Vatican Demonstrates Its Priorities with Prosecution of Financial Crimes Over Child Sexual Abuse
Cardinal Angelo Becciu was convicted of embezzlement in a Vatican real estate investment scheme. Pope Francis had ordered a crackdown on Vatican corruption more than two years ago, leading to this trial and conviction of the Cardinal and others involved in the crime. The Holy See, the other name for the rather strange city state known as the Vatican, apparently chooses not to “see” other criminal activities within its ranks, such as the thousands of priests accused of child sexual abuse and the cardinals that covered it all up. The Vatican press office released a statement touting the success of the prosecution's efforts to weed out financial misdeeds throughout the Catholic world. The International Association of Worldly Cardinals, the labor union representing Catholic cardinals, lodged a formal complaint with the Holy See's Holy Labor Relations Board over their perception that the prosecution of Cardinal Beeciu was unfair, undignified, and unholy. As the cardinals enter into holy negotiations for the Holy Master Bargaining Agreement, the lead negotiator Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger Jr. has stated his intention, in Latin, to pursue new restrictions on criminal liability for cardinals and for “extensio pontificiae infabilitatis ad omnes bases pertinentes, religiose loquendo” (the extension of papal infallibility to cover all the bases, religiously speaking.) Pope Francis, who was once a cardinal, replied with righteous indignation, “There can be only one!”