I never know where I’ll end up when running down the day’s stories. Today, we start with Pope Francis picking new Cardinals and end with an El Salvadoran death squad righteously slaughtering the enemies of God!
Act I
Pope Francis Raises Vatican Immigration Czar to Rank of Cardinal
By Thomas D. Williams, 3 Sep 2019
Pope Francis has announced his intention to elevate the head of the Vatican’s immigration department to the rank of cardinal.
In his weekly Angelus address in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday, the pope said he will be creating 13 new cardinals in a special consistory this coming October and among them will be Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, who runs the Migrant and Refugee Department of the Vatican’s office for Promoting Integral Human Development.
None of these new cardinals are American, Canadian, English, French, German or Swedish, the nations most endangered by weaponized migration. He’s practicing the white replacement he preaches.
As veteran Vatican journalist John L. Allen notes, Father Czerny “has been the pope’s right-hand man on migrant and refugee issues. and is recognized by Vatican-watchers as a reward to a man who has understood the pope’s priorities and has made them his own.
Contrary to usual practice, the pope is naming Czerny to the college of cardinals despite the fact that Czerny is not a bishop, but merely a priest. Pope Francis . the first Jesuit pope . has also not been shy about elevating members of his own Jesuit order to positions of prominence and influence in the Church.
Violating precedents in order to maneuver his allies into high position is textbook Convergence. Cardinals are required to be bishops, although there is historical precedent for promoting non-bishops with some hand-waving.
Czerny’s face looks pretty Pedo, although I scanned the other names and most weren’t as bad as this one. Also, only 10 of the 13 he’s promoting will be voters (Cardinals over the age of 80 don’t vote in Papal elections) so this isn’t an overt “stuffing the ballot” play.
I should check that. Passing up a chance to stuff the ballot box does not sound like something a Judas would do. Sigh, but it’s so hard to grok RCC internal politics…
Segue
Pope Francis firms up his legacy with appointment of new cardinals
Pope Francis firms up his legacy with appointment of new cardinals
By Thomas Reese, 2 September 2019
After six years as pope, Francis continues to remake the College of Cardinals in his own image, increasing the likelihood that his successor will continue on the same path as his papacy.
Ten new cardinal electors were announced on Sunday (Sept. 1) and will be “created” at a consistory on Oct. 5.
With the appointments, the college will grow to 128 cardinal electors, although within 10 days the number will drop to 124 as four cardinals turn 80, the age at which they can no longer vote in a papal conclave.
After Oct. 15, 53% of the cardinal electors will have been appointed by Francis. Though there are no guarantees how the cardinals will vote, the odds are that his legacy will be felt deeply under the next papacy.
Ballot box is confirmed stuffed.
In his selections, Francis has ignored many of the cardinalatial sees, such as Milan, Venice and Philadelphia, from which cardinals have traditionally been selected, because their current archbishops, such as Philadelphia’s Charles Chaput, are not in tune with Francis. style or policies. Instead he has chosen men who are in sync with him, like Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., who was made a cardinal in 2016 while serving as archbishop of Indianapolis.
Suspicious.
This time, for example, Francis elevated the archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, which has never had a cardinal, and even promoted a simple bishop from the Diocese of Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
From the Roman Curia, Francis selected Jesuit priest Michael Czerny, a midlevel official who frequently meets with the pope on immigration issues.
The statutes for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, in which Czerny’s section is housed, has a special clause indicating that the section will operate under the direction of the pope, .who will oversee it in the manner he deems appropriate.” In other words, although the section is in the dicastery headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, Czerny has always reported directly to Francis.
Very suspicious, although Turkson is a globalist peer of Francis. He might just be preoccupied with the creation of a new World Bank, a priority of his.
The announcement of new cardinals caught most people by surprise, but clearly Francis wanted to have them in place before the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, which begins the day after the consistory where the cardinals will be “created.”
