Month: Oct 2019

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Cormac Murphy-Oconnor

Pope Francis told Cardinal Gerhard Müller in 2013 to stop investigating abuse allegations against British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, according to a highly-placed Vatican source who spoke to Marco Tossati. Murphy-O’Connor, as a member of the “Sankt [St.] Gallen mafia,” played a pivotal role in getting Jorge Bergoglio elected Pope in 2013.

A source from England with inside knowledge of the case told LifeSiteNews that a woman alleges the cardinal had himself been involved in abusing her when she was 13 or 14 years old and that she was the reason for the investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Tosatti and LifeSiteNews have worked together on this joint story for some weeks now. We have shared our findings with each other.

Tosatti had previously revealed what he learned in September 2013 from a high-ranking Vatican source – “an extremely good source, who was then in the government of the Curia,” and he adds that his source has “learned [it] from those directly concerned.” – that Cardinal Müller, then Prefect of the CDF, was interrupted by the Pope while saying Mass at the Church of Santa Monica (next to the CDF building) for a small group of German students. But now Tosatti reveals that the reason for the interruption was to demand that an investigation into Cardinal O’Connor be halted.

As Tosatti puts it in an article for First Things last year: His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not mind—he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy. The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders about a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal.

This event took place in June of 2013, not long after Pope Francis had been elected Pope.

According to Tosatti’s newly released report, that cardinal and friend of the pope was Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, former Archbishop of Westminster, England and President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. As the Italian journalist explains: “He was accused of abuse by a woman,” and that woman had insisted for years on her claims and “had finally filed a complaint with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

Tossati describes his source as a “high-ranking exponent of the Curia.” He reports that the source “was very amazed” at this event involving the Pope, both about the way in which the communication took place, and also about the message itself.

“He [the Pope] should have said: let me see the dossier, bring me the results. Do not order the investigator to act in a specific way a priori. These are things that leave us very perplexed,” said Tossati’s source.

Tosatti says he “asked for confirmation from the competent offices, without receiving an answer.” LifeSiteNews reached out to the office of Cardinal Müller, asking for a denial or a confirmation of the story, but the answer was only that there would be no comment made. That is to say, we received a non-denial. LifeSiteNews also reached out to the Vatican Press Office, asking for a confirmation or denial of the story. Should they respond, we will update the report.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor died on September 1, 2017, without ever seeing a proper investigation of these charges.

After hearing this story as related by Marco Tosatti, LifeSiteNews reached out to a reliable source from England who is very well informed about exactly that same lady who had been accusing the English cardinal.

According to this English source, the lady has never gone public with her charges. But she has been in contact with Church authorities for about 15 years now, without ever having received a thorough investigation of her claims. This lady is already an acknowledged abuse victim, having received a settlement from the Archdiocese. She had been abused, when she was 13 or 14 years of age, by Father Michael Hill.

The pedophile Father Hill was imprisoned for five years in 2002 for abusing three minor children between 10 and 14. He had previously been imprisoned, in 1997, also for abusing children. He is thought to have attacked about 30 boys between his ordination in 1960 and the late 1980s. As The Guardian put it at the time: “His case is particularly notorious because the church’s leader, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, gave him a post despite warnings that he had abused young boys.” Hill had been moved to different parishes, in spite of the ongoing complaints of parents. Finally he underwent therapy in the 1980s.

Murphy-O’Connor, then bishop of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, had appointed Hill in 1985 and made him chaplain at Gatwick Airport. Hill then was charged with abusing a teenager with learning difficulties who had missed a flight and was visiting the airport’s chapel.

As later reports showed, Murphy-O’Connor had been warned by therapists that Hill would be abusive again. Murphy-O’Connor accepted that the diocese should pay compensation to those victims of Hill, but requested their silence on the matter of their abuse. Murphy-O’Connor had also been accused of trying to pay hush money to Father Hill – some £50,000 to buy his silence when he was released from prison.

Murphy-O’Connor “utterly” denied that claim. It was said that a junior bishop made the offer on his behalf during a visit to Hill’s Belmarsh prison in London.

Another sign of the cardinal’s indulgent leniency toward child abusers is the case of Father Tim Garrett. Fr. Garrett, then a priest in the Portsmouth diocese, was convicted, according to media reports, of taking indecent photographs of boys in the 1980s. Following the advice of a risk assessment showing that Garrett would not be dangerous, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor allowed him to transfer to his own Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. He later regretted that permission, just as he apologized for his mishandling of the Hill case.

The lady who accused Murphy-O’Connor himself of abuse, claims that when Hill abused her in the late 1960s, there were several other priests present and involved. She claims that Murphy-O’Connor was among them. She, who then lived in what is now the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, had entered in the early 2000s into an agreement with the Diocese and received £40,000 payment for the abuse of Father Hill.

Murphy-O’Connor had been the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton from 1977 until 2000, when he was appointed Archbishop of Westminster. He was also a member of the Sankt Gallen Group that tried to get Jorge Bergoglio elected, first in the 2005 conclave, and then again in 2013.

The story of the female victim of abuse is a story of delayed justice and denial of due process. Since she now lives in the Diocese of Portsmouth, she started to express her accusations to Church officials there. But sometime between 2009 and 2010, she also contacted the Archdiocese of Westminster with her allegations. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who has been Archbishop of Westminster since 2009 – and thus the successor of Murphy-O’Connor – refused to investigate the matter.

When Murphy-O’Connor was asked, in 2010, by Pope Benedict XVI to be the head of the Apostolic Visitation to Ireland in order to examine the abuse crisis there, people in the Diocese of Portsmouth were concerned that the abuse allegations against Murphy-O’Connor would then come to light and destroy the credibility of the Apostolic Visitation.

In 2011, according to our English source, the Diocese of Portsmouth, together with the Diocese of Northampton, contacted the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then under Cardinal William Levada, in order to request an investigation of the claims of that female victim by Rome and to protest Westminster’s refusal to follow the national safeguarding protocols. It was then Charles Scicluna, today the Archbishop of Malta, who requested that all the files from England be sent to him in person. A person from the Diocese of Portsmouth flew to Rome and delivered the files to Scicluna. It is understood that he began an investigation. However, in 2012, Scicluna became the Auxiliary Bishop of Malta and was thus removed from the Murphy-O’Connor case at the CDF. It was then Monsignor Robert W. Oliver who, after the departure of Monsignor Scicluna, met in 2013 with one of the English bishops in Rome in order to discuss the matter.

