate a prosecution – which is utterly chilling for free expression".

Such hard cases make for bad legal outcomes.  The UK Justice system is in danger of making itself a laughing stock over this issue.

Nazi Victims Ask EU to Investigate Vatican Bank

This article comes from Bloomberg.

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Nazi Victims Ask EU to Probe Vatican on Looted Assets

By Jeffery Donovan & Lorenzo Totaro

Holocaust survivors from the former Yugoslavia accused the Vatican of helping Nazi allies launder their stolen valuables and have asked the European Commission to investigate their claims. 

“We are requesting the commission open an inquiry into allegations of money laundering of Holocaust victim assets by financial organs associated with or which are agencies of the Vatican City State,” Jonathan Levy, a Washington-based attorney for the survivors and their heirs, wrote in a letter dated Oct. 20 to Olli Rehn, the European Union’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner. Levy provided the letter to Bloomberg. 

The request follows a decade-long lawsuit in U.S. courts on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs from the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. That case, basing its claims on a U.S. State Department report on the fate of Nazi plunder, alleged that the Vatican Bank laundered assets stolen from thousands of Jews, gypsies and Serbs killed or captured by the Ustasha, the Nazi-backed regime of wartime Croatia. The Vatican repeatedly denied the charges and the findings of the 1998 U.S. report. 

Amadeu Altafaj, Rehn’s spokesman, said in Brussels today that the commission had received Levy’s letter and contacted Vatican authorities about it. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi declined to comment on Levy’s request to the commission. 

Vatican Immunity 

The U.S. case, which sought as much as $2 billion in restitution, was dismissed last December by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco on grounds that the Vatican Bank enjoyed immunity under the 1976 Foreign Service Immunities Act, which may prevent foreign governments from facing lawsuits in the U.S. 

The commission should have the authority to probe the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, as the Vatican Bank is called, according to Levy’s letter. It cites a monetary accord signed on Dec. 17 of last year. Under the agreement the Vatican, which uses the euro and issues euro coins, pledged to implement EU laws against money laundering, counterfeiting and fraud. 

Rome prosecutors have also sought to show that the Vatican bank is covered under European law. Last month they seized 23 million euros ($32 million) from an Italian account registered to the IOR as they opened a probe into alleged violations of money-laundering laws by the Vatican Bank. 

“We looked at all the places where the Vatican may have surrendered sovereignty,” Levy said in a telephone interview. “The only place we could find was with the euro, where they placed themselves under the jurisdiction of either the European Central Bank or the European Commission.” 

Swiss Payout 

Levy initially contacted the legal office of the Frankfurt- based ECB and was told to take the claim to the commission, he said. An ECB spokeswoman confirmed that after being contacted by Levy, the central bank advised him to go directly to the EU’s executive arm. 

The U.S. lawsuit was first filed in 1999, one year after an official Swiss commission concluded that Switzerland received three times more gold taken from Nazi victims than previously estimated by the U.S. government. The same year, UBS AG and Credit Suisse AG, the biggest Swiss banks, agreed to pay $1.25 billion in compensation to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. 

In his letter, Levy said “gold and other valuables” stolen in the “genocidal” murder of 500,000 Serbs, Jews and gypsies “were deposited at the Vatican in 1946,” according to “contemporaneous documents authored by Allied investigators” and “the sworn testimony of former U.S. Special Agent William Gowen.” He interviewed and investigated the Ustasha involved in transferring the loot while stationed in Rome after the war. 

Euro Coins

Under its agreement with the commission, Vatican City State, a sovereign nation outside the EU, may issue a maximum of 2.3 million euros in coins in 2010 through the Italian mint, not including a further variable amount. The Vatican also pledged to implement EU legislation against money laundering by year-end.

Rehn said the Vatican has submitted its first draft laws “on the prevention of money laundering and the fight against fraud and counterfeiting” and the commission is analyzing them, according to his reply to a question from a member of the European Parliament, posted on its website on Sept. 9.

Lombardi on Oct. 23 declined to say whether the Vatican intends to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for implementing the EU legislation.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeffrey Donovan at jdonovan26@bloomberg.net; Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net

 

US Judge Asks Vatican to Serve Papers to Pope

 

This article comes from the Associated Press.

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US Judge asks Vatican to serve court paper to pope

 

By Dinesh Ramde

 

MILWAUKEE —

A federal U.S. judge is asking the Vatican to cooperate in serving the pope and two other top officials with court papers that stem from decades-old allegations of priest sexual abuse in Wisconsin.

