QUI ERIT DEINDE SANCTI PATRIS?

According to bookies, the front runner for the job of absolute ruler of the world's smallest country, and as Vicar of Christ and leader of the world's one billion plus Roman Catholics is the Italian Cardinal, Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan who is 71. Apparently (although I don't know how anyone would know) he received 50 votes of the 77 which are needed to clinch the job in the first round of voting. 

Other contenders are supposedly Brazilian Odillo Sherer, Archbishop of São Paulo , who is 63;  Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, also 63, and Marc Ouellet, from Québec, who is 69. They are rumoured to have received between 10 and 15 votes each.

One cardinal who isn't counting on getting the top job and moving to the Vatican any time soon is Roger Mahoney, whose ex-diocese of Los Angeles has just paid out $10 million in compensation for child abuse, all carried out by a priest whom Mahoney allowed to continue working with children, despite his knowing about the man's predilection for children. 

I reckon that had I been Mahoney, as well as retiring from overseeing my See, I would have declined to take part in the Conclave, [from which in any case, I would have thought him barred, due to his age (77)!]

Given the size of the Catholic population across the world, the influence that the Pope has in so many countries and the horrific recent history of child abuse and corruption, in particular in the Curia, the administrative heart of the Vatican City and the Church, (the reason many say that Pope (Emeritus) Benedictus XVI stood down) the choice of Pope is important to everyone, not just to Roman Catholics.

There are those who favour a return to an Italian Pope for the first time since 1978; but there are those who say that it would be more sensible to have a Pope from part of the world where the Church is growing, rather than one where it is in decline. Thus  African and South American candidates have been mentioned as possibilities for the first time. Some say the new Pope should be a preacher, some say an academic, some an administrator and tough manager. 

There will of course be many who remember that in 1978 there was a Pope who, it was rumoured, was shocked with the unholy doings of the Vatican Bank and allegedly had plans to investigate it. He died after 33 days in the papacy. 

I wondered if any of you have any ideas about who the next Pope should be and why. 

INTERNATIONAL AID BUDGET SPENT ON VATICAN STATE VISIT

FMQ is over at Subrosa's place this week


It seems that one of the countries that is in need of foreign aid is none other than the fabulously wealthy Vatican City.

I know this because it has come to the notice of the Committee for International Development, chaired by Malcolm Bruce, who has asked how diverting money from the international aid budget to pay for the state visit of His Holiness the Pope would meet the requirements of global aid rules.

Detailed examination of the accounts of the Department for International Development (DfID) show that £1.85 million of their fund money, was transferred from foreign aid to help pay for the expensive visit in June 2010.

Mr Bruce quite rightly noted that many people would be as surprised as the committee to discover that UK aid money was used to fund the Pope's visit. He also asked that ministers should explain exactly what this was spent on and how it tallies with Britain’s commitments on overseas aid.

Apparently DfID reckon that they were one of a number of government departments which part-funded the Pope's visit to the UK. The contribution, according to a spokesman, recognized the Catholic Church’s role as a major provider of health and education services in developing countries.

Good heavens. I’ve heard some crummy excuses in my time, but this one is worthy of a satire show all on its own. The Catholic Church does a great deal of work in under-developed countries, including continuing to deny the inhabitants the luxury of contraception to control the every larger population. Good work.

The spokesman said that the money did not constitute official development assistance and was therefore additional to the coalition government's historic commitment to meet the 0.7% UN aid target from 2013 (which is required to be met in order for the prime minister to retain his seat at the G8 table), although, I suspect that this has been hastily added now that the cat is out of the bag.

How embarrassing for the government to be found to be pilfering from an aid budget, to subsidize celebrations for the great and the good. But how typical.

But be aware that when you pay your higher taxes and get reduced services for them, that while this country blows hard about how much money it contributes to international aid, to helping the poorest people in the world, people hit by typhoons, earthquakes, disease and pestilence, that the government is just as likely to transfer the money to wining and dining heads of state, and laugh at you behind your back.

