The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

(*The United Nations Committee Against Torture reviewed the Vatican and issued a report in 2014 stating clerical sexual abuse is a form of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.)

 “We have to do something. We’re losing people,” Vatican officials will say. This is the assessment of Timothy D. Law, a Catholic advocate for survivors and accountability as published on goodmenproject.com on Nov. 23, 2025.

“The Italian-language Vatican Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook) 2022 gave the number of Catholics in the world at the end of 2021 at 1.376 billion (the last time they published Catholic demographics). But the World Christian Database  reported 1.272 billion Catholics as of 2024” stated James M. Thunder in the June 28, 2025, edition of newoxfordreview.org.

“Count me skeptical about the Vatican reports on the number of Catholics in the world,” wrote Thunder, an attorney who writes extensively about Catholic issues. 

 “With respect to the numbers from the Annuario Pontificio, the statistical data given in these yearbooks regarding archdioceses and dioceses are furnished by diocesan offices…How reliable is this method?” he questioned.

The Clerical Sexual Torture of Children Remains a Global Issue

“The Catholic Church has created a global catastrophe through its careful maintenance of a system that has allowed clergy to abuse children and vulnerable people around the world with impunity,” wrote Peter Isely, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) Global Advocacy Chair in a Sept. 22, 2025, press release.

“Philippine priests accused of sex abuse remain in active ministry in the Catholic-majority country,” reported BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. “At least seven of the accused priests continue to serve in parishes across the archipelago, some as recently as last month,” the group’s co-director Anne Barrett Doyle stated in a press conference on Jan. 29, 2025.

“Philippine bishops have a ‘deep sense of entitlement’ in withholding information on the abuse of priests in their diocese. These are men who fear nothing,” Barrett Doyle noted as reported by reuters.com.

“The level of trust in the Catholic Church in Poland hit a record low with only one third of traditionally Catholic Poles trusting the Church,” reported the OSV News on Sept. 16, 2025. The total percentage of people who declare trust (‘strongly’ or ‘rather strongly’) in the Church fell from 58% in September 2016 to 35.1% in the same month in 2025…. Commentators blame the fall on the bishops -too engaged in politics, money and not taking care of the abuse crisis,” the report stated.

“Belgium’s Catholic Church has received 59 new reports of sexual abuse in the Church between July 2024 and June 2025 as participation in religious sacraments continues to decline,” brusselstimes.com reported on Oct. 29, 2025.

 “In a case brought by a man who was abused as a little boy, the Catholic Church’s (Australian) Diocese of Ballarat argued that it couldn’t be sued for the actions of one of its priests, because priests are employed by God – not by the Church. The ruling by the High Court in the Church’s favour left thousands of survivors devastated,” reported the newdaily.com on Nov. 14, 2025.

 “Nigerian Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama said the crisis of sexual abuse of minors has not only ‘undermined’ the work of the Church but also ‘wounded our credibility,’” reported aciafrica.org. on Nov. 18, 2025.

“Italian survivors group Rete L’Abuso (The Abuse Network), expressed incomprehension at Pope Leo XIV calling on the Italian Church to develop a ‘culture of prevention’ on clerical child sex abuse,” the AFP reported on Nov. 21, 2025. “Rete l’Abuso estimated that 1,106 priests had been accused of sexual abuse in Italy, with almost 4,400 known victims, dating back to 2000… Group founder Francesco Zanardi said many priests accused are just transferred to another diocese.

“Years on from the shocking Portuguese report that lifted the lid on decades of deviant behaviour by priests and officials of the Catholic Church, very little appears to have been done for the hundreds of victims,” reported portugalresident.com on Dec. 1, 2025. “Victims of sexual abuse accuse the Church of a lack of ‘transparency, responsibility, opacity, slowness, disrespect.’”

Pope Leo XIV Will Not Take Action

“Pope Leo’s first public interview since his election in May took place in July. Excerpts were published Sept. 14 and the full transcript released Sept. 18,” reported survivorsrights.com.

“In that interview, Pope Leo said victims (of clerical sexual torture) must be treated with ‘great respect’ while also insisting the rights of accused priests must be protected. He claimed more than 90 percent of accusations are made by authentic victims, but acknowledged there are ‘proven cases of some kind of false accusation’ and said there must also be due process for those accused.”

“The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) sharply criticized Pope Leo’s remarks and position. They argued his emphasis on false accusations and priests’ rights comes even as evidence shows that he has not adhered to canon law or abuse policies in places he previously led.”

“When Pope Leo says not to expect major reforms, it is a rejection of survivors. It’s an abandonment of children by the Church. The failure to stop abuse, to remove offenders from positions where they can continue committing sexual violence, is not just a moral failure it’s a death sentence. We’ve lost too many friends to suicide and despair.” SNAP Board President Shaun Dougherty stated.

Pope Leo Met with Members of Ending Clergy Abuse

Pope Leo met with survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy for the first time on Oct. 20, reported Reuters. They are members of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), a global coalition of survivors, human rights activists, legal experts and advocates – not members of the critical group, SNAP, the oldest (founded in 1988; the ECA in 2017) and largest (18,000 members nationally by 2021 reported on the SNAP website) group of survivors.