During that time, the Archdiocese of Westminster was finally agreeing, for the first time, to meet with the female victim. One of the auxiliary bishops – now a diocesan bishop elsewhere in England – met with her together with the diocesan safeguarding head, but still did not agree to start an investigation, according to the source.

Those within the Catholic Church in England who support this victim’s cause argue that, independently of whether this lady speaks the truth or not, the Church must follow her own rules as they are now set up. That means that the accused clergyman should first be withdrawn from the exercise of his office, and then an investigation should be started. Depending on the result of the investigation, when it is completed, the accused clergyman is to be either reinstated or punitively removed. The protocols make no distinction between the treatment for a priest or deacon and that for a bishop or a cardinal.

As our source in England relates, there have been repeated attempts, on the side of good bishops, to request a Church investigation into the case of this female victim. They insisted that the Church has to follow the standing rules. Yet, as our source says, Murphy-O’Connor has been treated “as if he were above the law.”

Our source points out that, in his own career, Murphy-O’Connor always “stood very lightly with regard to the Church’s moral and doctrinal teaching.” In one interview, Murphy-O’Connor made it clear that he is not opposed to non-practicing homosexuals being in the priesthood. He then said: “I think the Church must judge the people who are ordained on what kind of person they are, not on their sexuality. And I think that there will be men, probably a very small minority, who might have a homosexual orientation. Obviously, if they are practicing, this would exclude them [from ordination]. But I would not say that a person who has a homosexual tendency is necessarily debarred.”

He also rejected the claim of a connection between homosexuality and child abuse: “All I would say is that it does seem to be established that the question of child abuse has nothing directly at all to do with homosexuality.”

The Englishman John Smeaton, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, the world’s oldest pro-life group, and co-founder of Voice of the Family, told LifeSiteNews the following about Cardinal Murphy O’Connor: “However deeply disturbing it is, it is very much for the good of the Church that evils which have been deliberately hidden by Church leaders are coming to light.” He gave as an example that the “late Cardinal Murphy O’Connor is on record for seeking to cover up evil. In 2008 it was revealed that the Cardinal had approved an ethics code for St. John and St. Elizabeth’s hospital which effectively accommodated referrals for abortion and other unethical procedures.”

Professor Luke Gormally, a former member of the hospital’s ethics committee commented at the time: “How can the Church in this country effectively defend the sanctity of life when its Chief Shepherd is prepared to approve a code which effectively accommodates referrals for abortion?”

John Smeaton concluded: “Church officials at the very highest level, including the Holy Father, must learn the lesson of recent revelations which have so scandalized the faithful: The cover-up of evil has got to stop.”

Perhaps most importantly, Murphy-O’Connor is said to have helped Pope Francis to get elected. Austen Ivereigh, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s former assistant, said that days prior to the March 12 conclave in Rome,

Murphy-O’Connor was tasked by the St. Gallen “mafia” to inform Jorge Bergoglio of a plan to get him elected. As Ivereigh described in his 2014 book on Pope Francis, Murphy-O’Connor was also tasked with lobbying for Bergoglio among his North American counterparts as well as acting as a link to those from Commonwealth countries. So, when Bergoglio met the English cardinal after his election, he said, “You’re to blame!”

As The Guardian puts it: “A few months after his election, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was apparently lightheartedly to credit Murphy-O’Connor, when the two met at a papal audience. The pope pointed to his old friend and said, ‘You’re to blame!’”
Murphy-O’Connor, it became clear, was an old friend of Bergoglio. As The Guardian’s obituary states,

Murphy-O’Connor called Pope Francis “my man”: “And, of course, his [Murphy-O’Connor’s] presence in Rome in 2013 [was in order] to witness the election of his friend as Pope Francis. He looked on in pleasure at the impact made by the Argentinian whom he liked, jokingly, to refer to as ‘my man.’”

So, based on the revelation from Marco Tossati’s source in the Vatican, it would seem that Bergoglio, after his election, especially thanked Murphy-O’Connor by telling Cardinal Müller to halt the investigation against him. As of this date, the abused lady’s complaints have never been thoroughly investigated, neither in England, nor in Rome. And with the help of Tosatti’s own report, we now know some of the reasons why.

Similar to McCarrick, Murphy-O’Connor is known to have later speciously shown himself to the public as being a hardliner with regard to abuse cases. “Roman Catholic bishops found to be flouting the new guidelines on child protection will be held to account, or expected to resign,” is the headline of a 2003 article quoting Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. However, as with the McCarrick case in the U.S., the truth is now gaining upon the Church’s hierarchy that has been evasively looking the other way.

In England, there is currently a government-commissioned independent investigation into all sex abuse cases in society, to include those in the Catholic Church. This investigation has the legal power to compel the production of evidence. For this investigation, a so-called “Truth Project” has been set up, whereby victims of sexual abuse of minors may now come and relate their story.

Our source tells us this female victim may have contacted that same Truth Project, since several weeks ago, the investigators requested the Archdiocese of Westminster the release of all the files pertaining to allegations against Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor.

It would be important now that four dioceses release their files to the Truth Project concerning this woman’s case: Arundel and Brighton; Westminster; Portsmouth, and Northampton (which submitted the case to the CDF, together with Portsmouth). Bishop John Arnold (now of Salford), who was at the time involved in refusing to investigate the case in Westminster, should also release his files.

Thus, as it seems, the Catholic Church is now sitting upon a ticking time bomb. And on top of that time bomb sits Pope Francis.

This report was consciously published on September 24, the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham – Patroness of the Catholic Church in England – and on the day of the beginning of the English bishops’ Ad Limina visit to Rome.

John-Henry Westen contributed to this report. The report has been checked by our English source for accuracy.

PAT SAYS,

One or two of the usual moaners will complain about this article bring from LifeSite News.

But what really matters is whether or not the story is true.

And it is!

The story was borne out by this weeks evidence before the IICSA.

CMOC got Francis elected Pope and to thank him Francis blocked the exposure of CMOC as a paedo.

