Tag Archives: Vatican

Pope denies St. Thomas evangelised South India – Ishwar Sharan

Leave a reply

Pope Benedict XVI’s statement on September 27, 2006 during a public audience, that the apostle St. Thomas only reached as far as North-West India—today’s Pakistan—was factually correct and reflected the statements of the Early Church Fathers and the geography of the Acts of Thomas. That the Pope’s minders changed his statement the next day on the Vatican website, to include South India in Thomas’s travels, is no surprise to us. Telling lies for Jesus and his Vicar in Rome are also very much part of Catholic Church tradition and history. – Ishwar Sharan

On 27 September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech in St. Peter’s Square at Vatican City in which he recalled an ancient St. Thomas tradition. He said that “Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia and then penetrated as far as western India, from where Christianity also reached South India”.[1] This statement greatly upset the Indian bishops in Kerala, and as it was perceived to be a direct violation of the beliefs of many Indian Christians, it was brought to the attention of the Pope’s editors and amended the next day on the Vatican’s website to read that St. Thomas himself had reached South India. G. Ananthakrishnan’s article “Thomas’s visit under doubt” in the Times of India, 26 December 2006, reads:

His reluctance to believe what fellow disciples said about Jesus Christ’s resurrection earned him the name Doubting Thomas. Centuries later, St Thomas—believed to be the man who brought Christianity to India—finds himself in the shadow of ‘doubt’ with none other than the Pope contradicting his evangelical trek in the country, only to modify it a few days later. But far from dousing the fire, the Pope has rekindled a debate and given critics an issue on the platter.

Pope Benedict XVI made the statement at the Vatican on September 27, 2006. Addressing the faithful during the Wednesday catechises, he recalled that St. Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia, and went on to western India from where Christianity reached Southern India. The import of the statement was that St. Thomas never travelled to south India, but rather evangelised the western front, mostly comprising today’s Pakistan.

Knowingly or unknowingly, he had in one stroke challenged the basis of Christianity in India and demolished long-held views of the Church here that St Thomas landed in Kerala, where he spread the gospel among Hindus. The comments were especially a letdown for the Syrian Christians of Kerala, who proudly trace their ancestry to upper-caste Hindus said to have been evangelized by St Thomas upon his arrival in 52 AD.

The comments went unnoticed until Sathya-Deepam, the official mouthpiece of the Syro-Malabar church, picked it up. Writing in it, George Nedungat, a member of the Oriental Pontifical Institute of Rome, conveyed the community’s anguish and claimed that previous popes had recognised St. Thomas’s work in south India.

The Pope’s original statement given out at St. Peter’s, before it was amended on the Vatican website, was factually correct and reflected the geography of the Acts of Thomas, i.e. Syria, Parthia (Persia/Iran) and Gandhara (Afghanistan, North-West Pakistan). There is no historical evidence to support the tradition that St. Thomas came to South India, and on 13 November 1952 Vatican officials sent a message to Kerala Christians stating that the landing of St. Thomas at Muziris (Cranganore now Kodungallur) on 21 November 52 AD was “unverified”. When this writer sought confirmation of the 1952 Vatican statement in 1996, the Vatican’s reply was disingenuous and non-committal. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said that he needed more information and that the life of St. Thomas was the object of historical research and not within his congregation’s competence.[2]

Earlier, in 1729, the Bishop of Madras-Mylapore had doubted whether the tomb in San Thome Cathedral was that of St. Thomas and wrote to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome for clarification. Rome’s reply was never published and we may assume it was a negative reply. Again, in 1871 the Roman Catholic authorities at Madras were “strong in disparagement of the special sanctity of the localities [viz. San Thome, Little Mount, and Big Mount identified by the Portuguese after 1517] and the whole story connecting St. Thomas with Mailapur.” However, in 1886 Pope Leo XIII stated in an apostolic letter that St. Thomas “travelled to Ethiopia, Persia, Hyrcania and finally to the Peninsula beyond the Indus”, and in 1923 Pope Pius XI quoted Pope Leo’s letter and identified St. Thomas with “India”. These papal statements also reflect the geography of the Acts of Thomas, as does Pope Benedict’s statement, and make no reference to South India. In fact, the India they refer to is now Pakistan.

Pope John Paul II visited India twice in 1986 and 1999 and prayed at the alleged tomb of St. Thomas in San Thome Cathedral, but, like St. Francis Xavier before him, he had nothing to say about St. Thomas’s visit to South India or Mylapore in the first century. This is a curious omission on the Pope’s part in that he was an ardent missionary who openly promoted the evangelising of India and Asia, and a statement from him confirming a visit by St. Thomas to South India would have certainly supported his agenda and that of his Indian bishops.