“The encounter, which included four victims and two advocates, lasted about an hour with ‘a significant moment of dialogue,’ they said…Gemma Hickey, a Canadian survivor who took part in the meeting, said Leo met with the victims in his office at the Vatican’s apostolic palace, took pictures with them, and listened carefully. ‘Pope Leo is very warm, he listened,’ said Hickey… ‘I left the meeting with hope,’ said Janet Aguti, a Ugandan survivor who was also at the meeting. It is a big step for us,’” quoted Reuters.

The ECA survivors “said the pope told them he was still coming to grips with the enormity of the Church’s scandals…I think he is still in a phase where he is trying to find out how to best address these issues,” said another attendee, Matthias Katsch.

If Leo had read SNAP’s September criticism, he wouldn’t “still be trying to find out how to best address these issues.”

“The Vatican has ignored every major international call for accountability, including from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Committee Against Torture, both in 2014. SNAP recalled that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child made recommendations including major canon law reform, independent monitoring of children’s rights and Church hierarchy, transparent sharing of archives relating to sexual abuse, and immediate removal of abusers from ministry. The Holy See has not implemented these recommendations,” SNAP Global Advocacy Chair Peter Isely said.

 “Survivors brought their evidence to the highest international bodies and those bodies affirmed what we’ve known for decades ‒ that the Catholic Church has perpetuated widespread sexual violence amounting to torture. When Pope Leo says not to expect any major reforms regarding Church doctrine related to sexuality, he is saying, ‘Let’s leave this system in place,’” Sarah Pearson, SNAP spokesperson stated.

 “We wouldn’t have to keep focusing on this crisis if Pope Leo would just do the right thing. Enact a global zero tolerance law, release the criminal evidence in the Vatican archives, and stop spending millions on attorneys and lobbyists to fight every effort to pass laws that allow survivors to seek justice. Until these basic steps are taken, the pope’s continued failure to act will ensure that this crisis remains front and center, as it should,” SNAP Board President Shaun Dougherty said.

 “ECA meeting participants said they also asked Leo to create a global zero-tolerance policy for priests accused of abuse, something survivors have pushed for. Timothy Law, an ECA co-founder, said he mentioned to Leo that the U.S. bishops have a zero tolerance law, which was enacted in 2002 after extensive reporting on abuse scandals in Boston. ‘Why can’t we make it universal?’ Law said he asked the pope.”

“On the day Pope Leo was elected, SNAP issued a public demand: ‘You can end the abuse crisis ‒ the only question is, will you?’ They say Pope Leo has now given his answer.’”

There will be no “global zero tolerance law” because:

“Pope Leo XIV has wielded his new papal authority to avoid testifying about his involvement in covering up child sex abuse in Peru…New evidence shows Pope Leo granted a dispensation to an accused Peruvian priest to end an internal investigation of his own conduct” SNAP stated after a press conference on Dec. 4, 2025.

“This evidence included internal Vatican documents, emails from Pope Leo, and recordings of meetings with Church officials discussing the cases of sexual abuse reported by Ana María Quispe Díaz and two other victims from the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru. Her full statement regarding the recent updates in her case can be found here.” noted SNAP.

“In a 2022 in-person meeting with (the then) Bishop Robert Prevost of Chiclayo, Ana María Quispe Díaz and two other victims reported that when they were between the ages of 9-14 years old, Fr. Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles (Fr. Lute) took off his clothes and, while making sexually inappropriate comments, touched his own genitals as well as the private areas of the victims on several separate occasions on mission trips to rural towns outside Chiclayo.”

“Despite assertions by Prevost that the accused priest ceased exercising public ministry, Facebook photos show that Fr. Lute continued public ministry during Prevost’s tenure as Bishop of Chiclayo,” SNAP stated.

“Fr. Giampiero Gambaro, OFM Cap., vice rector of the Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae, called Ana María Quispe Díaz and the two other clergy abuse victims to a meeting at the Bishopric of Carabayllo in Lima on April  23, 2025.

“Fr. Giampiero, the delegate instructor appointed by the bishop of Chiclayo to carry out the administrative work in the canonical investigation into Fr. Lute, can be heard in newly released recordings of this meeting making several shocking claims. He affirmed that Fr. Lute had acknowledged the acts of abuse they reported, stating, ‘It may be that he considers it a sin. But he doesn’t consider it a crime.’” (🎧Listen to audio with English transcription)

“Gambaro also presented an update on Fr. Lute’s status to the victims, characterizing it as ‘good news,’ stating that Fr. Lute had requested voluntary dispensation from the priesthood, citing the psychological exhaustion their accusations had caused him, framing Fr. Lute as a victim of the three women who reported he had abused them as young girls. Gambaro told the victims that this meant there would be no further investigation of the abuse. 

“Gambaro framed Fr. Lute’s dispensation as a loss of ‘dignity’ and ‘rights,’ implying that this is a punishment for Lute though he has been granted an ‘honorary discharge’ from the priesthood with no trial, no finding of guilt, and no public record of his crimes. 

Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected Pope on May 8. “Most significantly, the only person in the 1.4 billion member Catholic Church empowered to sign off on this dispensation, is the man who stands to lose the most by an investigation and trial: Pope Leo himself, who serves as both judge and interested party in a case that directly implicates his own oversight,” SNAP concluded.  

Why Pope Leo and his men will not “end the abuse crisis.”

 “On Jan. 31, 2014, the Committee for the Rights of the Child handed down its concluding observations in which it criticized the Holy See’s secrecy laws, its inadequate disciplinary system, the failure to mandate reporting of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities, and its failure to cooperate with independent inquiries,” ucanews.com noted on Dec. 9, 2025.