This shows CMOC in a very had light.

But more importantly, it shows Francis as a greasy South American gangster.

I have now completely lost the tiny bit of respect and hope I had for Bergoglio.

YESTERDAY WAS THE THIRD DAY OF THE INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO SEXUAL ABUSE IN ENGLAND AND WALES.

WITNESS THOMAS JAMES KIRBY

I was very impressed by the performance, character and evidence of Thomas James Kirby.

He was abused as a child at Peter Claver College run by the Verona . Comboni Fayhers.

He was abused by priests F338 and F339 that abused other boys who gave evidence to the IICSA.

He reported his abuse to Fathers Hicks, Downer and Devenish.

He got no decent reaction from the Comboni’s and ended up suing them.

The Verona / Comboni Order is one of the worst I have come across for being arrogant, priest protecting, threatening victims etc.

Mr Kirby rightly requested the IICSA to take all safeguarding functions away from the RCC as they CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

PORTSMOUTH SAFEGUARDING OFFICER ANGELA MC GRORY

Angela Mc Grory is the FIRST and ONLY RCC safeguarding officer that has EVER impressed me. I regard safeguarding officers with the same level of suspicion that I regard social workers with.

But it became clear to me that Angela told the whole truth yesterday, that she was truly caring for and loyal to survivor A710 and that she stood up to that awful creature PHILIP EGAN – the RC bishop of Portsmouth.

I’m not surprised that she moved to another diocese.

She told of how badly A710 was treated by Egan and Nichols in Westminster.

She told how uncooperative Nichols was in reporting CMOC to Rome and how bishops DOYLE and EGAN did it instead.

She basically left us under no illusions but that VINCENT ELSE NICHOLS was the villain of the whole piece.

Some church source smeared A710 and called her names in the media.

NICHOLS only met A710 to apologise to her AFTER his behaviour was highlighted in the media.

Basically, Elsie did not want the world to know that his predecessor was a PAEDO!

PETER DOYLE BISHOP OF NORTHAMPTION

Peter Doyle, while helping to drop NICHOLS in the shit, did so a bit reluctantly.

It was obvious that he was nervous.

It was also obvious that he was trying to tell the truth causing as little damage to ELSIE as possible.

He is, after all, one of THEM, and has sworn an oath of Pontifical Secrecy.

But Doyle did confirm that ELSIE NICHOLS is the UGLY SISTER in the A710 affair.

Doyle has already tendered his resignation and is waiting to be replaced.

His performance yesterday seemed only to show that was the best of a bad lot and he will not be missed.

Of course, he will replaced by worse!”

PHILIP EGAN – RC BISHOP OF PORTSMOUTH

After ELSIE NICHOLS, “RED GIZZARD EGAN” is the secondary villain of the piece.

I had other safeguarding experience of him and he is as useless as tits on a bull.

He was on the staff at Osccott! Do we even need to go further?

Its clear to me that he had little or no sympathy for A710.

He wanted to do a Pontius Pilate and hand the problem over to USELESS ELSIE in Westminster.

He refused to take Angela McGrory’s advice and issue a statement defending A710’s good name.

Angela Mc Grory stood up to him and is no longer working for him???

Egan is also giving the kiss of death to Portsmouth priests like the former PP of Fleet and the ex vocations Ray Lyons – who had an unfortunate of habit of facilitating seminarians jumping from his first floor windows in Osterwell

By the way, where is poor John Paul Little these days?

IN CONCLUSION:

The IICSA is showing. clearly, once again, that the RCC has no respect for God, man, woman or children – or indeed for the rule of law.

It is unfit to perform safeguarding functions ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

The British Government needs to set up a UK NATIONAL SAFEGUARDING COMMISSION to oversee all safeguarding functions in the RCC.

The RCC should foot the bill for this government commission and should be subjected to massive fines everytime it breaks safeguarding procedures.

The government should also bring in new legislation making safeguarding negligence a serious criminal offence punishable by long terms of imprisonment.

Ireland and other countries should introduce the same type of structures and legislation.

YESTERDAYTY

YESTERDAY I WATCHED MUCH OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE – DEALING WITH THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Yesterday’s evidence came in three parts:

1. Evidence of lady victim RC – A 711 who was a victim of a priest of the Servite Order and her suffering at the hands of Vincent Nichols and his safeguarding team..

2. Evidence read into the record of a deceased victim Frank Mc Ginnis.

3. The personal evidence, on camera of Mark Murray – a victim of the Verona / Comboni Order.

RC A 711

A711 was sexually abused by a Servite priest named as RCF500 whose Servite companion Father Vincent Coyne. f500 was the provincial of the Servites in the British isles.

He was a very charismatic man and in his 30s.

F500 and Father Coyle gave the 15 year old victim alcohol in the priory.

F500 groomed the victim over a two year period that eventually went on to full sexual intercourse and even rape over a 10 year period. These things sometimes happened in going swimming or in squash changing rooms.

As the abuse continued the victim recorded in her diary that gradually “my light went out”. When she went to university he followed her there to abuse her. On one occasion he returned from Rome and rape her.

In October 2016 she reported F500 to his provincial and the bishop of the diocese. The diocesan safeguarding person told her to opt for a church inquiry and not a police one.

The diocesan safeguarding person became ill and her case was referred to Westminster safeguarding – and as she says herself, that when things went terribly wrong.

Westminster blocked her at every step and refused to give her feedback. They called the victim names behind her back.

She got unsatisfactory apologies from the Servites.

“There was a man who used to dress in purple and dine magnificently everyday. At his gate lay victims of child sexual abuse”

Nichols refused to meet with her, even when he was preparing for the Rome abuse conference in February 2019. He had no time in “his busy diary”.

He only agreed to meet her when a newspaper covered her story. Only then did Nichols apologise to her about how his diocese and safeguarding team had treated her.

FRANK MC GINNIS RIP

PETER CLAVER COLLEGE YORKSHIRE

Mr McGinnis died before he could give evidence to the IICSA.

He was from Scotland and his parents had sent him to a state school. A Verona / Comboni priest visited his house and got his parents to send him to a Catholic junior seminary – St Peter Claver in Yorkshire.

