.
The People's Pope has
stayed true to his message of social justice and continued to say capitalism as
it is practiced today is a manipulation by the rich to control the lives of
everyone else. It is a message that
undermines the flamboyant living of a number of Bishops of the Church, a number
of whom have already sold off million dollar estates.
More important, it is a direct
challenge to the political leaders of America to stop protecting the rich
and start caring for the middle class and poor. It seems odd that all those defenders of the
people running for and holding political office are pretty much silent when it
comes taking on capitalism.
Capitalism is not
protected by our Constitution and did not even exist when our nation was
founded in this country. It evolved over
time and as it became more and more of a force in the evolution of America those
practitioners of capitalism seemed to create their own creed, their own
constitution and their own priorities far disparate from those of our
Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Where our nation was
founded on equal opportunity and individual freedom, capitalism was based on
greed, power, accumulation and control. Once upon a time our nation was the model for
the world in terms of social justice and the good of the people was the goal of
the nation and it led us into combining charity and government assistance into
housing, medical practices, transportation, education and agriculture practices
that transformed our country and was a beacon to the world.
But somewhere along the
line serving the public good fell victim to the greed driven obsession of
wealth, power and control. It wasn't
enough to have more money than everyone else, it became fashionable to protect
your own wealth by denying it to others.
Our institutions of
commerce became more and more exclusive until financial vehicles like the stock
markets were thoroughly corrupted with the blind complicity of our very own
government. Corruption has seeped into
nearly every aspect of capitalism from financing to banks, to markets, to manufacturing,
distribution, sales, quality control and you name it.
The government, federal,
state and local, became the way to legitimize corruption and all it took was the
rich setting aside a small percentage of the trillions of dollars in our
economy to lobby politicians, set up kickbacks, insider trading deals,
political campaign contributions, arms deals and you name it as long as tax
dollars were used and there were no restrictions on bonuses whether corporate executives
or government employees.
When the dark side takes
hold the talons run deep, straight to the heart, and both those people who were
participating in corruption and those who were ignoring corruption became the normal,
not the exception to the rule.
Total it takes a Pope from
South America to point out the obvious to Americans because those here in America
responsible for what goes on are caught up in the game and long ago lost their
moral compass.
Long ago Jesus Christ went
ballistic when he found the merchants peddling their wares in the Temple and he drove them
away. There is no Jesus today and
instead of a Temple
we have a nation that is full of corrupt and unethical practices. Maybe instead of trying to fix economic
problems caused by greed we should eliminate the instruments of evil used to
cheat the people through capitalism and restore individual rights, freedom and
equality.
As for the Pope, well he
practices what he preaches. Just check
out the next article about how he has cleaned house in the Vatican Bank, a
corrupt partner to the American banking system. If only our elected representatives had the
same guts for protecting the people. Maybe
the multi-million dollar bonuses earned by defrauding the American people and
triggering a worldwide recession won't happen again.
Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again
By Rob Garver
.
Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again
When he took over as head of the Roman Catholic Church last year, Pope
Francis made it clear that he meant to be the leader of a “poor church” –
meaning that the Vatican would focus less on its own splendor and more on
finding ways to use its vast financial resources to benefit the world’s poor.
It’s turning out to be more of a struggle than Francis may have expected;
last week he found it necessary to fire all five directors of the
Vatican’s Financial Information Authority –
essentially the primary financial watchdog over the
Papal State’s
considerable financial operations.
The announcement on Thursday was only the most recent in a series of
firings, replacements, and arrests that have rocked the
Vatican’s
financial hierarchy. It turns out that for Francis, casting the moneychangers
out of the
Temple
has proven to be a time-consuming task.
Last summer, a number of senior officials with the Vatican Bank resigned
around the time that one of its senior accountants, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano,
was arrested and charged with conspiring to smuggle more than $20 million from
Italy to
Switzerland. Scarano,
reportedly
known in Rome as “Monsignor 500” for his habit of displaying a wallet full
of €500 notes, has since been charged with multiple other offenses, including
money laundering.
In January, Francis fired four out of the five cardinals on the commission
overseeing the bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR in
its Italian acronym. Supposed to serve only priests, nuns, and religious
orders, the Vatican Bank has been implicated in money laundering schemes and
other illegal activity. Francis made it clear that he was open to closing down
the bank completely.
In February, by Papal edict, he laid out multiple new transparency
requirements for the
Vatican’s
financial arm, and created a new Secretariat for the Economy, meant to act as
an auditor general for the
Vatican.
The following month, he indicated that the Vatican Bank would survive, though
in a vastly different form, as a large number of accounts not related to its
central mission were shut down.
The edict, though, has not cleaned out all of the old guard who have made
the
Vatican’s
financial system a laughingstock among law enforcement professionals and a
haven for criminals.
Last week’s announcement came after Swiss money laundering expert René
Brülhart, who was named to head the Financial Information Authority, complained
that he was being obstructed by the board – made up of five Italians with
connections to the
Vatican’s
old guard.
In years past, it might have been Brülhart, at one point the head of
Liechtenstein’s
respected Financial Intelligence Unit, who found himself out on the
street.
To Francis’s credit, there is a new board on its way in oversee the
Vatican’s financial watchdog Its makeup is remarkable only because of its
international nature: it’s made up of four international experts, including
former financial regulators – one from the U.S., one from Switzerland, one from
Singapore and a fourth from Italy. It is also notable that the Italian member
is a woman, insurance executive Maria Bianca Farina, making her one of the few
women with significant authority in the
Vatican.
.