The request is an incremental step in a lawsuit that accuses the officials of conspiring to keep the allegations against a Milwaukee priest quiet.

The Vatican is not obliged to cooperate with the request. A message left with the Vatican's U.S.-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, was not immediately returned.

Plaintiffs' attorneys say the Vatican has not cooperated with similar requests in previous lawsuits.

Abuse Lawsuit Names Pope Benedict as Defendant

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.

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Sex abuse lawsuit involving Wisconsin priest names Pope Benedict as defendant

Milwaukee, Wis., Sep 24, 2010 / 05:59 pm (CNA).- A lawsuit filed by a man sexually abused decades ago by a Wisconsin priest has named Pope Benedict XVI as a defendant. However, two authors have claimed the latest charges against the Pope repeat “widely debunked” inaccuracies.

The suit has been brought by 60-year-old deaf abuse victim Terry Kohut, who says he was abused by Fr. Lawrence C. Murphy while he was a priest and principal at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

According to CNN, Kohut said through an interpreter that the abuse first took place in the priest’s office when he was in his early teens. The abuse continued for years. 

About 200 former students have said they were molested by Fr. Murphy, sometimes even in the confessional. Victims reported abuses to the civil authorities in the mid-1970s, but authorities dropped the investigation.

The case came to prominence earlier this year, with media outlets such as the Associate Press claiming that Fr. Murphy was “spared a defrocking” because he was allegedly “protected” by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Clergyman such as current CDF head Cardinal William Levada and former judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Fr. Thomas Brundage have said the CDF only suspended canonical proceedings against Fr. Murphy because he was dying. A lack of records in the archdiocesan archives also impeded the canonical case, which was opened in the mid-1990s after advocacy by Murphy’s victims.

Until 2001, the CDF had limited jurisdiction over sex abuse cases. Generally it was only involved in cases concerning allegations of abuse which took place in the confessional and possibly involved violations of the Sacrament of Penance. Prior to that year, most cases were handled in the Roman Rota.

In its March reports on the case, the New York Times relied on documents provided by lawyers Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, some of which were poorly translated from Italian. Anderson is one of the leading attorneys in sex abuse lawsuits and has claimed that Pope Benedict was "the mastermind, head, of an international conspiracy to cover up their own crimes and keep them above the law."

According to CNN, Anderson is the lead lawyer in Kohut’s lawsuit. The suit alleges that through a policy of secrecy the Holy See “knowingly allowed, permitted and encouraged child sex abuse by its priests, including Murphy.”

Gregory Erlandson and Dr. Matthew Bunson, authors of the Our Sunday Visitor book “Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal,” have claimed that the latest allegations concerning the Pope’s involvement in the Fr. Murphy case rehash discredited charges.

"While the Murphy case is a glaring example of the poor oversight and inadequate communication that typified many abuse cases in the U.S. dioceses in the past 50 years, it does not show Cardinal Ratzinger in any way tolerant of, or insensitive to, the actions of abusers," they said in a press release from Our Sunday Visitor.

Vatican Spokesman: Bank Scandal a "Misunderstanding"

This article comes from Zenit.

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Vatican Finances Aboveboard, Affirms Aide

Laments Misunderstanding That Could Have Been Easily Clarified

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Current media attention on the Vatican's Institute for the Works of Religion is rooted in a misunderstanding that "could have been clarified with great simplicity," according to a Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, affirmed this in a statement today published by the Financial Times.

The issue was first reported Tuesday, when the Vatican Secretariat of State announced its perplexity that Italian finance authorities seized some €23 million ($30 million) of Vatican funds.

The procurator's office in Rome also announced an investigation of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the president of the Vatican institute, and Paolo Cipriani, the director-general.

In today's statement, Father Lombardi affirmed that the international nature of the Institute for the Works of Religion [IOR] and Gotti Tedeschi's well-known status in the financial world moved him to "seek to avoid the spread of inaccurate information and to ensure that no damage is caused to the institute or the good name of its managers."

The Vatican spokesman went on to clarify that the IOR is "not a bank in the normal definition of the term."

Rather, he said, "It is an institute that administers the assets of Catholic institutions, who aim to further a religious and charitable apostolate at an international level. The IOR is located within the territory of Vatican City State, beyond the jurisdiction and surveillance of various national banks."

Father Lombardi noted efforts to include the Holy See on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s [OECD] “white list," but he explained that the "particular status [of the IOR] means that its position in the system and the regulations of international finance require a series of agreements to establish the procedures necessary."