“In its response, the Holy See made a surprising assertion. It stated that its only obligation under the convention was to the 30 children living in the Vatican City (the children of the Swiss Guards and other staff). Within those 49 hectares, the Church decides whether any of its priests and religious, convicted of child sexual abuse by civil or canonical courts, will still have access to some of the 300 million children that attend its schools, churches, and religious activities.

“The Holy See said attempting to implement the convention in other countries ‘could constitute a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states,’” ucanews.com wrote on Dec. 9, 2025.

“Non-interference in the internal affairs of states” reiterated the Vatican’s position of immunity for the popes and their men from all law save its own. In 1929, a bankrupt and debt-ridden Vatican and the Italian government signed the Lateran Treaty creating the Vatican City State as a sovereign entity over which the pope was given political autonomy.

So Pope Leo can do as he pleases – even if immoral or illegal – immune to any laws or judgments save his own. 

Thus, the global Catholic Church will continue to lose members who are sickened and disgusted by the continuing sexual torture of children and the lack of compassion and solace for the survivors.

Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America.

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“For every 100 people who join the Catholic Church, 840 leave….No other religion has nearly as bad of a join/leave ratio,” wrote the author of an article in crisismagazine.com based on the March 2025 Pew Research Center survey about U.S. Catholics.

Catholics Are Rapidly Losing Ground

Although “20% of U.S. adults self-identify as Catholic, only 21% of those Catholics say they attend Mass weekly” that Pew survey stated. That equates to “only 3.8% of all Americans being practicing Catholics,” crisismagazine.com noted.

Compare that to the “41% of Catholics who said they attended church at least once a week,” in the March 2008 Pew Research Center survey, twice as many as the current report.

Continue reading →

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 “As of June 26, 2025, 332,553 people have died worldwide, including 224,575 children caused by the Trump administration’s cuts to 83 percent of USAID grants,” Dr. Brooke Nichols, associate professor at Boston University, stated in a July 1 report published in The Washington Post.

Also, “More than 14 million people could die by 2030 as a result of USAID cuts, including 4.5 million children younger than 5 years old,” stated a report by a 15-member research team published in the June 30, 2025, edition of the medical journal The Lancet.

EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network)* has supported Donald Trump and his legions since 2016. In every interview they fail to correct Trump and his legion’s blatant lies and omit their criminal and cruel actions. By encouraging more EWTN viewers, the Vatican cooperates in Trump’s cruelty. 

 “EWTN Global Catholic Network announced it will serve as the exclusive media partner providing news coverage, broadcast, and digital streaming of Pope Leo XIV’s first-ever digital visit with American Catholic youth during the 2025 National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) on November 21, 2025,” a clear effort by the VAtican to increase the number of EWTN’s viewers

“According to the NCYC, the Holy Father is expected to address as many as 15,000 registered young people ages 14-18 gathered in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, and many more watching online around the world,” as reported by the CNA Staff for the Nation.

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/ewtn-to-carry-pope-leo-xiv-s-first-ever-digital-visit-with-america-s-catholic-youth

The following is just a very small sample of hundreds of articles and TV shows

of EWTN’s fawning and obsequious support for Trump and his legions.

“The GOP presidential candidate was featured on the Oct. 27, 2016, episode of EWTN’s The World Over. Raymond Arroyo, lead anchor and managing editor interviewed Trump. (Full Text Register Staff Nation October 28, 2016)

Arroyo: “When I travel the country, people say, ‘I’d like to vote for Donald Trump, but I don’t think I can look my wife and my daughter in the eye if I did so.’ They’re reacting to those Billy Bush comments (i.e. the authenticated “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump bragging about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’) and the reaction to some of these people who are accusing you across the country. What do you say to them?

Trump: “Well, that never happened – those were artificial. They were made up,”

Arroyo: “You weren’t always pro-life, but you now are determinedly and decidedly pro-life.” 

Trump: “Yes, I am pro-life.”

 “The US, although it represents just 4% of the world’s population, accounted for over 20% of all confirmed COVID‐19 cases and deaths worldwide that took place on Trump’s watch (The Trump Administration and the COVID‐19 Crisis by the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University, 2022.

“It has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of COVID‐19 deaths could have been avoided….While not responsible for everything that went wrong, President Trump was a decisive factor behind the tragically sub‐optimal US pandemic response,” the report noted.

On Aug. 4, 2020, EWTN Nightly News lead anchor Tracy Sabol conducted a White House interview with President Donald Trump:

Sabol: And if there was one message you wanted to say to our viewers, what would it be right now?

Trump: “These people are going to take all of your rights away, including Second Amendment, because, you know, Catholics like their Second Amendment. So I saved the Second Amendment. If I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have a Second Amendment. And pro-life is your big thing.”

Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed in a mass shooting on Aug. 27, 2025, while gathered for Mass at the Annunciation Catholic Church to mark the first week of classes at the parish school. Twenty one others were wounded, including 18 children between the ages of 6 and 15.

The killer, a 23-year-old white male, approached the side of the church and fired 116 rounds from an assault rifle through the windows. The man was later found dead in the back of the church from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities are still investigating his motive.