He went there when he was 12. He was sexually abused by a priest referred to as RC F338 in the priest’s room. F338 got him to take his clothes off and then the priest examined his penis and testicles with a pencil. He then fondled him until he ejaculated for the first time in his life. Each abuse session lasted 25 minutes and was repeated over 30 times.

Then a priest named F339 who was in charge of the infirmary abused him when he went with a bleeding knee.

He told three Verona priests in confession what had happened to him and no one did anything to help.

He was eventually expelled from the school.

For 20 years he wrote letters to the Verona Fathers and got no replies.

He was eventually given £ 14,000 in compensation with all the others abused being given the same amount.

Frank said: “The abuse destroyed my whole life. I was a very confused and angry young man. I became an electrician but my life deteriorated into unemployment and depression. It affected my relationship with my wife but we did manage to have three children. I became a very protective father”.

MARK MURRAY

MARK MURRAY GIVING EVIDENCE YESTERDAY

Mark Murray gave his evidence to the inquiry in full view of the cameras. I was so impressed by his courage and dignity.

He too went to Peter Claver College run by the Verona / Comboni Fathers.

The minute he arrived he knew he had made a wrong choice but stayed for 5 years.

He was groomed and abused by a FATHER ROMANO NADO.

Father even went home with him at Easter and abused him in his home.

In Peter Claver he was also abused by an older boy referred to as F502.

He was told by the order that Nado had no access to children but on the internet Mark saw Nado working with children and youth groups in Italy.

In April 2015 Mark travelled to the Order’s motherhouse in Verona to try and meet Nado. He had been told by the Order’s provincial in England, Father Devenish, that Nadu was too mentally ill to meet him.

He met Nado and Nado seemed to apologise but left the chapel to find the superior to whom he said “WE HAVE A PROBLEM”.

The Vice Superior of the Verona House said: “You and your lot are all money grabbers”.

The superior later said to Mark: “If you are waiting for an apology you will be waiting a long time”.

The Order brought Mark to court for trespassing, stalking etc but two Italian judges threw the cases out.

Mark wants CHILD SAFEGUARDING taken completely out of the hands of the RC institution.

It was deeply sad listening to and watching victims of RC abuse tell their story.

In fact these people have been abused twice – once by their sexual abuser and secondly by RC bishops and safeguarding teams.

RC safeguarding people are paid huge salaries and expenses by bishops and their real remit is to protect bishops, priests and church money.

All safeguarding should be entrusted to a government appointed commission who have the authority to raid premises and files and to issue massive fines against dioceses and religious orders.

They should work hand in hand with the police and have the power to send bishops and clergy to a long time in jail for covering up abuse.

We will only see real RC change when we see cardinals, archbishops, bishops, clergy and monks and nuns being led away in handcuffs to prison.

These holy scoundrels will not do the right thing in the name of morality or decency.

We need to make them do the right thing out of fear of the personal consequences for themselves.

BISHOP PETER DOYLE

I’m looking forward to hearing Peter Doyle tomorrow.

VINCENT “ELSIE” NICHOLS HAS HAD A FINE CAREER IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC JUNTA BUT HIS STAR IS ABOUT TO CRASH TO EARTH IN FLAMES.

Soon we will appear at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse for the second time.

He was there for the first time to answer for his poor performance as Archbishop of Birmingham.

This time he will be quizzed by high flying QCs over his failures in Westminster.

He will especially be under fire for his reluctance to report his predecessor CCMOC for abusing a little girl.

He will be thrown to the legal wolves by Peter Doyle, Bishop of Northampton. There has never been any love lost between these two men.

Doyle, for all his faults, has a pastor’s heart.

Nichols has no heart at all and has always been a scheming, cunning, ambitious climber.

Elsie is now greatly disliked by the Westminster priests whom he has treated poorly.

They can’t wait for him to be gone.

When he was called before the IICSA the first time he threw a sickie, which was really a panic attack over the fear of being exposed.

He may try this a second time?

I was watching the opening proceedings of the IICSA yesterday and Nichols name was on the tounges of all the barristers representing victims.

Their knives are sharpened and Elsie’s bladder will be laid bare.

He has climbed the ladder from being priest to bishop’s secretary, bishop’s conference secretary, bishop, archbishop and latterly cardinal.

I’m quite sure he daydreamed about wearing the white.

He will end his career as a failure and to change the scripture quote: Though your robes are like scarlet they will reduced to ashes.

Why do these “holy” men not heed the Lord – “What would it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lost his very soul”?

MEANWHILE IN NORTHERN IRELAND

A HIGH RANKING WESTMINISTER PRIEST HAS SENT ME A COPY OF THE ABOVE LETTER BISHOP PETER DOYLE OF NOTTINGHAM SENT ALL HIS PRIESTS AND DEACONS 4 DAYS AGO.

This happening has the potential to blow the English Catholic Church to bits and will also put Elsie Nichols in the firing line!

CORMAC MURPHY O CONNOR

Bishop Doyle, as a priest supported and counselled CMOC’s victim – and still does.

It was he and another bishop reported CMOC to CDF at the Vatican when Westminister refused to.

The other reporting bishop was Crispin Hollis, the retired Bishop of Portsmouth.

Apparently Elsie Nichols in fuming with Doyle and Hollis and a whole string of priests and advisers has been rushing in and out of Ambrosden Avenue for the last week.

The inquiry has called Nichols back in front of it. He is soon to reappear.

This is the scenario we are faced with:

1. CMOC gets Francis elected Pope.

2. Francis jokingly says to CMOC that he is to blame for his election.

3. Bishop Doyle has been counselling CMOC’S victim since he was was a priest decades ago.

4. Westminister Nichols fails to report the allegation against CMOC to Rome.

5. Bishops Doyle and Hollis report CMOC allegation to Rome.

6. Cardinal Muller in Rome begins to investigate CMOC.

7. Muller is interrupted saying Mass as Francis wants him on the phone IMMEDIATELY.

8. Francis orders Muller to stop the investigation into CMOC.

9. Muller appears to comply with Francis but continues his investigation.

10. CMOC dies and in spite of what Nichols knows he gets the funeral of a saint / hero and in interred like royalty in Westminster cathedral floor.

