Dirty Vatican Politics By Peter West

     Just when you thought that the injustice against Cardinal George Pell, in his sex trial case was over, it emerges that there is much more, once hidden behind the scenes:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/sacked-cardinal-used-vatican-funds-to-bribe-witnesses-in-pell-trial/news-story/64a88a004f92c0b104296277462b7600

“A senior Catholic cardinal has been accused of using €700,000 ($1.14m) of Vatican funds to bribe witnesses to secure a sex abuse conviction against a rival. Italian media have reported that Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, 72, is suspected of wiring the cash to recipients in Australia who helped to ensure hostile testimony in the abuse trial of Cardinal George Pell, who was accused of molesting choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. The scandal cast a shadow yesterday over the publication of a key Vatican document calling for a more caring and sharing society and denouncing the evils of war. Before he returned to Australia in 2017 where he was tried, jailed and acquitted on appeal, Cardinal Pell, 79, served as finance minister at the Vatican, where his attempts to clean up opaque accounting were opposed by Cardinal Becciu. Quoting leaked documents, the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera reported at the weekend that Vatican investigators suspect that Cardinal Becciu hoped to use the money to definitively derail Cardinal Pell’s transparency program, which threatened to expose Cardinal Becciu’s allegedly corrupt management of Vatican cash. Cardinal Becciu issued a strongly worded denial of the reports , stating: “I categorically deny interfering in any way in the trial of Cardinal Pell.” Cardinal Becciu held an influential role in distributing and investing millions of euros of Catholic donations as the deputy secretary of state between 2011 and 2018 before Francis put him in charge of running the Holy See’s department responsible for making saints. He was sacked from that job and stripped of the right to elect popes by Pope Francis last month, as Vatican investigators sifted through his spending record at the secretariat of state. Their suspicions are focused on a multimillion investment he oversaw in a luxury property in Chelsea, London, which allegedly lost the Vatican money while making millions for consultants.”

      It will be interesting to see where this story goes. It just shows what dirt goes on behind the scenes, and we, the little people are unaware of it, much like people are unaware of what exist below the city streets, or the white ants now eating away at the foundations of the West.