Vatican City, Sep 25, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Polish President Andrzej Duda met with Pope Francis Friday during his first official trip abroad since his narrow election victory in July.
The Holy See press office said Sept. 25 that after his audie… […]
Vatican City, Sep 25, 2020 / 10:45 am (CNA).- The day after he was forced to resign from his Vatican job and to give up his rights as a cardinal, Angelo Becciu defended his actions and said he “is ready” to explain if called on by Vatican judicial authorities.
“I didn’t commit any crimes,” Becciu told journalists Sept. 25. “I received no communication on the part of the [Vatican] magistrates. I’m ready. If they want me to explain [my actions], I’ll explain.”
“I’m maintaining my serenity,” he said. “I renew my trust in the Holy Father.”
Becciu spoke to journalists at an invite-only press conference near the Vatican Sept. 25. CNA obtained an audio recording of the press conference after it took place.
The cardinal responded to questions about actions he took while serving as “sostituto,” or the second-ranking official at the Secretariat of State, from 2011 to 2018.
New reports revealed that Becciu used millions of euros of Vatican charity funds in speculative and risky investments, and that he directed Vatican and Italian bishops’ money to go toward “loans” for projects owned and operated by his brothers.
The speculative investments were made by financier Enrico Crasso, who, CNA has previously reported, was given by Becciu control over millions of euros in Vatican investment funds.
Becciu said Friday that he did not follow the actions of Crasso “step by step,” and that they met only once a year. According to Becciu, Crasso would inform him of what investments he was making, “but it’s not that he was telling me the ramifications of all these investments.”
“I don’t know” what Crasso was doing, Becciu said.
According to the cardinal, investing Vatican funds was in his job description at the Secretariat of State. “Sure, we made investments,” he said. “We made them with the desire to make them in the interests of the Holy See, not my personal interests.”
Crasso manages Centurion Global Fund, an investment fund used by the Secretariat of State, with links to two Swiss banks investigated or implicated in bribery and money laundering scandals. As CNA reported, this is the same fund in which the Vatican Secretariat of State invested millions of euros, including with money donated to Peter’s Pence, an annual collection undertaken by the Holy See.
Reports show that the fund’s investments lost money while its managers, who include Crasso, recouped millions in fees.
Crasso also reportedly introduced Becciu to Lorenzo Vangelisti, CEO of Valeur Group, an asset management, advisory, trading, and real estate company.
Vangelisti was involved in the Vatican’s purchase of the Sloane Avenue property in London, together with the director of Valeur capital, Alessando Noceti, who worked previously for Suisse Credit in London.
Becciu denied that he knew either Vangelisti or Noceti. “I don’t know who they are,” he said. “I have never met them.”
The cardinal said that he and Pope Francis did not discuss the London property during their roughly 20-minute meeting Thursday. He also denied that any money from Peter’s Pence was used to purchase the property at 60 Sloane Avenue.
The cardinal described the meeting with the pope and his subsequent resignation as “surreal,” because “yesterday, until 6:02 p.m., I felt I was a friend of the pope, a faithful agent of the pope … and then there, speaking, he tells me that he no longer trusts me.”
“That he no longer trusts me because he had seen reports from the [Vatican] magistrates that I had embezzled,” he said.
After the cardinal resigned as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, a position he had been in since September 2018, the pope asked him to also resign the “privileges” of cardinals, Becciu noted.
The embezzlement reports, Becciu said, claimed that when he was sostituto he had misappropriated 100,000 euros to give to a cooperative owned by his brother, and which was part of the charity of his former diocese.
Becciu said he tried to explain the action to Pope Francis, saying that it was true he had gifted 100,000 euros, but it was sent to the Ozieri diocesan Caritas from Vatican funds intended for “various” charitable works, and thus was legitimate.
He said the accusation that the money had gone instead to his brother’s cooperative connected to Caritas “seemed strange” to him, and that when he called his brother and the bishop to ask about the money, they confirmed to him that it was in the Caritas accounts, yet untouched.