"[T]his is especially true in light of the new norms laid down by the European Union to combat terrorism and money laundering, he added.

President

In this context, Father Lombardi affirmed that the president, Gotti Tedeschi, from the "day of his appointment" and "in accordance with the mandate he received from the highest Vatican authorities" has been working "with great commitment to ensure the absolute transparency of the IOR’s activities, and its compliance for the norms and procedures which will allow the Holy See to be included in the white list."

Mentioning the "intense and fruitful contacts" that are ongoing with the Bank of Italy, the European Union, the OECD and the the Financial Action Task Force, he said it is "for this reason that the Vatican Secretariat of State expressed its perplexity and amazement at this investigation by the Procurator’s Office in Rome, which has come at a time in which this commitment is being clearly shown and these contacts are being made in order to reach lasting solutions as soon as possible."

Father Lombardi contended that the "nature and aims of the transactions under investigation could have been clarified with great simplicity." He said they were cash transactions the beneficiary of which is the institute itself, on accounts it holds at other credit institutions. 

"The current problem was caused by a misunderstanding -- now being examined -- between the IOR and the bank which received the transfer order," he said. 

Thus, the spokesman affirmed that the Holy See reiterates "complete confidence in the managers of the IOR, and its desire for complete transparency in the financial operations the institute undertakes, in accordance with the procedures and norms required today to ensure the security and transparency of transactions in the field of international finance."

Vatican Bank President "Incredulous"

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.

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Vatican bank chief on money laundering accusations: "nothing to hide"

Vatican City, Sep 22, 2010 / 04:04 pm (CNA).- Responding to allegations of money laundering, the president of the Vatican bank told Vatican analyst Andrea Tornielli that "there's nothing hidden, nor (anything) to hide." The president said the bank hopes to be on the "White list" for banks that conform to international anti-money laundering policies by December.

President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi of the Vatican's Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or as many call it, the "Vatican Bank," told Andrea Tornielli of the Italian daily "Il Giornale" that he feels "bitterness and humiliation" at the allegations made against him this week. He and the IOR are being investigated by Italian authorities for money laundering to the tune of $30 million.

The authorities seized this quantity after it was deposited by the IOR at the private Italian bank Credito Artigiano SpA, saying that the Vatican institution had not complied with an Italian anti-money laundering law from 2007 that requires the disclosure of information about account holders and beneficiaries. 

A Tuesday statement from the Holy See's Secretariat of State responded to the allegations saying that the bank has a "clear desire for full transparency” and expressing confidence that the truth would emerge.

Gotti Tedeschi himself said that from the time he assumed the presidency a year ago, he has been working to make every operation "more transparent and in line with the international anti-money laundering guidelines."

He told Tornielli that they hope to be on the "White list" of countries that respect these international guidelines by December. 

Of the $30 million transaction being investigated, he said that the money was sent by Credito Artigiano SpA to JP Morgan of Frankfurt simply for bond investments, from one IOR account to another.  

Asked why the bank is being investigated for money laundering in that case, Gotti Tedeschi said, "(w)e are acting out the norms. In the case under investigation it was about an error in the procedures carried out with the Credito Artigiano (Bank). But the operation is very clear, there is nothing hidden, nor to (anything) to hide: just a transfer of funds from the same IOR."

The IOR president said that he has met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was "very concerned" about the matter, but has expressed support for him. 

Incredulous at the accusations of money laundering, Gotti observed that, "an error in procedure is being used as an excuse to attack the IOR, its president and in general the Vatican."

Assuring his continued cooperation with investigations, he said that the bank is willing to "furnish information, (but) it would be sufficient to ask us for it rather than slamming us on the front page."

Vatican Claims Innocence on Bank Investigation

This article comes from Zenit.

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Vatican "Perplexed" at Bank Investigation

Affirms Confidence in Directors of Institute for the Works of Religion

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican today expressed its "greatest confidence" in the president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, affirming his efforts to protect "full transparency in regard to financial operations."

This affirmation came in a statement from the Secretariat of State after Italian finance authorities seized some €23 million ($30 million) of Vatican funds.

They also announced an investigation of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the president, and Paolo Cipriani, the director-general, for money-laundering.

The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) exists mostly to manage monies for the Vatican and religious congregations around the world.  

Leaders of the bank have already been in processes with international groups such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCDE), so that the Holy See can be included in its so-called White List, the Vatican statement noted.

It further affirmed its perplexity since "the necessary informative data is already available in the competent office of the Bank of Italy."

