ROME, February 22, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Italian and international media is consumed today by a story, of Machiavellian complexity, published in the daily La Repubblica, alleging that among the reasons for Pope Benedict’s shocking decision to resign was the existence of an entrenched “gay network” orchestrating “sexual encounters” and shady financial machinations within the Vatican. 

Despite their extraordinary nature, few are questioning the claim that a group of three specially appointed senior curial cardinals have presented a 300 page, two-volume document to Pope Benedict detailing the workings and sexual activities of a network of curial officials.

La Repubblica said the document is the result of an investigation, ordered by Pope Benedict, into the Vatileaks scandals that seized public attention in Italy for months in early 2012. The document was allegedly presented to the pope December 17 and remains under strict “papal secret,” locked away by Pope Benedict in his own safe.

The paper, that has not named its sources, says the report cites not only an active homosexual subculture in the Vatican, but factional “struggles for power and money”. The paper quotes “a man very close” to the document’s authors, who described its contents, saying, “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandment,” the Biblical prohibitions against sexual impurity and theft.

The document is said to identify one of the major divides in the Vatican’s internal culture as one of “sexual orientation”. “For the first time the word ‘homosexuality’ has been used, read aloud from a written text, in the apartment of Ratzinger… For the first time, although in Latin, the word blackmail, ‘influentiam,’ was used with His Holiness. ‘Impropriam influentiam,’” La Repubblica’s Concita de Gregorio writes.

The three cardinals – the paper names Spanish cardinal Julian Herranz, Italian cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi and Slovak cardinal Josef Tomko – revealed “a lobby network” identified with the various religious congregations - including the Salesians of Don Bosco and Jesuits – and “geographical origin,” described as “a network united according to sexual orientation.”

The paper quotes Cardinal De Giorgi directly, speaking about the pope’s decision to step down for the good of the Church. He said the decision was made as “a gesture of strength, not weakness”.

“He did it for the good of the Church. He gave a strong message to everyone in the exercise of authority or power who are considered irreplaceable. The Church is made up of men. The Pope has seen the problems and dealt with them in a particularly unusual, far-sighted initiative. He took upon himself the cross, in fact. But not decreased; on the contrary,” De Giorgi said.

The document, the paper said, included “dozens and dozens of interviews with bishops, cardinals and lay people. In Italy and abroad. Dozens and dozens of reports, reread and signed by the interviewees.” These interviews started with standard quesionnaires and were followed by personal interviews, the findings of which were “checked and cross-checked”.

The document is remaining secret, and will be kept by Pope Benedict who will place it directly into the hands of the new pope following the conclave. La Repubblica reports that Benedict will also meet with the three cardinals on Thursday, the last day of his pontificate.

The paper is claiming that it was with the reception of this report that Pope Benedict decided, the week before Christmas, to resign. They cited the comments by Pope Benedict in his homily for Ash Wednesday in which he decried “divisions in the ecclesial body that disfigure the face of the Church.”

But not everyone is convinced. La Stampa’s Marco Tossati wrote today that, given Cardinal Ratzinger’s 25 years in the very office most concerned with the doctrinal orthodoxy and sexual behaviour of priests and bishops, “it does not seem very plausible” that he has only now, with the publication of a single report, “suddenly decided to leave the Throne of Peter”.

The allegations have apparently caught the Vatican’s communications offices by surprise in a time of almost unprecedented turmoil for the Church’s leadership. At a hastily assembled press conference, Father Federico Lombardi would say only, “Neither the cardinals’ commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter.”

“Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this.”

It was made public by the Vatican in March last year that Pope Benedict had appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the so-called Vatileaks scandal. The investigation was carried out on two levels, with Vatican magistrates pursuing a criminal investigation and the Secretariat of State a more in-depth investigation into administrative corruption.

The result of the criminal investigation was the discovery that the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, had stolen private papers related to internal matters. Some of these were passed to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who later released a best-selling book detailing scandals and infighting within the Vatican.

