Archbishop Gregory gets caught in a deception regarding his attack on President Trump. Cardinal Becciu is at the heart of yet another Vatican Financial Scandal. And Archbishop Viganò is back with another assessment of the forces at play in the world today, vying for power. All of this in the latest 1P5 Minute!
TRANSCRIPT
(Please note, this was a working copy of the script of this episode, and not an official transcript. There may be some variations/typos)
I’m Steve Skojec and this is the OnePeterFive Minute
Well hello 1P5ers, today is Wednesday, June 10th, and here are this week’s top stories:
Archbishop Wilton Gregory, or “Wiltie Poo” as we like to call him, is still in the news this week regarding his ridiculous attack on President Trump over his visit to the John Paul II Shrine in DC.
As you may recall from last week’s episode, the Drama Queen of the Nile said that it was reprehensible that the shrine allowed the President to visit, classifying it as a photo opportunity and a political statement and that the Shrine staff had allowed it to be quote egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree end quote
Gregory did not recognize the irony of his own comments when lashing out at a president with whom he disagrees, but then, self-righteous bureaucrats with flamboyant tendencies often have very poor self-awareness or intellectual honesty.
And Gregory’s lack thereof has been shown to be particularly problematic in the wake of his comments. Although it was reported last week by Crux that Gregory had only just found about Trump’s visit to the Shrine when it was publicly announced, JD Flynn at the Catholic News Agency uncovered correspondence from May 30th indicating that Gregory had been invited to the event at the Shrine and had declined the invitation, citing a scheduling conflict.
Although there’s no indication that Gregory himself lied about what he knew and when he knew it – the reporting from Crux may have simply been missing key information — this makes Gregory’s tirade against not just Trump, but the Shrine staff themselves, wildly dishonest. If he thinks they were irresponsible for letting him attend an event he knew about and quote politely declined, what’s his excuse for not taking a stand if he truly had a problem?
Gregory has tried to shield himself from criticism of his anti-Trump temper tantrum by saying that such criticism is quote reminiscent, in my mind, to the criticism that people gave to Catholic priests and nuns that they saw marching during the civil rights period end quote
Sorry Wiltie-Poo. You don’t get to play civil rights victim when you’re a dishonest political opportunist occupying one of the most influential diocesan sees in the world, all while living in the marble-floored penthouse of a $43 million dollar building in Embassy Row, owned by the diocese. Rosa Parks you are not.
And speaking of prelates who enjoy the privileges and prestige of access to vast sums of cash, Cardinal Becciu is in the news yet again this week.
Becciu seems to be at the heart of every bit of shady financial dealing at the Vatican. from his intervention in the audit performed by Cardinal Pell to his appointment as visitator to the Knights of Malta after they received their sizable bequest to all the weird Vatican real estate dealings that have prompted questions of malfeasance, you can always find Becciu in the mix.
This time, Becciu is distancing himself from the arrest of Gianluigi Torzi, a financial broker working for the Vatican Secretariat of State and who was at the center of the Vatican scandal over the investment of hundreds of millions of euros in a London property. Torzi was arrested by the Vatican police on suspicion of extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and money laundering.
Becciu, who was the second-highest ranking member of the Secretariat of State from 2014-2018, claims he doesn’t now Torzi, who acted as a broker for the deal from 2018 to 2019. Becciu also defended the investment, saying that quote, “There has been no doubt that if it sold now it would make double what it cost – 148 million euros.” He also denied that Torzi’s arrest would have any broader impact on the curia.
CNA reports that between 2014 and 2018 – during Becciu’s tenure – the Secretariat of State paid about $300 million for the building in London. Questions have arisen over whether funds from Peter’s Pence went toward the cost – allegations that Becciu is also denying.
It was also Becciu, according to CNA, who appears to have attempted to quote:
obscure on Vatican balance sheets nearly 200 million in loans connected to the transaction by cancelling them out against the value of the property in London, an accounting maneuver prohibited by financial policies approved by Pope Francis in 2014.
The report goes on:
That apparent attempt to obscure the loans was detected by the Prefecture for the Economy, then led by Cardinal George Pell. Senior officials at the Prefecture for the Economy told CNA in 2019 that Becciu told Pell the cardinal was “interfering in sovereign business” by looking into the secretariat’s dealings with Swiss bank BSI.
If you’re looking for a reason why Pell was suddenly dragged from Rome to Australia to face trumped up charges of sexual abuse from 40 years ago, it seems that his discovery of a billion euros in the Vatican mattresses coupled with his investigation of other shady Vatican investment deals might be a good place to start.
To make matters even stranger, there is some evidence that the recently-arrested Torzi may have gotten his job by way of Pope Francis, who held a private audience with the financier in 2018. Torzi was ultimately hired by Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, another papal appointee, who was one of the figures Archbihop Carlo Maria Vigano warned about in his initial testimony in 2018. Vigano said that he had received quote worrisome information about him end quote. Parra faces allegations of homosexual predation of seminarians and even sexual abuse of minor seminarians. Vigano returned to the subject of Pena Parra in 2019, saying he had never been thoroughly investigated, and this even though a quote terrifying dossier was sent to Pope Francis detailing the allegations against him. Vigano said that the pope essentially ignored the dossier, and he remains in his position as sostituto at the Vatican Secretariat of State.