Brussels Court: Raid on Church Illegal

This article comes from Zenit.

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Raid on Belgian Church Declared Illegal 

Archbishop to Announce New Abuse Prevention Plan

BRUSSELS, Belgium, SEPT. 10, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The appeals court in Brussels ruled that a raid on the archbishopric was illegal, and the documents seized must be returned.

The Belgian police raided the headquarters of the Archdiocese of Malines-Brussels, where the bishops of Belgium were meeting for their monthly meeting on June 24. The authorities detained the bishops at the headquarters for nine hours as they searched the offices and the Cathedral of Mechelen.

At that time they drilled holes in two graves located in the crypt of the cathedral, and then sent cameras down in search of hidden documents.

In addition to the headquarters of the archbishopric of Brussels, the authorities seized some 500 confidential files In Leuven, Belgium, from the office of Peter Adriaensses, president of the commission for the treatment of sexual abuses. The home of former archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, was also searched.

On Thursday, the Belgian court ruled that these measures were "disproportionate," and that the documents collected could not be considered as valid evidence in any trial.

The judge ordered that the material be returned to the owners without passing under the eyes of prosecutors.

A communiqué from the archdiocese reported that Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard "hopes that all the attention will finally be concentrated on the victims of the sexual abuses in the context of a pastoral relationship."

The prelate affirmed that he is not at all "opposed to a judicial investigation carried out correctly."

He noted that he "is satisfied by the fact that this event was finally clarified," and "in the interest of all, that the fundamental rules of law are respected."

Today, Adriaensses released a report from the commission, which compiled the testimonies of over 500 victims abused by clergy, most of the cases taking place in the 1960s and 1970s.

Archbishop Léonard has said that he will respond to these cases on Monday with a new initiative meant to help the victims and prevent future abuse.

Israeli President to Meet Pope at Crucial Moment

This article comes from AsiaNews.

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Peres to visit Pope at a time of "serious" dialogue between Rome and Jerusalem

By Arieh Cohen

AsiaNews (Tel Aviv) - On Thursday, the President of the State of Israel, will be received in Audience at Castelgandolfo by Pope Benedict XVI. In preparation for this appointment, the octogenarian Head of State told an interviewer on the First Channel of Italy’s public television (RAI): “The relations between the Vatican and the Jewish State are the best since the times of Jesus Christ, and have never been so good in two thousand years of history.” He added too: “The reigning Pontiff wishes to have a sincere dialogue with us, as we wish to have with the Vatican.”

It is difficult to foresee that the visit of Peres to the Pope will have any specific effect on practical details of these relations, which in substance are being dealt with through other channels. The President, in Israel, is an almost exclusively symbolic figure, while the executive power is exercised by the Government. More probably, President Peres’s travels are in the context of the task he has for a while now assigned himself of cultivating Israel’s international image, given wide-spread skepticism concerning the intentions of the Government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister himself will on that day be in Washington, for the start of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, “Abu Mazen” – negotiations convened by President Barack Obama of the United States.

As for the bilateral relations with the Catholic Church (or as is improperly said in the televised interview, “the Vatican”), these are now at a phase of special importance. Since 29 July 1992, the Holy See and Israel are committed to concluding a series of “concordat-type” treaties, which together are meant to achieve legal and fiscal security for the Catholic Church in Israel. Two of those treaties were already signed and ratified some years ago: The “Fundamental Agreement” (30 December 1993), a kind of “Bill of Rights” for the Church in the Jewish State, and the “Legal Personality Agreement” (10 November 1997), which recognizes for civil purposes too the legal personality of the Church and of Church bodies. However, neither of these treaties has been introduced into Israel’s own legislation, which means that their usefulness is at present limited.

Since 11 March 1999, the Parties have been negotiating a third Agreement, for the purpose of confirming the fiscal status of the Church in Israel, especially the historic fiscal exemptions, which are an essential requirement for the ability of the Church to continue to carry out her functions of representing in the Holy Land the world-wide Church and of caring for the faithful locally. This third Agreement will also have to safeguard the Church’s properties in Israel, the Holy Places above all, and to provide for the restitution of certain such properties, such as for example the church-shrine in Caesarea, which was expropriated and razed to the ground in the 1950’s. The next “plenary” meeting of the negotiators – who together constitute the “Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel” -  is scheduled for 6 December this year. In the meanwhile, well informed sources say, the negotiators are working intensively. The United States, France, Italy and other nations are closely (though discreetly) following the course of the negotiations, consistently with their support – and that of their Catholic citizens – for the presence and work of the Church in the Holy Land.