The shooting renewed debates over America’s gun laws. “For the third straight year, firearms killed more children and teens, ages 1 to 17, than any other cause including car crashes and cancer” stated a report by the John Hopkins School of Public Health dated September 12, 2024. “In the U.S., gun death rates in this age group have increased by 106 percent since 2013 and have been the leading cause of death among this group since 2020,” the report added.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens

Two of Minnesota’s prominent leaders, both Democrats, seized the moment to push for change.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison: “An assault weapon ban may well have stopped him from using that weapon…We passed the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. For 10 years, we dramatically reduced mass shootings. We allowed it to expire in 2004. And the mass shootings went right back up. It’s not as if we don’t know how to do this….

“And I can tell you, being the attorney general and having spent 12 years in Congress, there’s a powerful lobby that will insist that there be guns everywhere, anywhere, and that they be allowed to sell guns to whoever they want to sell them to whenever they want to.” Ellison said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: “These kids were literally praying in church. And it is on us right now, not just to sit back. It’s on all of us to take the necessary actions so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again….

“We’re not talking about getting rid of your father’s hunting rifle, but we are saying why should you be able to have assault weapons? Why do you need these high capacity magazine clips where you can reel like 30 bullets off before you even need to reload?” 

Tragically, Congressional Republican will continue to make sure that assault weapons are readily available.

Immigration

On Feb. 13, 2025, on EWTN’s The World Over, Raymond Arroyo interviewed Thomas Homan. “On U.S. immigration policy, we absolutely are protecting human dignity,” Homan said.

A lifelong Catholic, Homan served as acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 30, 2017, to June 29, 2018. In November 2024, then president-elect Donald Trump designated Homan as “border czar” for Trump’s second presidency.

“The US government separated more than 4,600 children from their parents between 2017 and 2021. The 1,360 children who remain unaccounted for amount to nearly 30 percent of children separated during the first administration of President Donald J. Trump,” stated a report by the Department of Homeland Security dated Dec. 16, 2024.

“Trump’s cruel immigration machine is still tearing families apart. In its first five months, this administration has taken approximately 500 migrant children living in the U.S. from their homes and into government custody,” Jordan Forster, developmental neuroscientist at Yale University; Dylan Gee, professor of psychology at Yale University and Dina Francesca Haynes, executive director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School wrote in a reported dated June 26, 2025.

“ICE raids have turned playgrounds and classrooms into places of uncertainty and trauma. Family separation is happening in homes, schools, and courthouses across the country… A Marine Corps veteran’s wife, taken from her two-year-old and three-month-old children. A fourth-grade boy from California taken from his father and detained at a routine immigration appointment, later deported to Honduras. An asylum-seeking 9-year-old girl and her mother parted from her stepfather and 16-month-old sister and taken into federal custody.”

“During the president’s first term, the practice of forcibly separating families of immigrants faced widespread outrage and protracted legal challenges…Now, in Trump’s second administration, family separation has gone largely unchecked, as the courts and Congress abdicate responsibility and cede control of immigration policy to the executive branch,” Foster et al wrote.

“This prolonged detention and parent-child separation has profound and lasting consequences on the developing brain. Children are especially vulnerable to trauma early in life, when brain plasticity is highest. Forced separation from a parent – or living in constant fear of it – triggers the brain’s threat detection systems, increasing their risk for mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These consequences are linked with emotional and behavioral challenges that can last into adulthood,” Foster et al wrote

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-immigration-family-separation-deportation-rcna215386

Cruelty to Deportees

When asked about whether the administration is respecting the dignity of deportees in the EWTN interview, Homan responded: ‘We absolutely are.’

“The U.S. government sent more than 280 young men to CECOT, a Guatemalan jail notorious for torture, in secret in March and April 2025, with no notice to their loved ones or attorneys. There, they were held incommunicado and tortured,” as reported by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC),

https://www.nilc.org/resources/tracking-the-cecot-disappearances/

“To date, the U.S. government has not given any of the 280+ men an opportunity to defend themselves against any alleged basis for this exile – nor have we seen a full list of the men originally sent to CECOT,” the NILC wrote.

Cruelty to Detainees

“The countless videos of apparent ICE raids show federal agents with their faces covered, wearing plain clothes without a badge or identification, prompted protesters to call the detainment ‘illegal abductions,’” because their victims had not been accused of any wrongdoing, as reported by nbclosangeles.com on June 23, 2025.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/growing-calls-for-police-to-identify-and-uncover-face-amid-rise-in-ice-impersonators/3730630/

There are “images of masked men tackling and disappearing people in broad daylight” reported thehill.com on June 25, 2025.

“If you uphold the peace of a democratic society, you should not be anonymous. DHS and ICE agents wearing masks and hiding identification echoes the tactics of secret police authoritarian regimes,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair, Congressman Adriano Espaillat, said in a Press Release dated June 26, 2025.

Disappearances are the tools of authoritarian regimes,” the NILC wrote in their report.

“Disappeared” refers to one of the many types of Nazi atrocities. In 1941, Hitler ordered the Nacht und Nebel Erlass (Night and Fog Decree) designed to make anyone “deemed to be a threat … vanish without a trace into the night and fog. Uncertainty about the fate of those abducted sowed terror in society,” wrote Juan Méndez of Human Rights Watch.

Yet not Pope Leo XIV nor any cardinal, archbishop nor bishop has ever criticized Trump or any member of his administration by name.