Gabriele’s trial was made public and he was found guilty, held in an Italian prison for a short period and then personally pardoned by Pope Benedict. While this had appeared to be the end of the affair according to the newspapers, questions have not stopped circulating about the story behind the headlines.

It is widely believed in Italy that Gabriele, who was convicted by the Vatican’s court of illegal possession of documents of a head of state, had been chosen as a scapegoat and that the background of corruption had remained untouched. Gabriele stated that he stole the documents to protect Pope Benedict and fight an entrenched culture of “evil and corruption” among the Vatican’s hierarchy.

During his trial, Gabriele told the court, “What really shocked me was when I sat down for lunch with the Holy Father and sometimes the pope asked about things that he should have been informed on. It was then that I became firmly convinced of how easy it was to manipulate a person with such enormous powers.” He told Nuzzi in an interview that he was acting with “around 20 other people” in the Vatican, but later denied that he had been helped by anyone to remove the documents.

Certainly faithful Catholics fighting the homosexualist movement both within and without the Church have known for decades that a powerful homosexual subculture among some clergy and bishops took hold of the temporal affairs of the Church in the 1960s and after.

In his 2002 book “Goodbye Good Men,” US author and investigator Michael Rose described in detail the machinations of what came to be called the “lavender mafia” in the Catholic Church in the US. It documented the results of the changes made in the period immediately following the close of the Second Vatican Council in the practices of the Catholic institutions, particularly in seminaries and academia.

Rose and many others have pointed out that during this period, many of the seminaries abandoned their former rigor in screening prospective priests, allowing large numbers of morally unstable men to be put on track to ordination. This period also coincides closely with the time during which the great majority of the complaints of sexual abuse are recorded, nearly all by male clerics against adolescent boys and young men. At the same time, the hierarchy of the Church largely ceased emphasising the Church’s teachings on sexuality and the family.

Related LifeSiteNews story:

Cardinal Martini and the false theology promoting homosexuality

January 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Bill Clinton gave a crowd in New Hampshire this morning another reason to get out and vote: the winner of the 2016 election may have the opportunity to transform the Supreme Court, he said.

Speaking at a campaign rally for his wife, the 42nd president of the United States said the High Court may be in play in the next four years.

"We need to recognize something that has received almost no attention in this election," Clinton said approximately eight minutes into the 29-minute speech. "In all probability, the next president of the United States will make between one and three appointments to the United States Supreme Court - and I know who I want doing that."

Four Supreme Court justices are over the age of 75 -- including both the justices he appointed: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, both reliable members of the Court's liberal bloc. Conservative justice Antonin Scalia and swing vote Anthony Kennedy will both turn 80 this year.

The Susan B. Anthony List agreed that the balance of power on the Supreme Court is "one reason electing a pro-life president in 2016 is important."

Any justice's retirement or death could reshape the Supreme Court, which usually breaks down between evenly divided groups of liberals (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) and conservatives (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito), with Justice Kennedy often holding final sway - for instance, on the Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

In his speech, the first on behalf of Hillary's primary campaign, Bill Clinton said voters must elect Hillary to continue President Barack Obama's "inclusive social policy" and "stop us from going in reverse."

While he remains popular in Democratic circles, the former president's return to the campaign stump has not been without controversy. After Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of sexism, Trump raised Bill's history of womanizing and Hillary's work to suppress stories ranging from adultery to rape - something Clinton staffers referred to as "bimbo eruptions."

On Saturday, Trump tweeted:

I hope Bill Clinton starts talking about women's issues so that voters can see what a hypocrite he is and how Hillary abused those women!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2016

He doubled down on the allegation today. On CNN's "New Day" program this morning, Trump said, "I think that Hillary is an enabler."

"She has one of the great woman abusers of all time waiting for her at the house for dinner," he said.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus agreed that President Clinton's history of womanizing - from carrying on an affair in the White House to allegations that he raped Juanita Broaddrick in the late 1970s - was "fair game" if Mrs. Clinton accused other candidates of sexism.

That turn of events pleased talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who said on today's program, "Donald Trump may be a one-man wrecking ball on the entire concept of this War on Women business."