Asked if he thought that matter constituted a conflict of interest, since his brother works for the diocesan Caritas, the cardinal said, “a conflict of interest? I don’t know if it really was a conflict of interest. I wanted to help the diocese, not my brother, the diocese.”
A press release from the Bishop of Ozieri and president of the diocesan Caritas, Corrado Melis, Sept. 24 said the diocese “has never been the beneficiary” of undue or illegitimate favors.
Becciu is also reported to have used his connections to help two other brothers, from the time when he was apostolic nuncio in Cuba and Angola.
He quibbled with details of the L’Espresso report, which said that his brother’s carpentry company was given ecclesiastical projects in the two countries. According to Becciu, in Angola his brother only helped to repair “two doors” at the nunciature, and in Cuba, his brother did the renovations at the nunciature because “it was difficult to find” materials in Cuba, so they imported them from Italy.
To his third brother, who owns a food and beverage distributor, called Angel’s, Becciu said “he never gave money, not mine nor that of the institution” of the Church.
He also indicated proof should be given or he “will sue for defamation.”
Becciu’s family released their own statement Sept. 25, calling the reports “unfounded and maliciously false…” as well as “slanderous, offensive and disparaging.”
They said Francesco Becciu had carried out “some carpentry work on behalf of ecclesial entities” but they are “not attributable to Cardinal Becciu.”
Washington D.C., Sep 25, 2020 / 10:01 am (CNA).- The “preeminence” of the right to life is the teaching of the Church, the U.S. bishops’ pro-life chair stated ahead of October’s observance as Respect Life Month.
“T… […]
Vatican City, Sep 25, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Following his resignation yesterday, new reports reveal details of how Cardinal Angelo Becciu managed Vatican financial affairs, developing a story CNA first broke last year.
Portfolio statements show that… […]
Vatican City, Sep 25, 2020 / 07:15 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Thursday night that Cardinal Angelo Becciu had resigned from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals, but it did not specify which rights the cardinal had lost.
Exa… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2020 / 06:45 am (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell thanked Pope Francis Friday following the dramatic resignation of Vatican Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
In a statement sent to CNA Sept. 25, the former prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for th… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Germany’s Catholic bishops agreed this week to a uniform system for compensation payments to abuse survivors.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, announced the … […]
CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- It is hard to overstate the impact Fr. Gabriel Richard, a French missionary priest, had on the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit, in particular.
From co-founding the University of Michigan, to startin… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 24, 2020 / 06:30 pm (CNA).-
Legal experts have pushed back after a Catholic commentator said it is reasonable for the Senate to question potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s membership in the People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community based in South Bend, Indiana.
Barrett, a federal judge and professor at Notre Dame Law School, is widely reported to be a member of the People of Praise, and has faced media criticism for that, even while covenant communities have been fixtures in American Catholic and Protestant churches since the 1970s.
Massimo Faggioli, a historian and Catholic commentator, wrote a Sept. 24 op-ed for Politico Magazine expressing suspicion about the vows or promises Barrett may have made to an entity that, in his view, appears to lack the accountability of the official Church hierarchy.
Faggioli noted that “the dogmatic dimension of the Catholic intellectual tradition is, literally, an open book—the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
However, Faggioli claimed, “[Barrett] has made solemn promises that go far beyond the baptismal promises every Catholic makes.”
“To whom has Barrett made a vow of obedience? What is its nature and scope? What are the consequences of violating it?” Faggioli asked.
The professor did not note that since 2018, the People of Praise have made their covenant publicly available on their website. The covenant requires members to promise mutual support, common Christian discipleship, and common Christian witness. Members often move into the same low-income neighborhoods, in order to promote community development and develop charitable programs.
The People of Praise have said that their covenant agreement differs from a vow— which is a promise made to God— and that members are free to leave at any time.
Nevertheless, the Senate’s vetting process for Supreme Court nominees ought, Faggioli said, to examine “oaths and commitments they may have made that could affect or supersede an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Faggioli did not mention that numerous Supreme Court justices have been Freemasons, making vows of loyalty that are generally understood to supersede other loyalties and obligations.