Continued Support for the U.S. Rightwing

The Vatican under the current pope remains as committed to rightwing U.S. politics as all papacies have since Pope John Paul II allied with Pres. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and turned the U.S. episcopate into allies of the Republican Party. (See  https://churchandstate.org.uk/…/corruption-at-the-core…/)

“Pope Leo Meets with JD Vance as U.S. Conservatives Hope for Better Relations” was the headline in The New York Times May 19 edition. The pope met with the Vice President “for a closed-door meeting at the Vatican, the first private conversation between America’s two most high-profile Catholics since the new pontiff was elected,” Elizabeth Dias reported.

On August 2, the Republican-majority Senate confirmed former CatholicVote president and founder Brian Burch to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. 

“Every Catholic Voter Needs This Book – Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good. Donald Trump has transformed our politics and made the GOP the party of the working class. Policies from trade to immigration and taxes are being realigned to make sure that Americans from all walks of life can live the American Dream,” as posted on the catholicvote.org website.

While not accepting an appointment as ambassador in rare, the Vatican did refuse France’s nominee, the career diplomat Laurent Stefanini in 2015. The French weekly, Le Journal du Dimanche, claimed that Pope Francis himself sought to replace Stéfanini because he was openly gay. The French government refused to back down initially, but the situation ultimately led to France dropping the bid and nominating another ambassador. 

“Mary Rice Hasson will receive the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Leo XIV, a papal honor recognizing distinguished service to the Catholic Church. Hasson is currently a Kate O’Beirne Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center,” reported ncregister.com on August 13.

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/mary-rice-hasson-receives-cross-pro-ecclesia-et-pontifice-from-pope-leo-xiv

“The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) is an advocacy group founded in 1976 to promote right-of-center legal and cultural policies” stated RightWingWatch.com. The infamous Leonard Leo is on the Board of Directors.

The Catholic “Leonard Leo worked at the Federalist Society and ran an array of front groups tasked with scheming to capture and control the Supreme Court funded by dark money” wrote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. On September 9, Leo’s six appointees – all raised as Catholic – “gave a silent blessing to immigration raids in Los Angeles that target people for looking Latino, speaking Spanish and working jobs that build this country but never pay enough to live in it. The ruling permits federal agents to resume raids where people are seized with no warrant, no particularized cause for suspicion. Just skin color, language and callused hands,” latimes.com stated.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-09-08/noem-vasquez-perdomo-ice-latino-profiling

Betty Clermont is the author of The NeoCatholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America.

*ABOUT EWTN

“EWTN Global Catholic Network, in its 45th year, is the largest religious media network in the world. EWTN’s 11 global TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 435 million television households in more than 160 countries and territories. EWTN platforms also include radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 domestic and international AM & FM radio affiliates; a worldwide shortwave radio service; one of the largest Catholic websites in the U.S.; electronic and print news services, including Catholic News Agency, “The National Catholic Register” newspaper, and several global news wire services; as well as EWTN Publishing, its book publishing division.”

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Pope Leo XIV is close to Opus Dei

During a meeting on May 14 with the Opus Dei prelate, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, “the Pope expressed his closeness and affection” for the prelature of Opus Dei. “In a familial atmosphere of trust, Leo gave the prelate his paternal blessing” as reported by Victoria Cardiel for the independent Catholic News Agency and published by the National Catholic Register.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264103/pope-leo-xiv-ocariz-discuss-process-of-revising-opus-dei-s-statutes

Who is Opus Dei?

There is no more comprehensive and thorough expose’ than the book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei (1997, 2006) written by Robert Hutchison.

“Opus Dei is an official institution of the Catholic Church. It has around 90,000 members, both men and women. 98% are laypeople. The remaining 2% are priests,” Hutchison wrote. It’s headquarter is in Rome.

“Opus Dei provides spiritual formation aimed at helping people develop their spiritual life,” and most members try to follow this guideline, Hutchison noted. But he also stressed, “Opus Dei expressly forbids members to disclose their affiliation unless expressly authorized to do so.”

Opus Dei is the only organization in the Church designated as a personal prelature. “This enables Opus Dei to operate as it wishes, where it wishes, in total obscurity, with or without papal consent, unburdened by any oversight,” Hutchison explained.

At the top, Opus Dei leaders form a transnational elite. “They seek to colonize the summits of power,” Hutchison states.

In an article published Jan. 24, 2025, Spriha Srivastava wrote, “President Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. But one of the biggest moments came when Ana Botín, the executive chair of Santander, introduced herself by subtly challenging Trump’s familiarity with her. ‘You may not know me as well as the other panelists,’ she said before adding that Santander’s global customer base was larger than that of Bank of America, whose CEO, Brian Moynihan, was onstage with her, or JPMorgan.’”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/packed-hall-davos-hear-trump-184210357.html

Banco Santander S.A. is “the largest bank in the Eurozone by market value and one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalization.”  

Because Opus Dei was founded in Spain, the Spanish Botin family has long been associated with “the Work” as its members refer to their organization.

The bank has had a terrible history of cheating its customers and running afoul of regulations.*

Santander funds Opus Dei business schools. “Santander’s interest in higher education is a deep interest, long term, because we understand that at the university are studying the leaders who will run the country in the future,” explained a company official.

Opus Dei’s flagship university is in Navarre, Spain. Its graduate business school, IESE, founded in 1958, “has growing alliances in key areas such as Latin America, China and Eastern Europe, campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, and New York City and teaching facilities in Munich and Sao Paulo,” according to a 2012 report in the Economist. They also operate a global network of MBA schools stated Bloomberg.

Part 2: Money Laundering

“Remember: Wealth can’t be separated from power. Power begets wealth and wealth begets power,” Robert Reich, professor and former United States Secretary of Labor, warned us.

“Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world, What gives Opus Dei its importance is that it deploys its immense financial resources,” Javier Sainz Moreno, professor of Law at Madrid University, told Hutchison. And for them “the ends justify the means,” Hutchison wrote on pp 261, 262.

“Opus Dei is the most powerful force in the Catholic Church” Hutchison explains in his Introduction. “This book reveals that Opus Dei has become the Catholic Church’s paramount financial power” noted the amazon.com website.

“Control of the Vatican finances became Opus Dei’ most pressing objective,” Hutchison stated on p 363.

Pope Leo is close to Opus Dei as were his three predecessors.

“Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s election was backed by Opus Dei to insure the organization’s elevation to personal prelature,” Hutchison stated on p257. Pope John Paul II changed the Code of Canon Law in 1983 to make it official.  

“Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Opus Dei’s closest ally in the Roman Curia, was elected in record time, requiring only three ballots,” Hutchison wrote in his Introduction.

Because the book was published in 2006, it does not include information on the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio in 2013. I wrote an article documenting Pope Francis’ closeness to the prelature – THE OPUS DEI POPES: PART 3 – FRANCIS including: After Pope Francis’ election in March 2013, Banco Santander made itself available “at the Vatican’s disposition” as a consultant. “Santander, owned by the Botin family, is preparing training courses” for Vatican staff.  The bank “will have a presence that is going to mean a new leading role of Santander in the Vatican.”

“Close to Opus Dei” means that Leo, like his three predecessors did, will turn a blind eye to their using the Vatican City State’s sovereign immunity from all outside regulations and laws to launder money.

After 9/11, in order to curtail funding of terrorists, international financial regulators began exercising oversight on states that failed to comply with their rules regarding money laundering and other hidden monetary transfers. These were known as Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations.

Regulators required financial institutions to stop doing business in unregulated countries like the Vatican City State according to the Financial Times,

 “If a state is perceived to be at risk for money laundering, its financial institutions – in this case, the Vatican Bank in particular – usually pay a price. Depositors may take their business elsewhere, worried about possible seizures of assets, while banks in other countries may impose higher transaction costs to cover more aggressive ‘due diligence’ measures. In general, a state’s ability to play the global financial game is impeded,” explained Vatican expert, John L. Allen Jr.

The IOR is the eighth most popular destination for laundered money, ahead of the Bahamas, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the London Telegraph reported in January 2010.  “Persons close to Opus Dei controlled the Vatican Bank (otherwise known as the IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione),” noted Hutchison on p 295.

One adviser to the Vatican told the Financial Times that “it was the bankers’ fear of being tarnished by their links with the Vatican Bank – and fears of fines from emboldened regulators – that led [the Vatican] to clean up its act.”

In September 2010, Italian financial authorities seized 23 million euros from two Vatican bank accounts held in Italian banks because the Holy See refused to disclose the source of these funds. According to court documents, prosecutors stated the IOR deliberately flouted anti-money-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.”

So Pope Benedict had no choice but to establish the Financial Information Authority (FIA) in 2011 with “full powers of supervision over all the institutes and offices of the Holy See, the Roman curia, and Vatican City, including the IOR.” Establishing this “watchdog” department was a requirement by the EU in order for the Vatican City State to continue to use the lire as its currency.

On March 16, 2012, under pressure from the U.S. Treasury Department, JP Morgan Chase notified the Vatican that it closed the IOR account in its Milan branch because the IOR was “unable to respond” to requests for information about the provenance of the deposits. JP Morgan had been requesting the information since 2010. JP Morgan reported 1.8 billion euros ($2,200,000,000) had been deposited in the last 18 months in that account and then transferred to an IOR account in Frankfurt. And this is one account out of how many IOR accounts around the world?

On January 1, 2013, “the Bank of Italy, which had placed the Vatican Bank under intense scrutiny, blocked Deutsche Bank Italia from operating financial services inside the Vatican, including the use of credit cards at its museums and retail stores, after the Vatican failed to meet a Dec. 31 compliance deadline.” Per The Economist: “The reason for the central bank’s tough stance is that it has to comply with the European Union’s banking and anti-money-laundering law. This law permits EU banks to operate in non-EU countries only if these have adequate regulatory frameworks and supervisory controls in place.”

The Vatican began losing $40,000 a day in sales revenue. On Feb. 12, 2013, the Vatican announced that it found a consortium in Switzerland – another country that does not belong to the European Union – as a replacement for Deutsche Bank Italia. The fact that the Vatican chose a Swiss firm to manage financial services inside the Vatican “isn’t a good, transparent sign,” noted Carlo Marroni, a Vatican expert with the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore.

Under pressure, the IOR released its first public financial statement for the 2012 fiscal year in July 2013. But the names of the depositors and where bank funds are invested were secret.

The IOR announced in July 2014 that there were no longer any anonymous accounts. Depositors are now restricted to “Catholic institutions, clerics, Vatican employees or former employees with salary and pension accounts, as well as embassies and diplomats accredited to the Holy See.”

However, this is no guarantee the remaining depositors will not be used as “fronts” for illegal activities. “Investigators found that dirty money can also pass through non anonymous accounts belonging to priests.” For example, in 2012, four priests came under investigation for operating IOR accounts for the Mafia to launder money.