MOST suspicious. I heard a lot of screeching about fires in the Amazon a week ago, which were not significantly bad. This might explain why, if Francis was ‘setting the stage’. A quick source:
Adam also raised the interesting and relevant point that Brazil’s executive officer is not under globohomo control.
Only four cardinals will turn 80 in 2020, so unless there is a sudden dying off of cardinals, Francis will not have another chance to appoint new cardinals until at least 2021. The number of cardinal electors is not supposed to exceed 120, but the pope can go over the limit as John Paul did in 2003 when the number went to 135.
Ballot box now slightly overstuffed. Just in case a couple lickspittles croak early, one supposes.
Yep, I don’t call him Pope Judas for nothing.
End Segue.
Along with climate change and environmental issues, Pope Francis has made the immigration question a central plank in his pontifical platform.
For his part, Father Czerny has been a vigorous executor of the pope’s vision of immigration.
Last year, for instance, Czerny accused the Pope’s critics of being “obsessed” with national security and border control, which leads them to be overly fearful of migrants.
…Citing the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ant?nio Guterres, Czerny said that “the rise of nationalism and xenophobia must be counted among the new dangers for global peace and stability..
Yep, he’s totalitarian globalist. What else is new? What makes Czerny any different from a thousand other NPCs in starched collars?
Three Jesuits Among 13 New Cardinals Appointed by Pope Francis
https://jesuitswest.org/news-detail?TN=NEWS-20190901093918CFNPROV
1 September 2019
Co-founder and longtime director of the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto, Fr. Czerny was one of several Jesuits who volunteered to replace the Jesuits murdered at the Jos? Simeon Ca?as Central American University in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 1989. He was director of the human rights institute there, along with teaching philosophy and sharing in parish ministry.
Ooh! With my interest in true crime, I can’t pass up a thread like that.
Act II
Twenty-Five Years After a Massacre, Jesuits Reflect on the Meaning and the Martyrdom
http://jesuits.org/story?TN=PROJECT-20141028021446
By William Bole, 5 November 2014
November 5, 2014 . It was one of the most glaring and brazen human-rights crimes of the late 20th century.
In the predawn hours of November 16, 1989, an elite battalion of El Salvador’s military forced its way into the Jesuit residence at the University of Central America, or UCA. The university, led by its president, Father Ignacio Ellacur?a, SJ, had become a stronghold of opposition to human rights abuses committed by the U.S.-backed military.
On that night, soldiers dragged five priests out of their beds and into a courtyard, made them lay facedown on the grass, and fired bullets into their heads. They went back inside and killed another Jesuit. Then, searching the residence further, they found a housekeeper and her teenage daughter crouching in the corner of a bedroom, holding each other. The gunmen shot them too.
Twenty-five years later, many are still waiting for justice in the case of the murdered Jesuits and women. None of the top military commanders who issued the orders to kill was ever prosecuted for the crimes. There is now, however, renewed interest in bringing them to trial. Ramping up the pressure are global human rights groups and Spain, which claims jurisdiction in the case because five of the six Jesuit victims were Spaniards.
Global human rights groups are pressuring for prosecutions? Not actual governments? Sounds like dirty politics.
Amid these stirrings, the Society of Jesus is seeking something larger than legal justice. Many members of the order are promoting the legacies of those who perished in the Jesuit massacre . the Fathers Ellacur?a, Ignacio Mart?n-Bar?, Segundo Montes, Amando L?pez, Joaquin L?pez y L?pez, and Juan Ram?n Moreno, as well as Julia Elba Ramos and her daughter, Celina Maricet Ramos. The eight are often referred to simply as “the martyrs..
“Larger than legal justice”? …Social Justice, perhaps? And are the Jesuits the “Global human rights group” in question, pressing for a prosecution now that they have a Jesuit Pope to shove the paperwork? That would help explain why Spain (still culturally Catholic, I think) is claiming criminal justice jurisdiction over members of the El Salvadoran army, which itself is a very disturbing and questionable precedent for national sovereignty.