Once this Agreement is made (and it is impossible to foresee when this may be), or even before then and parallel to the talks about it, the “agenda” foresees several more Agreements of no lesser importance. In the course of the years, three subjects in particular have been publicly emphasized. First of all, an agreement that would guarantee and regulate in a stable manner the issuance of entry visas and residence permits for Church personnel from elsewhere. Here the State’s policies have varied over time, though their overall direction has been rather restrictive.

More than anything else, it is the lack of legal certainty that is problematic, namely the lack of officially published criteria.

Then there is this subject that is of the greatest pastoral concern, norms to guarantee the access to pastoral care of members of the faithful who find themselves in circumstances of limited mobility, specifically prisoners, members of the military and hospital patients. The accord on these matters between the Government of Italy and the Union of the Jewish Communities in Italy is often mentioned as a model, given the analogy between the small Jewish minority in Italy and the small Christian minority in Israel. The third subject often publicly mentioned in these years is a review of the presentation of Christ, Christianity and the Church in Israel’s school system. It would serve to verify effective reciprocity in relation to the immense undertaking by the Catholic Church over recent decades to ensure a correct, indeed a friendly, presentation of Judaism and the Jews in Catholic education.

There is then still some way to go in order for the “dialogue” mentioned by President Peres to achieve its purposes completely. However, the forward-looking optimism of the President of Israel is promising, and in fact it seems that both Parties are working towards that goal and are making steady progress.

Thus the Franciscan jurist, Father David-Maria A. Jaeger, an expert on Church-State relations in Israel, tells AsiaNews: “Especially in the last few years, it appears that the negotiations, which in effect constitute this ‘dialogue’ – to which President Peres refers – between the Holy See and the State of Israel, are being pursued by both Parties with great seriousness and commitment, as is evident from the ‘Joint Communiqués’ released from time to time by the Bilateral Commission. Though without ignoring the problems in various sectors of the day-to-day relations between the Church and the State, optimism is obligatory, and such optimism in itself has a decidedly beneficial influence.” He adds too: “In the end, obstinate optimism endows the experience of daily life with an eschatological horizon.”

French Cardinal Comes Out on Gypsy Crackdown

This article comes from the Associated Press.

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Paris archbishop concerned about Gypsy crackdown

By Angelo Doland

PARIS — The archbishop of Paris added to mounting criticism of France's crackdown on Gypsies, referring to the operation as a "circus" and saying Thursday he would tell the government that there are lines that cannot be crossed.

Meanwhile, France expelled more Gypsies, or Roma, on Thursday, putting them on two flights to Romania. A poll showed the French are divided about the expulsion tactic, though slightly more favor it than oppose it.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government has linked the Roma minority to crime and is dismantling their illegal squatters' camps and putting many of them on flights back to their homes in Eastern Europe.

The policy has attracted widespread criticism from those who say it amounts to racism toward one of the European Union's most impoverished minorities, and that Sarkozy is playing to the far right before the 2012 presidential election.

Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois told Europe-1 radio that he planned to meet with the interior minister to tell him what Roman Catholics think, "and to remind him that there are certain lines that must not be crossed." On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI urged people to accept "legitimate human diversity" in remarks widely interpreted as a message about the Roma.

The cardinal — asked about one of his recent sermons that alluded to a circus — responded "I spoke of a circus, which was the manner in which this affair was handed during the summer."

Also Thursday, the European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding spoke out on the issue, saying "some of the rhetoric that has been used ... has been openly discriminatory and partly inflammatory." She said EU governments must ensure both public order and "the social integration of all Europeans" living within their borders and added that she intends to brief the European Commission on the matter.

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux on Wednesday dismissed the barrage of criticism against the crackdown as "political blather."

At Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, dozens of Roma, including children and babies, were escorted by police onto a flight to Romania. The country's Mediafax news agency said a total of 284 Roma arrived from France on Thursday. Those who leave voluntarily are given euro300 per adult and euro100 per child to help resettle.

Human rights groups say the policy is absurd because many Roma simply return to France. Romania and Bulgaria are members of the European Union, and their citizens can enter France without a visa, but they must get work permits to work in France or residency permits to settle long-term.

One 36-year-old Roma woman who was recently turned out of an illegal camp in the Paris suburbs said she had already been expelled to Romania once before but immediately returned to France.