And Archbishop Vigano himself is in the news again this week after writing an open letter to President Trump. In it, the Vatican Whistleblower, who after his initial testimony in 2018 has been making his thoughts on world and church affairs known with increasing frequency, warns the president about what he envisions as two opposing sides in conflict in the world: the children of light, and the children of darkness. These latter, he claims, quote often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.
Vigano continues:
On the one hand there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family and the nation, exploit workers to make themselves unduly wealthy, foment internal divisions and wars, and accumulate power and money: for them the fallacious illusion of temporal well-being will one day – if they do not repent – yield to the terrible fate that awaits them, far from God, in eternal damnation.
Vigano states that these so-called children of darkness can be identified, politically, with the existence of the deep state, which has been engaged in battle with the president. He claims that there is also a deep Church, that quote
betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God. Thus the Invisible Enemy, whom good rulers fight against in public affairs, is also fought against by good shepherds in the ecclesiastical sphere.
Vigano then appears to level a similar charge against Archbishop Gregory – without saying his name — to the one I made in the last episode of the 1P5 Minute. Recall that I said:
These men – and I use the term very loosely – are running our Church. They have a chokehold on all of the institutions. They work against Catholic orthodoxy and unceasingly place impediments and scandals before the faithful. They are career bureaucrats looking to capitalize on politically correct public sentiment whenever and wherever possible, often living lavish lives at the expense of the souls they exist to serve.
The death of George Floyd was a vicious and unnecessary act, and it represents a tragedy that should arouse righteous anger in all of us – an anger that demands justice. But the destruction of life and property that has gone on across the nation in the past week is a demonic response, not a Christian one. It is anarchy and chaos. And Archbishop Gregory has chosen that side.
Now, here’s Vigano:
For this reason, I believe that the attack to which you were subjected after your visit to the National Shrine of Saint John Paul II is part of the orchestrated media narrative which seeks not to fight racism and bring social order, but to aggravate dispositions; not to bring justice, but to legitimize violence and crime; not to serve the truth, but to favor one political faction. And it is disconcerting that there are Bishops – such as those whom I recently denounced – who, by their words, prove that they are aligned on the opposing side. They are subservient to the deep state, to globalism, to aligned thought, to the New World Order which they invoke ever more frequently in the name of a universal brotherhood which has nothing Christian about it, but which evokes the Masonic ideals of those want to dominate the world by driving God out of the courts, out of schools, out of families, and perhaps even out of churches.
Now Vigano’s analysis, inasmuch as it is just that – an opinion based on the events unfolding in the world today – seems pretty solid to me. He sees the manipulation of these events taking place as a means to foment greater power, fueling fear and civil unrest to bring about a state of acceptance for repression and quote, a “world without freedom”. It’s as workable a hypothesis as any I’ve seen.
But where Vigano claims that the bad guys in this scenario are showing their cards out of a certainty that they already have control and no longer need to conceal their ambitions, I find myself wondering if it’s just the opposite. I wonder if they’re fearful that the people are finally starting to be awake. Many individuals have certainly fallen under the spell of the enemy. We see evidence of that all around us. But there is, still a silent majority – Vigano refers to them as the most conspicuous part of humanity – and it was these very people who voted Trump into office against all odds, voted for Brexit and saw it through, have been pushing back against the leftist, progressive, Marxist and arguably Masonic agenda around the world.
I wonder if the bad guys are hitting the gas not because they’re confident that they have things locked down, but rather because they’re actually afraid. Afraid that this social engineering project they’ve been working on for so many decades may in fact be coming apart at the seams, and if they don’t get control of the world now, their dreams may slip through their fingers entirely.
Perhaps I’m just being overly optimistic, but that’s something I think we could use more of in these dark times: hope. Never give it up. And never back down.
Thanks for watching the OnePeterFive minute. Please like and share this video, subscribe to our channel, and support our work by going to onepeterfive.com/donate today.
Until next time, I’m Steve Skojec, thanks for watching. May God bless you and keep you all safe out there.
RELATED LINKS:
- Archbishop Gregory invited to JPII Shrine Trump event days before public statement (CNA)
- Disagree with the bishop all you like, but he’s still the bishop (Crux)
- Vatican arrests London-based broker | Financial Times
- Cardinal Becciu says Torzi arrest is no ‘earthquake’ (CNA)
- Pope Francis ignored ‘terrifying dossier’ on top Vatican official’s sex abuse: Abp. Viganò (LifeSite)
- Vatican claims suspended bishop accused of sex abuse should be allowed to leave country for Rome job (LifeSite)
- Archbishop Viganò’s powerful letter to President Trump: Eternal struggle between good and evil playing out right now (LifeSite)