11. Doyle makes a statement to the ICSA.

12. Doyle is called to give evidence to the ICSA on next Wednesday 30.10.19.

13. ICSA summons Nichols back before them in the near future.

OCTOBER MEETINGS OF IICSA

WATCH THE HEARINGS THIS WEEK

http://www.iicsa.org.uk/live

Matthew Jolley, 32, had only recently entered the priesthood

Alan Weston 25 OCT 2019 ECHO. Liverpool.

Matthew Jolley, 32, was jailed after pleading guilty to arranging the commission of a child sex offence

A Catholic priest’s career was in ruins after he was jailed for a serious child sexual offence at Liverpool Crown Court .
Fr Matthew Jolley, who was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Liverpool in 2015, pleaded guilty to one offence of arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

ORDINATION PIC 2015

Jolley, 32, of Rhona Drive, Great Sankey, Warrington , appeared by videolink from HMP Altcourse to be sentenced this afternoon.

At the time the offence was committed last month, Jolley, who served as Catholic priest in Widnes , had just returned to the UK from Belgium and was due to travel to Rome for a two-year period of study.

The court heard Jolley came to the attention of authorities when he engaged in disgusting chat on various online platforms – including Grindr -about having sex with a two-year-old boy.
Jolley thought he was communicating with the child’s father, but in fact it was an undercover law enforcement officer trained to root out such perverts.

Liverpool Crown Court

Alaric Walmsley, prosecuting, said Jolley “created a profile as a 13-year-old bisexual male on Grindr, using the name Breed Me”.

Over a series of exchanges with the undercover operator, Jolley spoke about his sexual interest in young children, both male and female, with no age limit “so long as they’re cute.”

When the undercover operator mentioned a two-year-old son, Jolley’s response to the fictitious child was “whether I could share him”.

The interaction then moved to the Kik messenger service, and continued on the Wickr encrypted platform, with Jolley asking for indecent pictures and videos.

Mr Walmsley said Jolley then arranged to go to the dad’s address in Hale Village, in order to sexually abuse his son.

During the meeting Jolley again discussed how he planned to abuse the child.

When the undercover operative revealed his true identity to Jolley, the shamed priest struggled and tried to escape but was restrained and arrested on suspicion of child sex offences.

Mark Shanks, defending, said Jolley felt “utterly ashamed and appalled” by his behaviour. Mr Shanks said that if a two-year-old boy had been produced, Jolley said “he would have run a mile.”
Mr Shanks added: “His job and his interests were separate and he did not join the church to engage in activity with children.

“His career is ruined and he intends to take another job on his release.”

Sentencing Jolley to 40 months in prison, Recorder Jeremy Lasker said: “Your words and actions and intentions seem to me wholly inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic church.

“You have done nothing but a great disservice to the Church.”

On top of the custodial sentence Jolley was ordered to sign the sex offenders register for life.

Following sentencing, Detective Constable Louise Murphy, of Cheshire’s On-line Child Abuse Investigation Team, said: “Jolley committed this terrible offence whilst holding a position of trust.

On a previous tweet on his Twitter account Father Jolley published the photo if a whale’s erection!

Strange? No?

UPDATE LIVERPOOL

Windows smashed and strange “BEAST” graffiti daubed on church grounds

Police are looking for vandals who broke six windows and wrote the mysterious message in chalk at St Oswald’s in Old Swan

Luke Traynor Liverpool Echo

Boarded up windows at St Oswald King & Martyr Catholic Church.(Pic Andrew Teebay). (Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

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Windows were smashed and mysterious graffiti daubed on the wall of a city church.

Vandals trashed St Oswald RC Presbytery in Old Swan, breaking six windows and writing in chalk the word “BEAST”.

The windows have now been boarded up at the church presbytery in St Oswalds Street.

Police received a report of the criminal damage at 11.10am on Saturday.

Officers think the yobs struck sometime between 1.30am and 10am yesterday

PAT SAYS

So worrying that a priest ordained in the last 4 years has turned out to be a paedophile!

So, Catholic Clerical Paedophilia is NOT a past problem but a current problem.

How did this young man pass the psychological assessment?

And does this mean the system of assessment is not good for purpose?

It seems to me that the Catholic priesthood is not just a gay network, but also a paedophilia network!

And Francis, cardinals, archbishops, bishops priests are involved both in paedophile activity and covering up for each other.

And LIVERPOOL ARCHDIOCESE has serious problems at present.

MURPHY O CONNOR

Cardinal Gerhard Müller has confirmed that the Vatican investigation into sexual abuse by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was not completed, but instead was stopped for lack of the Pope’s approval.

Cardinal Müller was asked if Pope Francis had indeed halted the investigation into Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who passed away in 2017.

MULLER

Müller was until recently the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican body tasked with investigating sex abuse cases. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was accused of abusing a girl when she was 13 or 14 during the 1960s.

Cardinal Müller said he was “bound by Pontifical Secret,” but said that “the Pope’s approval is required for investigations” of a Cardinal.

Journalists informed Müller that some news reports were suggesting he had completed the investigation, rather than the investigation having been interrupted and prevented from continuing.

Journalists also asked the cardinal if he would at least go on the record to indicate that the investigation was stopped, rather than completed, and he agreed, “yes.”

‘The Pope wants to speak to you’

Rather, the original report focused on the fact that the investigation into the allegations did not follow proper Church protocol, and Archbishop Viganò mentioned the halting of the investigation in the context of the Pope’s larger record on sex abuse cover-up.

VIGANO

The bizarre circumstances around the Pope stopping the investigation were revealed by named Vatican reporter Marco Tosatti. From a source close to Cardinal Müller, Tosatti learned that the Cardinal, when he was Prefect of the CDF, was interrupted by a phone call from the Pope while saying Mass in June 2013 at the Church of Santa Monica (next to the CDF building) for a small group of German students.

As Tosatti put it in an article for First Things last year:

His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not mind—he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy. The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders about a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal.

CUF – COVER UP FRANK

In a report last week, Tosatti revealed for the first time, via a source close to Cardinal Müller, that it was the CDF’s investigation of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor that Pope Francis nixed during that urgent phone call.

