Enrico De Pedis crypt opened in Emmanuela Orlandi search

Just when you think it could not get worse for the Catholic  church, another scandal may be about to break (or it may not...)

On 22 June 1983  Emanuela Orlandi (above), the daughter of a Vatican Bank official, disappeared while on her way to a music lesson. Her disapearance remains unsolved and has been the subject of more than a few conspiracy theories.

On 2 February 1990 a piece of human shit going by the name of Enrico De Pedis (below) was shot by Mafia colleagues. Rather than being dumped in unconsecrated ground he was interred in the Vatican owned Basilica of St Apollinaire in Rome. There are allegations that a Cardinal Ugo Poletti accepted a "gift" of over £400k (for renovations and other "good" works) to authorise his burial in this church. Whether this is true or not is another matter.

One of the persons who is alleged to have been involved in Orlandi's disappearance is De Pedis. For some time there have been moves to open his crypt in the Basilica of St Apollinaire to determine whether Miss Orlandi's body is also hidden inside.

Today forensic teams and marble workers opened the scumbag's tomb. His body was found, inside a three-layer sarcophagus, well preserved and wearing a dark blue suit and black tie. Police took fingerprints and confirmed his identity. But also, tucked inside a niche of the ancient crypt were dozens of boxes containing unidentified human bones.

The city's chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, said the findings would be inspected as part of the ongoing investigation into Orlandi's disappearance.
"It is impossible that a young 15-year-old girl could disappear just like that, without a trace," said Orlandi's cousin, Pasquale Lo Russo, outside the basilica. "Now, finally, with Vatican and state officials allowing the opening of this tomb, we hope it will help us to verify the truth."


"It is an enormous and fascinating story that interweaves the church and the criminal underworld in the political context of the cold war years in Rome," said journalist and author Rita di Giovacchino, who has been following the case from its beginning and was present outside the basilica as the crypt was opened. "It is better than a Dan Brown novel."

The opening of the De Pedis crypt marks a long-awaited step forward for the Orlandi family, who now await news of further DNA testing by coroners and forensic anthropologists at Rome's University of Sapienza.

"This is just one more step forward for the investigation," Emanuela's brother, Pietro, said outside the basilica. "We hope eventually it will bring us clarity."

The bones found may or may not include those of Miss Orlandi but I am sure a large number of cold cases are about to be reopened! That De Pedis was buried in a church normally associated with Princes of the Church should be scandal enough....

...But, if the bones include the remains of Miss Orlandi then the Vatican is going to face a scandal that hopefully will rock it to its rotten core.

 

As readers will know, I was born and raised a catholic but the Vatican and I parted company in my teens. The more I have seen of the church's hierarchy  in action over the years, the more and more I hate everything it stands for.  The heiratchy continually spits in the face of the many good and fine priests, nuns lay members who do sterling service in often terrible conditions. It is these persons who make the church, not a bunch of elderly megalomaniacs sitting in a small part of Rome.

But who am I kidding, the hierarchy will cling like death to the trapping of power and will still go on. Perhaps these revolting old men may learn from all of the scandals that it has faced of late and will face in the years to come, but I doubt it.

Vatican has hisy fit over Benneton advert

The Italian clothes company Benneton usually courts controversy with its advertising campaigns. Its new campaign is called 'Unhate' which features leaders  from opposite sides of the political and religious divide appearing to exchange kisses.

One of the pictures, which will be used on billboards, in Benetton shops and on websites worldwide, showed Benedict XVI kissing Ahmed el Tayyeb, an Egyptian imam and a prominent figure in Sunni Islam.

Needles to say the Vatican is up in arms: "This shows a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offence to the feelings of believers, a clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people," said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman.

He said the Holy See was considering taking legal action against the fashion company.

The image, which is guaranteed to offend Catholics around the world, briefly appeared on a banner which was draped over the side of a Renaissance stone bridge near the Vatican, in the centre of Rome.

Hanging the banner was part of a series of "guerilla actions", the company said, which included the unveiling in Paris of an image of Nicholas Sarkozy smooching Angela Merkel and the unfurling of a banner outside Milan Cathedral depicting Barack Obama kissing his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

The provocative advertising campaign also included digitally-manipulated images of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, locked in an embrace with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader.

Alessandro Benetton, the deputy head of the company, acknowledged that the advertisements were provocative but said the campaign was designed to give publicity to "an ideal notion of tolerance."

I have never purchased anything from Benetton and am unlikely t do so. But you have to admit they know how to take a campaign worldwide. A few controversial images and their name is all over the international press!

Perhaps Duchamp, my place to go for ties and socks (and one of the very few the few designer clothes I wear) could boost  sales with a few controversial photos of well known wearers of their ties... I wonder what they could make of Stephen Fry and John Snow!