U.S. Jesuits say they are striving for the kind of justice that brings out the truth, forges reconciliation and looks ultimately to the future. .It’s not about vengeance or punishment, but about letting all of the truth be known,. said Father Stephen A. Privett, SJ, former president of the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution.
Be careful what you wish for, Padre, lest you receive it.
The background to this massacre is the Monroe Doctrine. Originally meant to end European colonization of the Americas, after the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s turned that nation Communist the United States decided to apply the Doctrine to opposing International Communism in the Americas. The Commies decided to test our resolve, of course, and did their Convergence thing, which at the time meant inciting peasant uprisings in many countries, with the more qualified peasants being trained by “advisors” as guerrilla fighters. The U.S. kept to the Monroe Doctrine (even as the Communists in U.S. overran our government) by propping up some pretty ugly governments that we ordinarily wouldn’t say hello to. Some of the peasants’ complaints were legit, others not, but rather than allowing sovereign nations to wash their own laundry, the situations were literally weaponized out of all proportion into proxy wars between USSR and USA. America pumped over $4 billion of military aid into the El Salvadoran Civil War alone.
It was often difficult to tell who the good guys were.
(Not-a-fun fact, Trump has considered invoking the Monroe Doctrine if China & friends prop up Venezuela.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_murders_of_Jesuits_in_El_Salvador
Note: All descriptions of events are taken from the Truth Commission’s report and the summary of accusations admitted by the Spanish court against the members of the Salvadoran military who were sentenced for the crime.
The Salvadoran army considered the Pastoral Centre of UCA a “refuge of subversives”. Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, Vice-Minister for Defence, had publicly accused UCA of being the center of operations for FMLN terrorists. Colonel Inocente Montano, Vice-Minister for Public Security, said that the Jesuits were “fully identified with subversive movements.” In negotiations for a peaceful solution to the conflict, Ellacur?a had played a pivotal role. Many of the armed forces identified the Jesuit priests with the rebels, because of their special concern for those Salvadorians who were poorest and thus most affected by the war.
As matters turned out, the army was right and the murdered Jesuits were some of the Communist advisors inflaming the peasant uprising. Which made them legitimate military targets. The proof is their liberation theology and allies, coming up.
Members of the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit of the Salvadoran Army, a rapid-response, counter-insurgency battalion created in 1980 at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, then located in Panama. The unit was implicated in some of the most infamous incidents of the Salvadoran Civil War.
On the evening of 15 November, Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno met with officers under his command at the Military College. He informed them that the General Staff considered the recent rebel offensive “critical”, to be met with full force, and that all “known subversive elements” were to be eliminated. He had been ordered to eliminate Ellacur?a, leaving no witnesses. The officers decided to disguise the operation as a rebel attack, using an AK-47 rifle that had been captured from the FMLN.
Like I said, sometimes hard to identify the good guys.
The soldiers first tried to force their way into the Jesuits’ residence, until the priests opened the doors to them.
A one-paragraph segue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Commission_for_El_Salvador
The presidential election of 1989 saw the victory of Arena candidate Alfredo Cristiani, who continued to enforce severe offences against the FMLN. In November 1989 the FMLN organized a major offensive against multiple urban cities, including the capital city.[6] The military was taken by surprise and had to fight vehemently for weeks before the guerrillas were forced to retreat. The battle employed egregious indiscriminate violence throughout San Salvador, leading to one of 16 November 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two women were executed by soldiers who entered their residence under the pretense that they were aiding leftist fighters.
Sounds like there was a reason the Salvadoran Army believed the Jesuits were allied with the leftist fighters and they leveraged the intel successfully. Are you sure you want the truth to come out, Father Privett?
After ordering the priests to lie on face-down in the back garden, the soldiers searched the residence. After lieutenant Guerra gave the order to kill the priests, Ellacur?a, Mart?n-Bar?, and Montes were shot and killed by Private Grimaldi, while Fathers L?pez and Moreno were killed by Deputy Sergeant Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas. The soldiers later discovered Father Joaqu?n L?pez y L?pez in the residence and killed him as well. Deputy sergeant Tom?s Zarpate Castillo shot Julia Elba Ramos and her 16-year-old daughter, Celina Mariceth Ramos. Private Jos? Alberto Sierra Ascencio then shot both women again.
