IMPERIALISM - LOOKING GLASS NEWS

New Pope is a Former Nazi
from Portland Indy Media Center
Entered into the database on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 @ 20:40:33 MST


 

Untitled Document

The truth is, according to his own autobiography [Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977] that Ratzinger was enrolled in the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s, and did not resist the Nazi draft, choosing to join Hitler's army in 1943.
Church Names ex-Nazi as Pope

The Roman Church Defends its Immense Riches by Supporting Fascism Worldwide

The new Pope Benoit 16, the German Cardinal Ratzinger, is a former Nazi.

The truth is, according to his own autobiography [Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977] that Ratzinger (along with his brother) was enrolled in the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s, and did not resist the Nazi draft, choosing to join Hitler's army in 1943 rather than claim status as a conscientious objector (as Jehovah's Witnesses did in Ratzinger's home town). Ratzinger never made any attempt to assist the Resistance to Fascism in Germany.
http://p217.ezboard.com/ftheratzingerforumfrm21.showMessage?topicID=7.topi

 

The previous Pope, John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) has also been accused of being a Nazi collaborator, even before he entered the church. Ratzinger explicitly referred to the fact, saying John Paul II's funeral mass, that Wojtyla "worked in a chemical factory during the war," as he recited a brief biography.

Wojtyla (John Paul II) worked in Nazi-occupied Poland for I.G. Farben's Solvay Drugs. One of the factory's products was cyanide, or Zyklon B gas, which was sold to Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz. Wojtyla, who had also been an actor, is said to have entered the priesthood in November 1946 to escape possible arrest and prosecution as a war criminal.
http://www.rense.com/general59/almost.htm

 

Church Silent During the Holocaust

World War II-era pope Pius XII, aka "Hitler's Pope," failed to once condemn the historic crime of industrial genocide of Jews and others under Naziism. The best witness of the Pope's silence is a statement by Nazi Germany's ambassador to the Vatican, Baron von Weizsacker. Weizsacker stated that the pope (Pius XII) had not "allowed himself to be carried away into making any demonstrative statements against the deportation of the Jews... [and that] he has done all he could, in this delicate question as in other matters, not to prejudice relationships with the German government. Since further action on the Jewish problem is probably not to be expected here in Rome, it may be assumed that this question, so troublesome to German-Vatican relations, has been disposed of."
http://www.chivalricorders.org/vatican/piusXII.htm

 

Catholic-Fascist Regime in Croatia

Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Independent State of Croatia was established as a clerical-fascist state under the rule of the Croatian fascist party, the Ustashe. Some 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Romas and other anti-fascists were killed in the Jasenovac death-camp complex, while many more were killed in smaller camps or in local massacres. While the Ustashe regime set about to racially exterminate all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders, it also carried out a systematic policy of plundering the assets of these three nationalities. These looted assets, the property of millions of people, were never recovered. The bulk of it was smuggled out of Croatia at the end of the war to the Vatican, and from there to still other destinations.
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/press1.html

 

The Vatican responded to lawsuits seeking to reclaim looted assets by declaring itself immune to prosecution by virtue of its statehood.

See the following article excerpt:

Vatican's Claim to Statehood used to Avoid Lawsuit
November 28, 2000
Reuters

The Vatican's bank has asked a U.S. court to throw out a lawsuit charging it with laundering gold and other assets stolen by a [Catholic] Nazi puppet regime, arguing that the Vatican has immunity because it is an independent state.
http://www.seechange.org/what's%20new/Vatican%20Bank%20Lawsuit.htm
**

 

In fact, the Church has consistently supported fascist regimes throughout modern history, in central and South America, in the USA and elsewhere, just as it has always supported the forces of reaction, in order to protect and increase its vast riches.

"The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest man in the world. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."
http://www.chick.com/reading/books/153/153_10.asp

 

St Peter's Basilica is the Vatican's most famous building, adjoined by the papal palace with more than 1,000 rooms.

The historic edifice with fortress walls dating back to the 16th or 17th centuries gained independent status in 1929 after the conclusion of Lateran Pacts with Italy. On February 11, Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini created the Vatican in its current dimensions and secured additional sovereignty rights and properties.

The Vatican's total assets are a well-kept secret but one which is the topic of much speculation... They include [priceless] works of art and palaces and properties which for the most part cannot be sold. Large parts of the Vatican's assets are in securities and gold reserves.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1685114,00.html

 

19 April 2002
Worldly assets

• The Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione ... ["Institute for Religious Works"! does not reveal financial data and records are kept only for 10 years*.] Profits and dividends are paid directly to the Pope. It enjoys the status of a central bank and has a dealing room adorned with crucifixes and papal portraits where 20 traders work.

• The 20,000 parishes in America [alone] had revenues of $7.5bn (£5.18bn) )in 2000.

• In the 1980s the Vatican Bank was forced to pay $241m for its part in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Roberto Calvi, "the Pope's banker" who dealt with the failed bank, was found hanging from a rope beneath Blackfriars Bridge [London].
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/worldly.htm


See also THE VATICAN BILLIONS by Avro Manhattan.

"The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, ... etc. ..

"In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at $635 million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of 571 million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.

"Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely 'that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.' Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. 'The Catholic church,' he said, 'must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.'

"The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican's financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.

"The Vatican's treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy assessment.


Vatican Bank Top 10 Money Laundering Destination

According to one global source, the Vatican is the main destination for over $55 billion in illegal Italian money laundering and the number 8 destination worldwide for laundered money, ranked well ahead of such offshore havens as the Bahamas, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.

In a recent report by the London Telegraph and the Inside Fraud Bulletin, the Vatican was named as a top "cut out" country along with the offshore banking centers of Nauru, Macao, and Mauritius. A "cut out" country is one whose banking secrecy makes it is all but impossible to trace laundered funds back to their source.

*The Vatican Bank is desperately resisting a legal action for an accounting of stolen World War II assets in a San Francisco Federal court (Alperin v. Vatican Bank) filed by Serb and Jewish Holocaust survivors. Contrary to the above reports, a declaration filed under penalty of perjury by the Vatican Bank's attorney, Franzo Grande Stevens, states in part that the Vatican Bank's "fundamental purpose is to promote pious acts" and that its depositors "are essentially limited to Vatican state employees, members of the Holy See, religious orders, and persons who deposit money destined, at least in part, for works of piety." Stevens also declared to the court that the Pope controls the Vatican Bank and that bank records are not retained after ten years.
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/vatpr.html

 

To sum up very simply, the Church is a business. The religious overtones are ancient marketing. You can see the imitation among the ruling elite today, where the Rockefellers or George Soros refer to themselves as "philanthropists," and W. Bush speaks of "human dignity" and a "A culture of life," etc.―even as they operate the Death Machine for their greater profit.

For all its "Big Lie" hypocrisy, the Church's marketing is quite direct about one thing, which is its metaphor for the faithful as sheep.


Further reading:
JPII A Political Obituary
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/pope-a06.shtml