"I could not stay more than four days because I had no house," the woman, Rodica, told Associated Press Television News, declining to give her last name amid the crackdown. "I could not stay there. So I had to ask my family, which stayed in France, to send me some money and then I bought a bus ticket to come back."

A poll Tuesday and Wednesday of 1,000 people by the CSA agency for Le Parisien newspaper showed that 48 percent of those surveyed favored the expulsions, while 42 percent are opposed. No margin of error was given.

Also Thursday, French Minister for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche was meeting with two top Romanian officials in charge of security and Gypsy issues.

A day earlier, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux dismissed criticism as "political blather" and insisted racial prejudice was not behind the crackdown. He said 117 camps have been dismantled so far and hundreds sent home.

Associated Press Television News producer Catherine Gaschka in Paris contributed to this report.

New Trends in European Catholicism

This article can be found at the Economist website.

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The Void Within

Catholicism is hollowing out in its traditional European strongholds. But signs of intriguing new life are springing up at its periphery

IN THE small world of traditional French Catholicism, everybody knows about Abbé Francis Michel. For the past 23 years this small, stubborn figure in his well-worn soutane has been responsible for the cure of souls in the village of Thiberville in Normandy. The locals like his conservative style, even though his Latin services would not suit all French churchgoers. The village’s 12th-century church, and the 13 other places of worship under his care, are kept in good repair by his supporters. (These days, some priests in rural France must cope with as many as 30 churches.)

Since the start of the year Abbé Francis has been at war with the region’s bishop—in church terms, a liberal—who has been trying to close the parish and move him to other duties. 

Uproar ensued in January when the bishop came to mass and tried to give the priest his marching orders. Most villagers followed Abbé Francis as he strode off to another church and celebrated in the old-fashioned way. He has made two appeals to Rome, both rejected on technicalities; a third is pending.

To Father Francis’s admirers Thiberville is a pinpoint of light against a sombre background: the near-collapse of Catholicism in some of its heartlands. In the diocese of Evreux, Christianity has been part of the fabric of life for 15 centuries. Of its 600,000 inhabitants, about 400,000 might call themselves, at least loosely, Catholic. But the number of priests under the age of 70 is a mere 39, and only seven of those are under 40. That is just a bit worse than average in a country that, as recently as the 1950s, boasted 40,000 active priests; in a few years, the number under 65 will be a tenth of that. This suggests a body that is not so much shrinking as dying.

On closer inspection French Catholicism is not dead, but it is splintering to the point where the centre barely holds. The brightest flickers are on the fringes: individuals like Abbé Pierre, founder of the Emmaus movement for the homeless; “charismatics” whose style draws on Pentecostalism, and traditionalists who love Latin rites and processions. Meanwhile, the church’s relatively liberal mainstream is almost in free fall. As conservatives like Abbé Francis see it, it is largely the liberals’ own fault: “They keep selling and closing properties, while we [traditionalists] are busy building and restoring.”

Among Europe’s historically Catholic lands, France is an outlier. Its leap into modernity took the form of a secular revolution; that differs from places like Ireland or Poland, where church and modern nationhood go together. Things are different again in Bavaria or the southern Netherlands, where the church inspires local pride; or in Spain, where Catholicism is at issue in an ideological war.

But in many European places where Catholicism remained all-powerful until say, 1960, the church is losing whatever remains of its grip on society at an accelerating pace. The drop in active adherence to, and knowledge of, Christianity is a long-running and gentle trend; but the hollowing out of church structures—parishes, monasteries, schools, universities, charities—is more dramatic. That is the backdrop against which the paedophile scandal, now raging across Europe after its explosion in the United States, has to be understood. The church’s fading institutional power makes it (mercifully) easier for people who were abused by clerics to speak out; and as horrors are laid bare, the church, in many people’s eyes, grows even weaker.

A couple of decades ago Ireland defied the idea that modern societies grow secular: churches were packed. But last year, after a decade of mounting anger over clerical malpractice, the nation was stunned by two exposés of cruelty by men and women of God. First, a nine-year investigation found that thousands of children had been maltreated at church-run industrial schools and orphanages. Then a probe of the archdiocese of Dublin, over the three decades up to 2004, not only found widespread child abuse by priests but police collusion in hiding it. 

Five Irish bishops offered to step down; the pope has accepted three resignations and is considering the others. When a new bishop, Liam MacDaid, took office on July 25th, he presented a stark picture: “Society has forced us in the Irish church to look into the mirror, and what we saw [was] weakness and failure, victims and abuse.”