The soldiers removed a small suitcase containing photographs, documents, and $5,000. They then directed machine gun fire at the fa?ade of the residence, as well as rockets and grenades. They left a cardboard sign that read “FMLN executed those who informed on it. Victory or death, FMLN”.
Orders were given to kill the witnesses, which is why non-Jesuits were also slain. You can’t blame FMLN, the Communist side of the civil war, if you leave witnesses behind.
Victims
Ignacio Ellacur?a, S.J.
Ignacio Mart?n-Bar?, S.J.
Segundo Montes, S.J.
Juan Ram?n Moreno, S.J.
Joaqu?n L?pez y L?pez, S.J.
Amando L?pez, S.J.
Elba Ramos, their housekeeper
Celina Ramos, her sixteen-year-old daughter
All but Celina Ramos were employees of UCA. Another Jesuit resident, Jon Sobrino, was delivering a lecture on liberation theology in Bangkok.
Thailand had defeated its own Communist insurgency around 1980. In 1988, its first Prime Minister was seated… the year before Sobrino traveled there to preach the gospel of Communism once again.
He said he had grown accustomed to living with death threats and commented: “We wanted to support dialogue and peace. We were against the war. But we have been considered Communists, Marxists, supporters of the rebels, all that type of thing.”
When you’re considered by the authorities to be Marxist, for valid reasons such as your liberation theology relying heavily upon the Hegelian dialetic, maybe a region you aren’t native to that is undergoing a Communist uprising is not the healthiest place to preach a heretical, Communist-leaning flavor of Christianity against the authorities.
Dying for God is one thing. Dying for Stupid is quite another.
When The New York Times described the murdered priests as “leftist intellectuals” in March 1991, Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco objected to the use of that characterization “without qualification or nuance”. He offered the paper the words of Archbishop Helder Camara: “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why they have no food, they call me a Communist.”
Liberation theology is Communism in Christian clothing. This death squad had every right to summarily execute those false Christians involving themselves in local politics and probably should have killed them a lot sooner. I’m not as happy about their killing witnesses but I’m often told I shouldn’t judge other cultures by the standard of my own. SJWs never lie!
The U.S. government, which had long provided military aid to the government, called on President Cristiani to initiate “the fullest inquiry and certainly a rapid one”. It condemned the murders “in the strongest possible terms”.[8] Senator Claiborne Pell, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: “I am devastated by these cold-blooded murders, which appear intended to silence human rights activity in El Salvador. I appeal most urgently for an end to the fighting and for a cease-fire … and ask that those responsible for these murders be brought to justice as swiftly as possible.”
Pell was a trust fund baby who championed Leftist causes… not exactly a Marxist, more like the late John “Songbird” McCain. Some of my American readers may have gone to college on a Pell grant? That was him.
So, the Commies twisted the massacre of their allies into a “they’re persecuting Christians!” sob story, at a moment when the government was weak from a hard push by the insurgents. That’s how Communists win: never on the battlefield, always in the media.
Hey, that explains everything about their social media shenanigans!
Nine members of the Salvadoran military were put on trial. Only Colonel Guillermo Benavides and Lieutenant Yusshy Ren? Mendoza were convicted. The others were either absolved or found guilty on lesser charges. Benavides and Mendoza were sentenced to thirty years in prison. Both were released from prison on 1 April 1993 following passage of the Salvadoran Amnesty Law by a legislature dominated by anti-guerilla and pro-military politicians. It was enacted to promote social and political reconciliation in the aftermath of the civil war…
A common way to end such Communist insurgencies was pardons for everybody after it became clear they were being used as puppets by superpowers who couldn’t care less about their cause.
…but its support came from the political factions most closely allied with the right-wing armed groups identified by the report as responsible for most wartime violations of human rights.