The allegation, and failed investigations

From a source in England close to the Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor case, it was learned that the lady around 2009 accused Murphy-O’Connor of involvement in her abuse. She had been, as a young teen in the 1960s, a victim of notorious pedophile priest Michael Hill. She asserted around 2009 that there were several priests involved in her abuse at the time, with Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor being one of them.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor later infamously transferred the known abuser Hill to be the chaplain at Gatwick airport despite warnings that he would offend again. (He did indeed offend again.) The lady in question is an acknowledged victim of Fr. Hill and was paid at the beginning of the 2000s a £40,000 settlement by the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton for the abuse she suffered.

While the left-leaning Tablet in England has claimed that the woman’s allegations against Murphy-O’Connor were investigated by police and the Church and found lacking in credibility, a source in England provides needed clarification.

Our source notes: “The police did not decide that she was not credible, but that they did not have corroborating evidence.”

The source added that, had the police not found the victim a credible source, “they would not have investigated the case.”

Rather, the source said, the police took the case so seriously that they interviewed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor himself “under caution,” which means that they made it clear to him that his answers could be used against him in court. Moreover, the source says the police never closed the case, but put it aside awaiting corroborating evidence.

The Tablet author Christopher Lamb omits in his description of the history of the case that the Archdiocese of Westminster altogether refused to investigate the allegations of the female victim according to Church protocols.

As has been reported, it was not the Archdiocese of Westminster, but two other dioceses – Portsmouth and Northampton – which filed a case directly with the CDF in 2011.

A well-placed source in England has affirmed, it was not Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster since 2009, who instigated the CDF investigation.

Only in 2011 – that is, three years after the lady started to claim Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor abused her – Nichols finally had his diocesan officials meet with her in person. Still, they did not open an investigation.

According to a source in England, Bishop Crispian Hollis (of Portsmouth, now retired) and Bishop Peter Doyle (Northampton) both knew the female victim for years and found her a credible person.

“All people involved [i.e., police, as well as the English bishops filing the case with the CDF] found that the female victim is a credible witness.”
The Tablet reports on a CDF investigation in 2011 of the case under then-CDF head Cardinal William Levada. That investigation apparently determined there was no case. However, our English source states that the

CDF’s investigation in 2011 was not thorough, inasmuch as the victim herself was not even personally interviewed by the

CDF officials.

As The Tablet so ambiguously puts it, the need to restart the case then in 2013 was due to an “administrative gap.” Of what that “administrative gap” could be, our source commented: “The CDF itself had not followed protocol.”

That is the very reason why, in 2013, Peter Doyle – the Bishop of Northampton who originally worked in Portsmouth and who knows the victim personally – together with Portsmouth “complained to Rome” and urged Nichols to restart the CDF investigation in 2013, according to our English source. But once Cardinal Müller finally got the 2013 CDF investigation underway, Pope Francis put a stop to it.

Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, notes that there were “some English bishops” who were “unhappy at Westminster breaking rules.” Speaking of The Tablet article, he wrote on Twitter September 30: “This report is basically accurate. I believe in ++Cormac’s innocence.

But this isn’t the whole story. Some English bishops unhappy at Westminster breaking rules; the CDF intervened. ++Mueller knows the truth.”

“Cardinal Nichols should explain precisely how he handled the Cormac allegations,” Thompson wrote on Twitter September 26. “They may have lacked credibility, but there’s no indication that the Church’s abuse procedures were properly implemented. Far from it.”

Viganò vindicated

On Twitter, The Tablet’s Lamb and Austen Ivereigh, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s former assistant, suggested that The Tablet’s report discredited Archbishop Viganò.

Viganò listed in his recent follow-up testimony Pope Francis’ “halting of the investigation of sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor” as one example of the pontiff’s complicity in sex abuse cover-up

The discrediting of Viganò would vindicate Pope Francis, not only with regard to his role in the Murphy-O’Connor case, but in the face of larger cover-up accusations surrounding the ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick debacle.

Cardinal Muller’s confirmation that the CDF’s investigation of Murphy-O’Connor was indeed halted would seem to vindicate Viganò, though.

Murphy-O’Connor had been the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton from 1977 until 2000, when he was appointed Archbishop of Westminster.

He was also a member of the St. Gallen Group that tried to get Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) elected, first in the 2005 conclave, and then again in 2013.

In his biography of Pope Francis, Ivereigh wrote that days prior to the conclave, which began March 12, 2013 in Rome, Murphy-O’Connor was tasked by the St. Gallen “mafia” to inform Jorge Bergoglio of a plan to get him elected.

According to Ivereigh, Murphy-O’Connor was also tasked with lobbying for Bergoglio among his North American counterparts as well as acting as a link to those from Commonwealth countries.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor recounted in his memoir An English Spring that when Pope Francis met the English cardinal in July 2013, the Pope told him, “You’re to blame!”

PAT SAYS

Now, look at what we have.

One cardinal abusing a 14 year old girl!

One cardinal been told to call off the investigation!

A pope rewarding a cardinal for his vote and for promoting him to the papacy by calling off the investigation into his paedophilia!

A pope interrupting the celebration of the Eucharist to save his friend’s neck!

Murphy O Connor supporting his fellow paedo Father Hill!

Its rotten from the very top to the very bottom.

Sex with kids, sex in seminaries, sex in the Confessional, etc.

Money, power, sex and God knows what else.

And all IN THE NAME OF GOD!

Lifesite News

Nick Squires, Rome

Worldwide donations to the Catholic Church have plunged in the wake of sex abuse scandals that have eroded faith in the Vatican, a new book claims.

The Church’s finances are in such a dire state – a result of a toxic mix of incompetence, internal wrangling and corruption – that the Vatican risks a default by 2023, according to the expose.
The amount of money donated by ordinary Catholics to the Church, known as Peter’s Pence, has plummeted from €101 million in 2006 to €70 million in 2016 and may now be less than €60 million.

Only a fifth of the total goes to helping the poor and needy, with the rest held in bank accounts or used to plug gaps in the finances of the Curia, the Vatican’s governing body.

The revelations are based on scrutiny of 3,000 confidential documents obtained by an Italian investigative journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi.

In his book, Universal Judgment, which was published on Monday, he portrays the Vatican as a viper’s nest of jealous cardinals, warring departments and avaricious officials who are adept at parallel book-keeping.