Pics: (1) The Pope has a new hat Sophia! (2) Examples of aid that the Vatican has spread around the third world, thus rendering it deserving of our aid money to fund their state visit. (3) How the ordinary people of the Vatican City live. (4) The poor wee Pope's summer residence at Gandolfo, which, along with Vatican City remains a part of the Papal States.

......AND ALL THIS MONEY FOR ONE WEE HAT

I read in the Sunday Post this week (yes, I know it’s Thursday, but I’m a slow reader) that the estimated cost of security during the Pope’s visit to Scotland this autumn will be around £70 million.

Now that’s a lot of money in any language (especially if the wee man’s only coming here to give Sophia Pangloss her red hat back).

As this is a State Visit and the Pope is here by invitation of Her Majesty’s government (ie wee Spud) as Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, we have to pick this bill up.

The security money, it seems, will come out of the Scottish government’s budget, despite the Scottish government having played no part in the invitation. And according to the article in the Post, the Scottish government says that it can’t afford it.

Now to be fair the Scottish government can easily afford £70 million pounds; it’s a lot, but in governmental terms it’s next to nothing, but at a time when pensioners are finding that their services have been cut, libraries are closing down, children’s services are being reduced etc, I think that Holyrood is quite right to say it can’t afford the money for a one day visit by a foreign head of state.

I’m not denying that this head of state may be important to a proportion of the Scottish population, and for those who feel that way his visit will be a huge event in their lives. The fact that I can’t see why, after all faith in God, is faith in God, not in a man in a long white garb, is of little relevance.

I’m also wondering who’s making the vast profit out of it. Who provides this security? As popular as the Pope will be with some people, he will be equally unpopular with others, I accept, particularly given his personal involvement in the scandals that have surrounded the Church, but £70 million... for one day?

The British Government invited the man on behalf of the British Queen. They should pay. And, as the Post suggests, it wouldn’t hurt if the obscenely wealthy Vatican City State were to put its hands in its pockets.

Alternatively Sophia could just nip over to Vatican on one of these cheap flights and get her hat back herself.

Pics: Sophia's hat (modeled by an elderly citizen of a small Mediterranean country), and an example of some of the Vatican's wealth that it might conside selling to pay for the Pope's security (in fact Michelangelo's Pietà which is in St Peter's Basillica, Vatican)

WHAT'S GOOD FOR PRIESTS ISN'T GOOD FOR FCO JUNIORS

The hypocrisy of the Vatican!

I feel I should apologise for blogging on the same subject twice in succession, but I had a quick glance at the papers this evening and I really began to wonder if we’d stepped back in time to All Fools’ Day.

It seems that the Vatican has taken the insulting proposals for the Pope’s visit very seriously and mutterings in Holy See are that the Pope may cancel his state visit to Scotland and England. Apparently the British Ambassador to the Vatican City State was summoned this afternoon to see the Secretary of State, the man in the Vatican who deals with Foreign Affairs and is the de facto Deputy Pope. The matter will now be discussed with the Pope himself.

It appears that this, on top of other matters such as Richard Dawkins’ threat to have the Pope arrested, persuaded officials at the Vatican, that acceptance of the invitation delivered by Jim Murphy on behalf of the Queen was a big mistake.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Senior Papal aides suggested the Foreign Office had not taken strong enough disciplinary action against those responsible for the document.

Now I’m not making excuses for the idiot employee who wrote this rubbish, but what was it that the FCO did to the guy? Oh yes. He was reprimanded and transferred to other duties.

Now then, what was it that these bishops did, sometimes with the good Cardinal Ratzinger’s knowledge when they discovered a priest had been abusing people in his care? Oh yes. They reprimanded him and transferred him to other duties.


See the connection there?

The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that a stupid, childish and disrespectful prank is, in the eyes of the Vatican, on the same level of severity as the hideous crime of child abuse. Would that be about right?

Or is it, to be totally honest, that anticipating an embarrassingly hostile reception when he landed in Edinburgh, and realising that he had only been invited as part of a pre election publicity stunt by the Labour Party, the Pope was desperately looking for a good excuse not to make the visit? And we handed him one on a plate.