Jan. 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - It’s a common complaint in pro-life circles: Why is it often so hard to get the churches involved in social causes? We know that Christians have abortions, too—so it is impacting us personally. We know that Christians are, for the most part, very anti-abortion—so it’s not as if they disagree with the pro-life movement. So what is holding so many people back from getting involved?

Apathy is part of it. Lack of awareness is part of it. But by and large, the real reason is an attitude that runs much deeper. The answer is simple: Church-going people are often traditional, conservative people. And here I don’t mean those terms in the way that political analysts might use them, to describe specific policy positions. I mean simply that they are people who want to work hard, raise their children, and be left alone.

Prayer is out, queer theory is in, and many a middle-aged conservative has found occasion recently to splutter his coffee and gape at his newspaper: “How did things change so fast?”

“Have you ever met a parent of nine kids who was a Democratic activist?” Dennis Praeger once asked wryly. Everyone laughed. Perhaps not everyone even knew why it was so funny—it was just an absurd thought. Such a parent, everyone presumes, would have better things to do. People like my grandparents, who immigrated virtually penniless to Canada from the Netherlands in 1953, began working the land, and raised eleven children on a farm they built through blood, sweat, toil, and tears. They were too busy raising children and putting food on the table to trouble themselves with the screechings of Canadian feminists and other such activists.

Herein lies the problem the pro-life and pro-family movement has in recruiting conservative people to engage the culture to combat the social ills infecting our society: There is something fundamentally foreign about “activism.” Indeed, the term “conservative activist” itself seems to be something of a contradiction in terms. Small-c conservatives and traditionalists do not want to change the world. They want to live in it and not be bothered.

It’s in the very root of the word—“conserve.” It is markedly different in temperament from “liberal,” which denotes “liberalizing”—action. Thus, many suspicious church people even find that the word “activism” carries with it a whiff of liberalism. Ambrose Bierce brilliantly encapsulated the contrast between these two temperaments when he defined a conservative as, “A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”

Which brings us to our present unpleasant realization that from a cultural perspective, the traditionalists and conservatives have been thoroughly beaten in the war for the culture. For the most part, we never even showed up. We raised families, built farms and businesses, and attended church functions while secular revolutionaries took over the entertainment industry, the media, academia—and finally, the public education system that now dutifully serves as a conduit for secular “values.” Prayer is out, queer theory is in, and many a middle-aged conservative has found occasion recently to splutter his coffee and gape at his newspaper: “How did things change so fast?”

They didn’t, of course. The Sexual Revolution has been unfolding now for over sixty years. But now, for the first time, people are beginning to wake up and realize that what is happening is not something we can ignore, because very rapidly, it is beginning to happen to us. Already, the influences of the entertainment industry and pornography are showing in the youth. It’s why Christian publications mourn the rise of “sexual atheists”—people who still believe in God, but just don’t think His rules apply to their sex life. Churches across North America are hemorrhaging young people as the public education system dutifully does what it was put in place to do: Plant skepticism, undermine the beliefs of any children from Christian homes, and then send them off to university so that the faculty there can finish the job. It’s why enormous numbers of Christians lose their faith during university.

The government, too, will no longer leave us alone. As I wrote previously concerning Ontario’s war over sex education, the government needs the ability to re-educate children into the values of their secular system, and will go to war with parents for the right to do so. In some European countries, children are being taken away from their parents because Christian beliefs could “harm” the children—and some academics are already suggesting that Christianity could, one day, be “treatable.”

Conservatives want to be left alone to raise their children. The unfortunate fact is that we won’t be.

The secularists never had any intention of letting us carve out enclaves where we could live in peace—and a stream of legislation like Alberta’s Bill 10, which would force home-schoolers and private schools to change their teaching on sexuality, is simply the most recent evidence.

This is why the tables have been turned. Now, it is secular progressive ideology that is the status quo, having successfully infiltrated and established itself in every major institution. They have achieved a new status quo, and we traditionalists have been left with nothing left to “conserve” in the first place. We can no longer be Chamberlain giving up territory bit-by-bit—we are now the frog in boiling water, and have to decide how to confront these encroachments to retain the freedoms we need to live as Christians in a society that increasingly holds us in contempt.