“If the pontificate of Frances fails, it won’t be because of the attacks of conservative Catholics or the crisis in vocations or because of the declining number of faithful,” Mr Nuzzi writes. “It will be because of the financial collapse that is coming ever closer.”

The Vatican deficit is “like a voracious and insatiable parasite, attacking wealth that was accumulated over the centuries from the pious offerings of the faithful.”
The precipitous decline in contributions has coincided with a crisis of faith for millions of Catholics, who have been appalled at the multiple sex scandals involving priests and cardinals.

Thousands of prelates have been accused of raping or molesting children and the Vatican’s former finance chief, Australian cardinal George Pell, is in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing teenage boys in the state of Victoria.
A Gallup survey early this year found that the number of Catholics in the US who had a “high” or “very high” opinion of the clergy had dropped from 49% in 2017 to 31% at the end of 2018.

The plunge in confidence was ascribed to the sex abuse crises which have affected the Church in the US, Ireland, Chile, Australia and other countries.

Pope Francis himself admitted that the Church’s “credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them.”

The Vatican has set up an emergency task force to address its financial crisis as its losses rose from €32 million in 2017 to nearly €44 million last year.

Pope Francis’ push for more transparency has been sabotaged by Vatican insiders, according to the book.

In a document obtained by Mr Nuzzi, a Vatican official wrote: “The deficit is recurring and structural and has reached worrying levels. We risk a default if no urgent steps are taken.”

Although the Vatican has a vast property portfolio, its management of the assets is “catastrophic,” said Mr Nuzzi, with around 800 properties left empty and hundreds of others leased out on peppercorn rents or for no money at all.

The entity that runs the property portfolio, known by its acronym Apsa, made a loss of more than €22 million last year.

It was the first time the department had ever been in the red, according to the author.

Vatican insiders have continuously attempted to impede or sabotage Pope Francis’ efforts to introduce more transparency and accountability, Mr Nuzzi claims.

He described his book as “an account of the Pope’s fight to stop the slide towards the financial collapse of the Vatican.”

PAT SAYS

There are only two things the RCC mobsters fear:

1. Exposure of their corruption.

2. Losing their monies and riches.

I am delighted that more and more Catholics are seeing through the RCC MAFIA and are reacting by walking away from them and stopping giving them money.

One of the biggest ways of bringing them to heel is to starve them of funds.

The other way is to expose all their evil as often as we can and everywhere we can.

Meet the mobster who claims he helped whack Pope John Paul I over stock fraud

By Brad Hamilton October 19, 2019

Colombo gangster Anthony Raimondi (left) claims he was present in 1978 when fellow conspirators killed Pope John Paul I (above) with cyanide — because the pontiff threatened to expose a stock fraud by Vatican bank insiders — in the new book “When the Bullet Hits the Bone.”Stephen Yang

He helped kill the pope — so his pals could stay out of hell.

That’s the shocking claim from longtime Colombo gangster Anthony Raimondi, who says that, in 1978, he went to Italy with a team of hit men who whacked John Paul I. They allegedly poisoned him with cyanide just 33 days into the pontiff’s reign, according to Raimondi’s new book, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone,” out now from Page Publishing.

Raimondi, the nephew of legendary godfather Lucky Luciano, claims he was recruited for the murder at the age of 28 by his cardinal cousin, Paul Marcinkus, who ran the Vatican bank. Raimondi’s job was to learn the pope’s habits and be on hand to observe as Marcinkus knocked out John Paul by spiking his nightly cup of tea with Valium.

“I stood in the hallway outside the pope’s quarters when the tea was served,” he writes, adding that the drug did its job so well that their victim wouldn’t have stirred “even if there had been an earthquake,” he recounts. “I’d done a lot of things in my time, but I didn’t want to be there in the room when they killed the pope. I knew that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell.”

Instead, he stood outside the room as his cousin readied a dose of cyanide, he claims. “He measured it in the dropper, put the dropper in the pope’s mouth and squeezed,” Raimondi writes. “When it was done, he closed the door behind him and walked away.”

After the snoozing pontiff was force-fed the poison, a papal assistant checked on him, then cried out that “the pope was dying” — after which Marcinkus and two other cardinals in on the plot “rushed into the bedroom like it was a big surprise,” Raimondi writes. A Vatican doctor was summoned, who ruled that John Paul I had suffered a fatal heart attack, he writes.

They used Valium and the deadly toxin so as to kill the pope painlessly — and to curry favor in the afterlife, Raimondi claims. To prove John Paul I didn’t suffer, Marcinkus and cohorts Pietro Palazzini and Antonio Ribeiro, also his cousins, needed Raimondi to testify on their behalf before God, he claims. “They said when we die I would be their witness,” Raimondi, now 69, told The Post.

They targeted the pope because he had threatened to expose a massive stock fraud run by Vatican insiders, according to the book.

The billion-dollar scam involved a forgery expert at the Vatican who faked the church’s holdings in blue-chip American companies such as IBM, Sunoco and Coca-Cola. Mobsters then allegedly sold the phony stock certificates to unsuspecting buyers.

John Paul I had vowed to defrock the perpetrators, which included Marcinkus and about “half the cardinals and bishops in the Vatican,” Raimondi told The Post. “They would have been thrown out and subject to the laws of the US and Italy,” he said. “They would have gone to jail.”
Had John Paul I “kept his mouth shut,” Raimondi writes, “he could have had a nice long reign.”

The body was barely cold when a new plan was conceived to kill his successor, John Paul II, who appeared poised to take action against the scammers as well, Raimondi writes. So the made mob man was summoned back to the Vatican and told to prepare for a second murder.
“ ‘This guy’s gotta go, too,’ they said. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do? Just keep killing popes?’ ”

Ultimately, John Paul II decided not to act because he knew he too would die, Raimondi told The Post, then went on to become the second-longest-serving pontiff in modern history, until his death at 84 in 2005.

His change of heart also prompted a booze-fueled celebration among crooked cardinals and mobsters in Vatican City, according to Raimondi.

“We stayed and partied for a week with cardinals wearing civilian clothes, and lots of girls,” he writes. “If I had to live the rest of my life in Vatican City, it would have been OK with me. It was some setup. My cousins all drove Cadillacs. I am in the wrong business, I thought. I should have become a cardinal.”

