The St. Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church

The St. Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church

Author: Julia Meloni

Publisher: Tan Books

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781505122879

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the mid-1990s, a clandestine group of high-ranking churchmen began gathering in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Opposed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the circle plotted a revolution in stealth. By 2015, their secret ached to be told. Before an audience, Cardinal Godfried Danneels joked of being a part of a "mafia." But as explosive as Danneels's confession was, a thick cloud of mystery still enshrouds the St. Gallen mafia. In this compelling book, Julia Meloni pieces together the eerie trail of confessional evidence about the St. Gallen group. Copiously researched and grippingly narrated, The St. Gallen Mafia sheds light on the following: The mysteries of the 2005 conclave, where mafia members grew divided over a plan to back Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope. The war against Benedict XVI by the mafia's Cardinal Achille Silvestrini - and the mysterious "confessions" believed to be linked to him. The enigmatic, complicated relationship between the mafia's Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and Benedict XVI. The mafia writings that presaged a new Francis - and the 2013 conclave that elected him. Martini's enduring role as an "ante-pope" - a "precursor" for Pope Francis.


The Dictator Pope

The Dictator Pope

Author: Marcantonio Colonna

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-04-23

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 162157833X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Marcantonio Colonna's The Dictator Pope has rocked Rome and the entire Catholic Church with its portrait of an authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff. Occupying a privileged perch in Rome during the tumultuous first years of Francis’s pontificate, Colonna was privy to the shock, dismay, and even panic that the reckless new pope engendered in the Church’s most loyal and judicious leaders. The Dictator Pope discloses that Father Mario Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) was so unsuited for ecclesiastical leadership that the head of his own Jesuit order tried to prevent his appointment as a bishop in Argentina. Behind the benign smile of the "people's pope" Colonna reveals a ruthless autocrat aggressively asserting the powers of the papacy in pursuit of a radical agenda.


The Lavender Mafia

The Lavender Mafia

Author: Johnnie Barleykorn

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2020-01-28

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9781679452833

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Jack McCreesh is a high school student who feels a powerful calling to be a priest. He realizes the church is in decline and he has a desire to take bold action and become a defender of the true faith. He could see the areas where the church was failing but did not understand how deeply entrenched the wickedness was.Due to family circumstances, he decides to take time for discernment and join the military. Years as a Navy corpsman and working with the United States Marines has toughened Jack, but it may not be enough. He enters the seminary to begin his battle with dark forces and the Lavender Mafia. He quickly encounters a powerful cabal that is in direct opposition to everything he believes. He is in the minority. The narrow path can be difficult, but he finds some allies in the seminary. Jack is focused on graduating so he can fight back as an ordained priest. He's determined to stay loyal to the teachings of Christ and oppose the covert, subversive network that is undermining the faith. The future of the Catholic Church is at stake. Jack McCreesh, and other faithful men like him, are needed to turn the tide and ensure the gates of Hell do not prevail.


Global Corruption Report: Sport

Global Corruption Report: Sport

Author: Transparency International

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-05

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1317443748

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sport is a global phenomenon engaging billions of people and generating annual revenues of more than US$ 145 billion. Problems in the governance of sports organisations, fixing of matches and staging of major sporting events have spurred action on many fronts. Yet attempts to stop corruption in sport are still at an early stage. The Global Corruption Report (GCR) on sport is the most comprehensive analysis of sports corruption to date. It consists of more than 60 contributions from leading experts in the fields of corruption and sport, from sports organisations, governments, multilateral institutions, sponsors, athletes, supporters, academia and the wider anti-corruption movement. This GCR provides essential analysis for understanding the corruption risks in sport, focusing on sports governance, the business of sport, planning of major events, and match-fixing. It highlights the significant work that has already been done and presents new approaches to strengthening integrity in sport. In addition to measuring transparency and accountability, the GCR gives priority to participation, from sponsors to athletes to supporters an essential to restoring trust in sport.


Shroud of Secrecy

Shroud of Secrecy

Author: Luigi Marinelli

Publisher:

Published: 2000-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 9781552631423

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Centuries have passed and secularism seems to have a stronghold on our world view, but the Vatican still rules the practices and doctrines of more than a third of the earth`s people with arguably the same iron fist it always has. After all this time, the all-powerful Vatican remains a complete mystery to all those outside its walls. Until now. A small group of Vatican prelates felt they could not participate in the code of silence that has allowed corruption and hypocrisy to flourish within the seat of power of one of the world`s biggest, most influential religions. This group, which has referred to itself as the Millenarians, has preferred anonymity for fear of repercussions from the publication of this book. One of the group, Luigi Marinelli, was compelled to step forward, and his livelihood and life have been threatened in the balance. "The book was an act of love for the Church," Marinelli has been quoted as saying. He and his fellow Millenarians strongly believe that the Church they love cannot survive if the ruling powers are mired in bureaucracy, rampant careerism, corruption and lack of accountability. The anecdotal evidence they provide is shocking, at the very least.


Understanding Pope Francis

Understanding Pope Francis

Author: Joseph R. Blaney

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-07-13

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1793651620

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Understanding Pope Francis: Message, Media, andAudienceoffers several chapters which illuminate the often misunderstood, but widely discussed, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis. With 1.3 billion baptized members living throughout every continent, communication by and about him is a subject deserving to be understood. As technology makes the “global village” predicted by Marshall McLuhan more apparent, the complexities of leading an organization across geographic boundaries with differing ideas about culture and governance present great need to be nuanced, indeed cautious, about messages communicated across diverse media platforms and consumed by divergent audiences. This book lays bare the messages Pope Francis produces, the way that varying platforms/media present those messages, and the complex ways in which audiences formulate their interpretations.