Ireland is still a churchgoing nation; about half claim to attend mass weekly, and there has been an uptick since the economy turned sour. But in a land that used to export priests and nuns to the world, vocations have dried up. In a couple of decades there could be a French-style implosion. That need not imply a collapse in Christian belief; but as one Catholic history buff puts it, rural Ireland could go back to its early medieval state, when a largely priestless folk-religion held sway. Already, popular religion—local pilgrimages, or books on Celtic prayer—does better than anything involving priests. And Ireland’s political class, once so priest-ridden, now distances itself from the clergy.

A state within a state

In Belgium, where Catholicism used to hold a disparate nation together, relations between church and state have been transformed in a spectacular way. On June 24th, as the country’s nine bishops were conferring at their headquarters, the building was taken over by the police. On the same day police raided the home of a retired archbishop, drilled holes in the tomb of at least one cardinal (looking for hidden papers) and took away 450 documents from the office of a church committee that was probing clerical abuse. The committee, headed by a layman, resigned in protest.

What the Belgian and Irish stories suggest is the collapse of a centuries-old order in which the church functioned as a sort of “state within a state”—administering its own affairs, and often the affairs of its flock, by a system of law and authority that ran in parallel with, and could trump, the authority of the state. Europe’s enlightenment may have put an end to the sort of formal theocracy in which popes commanded armies and kings ruled by divine right. But in a messy mixture of ways the authority of church and state has remained intertwined across Europe.

Even now quasi-theocracy dies hard. Ireland’s hierarchs have lost their grip on secondary and higher education, but primary schooling is still a church-based affair; even non-Christian youngsters are drilled in Catholic teaching. In France the Catholic hierarchy had until recently an informal place in the establishment. Nicolas Sarkozy may be the first French president who does not see the archbishop of Paris as a natural interlocutor. Mr Sarkozy, whose own roots are secular and Jewish, speaks of the church from an outsider’s distance.

As the Irish case shows, the most insidious links between church and state are often informal ones, which can leave priests and bishops virtually exempt from scrutiny. But all over Europe the child-abuse scandal has made secular powers keener to reassert their authority, and less willing to accept the Catholic church as a semi-autonomous power. In almost every country, therefore, the church is in decline as an institution—a situation in contrast to its vibrancy in Africa, Asia and much of Latin America, and the energy brought by Latinos to the church in the United States. But its decline across Europe is not uniform; in each country, the church faces a different mixture of threats and residual strengths.

Across southern Europe an intense, atavistic attachment to Catholic tradition remains, sharpened by a perceived challenge from the fast-growing Muslim neighbours. In Italy Catholicism, as a mark of cultural difference in a homogenising world, is held dear in some unlikely quarters: among atheist intellectuals, for example. As recently as 2006 a research institute, Eurispes, asserted that the share of Italians calling themselves Catholic had risen by eight percentage points over 15 years, to 88%. It also found that 37% of Catholics claimed to be regular mass-goers. Despite the decline of its flagship party, the Christian Democrats, the church has muscle; it has seen off challenges to Italy’s strict curbs on in vitro fertilisation.

But Italians are less pious than they pretend. A study of central Sicily, published this year, found that only 18% of people actually went to church, although 30% said they did. And the Eurispes study of Italy found that 66% backed liberal divorce laws and 38% supported euthanasia. Only 19% favoured abortion on demand, but 65% could accept the practice in cases of rape. Strikingly, more Catholics than non-Catholics supported cohabitation by unmarried couples. Behind supposed religious uniformity lies a range of views. “Rather than Catholicism, it is more accurate to talk about Catholicisms,” says Giuseppe Giordan, a sociologist of religion. “There are those who identify completely with the teaching of the pope, and those who dissent—both from the traditionalist and liberal viewpoints.” Among those who—paradoxically—find Pope Benedict XVI’s church a tad liberal are xenophobic groups that fear Islam: they groan at the sight of Catholic charities running halal soup-kitchens for immigrants.

Across much of traditionally Catholic Europe, there is massive dissent from the church’s teaching on morality. If the Vatican has lost credibility in this area, says Mr Giordan, it is for reasons that go beyond sex: it has failed to see that since the 1960s, there has been “a huge anthropological change in favour of…freedom of choice. People are no longer prepared to obey instructions.” The pope’s defenders—like Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano—would insist that Pope Benedict does believe in human freedom: he would prefer a small church of freely committed believers than a giant flock herded in by custom or constraint. But in many parts of Europe, critics of the Vatican feel it still tries to tilt the playing-field—by clinging on to old privileges—rather than embracing religious freedom.

