When Cardinal Ratzinger served as doctrinal watchdog, his second-in-command was Cardinal Bertone.Now, whenever the Pope faces an especially embarrassing problem, he hands it over to his trusted trouble-shooter.
Thus Bertone has recently been assigned to rein in the Fatima renegades who think the Church is involved in a plot to conceal the real message of the Blessed Virgin.
The redoubtable Cardinal is also in charge of keeping the uxorious Archbishop Milingo of Zambia sequestered in the Vatican far away from the press. He is now responsible for chastising La Repubblica, Italy's largest newspaper, for publishing this series on Church finances.
One of the articles translated by Graeme Hunter has an interview with a Vatican official who calmly denies a matter of public record, “that religious tourism enjoys tax breaks”. He does concede that “there is no trade union representation” in Church institutions but hastens to add that “this doesn’t mean that we don't look after our staff”.
However, the treatment of Church employees is currently being challenged in Germany.
This is how a German union magazine describes the Vatican rationale for its ban on collective bargaining: “Under God’s roof there is no fundamental contradiction between the interests of the employer and employees, but rather a ‘service organisation’ in harmony with the spirit of brotherly love and the Gospel”. ...Indeed.
Another of the articles translated by Graeme sounds ominous to anyone watching the British scene. It talks about “the unwritten pact by which the state dismantles social welfare piece by piece, [and] the Church [fills] the most gaping cracks.”
An Italian street priest is sceptical of this trend. Father Luigi Ciotti “was hauled before the Vatican for maintaining that wearing a condom to prevent transmission of HIV was an act of Christian love” and he is just as independent when it comes to judging Church involvement in social services.
“In forty years I have learned that a happy society is one with less solidarity and more rights. [...] It is a matter of regaining more justice and not offering as charity things which people should have a right to”.
Read Graeme Hunter's whole series of translations of these groundbreaking articles on Catholic Church finances.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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(Source: NSS)