"We are left frightened, very frightened."
- Cardinal Giovanni Benelli
On the evening of September 28, 1978 Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani) - the FIRST John Paul (not Karol Wojtyla, the second John Paul) - sat down in the Papal apartments in the Vatican to a frugal dinner of salad, clear soup, veal, fresh beans and a glass of water. With him were his two secretaries, Father Diego Lorenzi and Father John Magee. Luciani had been pope for only 33 days, but in those 33 days he had revealed himself to be a friend of the poor, a man who felt deeply for their plight, and someone who might very well do something about it. David Yallop, an investigative reporter and the author of the best-selling book In God's Name, An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, describes Luciani's sympathies:
"Albino Luciani had a dream. He dreamed of a Roman Catholic Church that would truly respond to the needs of its people ... He dreamed of a church that would dispense with the wealth, power, and prestige it had acquired ... of a church that would get out of the market place, where the message of Christ had become tainted; of a church that would once again rely on what has always been its greatest source of power, its greatest claim to a unique prestige: the Gospel."
Luciani was also an advocate of at least some of the tenets of a new and radical Catholic theology which was then sweeping through Latin America and threatening the economic interests of some of America's most powerful elite families and corporate interests [Citibank, First Boston Bank, the House of Morgan, Rockefeller interests (e.g., IBEC, Banco Lar Brasileiro, Banco Moreira Salles, the IFI, Banco de Investimento do Brasil, Deltec, Deltec Holdings, etc.), ad nauseum]. The name of this incendiary movement was LIBERATION THEOLOGY. In allying himself (if ever so cautiously) with this movement, Luciani had managed to arouse the fury of the unseen force that really governs the Vatican - at least since the end of World War II; and this force was about to prove itself far more powerful than Luciani had ever supposed, and much more evil than he had ever imagined.
Indeed, it was about to "fall on" him just as it had "fallen on" JFK fifteen years earlier in Dallas, on Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968, on Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, again, in 1968, and on Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Now it was maneuvering against the pope: It would end Luciani's papacy that very night; it would MURDER him sometime in the "witching hours" between 11:00 p.m. on the 28th of September and 4:00 a.m. on the 29th, and replace him with someone more amenable to its purposes and those of its corporate masters than Luciani was disposed to be: The anti-Communist Polish archbishop, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II). [Please see our articles, "MK-ULTRA: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" and "Conspiracy Theories."]
Yallop describes what happened the following morning, after Luciani's murder:
"At 4:30 a.m. Friday, September 29, [1978] Sister Vincenza carried a container of coffee to the [pope's] study as usual. A few moments later she knocked on the pope's bedroom door and called out, 'Good morning, Holy Father'. For once there was no reply. Vincenza waited for a moment, then paddled away quietly. At 4:45 a.m. she returned. The tray of coffee in the study was untouched. She had worked for Luciani since 1959 in Vittorio Veneto. Not once in eighteen years had he overslept. Anxiously she moved to the bedroom door and listened. There was no sound. She knocked on the door, timidly at first, then with greater force. Still there was no answer. Opening the door she saw Albino Luciani sitting up in bed. He was wearing his glasses, and gripped in his hands were some sheets of paper. His head was turned to the right, and the lips were parted, showing his teeth. It was not the smiling face that had so impressed millions but an expression of agony. She felt his pulse.
"Recently she recounted that moment to me. 'It was a miracle that I survived, I have a bad heart. I pushed the bell to summon the secretaries, then I went out to find the other sisters and to awaken Don Diego [and Father Magee]'."
Father Magee's first action was to telephone the Vatican Secretary of State Jean Villot. By 5:00 a.m. Villot was in the pope's bedroom. On the small bedside table was the medicine that Luciani had been taking for low blood pressure. Villot pocketed it, and then he carefully wiped the table down. From the dead pope's hands he took the notes that Luciani had been working on - his plans for reforming the church. He pocketed them as well. He removed the glasses and slippers the pope had been wearing. None of these items were ever seen again.
Villot then created for the shocked members of the pope's household a totally fictitious account of the circumstances leading to the finding of Luciani's body: He laid the blame for the pope's death on an acute myocardial infarction (in other words, an heart attack), and imposed a vow of silence on all those in the pope's apartment. He also instructed the household that news of the death was to be suppressed until he indicated otherwise. Then sitting down in the pope's study, he began to make a series of cryptic telephone calls, the substance of which he carefully concealed from everyone else in the papal suite.
Yallop writes:
"If Luciani died naturally, Villot's actions ... are completely inexplicable. His behavior becomes understandable only when related to one specific conclusion: Either Cardinal Villot was part of a conspiracy to murder the pope, or he saw clear evidence in the papal bedroom indicating the pope had been murdered, and ... determined that ... the evidence must be destroyed."
The Vatican claims that Professor Mario Fontana and Dr. Renato Buzzonetti signed the pope's death certificate attesting to the supposed "fact" that the pope had suffered a fatal heart attack, but no death certificate has ever been made public and both Fontana and Buzzonetti have refused to affirm that they ever signed such a document. Yallop writes,
"The continued refusal to make the death certificate available [if it exists at all] means that NO doctor is prepared to accept publicly the legal responsibility for diagnosing the cause of Albino Luciani's death [as an heart attack].
Moreover, ALL fifteen doctors on the staff of the Vatican's health service at the time of the pope's death have refused to "sign off" on the Vatican's story or to comment in any way on what might have actually happened to the pope. Obviously, they were in a bind: to acknowledge their doubts concerning the Vatican's story would call upon themselves the wrath of the Vatican and the hidden force that was manipulating it (the same force that recently killed off all the many doctors in the Ukraine who tried to tell the truth about the assassination attempt on Viktor Yushchenko); but to lie and sign off on the Vatican's contrivance would place themselves in an untenable position if facts to the contrary were ever to emerge. It would mean jail! So they remained silent; ALL OF THEM. What else could they do? [Please see our article, "The Truth About What's Happening in the Ukraine" for the story on the attempt on Yushchenko's life.]
The silence of ALL the doctors regarding the cause of Luciani's death coupled with the absence of a death certificate was telling, and the Vatican only added fuel to the fire by refusing to allow Italian authorities to conduct an autopsy or postmortem on the body - which is mandatory in Italy. [Italian law in such instances applies to the Vatican as well as to Italy.]
By October 1, 1978, suspicions were mounting that the Vatican was engaged in a "cover-up" regarding Luciani's death, and public pressure for an autopsy was mounting. Still, the Vatican wouldn't budge. Italy's most respected newspaper, Corriere della Sera, carried a front-page article demanding an autopsy. The article was entitled, "Why Say No to an Autopsy?" It was by Carlo Bo, an Italian journalist considered very knowledgeable about the Vatican. Yallop writes,
"The body of a beggar found in the gutters of Rome would be accorded a greater degree of professional care and attention. The scandal is all the greater when one is aware that the examining doctors had never treated Albino Luciani while he was alive. When I spoke to Dr. Renato Buzzonetti in Rome I asked what medicines the pope had been taking in the weeks before his death. He replied, 'I don't know what medicines he was taking. I was not his doctor. The first time I saw him in a doctor-patient relationship he was dead'."