Whatever, it’s not looking good for Spud.

Pics: Foreign Office and The Vatican

Joyeuses Pâques....Happy Easter

The message of Easter somehow got buried today in several rows over the Catholic Church and paedophilia.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams, criticised the Catholic Church in Ireland saying that it had lost all credibility stunning the Archbishop of Dublin. Rowan Williams also made it clear that he was angry about the Pope’s plans for a new ‘ordinariate’ to take Anglicans, dissatisfied with the idea of women bishops and gay bishops, over to the Roman Church. He refused absolutely to give his blessing to Anglicans who seek to take up the Pope’s offer to help them convert.

He was speaking in a recording for an Easter Monday broadcast of the Andrew Marr show on Radio 4 “Start the Week”. He talked about an Irish friend who told him that it was difficult to walk down the street in Ireland now wearing a clerical collar. He said that, “an institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility — that’s not just a problem for the Church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland.”

This comes on the same weekend as Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pope, said that the outrage over the child sex scandals in the Catholic Church could be compared with anti-Semitism, which has caused uproar within certain sections of the Jewish community.

It seems that although child abuse in the Church has been making headlines across the world for many years, with some diocese in America being bankrupted by the claims against them, the recent revelations that the Pope, as Cardinal in charge of discipline of the clergy, was aware of individual cases (including one where the priest abused over 200 children) and yet did nothing, has blown the whole thing sky high. This time it will not go away.

In what is supposedly the most holy weekend of the Christian calendar, this story is dominating the news. I think that the question on everyone’s mind in Scotland and the wider UK, is how this will affect the visit of Pope Benedict planned for September? What kind of reception will he get? Will it even be able to go ahead, or will there be a new Pope by then?

Oh well.... It's a question for another day. In the meantime.....Happy Easter everyone. Don’t overdo the eggs!


Pictured: Pope Benedict washes 12 pairs of feet following the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

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SPUD'S OFF TO THE VATICAN TO BRING THE POPE BACK TO SCOTLAND FOR LABOUR

According to the Scotsman (make of that what you will) the Viceroy of Scotland, Spud Murphy, is hoping to bring the Pope to Scotland. He is going to the Vatican City State this week for talks with Vatican officials and will meet the Pope during His Holiness's regular Wednesday General Audience (in other words with all the other people that are going to be there).

Right! Let’s just get this a wee bit straight. First of all Brown already told us HE is bring the Pope to the UK next year. Of course the Vatican refused to comment either way as I recall. Secondly Murphy isn’t going to be “bringing” the Pope anywhere. Benedictus XVI is the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome, but in matters of international diplomacy he is a Head of State and the supreme ruler of Vatican City State. So, the likelihood of wee Spud “bringing” him anywhere is just plain silly. I’m not, therefore, sure why the Scotland Secretary is going to the Vatican. If talks about the Pope’s visit to the UK are to be held, would not some minister for European Affairs be a more appropriate person?

Again according to that pretty disreputable rag, Mr Murphy said: "It would be a fantastic occasion if the Pope were to visit Britain. The Prime Minister wants us to work closely with the Vatican. It is too early to say if the Pope will be coming to Scotland next year, but it certainly won't be for a lack of trying on my part."

Well, yep I’m sure it would be a fine occasion if the Pope decided to come to Scotland. For those of his faith it would be a huge honour. For the rest of us it would raise Scotland’s profile and of course it would generate a lot of money for local businesses wherever the Pope went. (I mean no disrespect, heads of state mean crowds mean business.)

Although I have no religious affiliation with his church, I hope he does come.

It would be a travesty however, if Mr Brown or Mr Murphy decided to use either this story or His Holiness’s actual visit for any electoral or party political purpose, and this announcement and the Scottish Viceroy’s visit is very close to a certain by-election date, or am I just being a cynic?

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On another topic, I saw a post today on Monty Burton’s excellent Universality of Cheese blog, and I really would suggest you have a look at it. It’s truly awesome.