More woes for Irish church?

The Irish Examiner  carries a short item about another report that will cause trouble for the Catholic church in Ireland. The report, into the diocese of Raphoe in county Donegal  is expected to reveal how 20 priests abused hundreds of children in a Co Donegal diocese over 40 years.

The report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church will be published later this month.

Worse still, the report will also severely criticise the Church for a continued cover-up.It is reported to have found that the Church was "uncooperative, obstructive and misleading when gardaí became involved in a number of investigations".
Although there have been plenty of other damning reports into abuse in the Catholic church in Ireland I wonder how this one will be received given the  reaction to last month's report on the diocese of Cloyne.

Relations between Ireland and the Vatican are rather strained at the moment. I wonder if this report will add further fuel to the fire

Idiot Vatican Apparatchik II: Cardinal spits in face of abused

Cardinal Angelo Sodano is the dean of the College of Cardinals showed once again the Vatican’s lack of understanding or concern about sex abuse scandals by describing it as "petty gossip"

During Easter Mass in St Peter's Square, Cardinal Sodano expressed solidarity with the Pope, "Holy Father, the people of God are with you and will not let themselves be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers," the cardinal said. His remarks echoed comments made a week earlier by Pope Benedict.

Pope Benedict has not made any explicit comment on the issue since he penned a letter apologising for child-abuse in the Irish Church late last month. The pontiff has been accused personally of failing to take action against a suspected abuser during his tenure as archbishop of Munich - a claim the Vatican strongly denies.

Critics also say that when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, he did not act against a priest in the US state of Wisconsin who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys.

The Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, stepped up its defence of the Pope in its Sunday edition, publishing messages of support from around the world and denouncing the "slanderous attacks and the defamation campaign surrounding the drama of abuse by priests".

What to say? The choice of words belittles the scale of the scandal facing the church. The Vatican has in reality done nothing to address the situation but then it is an autocracy a remnant of the time of absolute monarchy. In the end it does not care about the victims. In its view it will still exist when the scandal is forgotten. It may make a few token gestures but its only concern is power and the maintenance of power. Nothing else matters.Sodano is a product of this mindset. As such he is a piece of shit

Idiot Vatican apparatchik with head up his arse I: Raniero Cantalamessa

The disgraceful attitude of Vatican apparatchiks to the torrent of sex abuse scandals perpetrated by priests continues. This time, rather than cover up or belittle the scandals the Pope’s personal preacher caused extreme offence by likening the attacks on the Church to the treatment meted out on Jews over the centuries.

Speaking on Good Friday the Pope’s preacher Raniero Cantalamessa likened accusations against the pontiff and the Catholic church in sex abuse scandals in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

Cantalamessa, in his reflections for the pope on the Catholic church's most solemn day, said he was inspired by a letter from an unidentified Jewish friend who was upset by the "attacks" against Benedict. Jews "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms," said Cantalamessa, a Franciscan priest.

Quoting from the letter, Cantalamessa said his Jewish friend was following "with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he said, quoting from the letter

Invoking any comparison with anti-Semitism is bad enough but particularly crass on Good Friday, a day which gave rise to Centuries-long persecution of Jews as Christ Killers

Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, later contacted The Associated Press and said Cantalamessa wasn't speaking as a Vatican official when he compared "attacks'" on the pope to "collective" violence against Jews. Such parallelism can "lead to misunderstandings and is not an official position of the Catholic church," Lombardi said, adding that Cantalamessa was speaking about a letter from a friend who lived through a "painful experience."

Cantalamessa in his sermon also said there was no need to dwell on the scandals. He referred to the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying "unfortunately, not a few elements of the clergy are stained" by the violence. Still, he said, "there is sufficient talk outside of here."

German Jewish leader Stephan Kramer described Cantalamessa's remarks as unheard-of "insolence." "It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust," said Kramer, general secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, in an interview with the AP in Berlin.

A vocal U.S.-based victims lobby, SNAP, reacted scathingly to the sermon. "It's heartbreaking to see yet another smart, high-ranking Vatican official making such callous remarks that insult both abuse victims and Jewish people," said David Clohessy of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's morally wrong to equate actual physical violence and hatred against a large group of innocent people with mere public scrutiny of a small group of complicit officials."

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on the Vatican based at Georgetown University in Washington, also criticized Cantalamessa's homily as "not helpful." “You know, you wish that people in the Vatican had at least some idea of how what they say will be perceived by an audience outside of the Vatican clergy," he said.

Personally it just goes to show how out of touch the residents of the Vatican truly are. Cantalamessa, for all of his intellect, showed himself to be an utter idiot