The doctors who did know Luciani, however, were aghast at the Vatican's fanciful story; for example, Dr. Carlo Frizzerio, Luciani's actual physician at the time of his death, said:
"He [i.e., Luciani] had absolutely no cardiopathic characteristics [except for low blood pressure]; besides, his low blood pressure should, at least in theory, have made him safe from acute cardiovascular attacks. The only time I needed to give him treatment was for an influenza attack."
Dr. Giuseppe DaRoz, another one of Luciani's personal physicians, was outraged at the Vatican's ridiculous story. He asserted in no uncertain terms,
"Albino Luciani was in perfect health."
And there were others, all knowledgeable about Luciani's health; for example, there was Edorado Luciani, the pope's brother, who weighed in, saying:
"The day after the enthronement ceremony, I asked his personal doctor how he had found him, bearing in mind all the pressures he was now subjected to. The doctor reassured me, telling me that my brother was in excellent health and that his heart was in good condition."
Finally, there was Monsignor Mario Senigaglia, Luciani's private secretary, who stated,
"Albino Luciani did not have a bad heart. Someone with a bad heart does not, as the patriarch did every year with me ... climb mountains. We would go to Pietralba, near Bolzano, and we would climb the Corno Bianco, from fifteen hundred to twenty-four hundred meters, at a good speed ... There was never a sign of cardiac insufficiency. On the contrary, at my insistence ... an electrocardiogram was carried out, which recorded nothing irregular. Immediately before leaving for the conclave in August 1978 [the one that elected him pope] and after his visit to the Stella Maris Institute he had a full medical checkup. The results were favorable in all respects."
In the light of all this, public speculation that the Pope's death was not natural exploded. Men and women were heard shouting as they passed Luciani's body on display in the Vatican "Who has done this to you? Who has murdered you?"
Still, the Vatican refused to surrender Luciani's body to Italian authorities for an autopsy. Why? - BECAUSE AN AUTOPSY WOULD HAVE REVEALED THAT THE POPE HAD BEEN POISONED. Yallop writes:
"It was from a cardinal residing in Rome [specifically, Cardinal Jean Villot] that I learned of the most extraordinary reason given for ... [the pope's death]. He told me -
'... that what had occurred was a tragic accident. That the pope had unwittingly taken an overdose of his medicine. The camerlengo pointed out that if an autopsy was performed it would obviously show this fatal overdose. No one would believe that His Holiness had taken it accidentally. Some would allege suicide, others murder. It was agreed that there would be no autopsy'."
What? - Villot had now admitted that there had been no truth concerning Luciani's supposed heart attack. He had retreated from his original story: He now acknowledged that Luciani had been poisoned; but he was attributing the poisoning to what he called an "accidental overdose," and that the Vatican was covering this up because "no one would believe it." But that was just another Vatican lie! Yallop continues,
"On two occasions I have interviewed Professor Giovanni Rama, the specialist who was responsible for prescribing [the pope's medication] Effortil, Cortiplex, and other drugs to alleviate Albino Luciani's low blood pressure. Luciani had been a patient of Dr. Rama's since 1973. Rama's observations regarding a possible overdose are illuminating:
'An accidental overdose is not credible. He was a very conscientious patient. He was very sensitive to drugs. He needed very little. In fact, he was on the minimum dose of Effortil. The normal dose is sixty drops a day, but twenty were enough for him. We were always very prudent in prescribing medicines'."
Obviously, the pope had been poisoned. Yallop - who concentrates his story mainly on the contiguity and "immediacy" of the assassination - lays the blame for the poisoning on one (or a combination) of six different individuals:
The problem is, however, while each of these men, either alone or in combination, had personal reasons to murder the pope, four of them - Villot, Calvi, Marcinkus and Cody - simply did not have the stomach for assassination, at least not on a personal, eyeball to eyeball level; and the two who did were not in Italy at the time. Gelli was hiding out in Argentina and Sindona was under arrest in New York in connection with the failure of the Franklin National Bank (the twentieth largest bank in the United States at the time) through which he had been laundering Mafioso money.
But if one were to step back for a moment and look at the MATRIX in which all of these men lived and "had their being," one can make out the shadow of another force lurking in the background - a force that connected all these men together, and which did possess the power to pull off such an assassination: the CIA.
Of course, one might say that about the Mafioso as well - after all, the Mafioso was also deeply enmeshed with each and everyone of these men; but the fact is, the Mafioso is much more the handmaiden of the CIA than most people imagine, and that's especially true insofar as Italy is concerned. The Mafioso would have never dared to kill the pope without the "say-so" of the CIA; if they had dared to act in such a colossal undertaking without the CIA's okay, they would have been ripped apart and scattered to the wind - and the CIA was perfectly capable of doing that.
The CIA's position in Italy was unique in the several decades following the end of World War II. The United States was locked in a titanic struggle with the Communists for control of Italy (and not just Italy, but all of Europe), and - as a result - the CIA had poured millions and millions of dollars into Italy as a part of its effort to stop Italians from voting into power a Communist government, and that included pouring millions of dollars into the Catholic Church which was perhaps the most powerful anti-Communist organization in all of Italy at the time. Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti writes:
"In the 1950s and the 1960s the CIA gave economic support to many activities promoted by the Catholic Church, from orphanages to missions. Millions of dollars each year were given to a great number of bishops and monsignors."
The fact is, the HORROR of Communism had become an "institutional memory" in the Vatican; it had bled into its walls. Indeed, anti-Communism had become a virtual doctrine in the Roman Church, if not in Africa, Asia and Latin America, at least in those parts of the church that gathered themselves around the inner-workings of the Vatican and made up the Vatican Curia - and that's what counts in any hierarchy. In the Roman Church, power flows from top to bottom, not the other way around, and Communism had not been kind to the hierarchy of the Roman Church.
For example, take what happened to the Papal Nuncio in Munich (Germany) on May Day 1919 during a Communist uprising in that city. John Loftus, an attorney who worked for the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, tells the story of that abortive Communist revolt and its impact on two of the Roman Catholic Church's future popes, Pius XII and Pius XI:
"The fighting had raged all through the day as the remnants of the Red Forces clung desperately to key positions around Munich's Palace of Justice and at the railway station. The ragged gunfire punctuated the death cries of the [Communist] revolutionaries. The White troops [i.e., the anti-Communist forces], bearing their blue and white flag aloft and wearing fir twigs on their steel helmets, slowly but surely dislodged Munich's short-lived Soviet government.