1. As quoted in Deccan Chronicle, Chennai, of 23 November 2006, under the title “Pope angers Christians in Kerala”.

2. Our letter to the Prefect, Sacred Congregation of Rites, Vatican City, dated 26 August 1996, read: “I am doing research on St. Thomas in India and have learned that your office issued a letter on November 13, 1952 which stated that the landing of St. Thomas at Cranganore in 53 AD is unverified. I would like to know if in fact the said letter was issued and, if that is not the case, whether you can confirm that St. Thomas was martyred and buried in Madras. I would be most grateful if you could direct me to any authentic evidence supporting the story of St. Thomas in India.” The reply from the Prefect, Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Rome, dated 11 September 1996, read: “This Congregation for the Causes of Saints has received your letter of 26th August last in which you have asked for information regarding Saint Thomas’ presence in India. We have not found in our Archives the letter supposedly written by this Congregation on 13th November 1952, of which you speak, because of a lack of more precise data (Diocese, destination, etc.). Nor do we have other data regarding Saint Thomas since this Archive was begun in 1588. His life is the object of the research of historians which is not the particular competence of this Congregation.” This reply was a brush off. The Prefect knew what we were asking for and could have located the 1952 Vatican letter in a few minutes if he wished to.

Courtes: www.ishwarsharan.com

For more details read this book…

The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple

Pope Reinstates Sexual Molester in Church in Tamilnadu

Leave a reply

The Vatican reinstated a sexual molester, Joseph Jeyapaul in a Tamilnadu church. He had been convicted in the United States of America after having raped children. He was returned to India after clearance from the Pope Franics. This is a continuum of the #ChurchAtrocities for centuries indulging in Paedophilia, rape, sexual molesting,homosexuality. Recently, the Pope had made a promise to the world that they will no longer reinstate molesters as priest in the church. This by itself was a self-admission by the Pope. Now, it is clear that the so-called promise was also hollow.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/video/indian-priest-charged-with-molestation-rehabilitated-in-tamil-nadu/1/648914.html

 

 

 

The Church and Blood Money

Leave a reply

The Vatican has a number of skeletons in its cupboards, ranging from money laundering, drug trafficking, sex scandals and paedophilia. Gerald Posner investigates the death of Pope John Paul I, operations of the Catholic Church and its nexus with politics and organised crime. God’s Bankers is more thrilling than Mario Puzo’s Godfather, writes KUMAR CHELLAPPAN

The Catholic Church is a subject of interest to millions of non-Catholics all over the world mainly because of the secrecy associated with the functioning of the world’s largest religious congregation. The Iron Curtain which shields this church will put both the former Soviet Union as well as the Italian Mafia to shame. The Vatican City, world’s smallest sovereign country (area 110 acres and population 842) and abode of the Pope, the spiritual head of the Catholics, wields tremendous influence in global politics.

The younger generation in India may not be aware of the influence wielded by the Catholic Church in India. The role it played in getting the EMS Namboodirippadu-led Kerala Government (world’s first democratically elected communist regime) dismissed in 1959 was revealed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former US diplomat in his book A Dangerous Place. The CIA too helped the church in Kerala, financially as well as morally, to get the communists removed from its path. The church feared that the communists would take over the vast stretches of landed properties and educational institutions owned by it.

Such is the power of the Catholic Church in India that many people attribute it to the fall of the Janata Party Government in 1979. The Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in Parliament by OP Tyagi resulted in the disintegration of the Morarji Desai Government with Mother Teresa, the queen of proselytisation herself coming out to stage protest march against the Bill.

When the Catholic Bishops Council of India, the most powerful body of the church in the country, came out against the Narendra Modi Government questioning its “indifference” to vandalisms perpetrated by “Sangh Parivar” activists on churches, all hell broke loose in India. Cardinal Cleemis, the CBCI chief, was vocal in his criticism of the Modi Government and alleged that minorities have become unsafe under the present BJP dispensation at the Centre. With law enforcement agencies unravelling the details of each and every attack on the Churches, the Cardinal has become somewhat silent.

The Catholic Church has overturned Governments and regimes in South America, Africa as well as in Europe which were not of its likings. Vatican has a number of skeletons in its cupboards. It ranges from money laundering, drug trafficking, sex scandals and cases of pedophiles. A lot of wealth under the dispensation of the church is said to be dirty money and the curia (the bureaucracy in Vatican City) has a lot to shield from public scrutiny, reportedly.