The end of obedience

In Spain the church presents all these contradictions: it is culturally very strong, and rooted in one half of a divided society. It is losing its sway over people’s behaviour but retains a loud and controversial voice. Some 28% of people in Spain call themselves practising Catholics, and another 46% non-practising Catholics; as many as 38% profess devotion to a particular saint or image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. But secularism, and a long-term backlash against the Catholic authoritarianism of the past, is on the march: 2009 was the year when town-hall weddings finally overtook those in church.

In recent weeks thousands of Spanish Catholics have joined church-backed rallies against a new, liberal abortion law, part of the ruling Socialists’ programme of radical change. In other measures, gay marriage has been legalised and religious (in effect, Catholic) education has been downgraded. Rallies in favour of the new abortion law were just as large, though, and a centre-right government would be unlikely to change it. The church can still mobilise, but it cannot impose its will.

Among the Catholic nations of Europe, Poland stands out as the only place where seminaries are full and priests abound. The percentage of churchgoers remains high, though it peaked, at 55%, in 1987. But Catholicism has no monopoly over Poland’s public square; the country played host this summer to a European gay pride march, and this year’s musical hits include a song by a famous crooner, Olga Jackowska, in which she discloses that she was abused by a priest as a child. Nor is Polish Catholicism immune from social changes; a survey of Polish priests found that 54% said they would like to have a wife and family, and 12% said they already had a stable relationship with a woman.

But for Poles Catholicism retains a huge emotional power. It is true that Polish Catholicism has a vitriolic fringe, prone to bigotry and anti-Semitism. But there are several positive traditions on which the church can draw, ranging from the efforts of John Paul II to improve relations with Jews to the tolerant nature of the 17th-century Polish Commonwealth, which had room for Protestants, Jews and Muslims. Unlike the once-mighty Latin churches at whose behest the New World was conquered, the Polish church sees itself as honourable but embattled: a defender of the nation against invasion and a comfort in its darkest days.

Embracing humility

Poland’s tradition—or rather, some carefully selected bits of it—is one place to which the Vatican might look if it wants to shake off the habit of arrogance that has bedevilled its responses to the child-abuse scandal. It is true that most of the cases took place in the 1960s and 1970s; the culture of cronyism and impunity which made such horrors possible is now well in the past, and most of the institutions involved have been shut for decades. But many of today’s senior bishops were part of the world that tried to cover these things up. That is deeply embarrassing for the elderly men who now run the church, including the 83-year-old pontiff. And their reaction has ranged from slow to staggeringly insensitive.

As a rule of thumb, the reaction has been especially clumsy in parts of Europe (including Rome itself) where the church has recent memories of enjoying unchallenged power; and much more intelligent, and appropriately humble, in places where the church was used to fighting its own corner in a noisy democratic space.

Take the sunny Saturday in May when the Dutch diocese of Roermond, in the country’s Catholic south, commemorated 450 years of life. In deference to the public mood, the festivities were reduced in scale, and a note of repentance was added to a dignified cathedral service. A small group of child-abuse protesters rallied outside, but the impression was left of a church already working to clean its stables.

In the French city of Lyon, where St Irenaeus hammered out some of the basics of Christian doctrine 19 centuries ago, the church is downsizing in a different way. One of its best-known priests is Father Christian Delorme, an admirer of Gandhi who has been speaking out for poor Muslim immigrants since the 1970s. As pastor of two parishes near the city centre, where families of Spanish or Portuguese origin rub shoulders with North Africans, he is kept down to earth by having to conduct at least 200 funerals a year. Some of his colleagues, he says, refuse to take funerals because they feel they should be preparing their flock for the time when there are no priests available. But he officiates willingly, feeling that this is his biggest chance to meet people who are mostly unchurched. At 60, he regrets the decline of the progressive French Catholicism that flourished in his youth—and also of Christian culture in general. Businessmen he lectures to do not even know the rudiments of doctrine.

But he is too busy, and intellectually active, to wallow in gloom or pessimism. As he sees things, the regime of laicité has protected the French church from the dangers of power over the vulnerable. Catholic schools exist in France—but not the vast network of unaccountable authority that led Irish, Belgian and Bavarian priests into temptation. French Catholicism is a battered tree, but it can still sprout new and unexpected branches. In places like Italy, where the church shelters behind a high wall of culture and convention, the hardest days may still lay ahead.