"May Day 1919 was a time of blood and madness. The anti-Communist troops wanted revenge for the ten hostages shot by the Communists the day before. The Whites took their vengeance in the brutal killing of some 300 Red Spartacists. In those chaotic last hours, another war - the long cold war of the Catholic Church [against Communism] - was perhaps also beginning. As the Whites advanced into the city, the Papal Nuncio's residence was repeatedly raked in the crossfire. In the final spasm of massacre and retreat, the 'civilized' rules of war were abandoned as each side hunted for one last target of revenge. The priest could hear the mob coming; it was coming for him.
"The Reds entered his extra-territorial compound and clattered up the stairs. The Nuncio 'insisted on facing them alone', dressed in his Bishop's robes. He coldly berated them, and in response they menacingly pointed their weapons at his head. It was one of those moments where history holds its breath. The priest remained impassive and stared the mob down. With a quiet smile he said, 'It's never wise to kill a diplomat'. The Spartacists were dumbstruck, and left soon after in the Nuncio's car. As one historian later recorded, by 'impressing them with his dignified, decisive and immovable protest he forced them to withdraw without daring to commit violence. It was a magnificent victory'.
"By mid-afternoon the victory was complete. The Pope's representative emerged from his bullet-scared residence and angrily denounced the Reds' 'bestial hostage murder'. Despite his calm demeanor, the incident was a 'genuine shock to his system'. The Papal Nuncio was Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. For the rest of his life, he never forgot the moment that the Reds held a gun to his head. That memory became the Pope's recurring nightmare. Pacelli's private doctor recounted later that the Pope often relived it in his dreams even when he was nearly eighty. Some historians trace Pacelli's silence towards Hitler to that May Day in Munich ...
"While publicly denouncing the Reds' murder of the ten hostages in 1919, the Nuncio ignored the 300 prisoners massacred by the Whites. A pattern of selective condemnation had begun that later appeared to many to be echoed by the Pope's silence concerning Hitler's atrocities and his strident denunciations of Stalin."
Loftus goes on to say:
"Eugenio Pacelli's was not the only priest to have experienced Bolshevik terror first-hand, nor was he the only future Pope who became an inflexible anti-Communist as a result. One year after the attack on Pacelli, the Papal Nuncio in Warsaw also witnessed Communists' methods during the Russo-Polish war. Like Pacelli in Munich, the Nuncio in Poland had personal experience of the anti-religious policy of the Moscow Government which inspired in him an abiding hatred of Bolshevism and a conviction of its danger to a Christian Europe." [He was later to become Pius XI.]
All this to say nothing about what happened to other members of the Vatican Curia and the top echelons of the church. As a result, the CIA found an extremely willing partner in the Roman Catholic Church - or at least in the Vatican Curia - insofar as its machinations in Italy were concerned.
In addition, the CIA joined forces early on with the Mafioso - particularly with the Gambino and Inzerillo crime families - both of which, like the Catholic Church, were virulently anti-Communist. It also linked itself up with Propaganda 2 (P-2), an underground Masonic lodge unacknowledged by the "regular" Masonic hierarchy. P-2 was dedicated to the overthrow of the Communist Party and the trade unions.
The name of the lodge had been chosen to invoke the patriotic aura of an earlier Propaganda lodge headed by Giuseppe Mazzini during the Revolution of 1848. P-2 had very extensive sub rosa connections to the CIA. It's reputation as a venomous anti-Communist organization was so great, that many members of the Vatican Curia had been drawn into the organization, including none other than Cardinal Jean Villot, the Vatican Secretary of State - all this despite the fact that Pope Clement XII had anathematized anyone who belonged to the organization in 1738 (a ban that Pope John Paul II subsequently lifted).
Together, these forces - i.e., the CIA, the Roman Catholic Church, P-2 and the Mafioso - created an anti-Communist "FRONT" that formed an almost seamless organizational web for anti-Communist activity in Italy - and so much so that it was often difficult to say who was who, and who had done what to whom. Bishops and Cardinals were members of P-2; P-2 members were affiliated with the Mafioso and the Vatican; and the CIA was everywhere; it was the "FRONT'S" Svengalli. For example, through P-2, the CIA controlled (and that's not too much to say) Giovanni Torrisi, the chief of the Italian army; Generals Giuseppe Santovito and Giulio Grassini, the head of Italy's equivalent of the CIA; Orazio Giannini, the head of Italy's financial police; cabinet ministers and politicians of every political shade (except, of course, the Communists); thirty generals; eight admirals; newspaper editors; television executives; top businessmen; and bankers including Roberto Calvi and Michele Sindona.
This was a virulently anti-Communist cabal made up of people who sincerely believed that in fighting Communism, they were fighting the devil himself - and nothing was "out-of-bounds" insofar as this war was concerned, including the use of illegal profits derived from currency speculation, embezzlement, and money laundering for the Mafia. These funds were then "put to use" fighting Communism - in Italy to begin with, and later on in Latin America, Poland and Eastern Europe.
To say, as Yallop does, that the blame for Luciani's murder can be put at the doorstep simply of one these men - i.e., Villot, Calvi, Marcinkus, Cody, Gelli and Sindona - or a combination of them, and leave it at that is to leave the story half-told. It's not credible! It's akin to saying one's hand murdered Luciani without the active participation of the rest of one's body (i.e., one's arm, one's shoulder, one's legs, etc.), and most of all, the "say-so" of one's brain. The CIA was the brain here. Again, NOTHING happened in Italy in 1978 without the okay of the CIA and the "elite of power" that the CIA serves - an "elite of power" that is centered in the United States, and which, as Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University says -
"... severally and collectively, now makes such key decisions as are made - decisions that carry more consequences for more people than has ever been ... in the world history of mankind." [Please see our articles, "The Elite, Money and the End of Days" and "Conspiracy Theories."]
It is precisely this "elite of power" that ordered the "hit" on Luciani, just as it had ordered "hits" on JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Salvador Allende. Moreover, Luciani was "hit" for the exact same reason that these four men had been "hit:" By allying himself (again - if ever so cautiously) with some of the tenets of Liberation Theology he had become a threat to this "elite of power" and to the then-developing American New World Order System, a system which by 1978 was well on its way to securing world-hegemony for itself.
Luciani's dream of "returning the Church to the poor" - of adopting what he called a "preference for the poor" - had to be stopped! It had to be prevented from coming to fruition; after all, the thought that a church which embraced ONE-FIFTH of ALL mankind could adopt a theology as incendiary to "property rights" as LIBERATION THEOLOGY was intolerable to this "elite of power" - i.e., to the Milbanks, the Rockefellers, the Cabots, etc. of this world. And in Italy, the American elites were perfectly situated to end Luciani's dream.
They had created a MONSTER in Italy that was more than able to stop Luciani; a monster that not even Italy could contain; a monster whose slithering tentacles had by 1978 spread worldwide encompassing the Rothschilds in Paris and London, Credit Suisse in Switzerland, Hambros Bank in England, as well as Morgan Guaranty, Bankers Trust, Chase Manhattan Bank, Franklin Bank and Continental Illinois Bank - all in the United States, and which grasped in its claws Cardinals Villot, Guerri, Capio and others; a monster that had extended its reach to Premiers Giulio Andreotti and Amintore Fanfani in Rome, to the men who ruled in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and even to U.S. Treasury Secretary David Kennedy in Washington D.C.