How can one be a conservative in a society with nothing left to conserve and everything to fight for? It’s a pressing, imminent question that demands our attention. The twofold task of passing our Christian beliefs on to our children and preventing the government from interfering in that process was once easy—we could just live and let live. That was always a questionable strategy, especially as it ignored the massive loss of life through abortion happening in our own towns and cities. Standing up for our pre-born neighbors is not just a “cause,” but a biblical command. But now, it is in our self-interest to engage. It is not just the children of others we should be worried about, but our own. We will not have the luxury of raising children the way our parents and grandparents did. The time to speak Truth to power is now.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Planned Parenthood performed 323,999 abortions and received $553.7 million from U.S. taxpayers during the 2014-2015 fiscal year, according to its most recent annual report.

Although it saw 200,000 less patients and provided 11 percent fewer services than the previous year, its taxpayer subsidy increased by nearly $25 million.

Abortions are down from 2013, when the industry performed 327,653 abortions.

"The stability of Planned Parenthood's abortion count – between 324,000 and 334,000 since 2008 – is remarkable, given that national figures for abortions have been in a nosedive since 2008," the National Right to Life Committee noted. "They have dropped 13 percent in just three years."

In 2014, Planned Parenthood provided 931,589 emergency contraception kits, a decrease from 2013.

Nonetheless, the Planned Parenthood increased the amount of money it received from taxpayers over the previous year, when it received $528.4 million. Government revenues accounted for 43 percent of the abortion provider's $1.296 billion in revenue during the 2014-2015 reporting period.

"We helped several affiliates return to financial health," the group's most recent report said. Its 661 affiliates reported $61.2 million in "excess revenue" (profits) in 2014. That's significantly down from $127.1 million in 2013-2014.

The most recent report, released late last month, found a decrease in overall services from July 1, 2014, through last June 30.

It performed 123,226 fewer breast exams during that time than it had in the previous year.

The number of abortions, birth control, and cancer screenings decreased markedly.

Its prenatal services continued its downward trend, as well, from 18,684 to 17,419.

The group performed 718 female sterilizations and 3,445 vasectomies last year, another downturn.

One area that showed a modest increase was adoption referrals - 2,024, up from 1,880 in 2013. That means the organization performed 160 abortions for every child referred for adoption.

Yet the new report hails a series of "breakthroughs," particularly its legislative lobbying efforts.

"We protected and expanded access to abortion," one headline in the report says.

The group spent $39.3 million on "public policy," another $16.7 million to "engage communities," and $4.6 million to "refresh our brand."

"Our advocacy efforts never slow down," the report states. "We are constantly working hard to deepen our partnerships with allies, lobby in state legislatures, and fight in the courts when access to safe and legal abortion is threatened."

It credited a bill it supported, a California law allowing non-physicians to perform abortions, with "raising abortion access to a gold standard."

Planned Parenthood also saluted the Supreme Court decision redefining marriage nationwide, Obergefell v. Hodges, as well as saying that the Affordable Care Act (conventionally known as ObamaCare) "is woven into the fabric of our health care system."

The report states that abortion advocacy is seamlessly tied to homosexual and transgender activism. "Planned Parenthood believes that reproductive rights are deeply connected to LGBTQ rights and is proud to be a provider of health care and information for so many in the LGBTQ community," the report says. Its affiliates now provide hormone treatments for transgender people in 26 centers across 10 states: California, Colorado, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Vermont, and Washington state.

The report concluded just weeks before the Center for Medical Progress released a series of undercover videos showing prominent Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price it hoped to receive in exchange for organs and tissue harvested from aborted babies.

“We are at a critical moment in our history," Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards wrote in a joint statement with Chairwoman Jill Lafer, which is included in the report. "Over the past several months, we have been tested in every way imaginable.”

You may read the full 2014-2015 Planned Parenthood report here.

The previous year's report is here.