In a Catholic context, “vows” are specifically defined by the Code of Canon Law as promises made to God, while the group’s covenant speaks of “a unique relationship one to another and between the individual and the community.”
The group’s covenant, according to the People of Praise’s website, is “made freely and only after a period of discernment lasting several years.”
“Our covenant is neither an oath nor a vow, but it is an important personal commitment. We say that People of Praise members should always follow their consciences, as formed by the light of reason, and by the experience and the teachings of their churches,” the group’s website reads.
The group’s website also states that “we have always understood that God can call a person to another way of life, in which case he or she would be released from the covenant.”
A former member of the People of Praise told CNA that the covenant was taken seriously, and as a result his family was encouraged to reconsider when they decided to leave several decades ago, but the group did release them from the covenant..
Even vows of obedience, in and of themselves, are not new or uncommon amongst Catholics. As Faggioli himself notes, Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and lay Catholic members of “secular institutes” all take them.
“But at least in these communities, the vow of obedience that such a person has made would be visible, formal and accountable. That is not the case with new Catholic charismatic communities, whose vows are not public and whose leadership is not accountable under Church law,” Faggioli writes.
People of Praise’ covenant, which is publicly available, speaks mostly about the members’ commitments to each other and to the community, and does not explicitly include any provisions related to obedience to the group’s leadership, though it does provide that the member “accept the order of this community.”
Part of the covenant includes a promise to “obey the direction of the Holy Spirit” “in full harmony with the Church.”
Covenant communities- Protestant and Catholic- emerged across the country in the 1970s, as a part of the Charismatic Renewal movement in American Christianity.
While most People of Praise members are Catholic, the group is officially ecumenical; people from a variety of Christian denominations can join. Members of the group are free to attend the church of their choosing, including different Catholic parishes.
The group began with 29 members who formed an agreement to follow common principles, to give five percent of annual income to the group, and to meet regularly for spiritual, social, and service projects.
Rick Garnett, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, argued in a response to Faggioli’s op-ed that while there may be legitimate reasons for a nominee’s faith to come up in their hearings, a willful misunderstanding or misrepresentation of a nominee’s beliefs is not acceptable, nor is the application of greater skepticism to a nominee’s sworn testimony because of disagreements with that nominee’s religious beliefs or affiliations.
“Several Democratic senators did these things during Barrett’s hearings on her Court of Appeals nomination, and too many commentators and activists are doing these things now,” Garnett contended.
Barrett offered sworn testimony in 2017 to the Senate that she sees “no conflict between having a sincerely held faith and duties as a judge,” and that she will “never impose my own personal convictions upon the law.”
In a 2018 interview with the South Bend Tribune, People of Praise leader Craig Lent said the group never tries to influence how their members live their professional lives.
Faggioli in his op-ed cited a 2014 warning from Pope Francis for church communities in which he advised them not to “usurp the individual freedom” of members.
But Garnett noted that Pope Francis has praised charismatic renewal movements as a “current of grace” in the Catholic Church, and rejected the idea that Pope Francis’ comments could be used to single out People of Praise specifically.
Bishop Peter Smith, auxiliary of Portland in Oregon and a member of the People of Praise, rejected the idea that there is anything out of the ordinary or inappropriate about the group. If affiliation with the group were something to be concerned about, he said, Pope Francis would not have appointed him a bishop.
Some former members of the People of Praise have alleged that leaders have exerted undue influence over family decision-making, or pressured the children of members to commit to the group before being able to make that decision with maturity.
One critic, philosopher Adrian Reimers, has written that the group has made “serious errors” in its theological approach.
One former member of the group acknowledged the criticisms the group has faced, and said groups like People of Praise can develop unhealthy dynamics without careful attention. But he told CNA that “the rank and file People of Praise members are very, very good people, wholeheartedly dedicated to the Lord,” he said.
CNA Staff, Sep 24, 2020 / 06:19 pm (CNA).- The chair of the US bishops’ migration committee emphasized the importance of immigrant workers in testimony submitted to a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration an… […]
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