Those who dismiss his claims, or point to the fact his story resembles the plot from “The Godfather III,” Raimondi shrugs. “It was a terrible movie. To tell you the truth I don’t really remember it. What I said in the book I stand by till the day I die. If they take [the pope’s body] and do any type of testing, they will still find traces of the poison in his system.”

Anthony Raimondi is the nephew of legendary godfather Lucky Luciano.Popperfoto via Getty Images
Raimondi’s book is loaded with other over-the-top revelations, including intimate details on the Lufthansa heist, one of the most notable rip-offs in mob lore.

But his take differs from the movie “Goodfellas,” and the book “Wiseguy” on which it was based, as both featured James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, played by Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill as the brains behind the epic theft.
Raimondi — a fixer and earner for the Colombos — claims Lufthansa’s real mastermind was Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky, head of the Kosher Nostra and a mentor of Raimondi’s, he claims. “I first brought him in on the plan during a trip to his home in Miami,” he writes.
Another one of Raimondi’s cousins was friends with gangster Burke, who allegedly got a tip about big money coming through JFK Airport.

But when the information circulated among the Lucchese hierarchy, the family couldn’t “figure out how to put this deal together,” Raimondi writes, so he convinced Lansky to come to New York and orchestrate the smash-and-grab job.
“Everything was so well planned,” he writes. “Meyer had set the time for everything to happen. He had it mapped out so everybody had a precise job they had to do.”

In the end, Raimondi claims, the gang got away with far more money than previously believed: about $45 million, including cash, jewelry and $35 million in bearer bonds that Lansky believed had been stolen before being shipped to New York, says the book.

Raimondi hid the bonds at his father’s house, after which Meyer fenced them at “85 cents on the dollar,” he writes, and the loot got spread around all five organized-crime families at a social club in Brooklyn on Cortelyou Road.

“We were there for hours, counting the money and giving everybody their end,” Raimondi writes. “The bosses came down from all the families personally . . . They were getting millions.”

Everyone was warned to keep low profiles and not make extravagant purchases. But several didn’t — and were systematically rubbed out, Raimondi writes.

Michael Vecchione, a former top prosecutor at the Brooklyn DA’s office who went after Colombo mobsters and has written three books on crime-fighting, is dubious. “I do remember the name Raimondi coming up, but I never heard anything about Meyer Lansky being involved in the Lufthansa heist,” he said. “But there’s no way to verify what this guy is saying.”

As for the author, he claims he managed to avoid prosecution for years, because he and his crew paid millions of dollars from his own loansharking and clubs to Mayor Ed Koch, with Koch aide Bess Myerson acting as bag lady.

“We had illegal casinos, shylock money, and Koch got a piece of everything and we never had a problem with the law,” he writes. “I’d take the package for Bess and bring it to [a friend’s] house, where she would come and collect it. I’d put it in a regular canvas bag, and she would just put it in her briefcase.”

Raimondi, a hulking and fiercely loyal Colombo member nicknamed Pluto, has a fascinating personal story as well, as he had regular contact with notable gangland figures such as Carmine Galante, Allie Boy Persico and Joe Colombo.

He alleges he dodged life in federal prison for a murder he committed as a teen in Brooklyn after the Army recruited him to become a sniper during the Vietnam War.

Pope John Paul IISygma via Getty Images
His job, Raimondi claims, was to drop in behind enemy lines in Cambodia and assassinate North Vietnamese fighters, which he says he did ruthlessly.

He allegedly returned to the US with a clean record and threw himself into mob business, benefitting from the help of Lansky, who, Raimondi writes, “taught me so many different ways of shaking down a guy. He also taught me so many ways to kill a guy, because Meyer was deadly. Don’t let nobody fool you: Meyer killed a lot of men in his time.”

Raimondi, who is now fighting cancer and living in Brooklyn, said he decided to quit the life and tell his story because “I don’t need this s–t any more.”

“All the old guys either went to prison or they died or went into witness protection,” he told The Post.
“The new guys didn’t do things the old way. I said, you know what, time to leave.”

PAT SAYS

I have always believed that John Paul 1 met a criminal end 😥

He was the mysterious pope we never got to know.

If he had survived we might have been spared the gangster John Pole 11.

The Vatican is a place of unequalled evil.

I discovered that when I was detained there in March.

I will NEVER enter that place again.

It is Satan’s playground.

From my Roman Correspondent – pastor ignotus

“The man to watch is Archbishop Arthur Roach, Secretary of the Liturgy Congregation in Rome.

He is even more ambitious than Elsie (if such a thing can be imagined) and is pulling every string available to return to England and wear Elsie’s crown.

He is a Yorkshireman and has come up the usual route; bishops secretary, financial secretary, from which he suddenly resigned, secretary of the CBCEW, auxiliary bishop and then Bishop of Leeds.

He was shafted out of his home diocese when he had seemingly bankrupted it renovating their ghastly cathedral and his mansion in the Dales and got the cushy sinecure in Rome by sucking up to anyone with a bit of magenta on their cassocks.

And his friendship with ex Papal MC Marini (the first one who got fired for dressing the German Pope in a John Lewis Duvet covet once too often) who is his tennis partner.

They also holiday together in the luxury Italian island of Ischia. I’m told it’s his for the taking. Westminster priests better watch their backs as he is ruthless.

A vain, overweight bully, he keeps one part of his CV very quiet – the years he spent as a priest at the Veneral English College may well yet deny him what he so desperately seeks.

A far cry from Jordan’s shores! Or perhaps not?

Pat Says,

Roach is already 69 and will be well over 70 when Elsie resigns.

It’s hard to imagine The Vatican putting a 70+ year old man in Westminster.

Of course they did put Daly in Armagh when he was 70?

Westminster seems to be a very dysfunctional diocese with its clergy being made up of gay cliques, ex Anglican, gay and married, members of the Ordineriate, a few ssurviving Paddys and a splattering of other strange types.

In Archbishops House you have Elsie as the man of the house Sister Wragg, her blood / religious sister, Margaret, former Benedictine abbot and Bishop of Menevia Mark Jabale and the cardinal’s secretary.

The Westmminster priests never like their archbishops and knife away at them behind their backs.

Who ever gets the job is in for a miserable time.