The 2024 annual report of the Financial Information Authority was released by the Vatican on April 9, 2025. The FIA recorded 129 incoming cross-border cash declarations above the amount of EUR 10,000 amounting to more than €18 million, and outgoing declarations totaling €5.2 million (emphasis mine) according to the pillarcathoic.com website.  (10,000 dollars or Euro per transaction is the amount set by the AML/CFT regulations that require reporting.)

On April 8, 2015, it was reported that magistrates in Rome “are expressing their dissatisfaction” that still no work was being done by the IOR to counter money laundering.

The Vatican: Corrupt at its Core

That was the last recorded criticism of the Vatican’s money laundering. Whether those who regulate money laundering have lost their zeal for enforcement now that 24 years have passed since 9/11, or those who want to launder money found more lucrative returns from other financial institutions, we do not know. 

Other Indications of Corruption in the Vatican

Like all plutocrats, Opus Dei favors the political party who will lower taxes for the wealthy and reduce or eliminate regulations. “Close to Opus Dei” means being close to the right wing of the Church, culture wars and political allies of the prelature’s leaders.

“Pope Leo is clear on his opposition to the attempted ordination of women,” reported Jonathan Liedl in the May 9 article in the National Catholic Register.

“Pope Leo affirmed that priests must be celibate … as he met in St. Peter’s Basilica with about 400 bishops and cardinals from 38 countries attending this week’s special Holy Year celebrations for clergy,” reported Nicole Winfield on June 25 for apnews.com.

“Prior to his papal election, Cardinal Prevost spoke out rarely, but forcefully, against disordered sexual practices and ideologies. At the 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization, he raised concerns among his fellow bishops that Western media and pop culture fostered ‘sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel,’ including the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ and ‘alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children,’” Liedl wrote.

“As the bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, he said, ‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,’” noted Liedl.

“Christian values are being threatened by the malign influences of power politics and big money,” Hutchison wrote as quoted on the back cover of his book.

“Pope Leo Meets With JD Vance as U.S. Conservatives Hope for Better Relations” was the headline in The New York Times May 19 edition. The pope met with the Vice President “for a closed-door meeting at the Vatican, the first private conversation between America’s two most high-profile Catholics since the new pontiff was elected,” Elizabeth Dias reported.

In a letter dated July 25 Pope Leo XIV praised migrants. “Their courage and tenacity bear heroic testimony to a faith that sees beyond what our eyes can see and gives them the strength to defy death,” without mentioning Trump by name  according The Washington Post.

The U.S. episcopate – every bishop, archbishop and cardinal – was appointed by an Opus Dei-approved pontiff.

The prelate of Wall Street, New York’s Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan offered a prayer at Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and led the invocation at Trump’s second inauguration in 2025.

Compare Dolan’s implied support for Trump with that of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., Mariann Budde, who delivered a sermon at the National Cathedral the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration.  “She spoke directly to Trump who was seated in the front row. ‘I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said, invoking gay, lesbian, and transgender children, as well as undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers.”

The U.S episcopate as been only vocal in their opposition to Trump’s immigration actions.

 On June 16, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement: “In the context of a gravely deficient immigration system, the mass arrest and removal of our neighbors, friends and family members on the basis of immigration status alone, particularly in ways that are arbitrary or without due process, represent a profound social crisis before which no person of good will can remain silent.”

Like Pope Leo, Archbishop Broblio never criticized Trump by name.

Unlike other American religious groups, no U.S. bishop, archbishop or cardinal has ever declared any of his properties as sanctuaries for immigrants.

 “A coalition of more than two dozen religious groups is suing the White House over its policy allowing immigration officers to arrest suspected illegal immigrants in houses of worship” the independent Catholic News Agency reported on Feb. 11, 2025.

“In their lawsuit, filed Tuesday at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the 27 religious groups, including the Mennonite Church, the Episcopal Church, the Friends General Conference, and several Jewish groups including the New York-based Rabbinical Assembly, argue that the enforcement of immigration arrests in churches is ‘substantially burdening the religious exercise’ of the plaintiffs’ congregations and members.”

 On July 28, “A coalition of Protestant denominations – including several synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America along with Quaker churches, Baptist churches, and community churches –  filed a lawsuit to challenge a policy from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that makes it easier for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to arrest suspects at churches and other sensitive locations,” The Nation reported as posted on ncregister.com.

And no U.S. bishop has ever has ever put themselves in a position to be arrested as did Bishop William J. Barber II, founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. 

“The Rev. William J. Barber was arrested May 6, 2025, in the U.S. Capitol following a prayer-protest against potential cuts to Medicaid. He warned congressional Republicans against weaponizing ‘our tax dollars against us’” as reported by nbcnews.com.

On June 2, “the Rev. William Barber led a group of clergy in several minutes of prayer inside the Rotunda building before the group was advised by a senior officer with the US Capitol Police that they were in violation of the building’s prohibition against demonstrations. Barber and several others can be seen continuing to pray as they are led away in zip-ties, in video taken by The Independent at the protest.”

“Clergy have said planned GOP cuts to Medicaid is a moral issue. It’s not a Republican or Democrat. It’s a moral issue,” Barber said.  “His Moral Monday rallies, held in DC, his home state of North Carolina and elsewhere, have rallied left-leaning faith leaders on issues that affect low-income communities across the country for more than a decade,” The Independent noted.

Conclusion

Opus Dei will continue to control the Vatican’s finances and politics as long as the city state has an exemption from international financial oversight.

Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America

*A sampling of Santander headlines:

Santander tops consumer complaints in Brazil

Huge Eurobank, rated ‘Britain’s worst,’ now accused of gouging U.S. consumers

Banco Santander S.A. Fined $200 Million for Advice Failings

Santander fined €16.9m by Spain’s stock market regulator for failing to provide buyers of its Valores bonds with the necessary information

Santander fined £12.4m by the [London] City regulator for serious failings in the way it sold thousands of customers investment products.

Santander Bank Fined $10 Million for Illegal Overdraft Fees by the [U.S.] Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

U.S. Federal Reserve: Santander fails to comply with state and federal regulations

Santander will pay almost $25 million to two U.S. states for predatory loans

Banco Santander fined 1 mln euros for failing to stop money laundering

Police search Santander’s Madrid HQ in money-laundering inquiry

Banco Popular, another Opus Dei bank, failed and was bought by Santander. “Popular’s 300,000 or so shareholders have now had the value of their investment reduced to zero. So have investors in some €2bn of bonds.” An article titled “The scandalous economic practices of Opus Dei,” was about Banco Popular’s predatory student loans.

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During his reign, this pontiff has failed to protect children from sexual predators and to protect Chinese Catholics from persecution. Before his election, while residing in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio cooperated with the barbarous junta who ruled during the Dirty War, gave disingenuous testimony about his actions during this period and protected sexual predators.

Pope Francis celebrated his 88 birthday on Dec. 17, 2024.  He is largely restricted to a wheelchair. A month earlier, on Nov. 20, the Vatican published a new edition of papal funeral rites. Burial outside the Vatican will be allowed in keeping with Pope Francis’ wishes.

There will be crowds mourning in St. Peters Square when Pope Francis finally succumbs to his illnesses which include “inflammation of the lungs,” “a three-hour abdominal surgery with an eight-day stay in the hospital, “ and another lengthy hospital stay “due to respiratory infection.” as described by a Jan. 17, 2025, article in the National Catholic Register.

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“Evangelicals helped Trump in states he was mostly going to win anyway. Catholics? Now we’re talking about Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. And that was the election.”

The prelate of Wall Street, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, will lead the opening prayer for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. “Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, announced he would take part in the inaugural ceremonies during an interview with the local news channel WPIX on Dec. 24.

Two days earlier, “Cardinal Dolan said in an interview with Fox “Sunday Morning Futures” host, Maria Bartiromo, Dec. 22, 2024, that he had discussed matters of faith with Trump, a nondenominational Christian. The cardinal has said in the past that the former president ‘takes his Christian faith seriously.’ ‘I believe that President Trump may have had a bit of a rekindling. Alleluia, because I don’t know how anybody can be president of the United States without a deep faith,” Dolan said as reported by the National Catholic Register.

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Project 2025 is a terrifying blueprint for America if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

 “It has been reported, though denied, that internal Project 2025 discussions have centered around the next conservative president invoking the Insurrection Act on the first day in office to allow the military to quell civil unrest,” the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism reported.

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Life: My Story Through History was published March 19, 2024. “For the first time, Pope Francis recalls his life through memories and observations of the most significant occurrences of the past eight decades,” the Amazon review noted. “Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history – from his earliest years during the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the turmoil of today.”

“The book opens with three-year-old Jorge in the kitchen with his mother in Argentina as World War II breaks out, and he goes on to witness several historic events: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the moon landing in 1969 and even the 1986 World Cup in which Maradona scored the unforgettable ‘hand of God’ goal,” the review recapped.

“Here are the frank assessments and intimate insights of a pastor reflecting on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 2001 terrorist attack on America and the collapse of the Twin Towers, the great economic recession of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, and the subsequent conclave that elected him Pontiff,” the review summarized.

And oh, by the way, Pope Francis also remembered “Videla’s coup in Argentina.” It is shocking that the most horrific period in Argentine history of brutality, torture and death would be reduced to “Videla’s coup,” especially by someone who survived.

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Pope Francis initiated a “Synod on Synodality” in October 2021 “to enhance the communion, participation, and mission of the Church,” as reported by the Catholic News Agency. “It culminates in two more global assemblies at the Vatican. The first concluded on Oct. 28, 2023, with the finalization of a 42-page synthesis report. The October 2024 session is expected to produce a final report which will be presented to Pope Francis for his consideration in issuing any related teaching,” the Catholic News Agency further explained in an article dated Dec. 12, 2023.

In addition, 300 priests selected by their bishops will attend a meeting at the Vatican from April 28 to May 2, 2024, as part of the ongoing Synod on Synodality. “After parish priests were excluded from the first session of the Synod last October, they all highlighted the importance that they have a voice in the process, as well as the value of spending time with priests from around the world.” cruxnow.com reported.

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Pope Francis celebrated his 87th birthday on Dec. 17, making him the oldest pontiff since Pope Leo XIII died in 1903 at the age of 93. He has been in the hospital three times since last March as reported by the Catholic News Agency.

On March 29, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis was expected to remain in the hospital for “some days” due to a respiratory infection. On June 7, the pope had a three-hour abdominal surgery to repair an incisional hernia. He was discharged after an eight-day stay in the hospital. On Nov. 25 he went to the hospital where a CT scan showed that he had a lung inflammation that was “causing some breathing difficulties.” He was treated with antibiotics intravenously as he recovered.

There will be crowds mourning in St. Peters Square when Pope Francis finally succumbs to his illnesses, including many Americans provided with so much adulation from the U.S. media during his reign.

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