In the early 1970s this cabal became engaged in what became known as the "Polish Project" which aimed at destabilizing the Communist government in Poland. Archbishop Cody in Chicago initiated the project. It was a "natural" for him; there was a huge Polish population in the Chicago area and they were a "mainstay" in his archdiocese. He enlisted the help of Bishop Marcinkus at the Vatican Bank in Rome (who was also a native of Chicago) and, together with the help of their Mafioso allies, they began to divert millions and millions of dollars (much of it Mafia money derived from drugs, prostitution and gambling) via the Continental Illinois Bank and the Franklin Bank in the United States to the Vatican Bank in Italy. From there the money was sent to a series of 17 small "offshore banks" in Nassau, the Caribbean, Nicaragua and Panama - and from there it was shipped off to the cardinals in Poland, among whom was Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow (later to become Pope John Paul II). The money was then doled out to the Solidarity Movement which was then locked in battle with the Communist Party for control of Poland.
NOTE
Former Ted Koppel of Nightline (ABC) reported on this intricate flow of funds in the early 1980s; but it was never picked up by the rest of the mainline media, and Koppel never pursued the issue. The Soviets also reported on what was occurring - that drug money was being fed into Poland by the Vatican and the CIA in order to destabilize the Polish government. But the Western press put all this down as nothing more than Soviet "disinformation."]
In 1976 Jimmy Carter became president, and he appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski as his National Security Advisor. Brzezinski, also a native of Poland, got word of what the Vatican and Cardinal Cody were up to. He also discovered that the CIA was involved - after all, the movement of such huge amounts of money from the United States to the Vatican, back to the Caribbean, and from there to Poland could hardly go unnoticed by the CIA.
Brzezinski thought it was a marvelous idea! Fighting Communism in Eastern Europe using drug money - and he threw the support of the White House behind this secret and illicit flow of funds into Poland. Sadly, this has become a recurring theme in American diplomacy - i.e., using drug money and other ill-gotten moneys to fund CIA "black operations" out of the view of Congressional oversight committees; this, of course, is exactly what Reagan thought when he began using drug money to fight the Contras. [Please see our articles, "Gary Webb: Drug Connection," "History of CIA Involvement in Drugs," and "The Drug Epidemic, Viruses, Ebola and AIDS."]
Some, of course, might think that that's a marvelous idea! But one should remember that this flow of funds to Poland contributed mightily to expanding the "drug epidemic" in the United States, which Reagan's so-called "Contra Wars" broadened into a pandemic. But, then, what do the elites who control the United States care about that? The fact is, drugs help the elites cling to power in a number of different ways:
Unfortunately for the CIA and its allies in the Vatican, no one on "their side" was paying much attention to what was occurring in the Catholic Church outside of Europe and North America: The church at the local (parish) level in Latin America and the Third World was undergoing a fundamental change, AND THAT CHANGE HAD A LOT TO DO WITH THE ABJECT POVERTY THAT THE PARISH PRIESTS OUTSIDE OF THE SO-CALLED "FIRST WORLD" WERE CONFRONTING AMONG THEIR PARISHIONERS largely as a result of the greed and avarice of the American elites. That, of course, is the problem with hierarchies: All too often they are utterly detached from what's actually happening at the "grassroots" of their organizations - and that was especially so with the Vatican Curia from the end of World War II to the late 1970s, taken up as it was with its struggle with Communism in Italy and the rest of Europe.
But the struggle with Communism in Europe did not much concern the Roman Church in Latin America and the rest of the so-called Third World. Their concern was with the increasing poverty of their parishioners.
By the time the archconservative and virulently anti-Communist Pope Pius XII died in the mid-1950s, concern for the poor and dispossessed of the church had become the chief preoccupation of many of Latin America's parish priests. As a result, when the College of Cardinals met in Rome to elect a new pope these priests prevailed upon the Latin American hierarchy to use its influence in the choice of Archbishop Roncalli of Italy.
The choice of Roncalli was a masterstroke insofar as the parish priests of Latin America were concerned. The Vatican Curia was put "off-guard" because Roncalli was an Italian - and surely all Italian cardinals were "safe" insofar as the war on Communism was concerned.
But Roncalli was different. He had quietly expressed his belief that "the church had to be more deeply identified with the 'last' of this world, who would be the 'first' in the Kingdom of God." The Latin American bishops were aware of Roncalli's beliefs; as a result, they "pushed" for his election as pope, and they got him. Roncalli was chosen pope! - a choice that the "conservatives" in the church were to live to regret.
Roncalli had been carefully watching events in Cuba - specifically, the revolt of the poor of that country against America's puppet government there, the corrupt, Mafia-controlled Fulgencio Battista regime - a regime whose foul debauchery and vile dissipation were accurately portrayed by Francis Ford Coppola in his film, Godfather II. Castro's successful revolt against Battista was to Roncalli a sign that the church had to act quickly; it had to adopt a "preference for the poor" if it was to survive as a viable force in the lives of its parishioners. This idea implied a profound change in both the structure and the attitude of the church.
The Second Vatican Council was called by Roncalli in 1959 to do just that: specifically, to restructure the church as a positive force for change in the lives of its poverty-stricken parishioners, not only in Latin America, but elsewhere in the Third World. IN TAKING THIS STAND, OF COURSE, RONCALLI WAS PLACING THE ROMAN CHURCH IN DIRECT OPPOSITION TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER DREAMS OF AMERICA'S ELITE and to such business interests as the Pew family (Sun Oil Company), Clark Breeding (Aztec Oil), Nelson Bunker Hunt (Placid Oil), the LeTourneau family (earth moving, lumber, cattle), G.S. Jones, the Woodward Foundation, Samuel Milbank (Corn Products Corp. - ranching, mining, mutual funds, banking, the Borden Company), the Cero de Pasco Corporation, Standard Oil of New Jersey (Humble Oil, International Petroleum), the Weyerhauser Corporation (lumber), Aaron Saenz (sugar, banking), Amos Baker (oil), Maxey Jarman (GENESCO Corporation), the Irvine Foundation (citrus ranching, real estate), Swift and Company (cattle and meat packing), the Olin Foundation, ad nauseum.
For example, in Colombia alone 400 of America's Fortune 500 countries were ensconced there busy robbing the people of that country blind of their patrimony. America's "investment" in Latin America was ENORMOUS. Billions and billions and billions of dollars were involved, and Roncalli - by his actions in reforming the church and placing it on the side of the poor of that area - was threatening to unravel American economic domination of this region and, ipso facto, stripping the Americans of their ill-gotten gain.
On October 11, 1962, 2,381 Roman Catholic bishops from around the world gathered in Rome for the opening ceremony of Vatican II - a Council that Roncalli hoped would reform the church and place it irrevocably on the side of the poor.
