A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria: This way. Don't touch church money! The first historic conviction from the court (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

While the controversy rages in the Catholic world between the extremist 
and progressive areas regarding the papal openings to the baptism of 
children born to trans or gay couples, and also on the possibility that 
these people can act as godparents at baptisms - one break from the 
"Cc'aggia fa ppe campà" series - Pope Francis continues to gain 
consensus on the right (few) but above all on the left. Director Ken 
Loach is the latest arrival; Interviewed by L'Espresso, when asked if he 
doesn't identify any politician today who supports the cause of the 
least fortunate, he replies: "The only one seems to me to be Pope 
Francis. It's funny that the most radical politician on the planet is a 
Pope, doesn't he think? Yet I cannot name any leader in the West who is 
as radical as him, which has never happened before." In fact, he makes 
people laugh, and perhaps even cry, and not only because there are no 
leaders in sight other than Bergoglio, but because Marxist culture, even 
the most radical, is still looking for the leader-redeemer of the masses.

And while gays and the entire LGBTQIA+ family... seem happy with the 
novelty (especially the Catholic components within it which divide the 
clergy into good and bad, without going to the roots of patriarchy and 
discrimination), the "revolutionary" Francis deploys his huge troops in 
churches, in oratories, in squares, armed with candles and shouting 
prayers against the war, against the massacres of children in Gaza, 
against climate change desired by man and so on and so forth.

Another novelty was achieved in this papacy: the condemnation, on 
December 17, of a cardinal by the Vatican Tribunal with lay judges; 
Cardinal Angelo Becciu paid the price, with five years and six months in 
prison, plus a perpetual ban from public office and an 8,000 euro fine. 
certainly Becciu had made it dirty, with his business committees, his 
intrigues with companies dedicated to trafficking of all kinds, his 
favors to relatives and friends in Lazio and in his Sardinia, and that 
reckless attempt to buy and sell a property in London which ended up 
uncovering the entire system patiently set up by the cardinal when he 
was Deputy of the Secretariat of State, from 2011 to 2018, taking care 
of the investments (read the speculations), with the power to dispose of 
the reserved funds, including the Peter's Pence money donated by the 
faithful for the poor.

Why are we talking about speculation? Because it was an established 
habit in the Vatican to invest part of its finances in adventurous and 
risky operations. Becciu was convicted first of all for embezzlement and 
then for the "illicit use" of 200 million and 500 thousand US dollars, 
"about a third of the availability of the Secretariat of State at the 
time". The sum had been paid between 2013 and 2014, at the disposal of 
the then Substitute, for the subscription of shares of Athena Capital 
Commodities, a "hedge fund" of the financier Raffaele Mincione "with 
highly speculative characteristics and which entailed for the investor a 
strong risk on the capital without any possibility of controlling the 
management", writes the Vatican Tribunal in the sentence read by the 
president of the Tribunal, Giuseppe Pignatone, a judge well known in 
Sicily for having been Deputy Prosecutor in Palermo and protagonist of 
some of the most famous trials anti-mafia; then moved to Reggio 
Calabria, then to Rome with the functions of Chief Prosecutor. Retired 
in 2019, Bergoglio had appointed him President of the Vatican City Tribunal.

Returning to Becciu, he was found guilty, in collaboration with Cecilia 
Marogna, also for the payment of 570 thousand euros to the woman, his 
friend and accredited as a geopolitical analyst without having any 
title, money which in theory should have been used for the attempt to 
free a nun Colombian girl seized in Mali, a "motivation that does not 
correspond to the truth", as stated in the sentence.

Finally, the cardinal was convicted, again for embezzlement, «for having 
arranged, on two occasions, into an account in the name of the 
Caritas-Diocese of Ozieri», the payment of 125 thousand euros to the 
Spes cooperative «of which his brother Antonino was president».

There were ten defendants in total, plus four companies. The Court 
sentenced Enrico Crasso, who for years managed the investments of the 
Secretariat of State, to seven years; the "minutante" of the Secretariat 
Fabrizio Tirabassi at seven and a half, the broker Gianluigi Torzi at 
six, the financier Raffaele Mincione at five and a half, Cecilia Marogna 
at three years and nine months. All were sentenced, "jointly and 
severally", to pay damages to the civil parties, calculated at over 200 
million euros.

The defendants appealed, hoping for earthly justice given that divine 
justice was a bit distracted. In fact, none of them have any doubts 
about their innocence, and all claim to have acted for the good of the 
Vatican. Meanwhile, when the scandal broke out, Pope Francis, not 
trusting in the help of the Eternal Father, had secured the Church's 
capital by canceling any possibility of spending by the autonomous 
funds, concentrating them all in the Administration of the Apostolic 
Patrimony of the Holy See ( Apsa), under his strict control. An entirely 
internal war that the Pope seems to have won at the moment, while his 
aches and pains increase and so does his tiredness.

Brother Doubtful

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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