Translation, the Commies were bitter about how popular the government was with the people post-war. Probably the Jesuits, too. Did I repeat myself?
The Jesuits in El Salvador, led by Jos? Mar?a Tojeira, UCA’s former rector, continued to work with the UCA’s Institute of Human Rights, founded by Segundo Montes, to use the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, to bypass the Salvadoran Amnesty Law of 1993 and expose the role of higher military officers in the murders.
They claim to not be Communists, then when they encounter a law they don’t like, they appeal to Socialist world government to thwart the ruling of a legitimate authority. That is not Christian behavior. We aren’t supposed to hold grudges. We leave them for Judgment Day.
And Czerny publicly associated himself with this behavior. Not just with his Commie-preaching peers, either, but with the very notion that national sovereignty needs to die.
In July 2016, the Supreme Court of El Salvador found the Amnesty Law unconstitutional, citing international human rights law.
Why only now? Did Pope Judas have a hand in this? I couldn’t confirm or deny but it’s really, really suspicious, not to mention damning for El Salvador’s sovereignty, that its highest court decided international law trumped national law.
The ruling of the Spanish court [GQ: which somehow claims jurisdiction for all crimes against humanity] specifies that the Jesuits were murdered for their efforts to end the Salvadoran civil war peacefully. The planning of the murder started when peace negotiations between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN had broken down in 1988. The leadership of the Salvadoran military were convinced that they could win the war against the FMLN militarily. They interpreted Ignacio Ellacur?a’s efforts for peace negotiations as an inconvenience that had to be eliminated.
That’s a lie. Time for a Segue to liberation theology!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ellacuria
According to Ellacur?a, salvation is accomplished historically, not just individually, but collectively. It is not just about liberation from evil, guilt, personal or social offenses, pain, disease and fetichism. Those forms of liberation only start by liberation from unjust structures like slavery, political domination, psychological and social oppression. Besides the book of Exodus, the Bible also presents other such cases of liberation from oppression as the return from exile in Babylon in the books of Esdras and Nehemiah; the fight against Macedonian occupation in the book of Maccabees; the Beatitudes of Jesus; and the book of Apocalypse in the face of the persecution of Christians in Rome.
You can’t believe that and be politically neutral. Ignacio was preaching overthrow of a legitimate government, not advocating peace. What demands did Ignacio make of FMLN? None. In his twisted theology, the liberators (rebels) are by definition the good guys.
You can’t believe that and be Christian, either. The Jews were not slaves in Babylon and the Beatitudes taught “turn the other cheek” not “throw off your oppressors”.
End segue.
On the 20th anniversary of the massacre, President Mauricio Funes awarded the Order of Jos? Mat?as Delgado, Grand Cross with Gold Star, El Salvador’s highest civilian award, to the six murdered priests. Funes knew them personally, considered some of them friends, and credited their role in his professional and personal development.
That’s also damning, because Funes was the first FMLN party candidate to reach the Presidency on a Communist platform post-Civil War. Funes himself wasn’t a rebel but his brother was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauricio_Funes
Since coming to power [June 2009 – June 2014], Funes’ administration has implemented a wide range of social reforms designed to combat poverty and inequality, including the institution of various poverty alleviation programs in the most impoverished communities, the abolition of public health care fees, the introduction of free shoes, meals and uniforms for schoolchildren, the distribution of property titles to hundreds of families, the introduction of monthly stipends and job training for those living in extreme poverty, and pensions for the elderly. In addition, investments have been made in improving school infrastructure, a presidential decree has been made against discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation in the public services, two working groups on indigenous affairs have been created as a means of bringing about better representation of the interests of El Salvador’s indigenous communities, a community health plan has been introduced, improvements have been made in teacher’s salaries, and measures have been introduced to combat illiteracy.
Oh God, the Convergence is everywhere. Humanity is truly punked.
Upon his inauguration on 1 June 2009, Funes resumed Salvadoran diplomatic relations with Cuba. El Salvador previously suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba 50 years ago due to the Cuban Revolution.