Paying close attention to all this were a number of Latin American priests: Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, Leonardo Boff, Clodovis Boff, Carlos Meister, Frei Betto, Oscar Romero, Dom Helder Camara, Paulo Evaristo Arns, Ernesto Cardenal and countless others like them. M Hillar and H.R. Leuchtag write:
"The Latin American bishops insisted that the final documents [of Vatican II] should deal with the issues of development and human progress. The essence ... [of what they desired] was the removal of power from the privileged few to the poor majorities. [This] revolution could be peaceful if the privileged elites did not put up a violent resistance, and that Christians should become involved [in this struggle]."
The death of Roncalli in 1963 and the election of Giovanni Battista Montini to the Papacy as Pope Paul VI did little to slow down the movement for change in the Catholic Church. Barely three months after his inauguration, Montini reconvened the Second Vatican Council begun by John XXIII (Roncalli). Within a month, the council had approved twelve amendments to the first chapter of the schema of liturgy. Vernacular masses were introduced in August of the following year.
In January of 1967 - the year in which it was announced that the Latin mass would soon be fully abolished - PRESIDENT NIKOLAI PODGORNY OF THE SOVIET UNION BECAME THE FIRST COMMUNIST HEAD OF STATE TO BE WELCOMED TO THE VATICAN - an event which sent shivers up and down the spines of America's elites: It seemed as though the Catholic Church was on the verge of embracing Communism.
And that wasn't all: In his encyclical Populorum Progressio (March, 1967), Pope Paul VI appealed for social and economic justice for the poor of the earth. The encyclical seemed aimed straight at the heart of America's developing New World Order System. Hillar and Leuchtag write:
"The encyclical of Pope Paul VI Populorum Progressio critiqued the international economic order and even explicitly condemned the capitalistic system: 'IT IS A SYSTEM ... WHICH CONSIDERS PROFIT AS THE KEY MOTIVE FOR ECONOMIC PROGRESS, COMPETITION AS THE SUPREME LAW OF ECONOMICS, AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AS AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT THAT HAS NO LIMITS AND CARRIES NO CORRESPONDING SOCIAL OBLIGATION'."
It was an appeal that was taken up again by the thirty-ninth Eucharistic World Congress, held in August 1968.
Acting on what they saw as a "preferential option for the poor" in the deliberations and resolutions of Vatican II, the Latin American bishops came together in Medellin (Colombia) in 1968 to affirm the church's identification with the poor and dispossessed of the earth. The past identification of the Roman Church in Latin America with the rich and powerful was challenged in the name of a closer relationship with the poor. The Latin American bishops insisted that the rich in Latin America (and, indeed, the world) must be removed from power and privilege, and democratic norms established that would give the poor a "say-so" in their governance.
On the basis of their work at the Medellin Conference of 1968 the Latin American bishops, theologians and pastoral activists launched a wide-ranging movement in the Latin American Church. It was argued that the Roman Church had to be reconstructed from its local grassroots on the basis of popular experience and a new reading of the Word of God. The activists advocated a multiplicity of small communities of the faithful known as "Basic Church Communities" [Comunidades Eclesiaia de Base (CEBs)]. To make up for the lack of priests, the CEBs were to be headed by lay ministers supported by clerical representatives.
Ruben Cesar Fernandes writes:
"In place of the emphasis on traditional ritual, the CEBs would concentrate on understanding the Bible and its significance for modern times ... Missionaries were encouraged to join the struggle of ... [the poor] for land ... The Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) took up the cause of Brazilian Indians. The Pastoral Mission for Land rediscovered the links with rural society which had previously characterized the Church. It distanced itself from the local landowners and threw its weight behind organizing the landless peasants and laborers. The Pastoral Mission for the Slums made a vigorous contribution to urban social movements, while the Pastoral Mission for Children became active in the defense of the rights of children and young people. Trade unions gained new support from Catholic activists, who played a part in the founding of the Workers' Party [Partico dos Trabalhadores (PT)] ..."
The tenets of Liberation Theology and Vatican II were spreading like wildfire among the poor of Latin America. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, even developed a new method for "raising the consciousness" of the poor with regard to their condition as victims of exploitation. Hillar and Leuchtag write:
"The peasants had to realize that their abject poverty was not of their making and they did not have to put up with it. In analyzing Latin American society, some [Roman Catholic] ... missionaries even began to utilize Marxist tools while rejecting the philosophy of dialectical materialism."
Hillar and Leuchtag continue:
"For the first time sin was formulated [not just in personal terms, but] in social terms [as well] ... Liberation [Theology] sought an interpretation of Christian faith derived from the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor."
Leonardo Boff, one of the most important proponents of Liberation Theology and a Professor of Ethics and Philosophy at the University of Rio de Janeiro, wrote:
"Liberation Theologians cannot accept a market doctrine that brings death to the majority of the human race ... The Church must break away from the powers of this world and turn its attention to the oppressed ... WE HAVE TO REJECT A CHRISTIANITY WHICH ALLIES ITSELF WITH THE RULING CLASSES AGAINST THE POOR."
All this was anathema to the American elites - and most especially to the CIA / Vatican Curia / P-2 / Mafioso axis that the CIA had created in Italy AND WHICH HAD NOW INSINUATED ITSELF INTO LATIN AMERICA. Nick Tosches writes that the men who formed the inner workings of this axis were appalled. They believed that Montini (i.e., Roncalli's successor) had fallen under the influence of Monsignor Pasquale Macchi, the pope's close confidant in the Vatican and a supporter of the Latin American bishops. Sindona - one of the leading figures in the CIA / Vatican Curia / P-2 / Mafioso axis - wrote of Macchi:
"The Second Vatican Council, the Novus Ordus of the mass, THE ADVOCACY OF SOCIALISM IN THE GUISE OF PIETY, THE EMBRACING OF COMMUNIST RULERS to whom God was anathema - this was Macchi's work. The pope's voice and the pope's power were the instruments of Monsignor Macchi's will. The church did not see until it was too late that to destroy the Latin mass was to destroy the ritual power of the sacred mysteries. The vernacular mass, instead of bringing people to the church, drove them from it. Through Paul VI, Macchi was destroying the church he had vowed to serve."
The election of Albino Luciani as pope in 1978 following the death of Paul VI seemed to augur more of the same insofar as the Roman Catholic Church's "preference for the poor" was concerned. Indeed, Luciani seemed intent on speeding up the process and actively supporting the Latin American bishops in their war with the American New World Order System; and not only that, he seemed intent on disengaging the church from the anti-Communist "Polish Project" with its heavy reliance on "tainted money" from the Mafioso.
The CIA and Zbigniew Brzezinski were stunned. As Hillar and Leuchtag wrote, they -
"... believed that the Communists were taking over the church."
They saw the Roman Church moving against them on two different fronts: (1) in Latin America where the church was supporting Liberation Theology against American business interests, and (2) in Poland and Eastern Europe where the church was threatening to disengage itself from the "Polish Project."