God's Bankers

God's Bankers

Author: Gerald Posner

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 752

ISBN-13: 1439109869

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A deeply reported, New York Times bestselling exposé of the money and the clerics-turned-financiers at the heart of the Vatican—the world’s biggest, most powerful religious institution—from an acclaimed journalist with “exhaustive research techniques” (The New York Times). From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, God’s Bankers traces the political intrigue of the Catholic Church in “a meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican’s legendary, enabling secrecy” (Kirkus Reviews). Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine financial entanglements across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in one of the world’s most influential organizations. God’s Bankers has it all: a revelatory and astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, and mysterious deaths written off as suicides; a carnival of characters from Popes and cardinals, financiers and mobsters, kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that clarify not only the church’s aims and ambitions, but reflect the larger tensions of more recent history. And Posner even looks to the future to surmise if Pope Francis can succeed where all his predecessors failed: to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and to rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable financial quagmire. “As exciting as a mystery thriller” (Providence Journal), this book reveals with extraordinary precision how the Vatican has evolved from a foundation of faith to a corporation of extreme wealth and power.


A Voice in the Wilderness

A Voice in the Wilderness

Author: Archbishop Carlo Viganò

Publisher: Angelico Press

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1621386988

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“To restore the beauty of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terribly disfigured by so many abominable crimes, and if we truly want to free the Church from the fetid swamp into which she has fallen, we must have the courage to tear down the culture of secrecy and publicly confess the truths we have kept hidden.” These bold words from the pen of an archbishop in exile—part of a bombshell exposé published in August 2018 concerning Theodore McCarrick and his circle—catapulted the ecclesiastical diplomat Carlo Maria Viganò to international prominence. In a steady stream of interventions from that time onward, Archbishop Viganò has not only supplied further incriminating details on the current Vatican regime but has extended his critique to the neo-modernism and worldly accommodation that officially entered the Church through the Second Vatican Council. He argues, moreover, that just as there is a “deep state” of wealthy and powerful international elites who exercise enormous sway over political affairs and cultural vectors, so too there is a “deep church” that retains for its advantage the external trappings of religion while pursuing an agenda of error and moral corruption. These pseudo-sovereignties closely collaborate as they work for the same goals, which are, at this point, an open secret. A Voice in the Wilderness collects for the first time all the major writings of Archbishop Viganò from August 2018 to January 2021, with explanatory introductions and notes by Brian M. McCall. Finally available in one place to allow for easy access, assimilation, and debate, it is the definitive edition of an extraordinary body of pronouncements that have stirred up vehement controversy on all sides. Regardless where one stands in its regard, Viganò’s arresting message cannot be ignored. Ultimately, it is one of conversion to Christ the King, the Truth in person, who sets us free from the accumulating slaveries of our time.


The Vatican Exposed

The Vatican Exposed

Author: Paul L. Williams

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2009-09-25

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1615921427

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over 50 billion dollars in securities. Gold reserves that exceed those of industrialized nations. Real estate holdings that equal the total area of many countries. Opulent palaces containing the world's greatest art treasures. These are some of the riches of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in 1929 the Vatican was destitute. Pope Pius XI, living in a damaged, leaky, pigeon-infested Lateran Palace, could hear rats scurrying through the walls, and he worried about how he would pay for even basic repairs to unclog the overburdened sewer lines and update the antiquated heating system. How did the Church manage in less than seventy-five years such an incredible reversal of fortune? The story here told by Church historian Paul L. Williams is intriguing, shocking, and outrageous. The turnaround began on February 11, 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Through this deal Mussolini gained the support of the staunchly Catholic Italian populace, who at the time followed the lead of the Church. In return, the Church received, among other benefits, a payment of $90 million, sovereign status for the Vatican, tax-free property rights, and guaranteed salaries for all priests throughout the country from the Italian government. With the stroke of a pen the pope had solved the Vatican's budgetary woes practically overnight, yet he also put a great religious institution in league with some of the darkest forces of the 20th century. Based on his years of experience as a consultant for the FBI, Williams produces explosive and never-before published evidence of the Church's morally questionable financial dealings with sinister organizations over seven decades through today. He examines the means by which the Vatican accrued enormous wealth during the Great Depression by investing in Mussolini's government, the connection between Nazi gold and the Vatican Bank, the vast range of Church holdings in the postwar boom period, Paul VI's appointment of Mafia chieftain Michele Sindona as the Vatican banker, a billion-dollar counterfeit stock fraud uncovered by Interpol and the FBI, the "Ambrosiano Affair" called "the greatest financial scandal of the 20th Century" by the New York Times, the mysterious death of John Paul I, profits from an international drug ring operating out of Gdansk, Poland, and revelations about current dealings. For both Catholics and non-Catholics this troubling expose of corruption in one of the most revered religious institutions in the world will serve as an urgent call for reform.


NATO's Secret Armies

NATO's Secret Armies

Author: Daniele Ganser

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-06-21

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1135767858

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II. These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture. Codenamed 'Gladio' ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.