The personal friends of hardline Communists aren’t likely to be McCarthy types.
On 10 February 2016, the El Salvador Supreme Court ruled that Funes would face a civil trial for charges of illegally laundering more than $700,000 in personal bank accounts. … On November 28, 2017, El Salvador’s second civil court found Funes guilty of illegal enrichment.
Commies gonna Commie. Nicaragua gave him political asylum, sadly, but at long last we know who the good guys were in the El Salvadoran Civil War. While FMLN stays true to its kleptocrat heritage, the death squad has mounted some impressive legal defenses:
El Salvador ex-colonel fights extradition for notorious murder of Jesuit priests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/20/salvador-colonel-extradition-murder-jesuit-priests
By Jonathan M. Katz, 20 August 2015
Inocente Orlando Montano sat in the sparsely filled courtroom, saying nothing, as two American lawyers and a federal judge argued his fate.
In court, the man who was once El Salvador’s vice-minister of defense and public safety wore an orange jumpsuit stamped with the initials of the North Carolina prison where he currently resides. A blue walker was parked behind him.
He was an illegal immigrant according to this article. How unfortunate (and cunning) that the Lefties aren’t prosecuting him for that. It would have been a beautiful judicial precedent.
Wednesday.s argument centred on whether Montano, 73 and an ex-colonel in the Salvadorian military, would be extradited from the United States to Spain, where a judge eagerly waits to prosecute him for one of the most notorious crimes of his country’s horrific 12-year civil war: the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s teenage daughter, on a university campus in San Salvador in 1989.
There was no decision from the US magistrate judge on Wednesday, surprising many watching the case unfold in US district court who thought extradition would be quickly granted under the firm prodding of the State Department.
Huh. What would make a female judge unexpectedly decide to resist high-level pressure to push the paperwork through the system?
Instead, the federal public defender who has taken on Montano’s case, James E Todd, bombarded the court with 44 pieces of evidence . mostly declassified diplomatic cables from the time . all of which he slowly read aloud for several hours as the prosecutor openly fidgeted and rolled his eyes.
At the end of the hearing, Judge Kimberly Swank gave both sides until mid-September to submit written arguments, sometime after which, she would issue a written decision.
.Obviously it has taken me some time to digest this, and obviously it will take some more time,. Swank said.
Man, I’d love to read those cables. It was to no avail; she decided on 5 February 2016 to extradite him, but as a “terrorist” and not a murderer. Terrorism, of course, having been so redefined by the Left that it can be applied to any criminal and not just the Left’s Antifa dogs and ‘community organizers’.
Carolyn Patty Blum, a senior legal adviser with the Center for Justice and Accountability, which has taken a leading role in pushing the case, rejected that argument.
CJA is a San Francisco NGO dedicated to the use of lawfare on behalf of “crimes against humanity”. They have 12 members, 9 of which are female. Their current leader:
…has a face that gives me hope that his pushing for universal jurisdiction for international tribunals will come back to haunt him one day. And yes, he’s out & proud homosexual.
Montanto.s lawyer James Todd deployed a wide variety of arguments in his client’s defense, including impugning past informants and witnesses. Several times he mentioned that it would be better for Montano to face a Salvadorian court, though there is no indication that one would try him.
None of the other 19 “wanted” death squaddies were turned over to Spain… but they’re all still living in El Salvador AFAIK, so Montano’s illegal immigration to USA came back on him, albeit in a very unsatisfying way for all concerned.
That clears up some of the Cold War stories I’d heard about when I was becoming politically aware in the 1980s. It’s always interesting why stories that shouldn’t be a big deal explode and make a big difference, and you know there’s got to be more going on than is reported but nobody is talking.
This is why the deaths of six Jesuits was an international crisis while the other 74,994 people or so who died about the same time in the same situation were not. It was how the Communists pulled a delayed victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Someday I’ll learn why Kashoggi the Journalist’s death was an international scandal, too.
An astute observation.