The Pope had to be stopped; and he was! He was MURDERED! We may never know the complete details as to exactly how the murder was carried out, but to say that Luciani wasn't murdered, and that the CIA wasn't involved is tantamount to looking at the color white and calling it black.
The CIA then began a "clean-up" operation aimed at throwing suspicion off itself and placing it on others, or at least "muddying-up" the waters: The CIA had Giorgio Ambrosoli, the magistrate appointed by the Italian government to investigate the illegal movement of Mafioso funds from the United States, to the Vatican, back to Central America and the Caribbean, and from there to Poland. He was murdered by the CIA's handmaiden, the Mafioso as he was entering his office in Milan.
Ambrosoli's lieutenant, Colonel Antonio Varisco was gunned down while riding in his car. Responsibility for his murder was placed on the left wing "Red Brigades," though most in Italy chalked it up us a right wing Mafioso "hit."
Then Boris Giuliano was "hit." Giuliano was the deputy superintendent of the Palermo police force who had been working with Ambrosoli to uncover the relationship of the CIA and the Mafioso in Sicily.
Finally, the CIA moved against Roberto Calvi and Michael Sindona. Calvi was murdered and left hanging at Blackfriars Bridge in London - an apparent suicide - because he threatened to expose the strange financial "goings-on" insofar as the CIA / Mafioso / P-2 / Vatican axis was concerned - especially as it pertained to the CIA's and the Vatican's "Polish Project." Sindona was arrested in the United States for the same reason; he was later extradited to Italy, and murdered in prison there.
It's a dangerous thing to work for the CIA in any capacity: the CIA eats its own children, as both Calvi and Sindona found out; and not only "outsiders" like Calvi and Sindona, but also "insiders" as Ambassador Colby, the former head of the CIA discovered. Both Sindona's and Calvi's assassinations were linked to P-2 and the Mafioso; but, again, the real mastermind behind both "hits" was the CIA. I repeat: NO RIGHT WING ACTIVITY OF THIS NATURE HAS EVER BEEN CARRIED OUT IN ITALY WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE CIA - NONE! To say - as a recent documentary on Calvi that appeared on NBC alleges - that P-2 and / or the Mafioso carried out the assassination of Calvi (and Sindona) acting alone is tantamount to saying what I suggested earlier: that one's hand can commit a murder without the participation of the rest of one's body. It's impossible! It's nonsensical!
By the time the CIA was finished, it had covered up any reason the CIA might have had to assassinate Luciani. ALL THAT WAS LEFT WERE SHADOWS AND GHOSTS - apparitions that pointed to the CIA, but nothing solid; nothing that could be relied upon in a court of law; the same phantoms that pointed to the CIA and its elite masters insofar as the murders of JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Salvador Allende.
Karol Wojtyla was the choice of the Vatican Curia to be the next pope, and not only the choice of the Vatican, but the Vatican's anti-Communist allies, P-2, the Mafioso, AND ABOVE ALL, THE CIA.
His election as pope was engineered by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who controlled the Holy Office [now called the "Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" - the same office that Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) held under Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II)]. The "Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" was also known in another place and in another time as the INQUISITION - and it has been the menacing "hide-out" of Catholic reactionaries from the Reformation onward.
The thinking of just about all the men who comprised the Vatican Curia [and who had ruled the Roman Church through the papacies of Pius XI and XII (the immediate predecessors of Roncalli)] had been shaped not only by the Vatican's war against Communism, but by the extremely REACTIONARY concepts of Vatican I and Pius IX who in 1870 had assembled the bishops of the Roman Church together to declare the infallibility of the pope on questions of doctrine, and proclaim the Syllabus of Errors and its accompanying encyclical, Quanta Curia. These men would have been anti-democratic reactionaries even in the absence of the church's war against Communism.
In these documents the papacy had denounced freedom of speech and the press. Pius IX also made it clear that he disliked intensely the concepts of democracy and that his "preference" was for absolutist dictatorships allied with the church - THE SAME KIND OF DICTATORSHIPS THAT MANY IN TODAY'S EVANGELICAL CHURCH SUPPORT; THE SAME KIND OF GOVERNMENT / CHURCH PARTNERSHIP ADVOCATED TODAY BY MANY SO-CALLED CHRISTIANS IN THE UNITED STATES.
He further denounced all those who asserted that the church could not use military force to advance the interests of the Christian Faith - THE SAME KIND OF MILITARY FORCE THAT IS NOW BEING EMPLOYED IN IRAQ BY THE AMERICAN ARMY.
It doesn't take a great leap of intellect, therefore, to understand why the Papacy of Pius XII failed to denounce Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during World War II. Indeed, the Vatican profited greatly from Hitler's benefice when he confirmed the Kirchensteuer (church tax) which imposed a tax on all wage-earners in Germany for the benefit of the Vatican. Just like evangelicals in the United States today, the Roman Church can be easily bought - and hang all those who get in the way of the flow of such moneys into the church's coffers - for example, those who support Liberation Theology.
Pius IX was followed by Pius X (not counting the short interregnum of Leo XIII). During Pius X's reign as Pope, the "Index of Forbidden Books" grew longer and longer, and those Catholics who challenged the Index were ruthlessly excommunicated.
Pius X is the pope who coined the word "modernism" as a pejorative against which "people of faith" everywhere were called to struggle. Anyone who questioned the absolutism of the church was anathematized. SOUNDS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE ABSOLUTISM OF TODAY'S APOSTLES AND PROPHETS IN THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH. TWIDDLE-DEE AND TWIDDLE-DUM: THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE TODAY BETWEEN ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND TODAY'S EVANGELICAL CHURCH. [Please see our articles, "A Luciferic Christianity" and "The God-Men of America's New World Order System."]
With the pope's blessing, an Italian prelate - Umberto Benigni - created a network of informers, the purpose of which was to hunt down and destroy all "modernists." Thus, in the twentieth century, the Inquisition was reborn. While the pope was not in a position to order any burnings at the stake because of the diminution of his earthly powers, he certainly wrecked many careers in the church, and destroyed the reputations of countless numbers of lay Catholics. [Please see our article, "Today's Church: Making Zombies out of Christians - the Prophets and Apostles Movement."]
Yallop writes:
"The church was eating her own children. The majority of those whom Pius and the men around him destroyed were loyal and faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church ... Seminaries were closed. Those that were allowed to remain open to teach the next generation of priests were carefully monitored. In one encyclical the pope declared that everyone who preached or taught in an official capacity had to take a special oath abjuring all errors of modernism. He further declared a general prohibition against the reading of newspapers by all seminarians and theological students, specifically adding that his rule also applied to the very best journals.
"Every year Father Benigni, the man in charge of the spy ring that eventually reached through every single diocese in Italy and right across Europe, received a subsidy ... directly from the pope ..."
THIS IS PRECISELY THE INTELLECTUAL AND THEOLOGICAL MELIEU OUT FROM WHICH THE PAPACY OF KAROL WOJTYLA SPRANG. Naturally enough, a lot has been done to hide this fact - especially the fact that this particular strand of Roman Catholicism supported the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini; but the effort represents nothing less than a re-writing of history. The fact is, the Roman Catholic Church in Europe - including the church in Poland - supported both the Italian and German dictatorships - even after Hitler over-ran Poland. They considered Hitler to be the "lesser evil" in comparison to the Communism of the Soviet Union. While there were isolated incidents of the Catholic clergy's opposition to Hitler, for the most part, the Catholic Church in Poland stood aside while the Germans rounded up Polish Jews and sent them off to the death camps. NOW THIS WAS THE KIND OF CATHOLICISM WITH WHICH THE AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER SYSTEM COULD DO BUSINESS.
Wojtyla knew who had elevated him to the papacy: THE CIA - and he knew what he had to do! THE CIA WAS HIS MASTER; HE WAS ITS SERVANT. They ordered! He obeyed! He sold the Catholic Church in Latin America out to the CIA in return for the CIA's help in Poland. It was a bargain with the devil.
As part of this bargain, Wojtyla organized a conference in Santa Fe together with the CIA and issued a statement that read in part:
"U.S. foreign policy should begin to confront Liberation Theology (and not just react to it after the fact). Unfortunately, Marxist-Leninist forces have used the church as a political weapon against private ownership and the capitalist system of production, infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are more Communist than Christian."
Now that's what the U.S. elites wanted to hear! Hillar and Leuchtag summarize what happened as a result of the Santa Fe conference:
"The CIA and conservative churchmen joined hands to destabilize the movement [i.e., Liberation Theology] ... The CIA and the State Department created front groups to attack Liberation Theology:
- "The Puebla Institute which published many disinformation books about Liberation Theology and later even took on the mantle of a human rights group.
- "The Institute of Religion and Democracy - a CIA front organization linked to the State Department's Office for Latin America, run by the National Security Council.
- "The Rand Corporation which undertook research and published a special study entitled 'Changing The Catholic Church'."
In short, Wojtyla formed a united front with Ronald Reagan against Liberation Theology; HE ORGANIZED HIS PONTIFICATE AS A CONSCIOUS COUNTER-REVOLUTION AGAINST THE TENETS OF LIBERATION THEOLOGY and Vatican II - a winding back of the clock to the Catholicism of Pius IX and the alliance that that pontificate had made with the rich and powerful of the world.
He ruthlessly attacked the alliances the church had made under the pontificates of Roncalli and Montini with Catholic workers, peasants and lower-ranking priests, and particularly the alliances the Catholic clergy had made with revolutionary groups in Latin America, specifically the alliance the church had made with Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front where Father Ernesto Cardenal had joined forces with Daniel Ortega as an integral member of the Sandinista's inner circle.
Barry Healy writes:
"The pope fought the theology, while the Reagan administration and its Latin American allies murdered the liberationists ... Among the fallen was El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in 1980 by a right-wing death squad while saying mass. The Arena Party, the death squad's legal face, sent a delegation to the Vatican just weeks before the assassination protesting Romero's public statements in defense of the poor." [Please see our articles, "Pat Robertson, Roberto D'Aubuisson and the Death Squads," "Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror, Torture and Death," and "The Horror of John Dimitri Negroponte and Everything He Represents."]
Healy continues:
"While the Salvadoran people regard Romero as a saint, John Paul II attempted to ban any discussion of Romero's beatification ... John Paul II's saintly role model was the Spanish fascist Jose Maria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, one of the reactionary and weird Catholic secret societies that the pope has used as weapons against ... [the supporters of Liberation Theology]."
Commenting on the papacy of Karol Wojtyla - and most particularly Wojtyla's clampdown on Liberation Theology in Latin America while at the same time supporting revolution in Poland using "dirty money" - Yallop writes:
"We have a pope [i.e., Karol Wojtyla] who publicly berates Nicaraguan priests [specifically, Ernesto Cardenal, et. al.] for their involvement in politics and simultaneously gives his blessing for large quantities of ... [Mafioso] dollars to be made available, secretly and illegally, to Solidarity in Poland. It is a papacy of double standards: one for the pope and another for the rest of mankind. The papacy of John Paul II has been a triumph for the wheeler-dealers, for the corrupt, for the international thieves such as Calvi, Gelli, and Sindona. While His Holiness has maintained a very highly publicized image, not unlike some endless rock 'n' roll tour, the men backstage are ensuring that it is business as usual. It is to be regretted that the severely moralizing speeches of His Holiness cannot, apparently, be heard backstage."
Yallop continues:
"With regard to the infiltration of the Vatican by Freemasons [meaning P-2] ... the Vatican ... has now not only taken on board various Masons from various lodges, but it has also acquired its own in-house version. ITS NAME IS OPUS DEI (God's Work) ...
"Opus Dei is a Roman Catholic organization of international scope. Though its actual membership is relatively small ... its influence is vast. It is a secret society, something that is strictly forbidden by the Church. Opus Dei denies that it is a secret organization but refuses to make its membership available. It was founded by a Spanish priest, Monsignor Jose Maria Escriva de Balagner, in 1928. It is part of the extreme right wing of the Catholic Church, a political fact that has ensured that the organization has attracted enemies as well as members. About 5 percent of its members are priests, the remainder are lay persons of both sexes. Although Opus Dei has members from many walks of life, it seeks especially to attract those from the upper classes, including young professionals with potential to rise to positions of power. Dr. John Roche, an Oxford University lecturer and former member of Opus Dei, describes it as 'sinister, secretive, and Orwellian'. It may be that its members' preoccupation with self-mortification is the cause for much of the news media hostility that has been directed toward the sect. Certainly the idea of flogging yourself on your bare back and wearing strips of metal with inward-pointing prongs around the thigh for the greater glory of God might prove difficult for the majority of people in the latter part of the twentieth century to accept. No one, however, should doubt the total sincerity of the Opus Dei membership. They are equally devoted to a task of wider significance: THE TAKE-OVER OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
"That should be a cause of the greatest concern not only to Roman Catholics but also to everybody else. Under Pope John Paul II, Opus Dei has flourished. If ... [Karol Wojtyla] is (was) not a member of Opus Dei, he is (was) to its adherents everything they could wish a pope to be. One of his first acts after his election was to go to the tomb of the founder of Opus Dei and pray. Subsequently he has granted the sect the status of a personal prelature, a significant step on the journey [to a place] where one becomes answerable only to Rome and God.
"This organization has, according to its own claims, members working on over six hundred newspapers, journals, and scientific publications scattered around the world. It has members in over fifty radio and television stations. In the 1960s three of its members were in the cabinet of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, helping to create Spain's 'economic miracle' ..."
And this was written more than twenty-five years ago. Today, Opus Dei's membership is in the hundreds of thousands worldwide. Opus Dei members function in just about every government in the Western World, including the United States. Indeed, two members of today's U.S. Supreme Court - Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia - have direct and indirect ties with Opus Dei. Many so-called "neo-cons" that operate in close coordination with today's evangelicals are members of Opus Dei. [More about this in upcoming articles.]
The death of Karol Wojtyla and the election of Joseph Ratzinger as pope promises more of the same: the continuing movement of the Roman Church rightward and away from Roncalli's, Montini's and Luciani's vision of a church allied with the poor of the earth; a church "... more deeply identified with the 'last' of this world, who would be the 'first' in the Kingdom of God," as Luciani and Roncalli expressed it.
In the Vatican, Ratzinger was one of the driving forces behind the crackdown on Liberation Theology and he was one of the chief architects of the Roman Church's alliance with the American New World Order System. Indeed, Sidney Blumenthal credits Bush's victory over Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election to the machinations of Cardinal Ratzinger. Blumenthal writes:
"President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop ... Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. 'Not all the American bishops are with me', he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism ... [in his favor] ...
"About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a 'grave sin' and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned 'the case of a Catholic politician campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws' - an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to 'refuse to distribute it'. Any Catholic who voted for this 'Catholic politician', he continued, 'would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion'. During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, a collaboration with 'evil'."
The intervention of Ratzinger in the election of 2004 is credited with increasing Bush's margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election - rising from 46 to 52 percent of the Catholic vote.
Blumenthal says that without this shift, Kerry would have won the election by a million votes.
Blumenthal continues:
"The right wing of the Catholic Church is [now] as mobilized as any other part of the religious right. It is seizing control of Catholic Universities, exerting influence at other universities, stigmatizing Catholic politicians who fail to adhere to its conservative credo, pressing legislation at the federal and state levels, seeking government funding and sponsorship of the church, and vetting political appointments inside the White House and the administration - imposing in effect a religious test of office. The Bush White House encourages these developments under the cover of moral uplift as it forges a political machine uniting church and state ..."
Now, think about this for a minute! The right wing of the Catholic Church is now as mobilized as any other part of the religious right? - and without the vote of this contingent of the Catholic Church, the Bush coalition would collapse? Eee gads, what that means is that evangelicals in the United States who support George Bush and the American New World Order System are now in lock-step with Catholics - and I mean here, "HARD-CORE" Catholics; Catholics who believe in the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church and the pope; Catholics who believe that the pronouncements of the pope on matters of faith are infallible, etc.
These are not the kind of Catholics who would be willing to sit down with you to discuss matters of the faith with an open mind - as most of the adherents of Liberation Theology would be disposed to do.
These are the type of Catholics who hold to the kind of Catholicism that informed the views of Pius IX and Pius X; a kind of Catholicism that is "into" self-flagellation (beatings and whippings); the kind that condemns and ex-communicates its opponents, wrecks their careers, and destroys the reputations of those who disagree with its pronouncements; the kind that promulgated the "List of Forbidden Books," that prohibited the reading of newspapers by all seminarians and theological students; the kind that instituted a spy ring to keep tabs on the "every day" lives of its parishioners, and so forth and so on. In short, THIS IS THE KIND OF CATHOLICISM THAT PRODUCED THE INQUISITION!
THINK ABOUT THAT: THE HARD-CORE RIGHT OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH (THAT FACTION OF THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE FOR THE "SALEM WITCH TRIALS") AND THE HARD-CORE RIGHT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (THAT FACTION OF THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INQUISITION) HAVE NOW UNITED THEMSELVES TOGETHER TO BRING "HOLY WAR" TO THE WORLD IN THE NAME OF GEORGE BUSH'S AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER SYSTEM. When these factions fought each other 400 years ago in the Thirty Years War they ended up killing off between one-third and one-half of the population of Europe. Now - united together - they'll probably do the same (and worse) to the whole world.
Those who believe that Christianity belongs to the poor of the world, and not to the rich; who believe the words of Christ when He said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a [sewing] needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matt. 19:24) and when He said, "Blessed be ye poor: for YOURS is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20) should understand that they will be pursued to death or ruin by this "New Christianity." [Please see our article, "A Luciferic Christianity" and the "God-Men of America's New World Order System."]
This is certainly what right wing Catholics - i.e., the devotees of John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) - have done with the followers of Liberation Theology; this is certainly what they did to Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff, Clodovis Boff, Carlos Meister, Frei Betto, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop Paulo Evaristo Arns, Ernesto Cardenal and countless others like them. Indeed, they have been pursued more ruthlessly by the Roman Church than were the Protestant Reformers and the Jews in Spain during the Inquisition. Their bishoprics and parishes have been broken up, many of them have been "exiled" or forced into "retirement" in far-away places, others have been replaced by John Paul II with followers of Opus Dei, and still others have been ruthlessly killed by Death Squads acting in conjunction with the Vatican's ally in the Third World, the American military and the CIA.
The Christianity (so-called) of the American New World Order System has no other choice; it has to be relentless in its pursuit of those who embrace a Christianity for the poor. Why? Ratzinger himself explains:
"... if one accepts the fundamental assumptions which underlie liberation theology, IT CANNOT BE DENIED THAT THE WHOLE EDIFICE HAS AN ALMOST IRRESISTIBLE LOGIC ... Liberation theologians have succeeded in creating a total picture of the Christian reality, and this total view seems to respond fully ... to the ... moral challenges of our time ... One can understand, therefore, that this new interpretation of Christianity should have exercised an increasing fascination over theologians, priests and religious [activists], particularly against the background of Third World Problems ..."
The only answer to such logic is to remove it from the public sphere, and eradicate all those who believe that Christianity is not the purview of the rich, but the exact opposite - it is the purview of the poor and dispossessed of the earth; those who believe that Christ meant it when He said:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, BECAUSE HE HATH ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR; he hath sent me TO HEAL THE BROKENHEARTED, to preach DELIVERANCE TO THE CAPTIVES, and RECOVERING OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, to SET AT LIBERTY THEM THAT ARE BRUISED..." (Luke 4:18) [It is from this verse that Liberation Theologians get the term, "Liberation Theology:" Christ has come to set at LIBERTY the poor of the earth, and those who have been "bruised" by the rich and powerful.]
The Catholicism of Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) is an evil and corrupt thing - after all, what can one say about a Christianity that could ally itself with the CIA and the American New World Order System to kill a pope. Of course, the same thing could be said of the Christianity of James Dobson, C. Peter Wagner, Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, et. al. that has stumbled all over itself in its admiration of the late pope, and REVILES and PERSECUTES those evangelicals who warn against evangelical / Catholic rapprochement as "divisive." But Jesus said:
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are ye, when men shall REVILE you, and PERSECUTE you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: FOR GREAT IS YOUR REWARD IN HEAVEN: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." (Matt. 5:10-12)
Until next time, God bless you all!
S.R.
Shearer
Antipas Ministries