God’s Bankers, authored by Gerald Posner, the attorney-turned-investigative journalist is a well-researched chronicle about the history of money and power at the Vatican. The book has brought out hitherto unheard accounts and mysteries associated with the church and the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978. Not only the death of the Pope; many investigating officers, prosecutors and crucial witnesses who could have thrown much light into the shady deals of the powerful people in Vatican were either bumped off or killed in staged accidents.

A shocking revelation made by Posner is about a woman who was present in the official residence of John Paul I in the Vatican the night he breathed his last. The Vatican has never revealed to the outside world about this fact as it would have given rise to many uncomfortable questions about the Pope’s celibacy. John Paul I, whose real name was Albino Luciani reigned for just 33 days. He was elected Pope following the death of Pope Paul VI on August 6, 1978. According to a communique issued by the Vatican, Pope John Paul I was found dead on September 29 around 5:30 am by John Magee, his private secretary.

But Posner’s investigations are based on the secret files in the archives in the Vatican and interviews with people who had inside information and first hand access to the interiors of the papal palace and has thrown out some shocking facts which may put a shadow on the Vatican’s claims of puritanism. It was Vincenza Taffarel, a nun who had been with Albino Luciani for more than 20 years as the head of his household who first found him dead. Vincenza ran to John Magee’s bedroom and roused him from a deep sleep. Magee sprinted to John Paul’s private chamber and put his hand on the pontiff’s cheek.

Villot, the secretary of state, who decided to cover up the presence of Vincenza and drafted the version that it was Magee who found out the Pope dead. Villot also summoned two morticians to prepare the Pope’s dead body for public display. “The morticians took out a small rope from a canvas bag. They tied some around the corpse’s ankles and knees. Then they straightened his legs and secured the rope to each end of the bed’s frame. The morticians looped it around John Paul’s chest and both pulled his arms and torso until the corpse was flat,” says Posner in his account.

Though the Vatican officials described “myocardial infarction” as the cause for John Paul’s death, there were many accounts which said that the Pope was poisoned to death. One of the morticians attending to the Pope found that there were clotting around the Pope’s neck. But the group of cardinals who reached the Vatican immediately after the pontiff’s death ruled out the possibility of any autopsy which sabotaged the chances of getting any lead for the investigators.

What went unnoticed was an attempt on the life of the Pope which happened days before he was found dead. Metropolitan Nikodim, the second-ranking prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church called on John Paul immediately after his installation as the Pope. “Nikodim sipped coffee from a cup the Pope had just poured. Then the bishop dropped his cup and saucer. He clenched at his throat as he gasped for air, and fell over backward, smashing a small table as he slammed into the floor. Luciani (the Pope) called for help and dropped to his knees to administer the last rites. By the time Dr Renato Buzzonetti, the deputy chief of the Vatican medical service arrived a few minutes later, the 48-year-old Nikodi was dead”, says Posner in the book.

Strangely no autopsy was performed. A conspiracy theory swept through the Vatican; a poisonous brew that had been intended for the new Pope had killed Nikodim. This incident as well as the unexpected death of John Paul in a gap of few days are similar to the murders and mayhem carried out by the dreaded Mafia.

Much has been written about the death of John Paul 1. The book In God’s Name by David Yallop has given an entirely different account about the murder. Kunhanandan Nair, an Indian journalist, who covered the death of John Paul and the subsequent election of the next Pope, has said in his reports that the Pope was murdered by a cartel consisting of certain cardinals, politicians and mafia dons who wanted him out of the scene as they feared the Pope would throw out those responsible for money laundering and financial embezzlement worth hundreds of crores of dollars from the Church owned Bank of Vatican (Banco Ambroziano).

Immediately after assuming the throne, the Pope had ordered a thorough probe into the financial irregularities committed by this cabal of cardinals, bishops, bankers and mafia dons with money drawn from Banco Ambroziano, owned by the Vatican. The Catholic Church today is the world’s largest capitalist holding company with lot of financial, commercial and political interests.

The Banco Ambroziano was one of the largest private banks in Italy and was owned by the church. Roberto Calvi, chairman and managing director of this bank was found hanging from the London Bridge on June 18, 1982, four years after the death of Pope John Paul I. Though the coroner in London declared it as a suicide, in 2002, it was scientifically proved that Calvi was murdered and hanged from the London Bridge. Why? Posner answers this question and many other hitherto unasked and unanswered queries which are not music to the ears of the church.

But why all these shady deals and operations? The church authorities have the answer themselves: “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys”, a bishop is reported to have told the author. Posner has given a chilling account of the activities of the Catholic Church with special focus on Italy. One cannot help laughing when Catholic bishops and cardinals in India describe the BJP, RSS and other Hindutva forces as fascists. The Vatican City, the abode of the Pope itself is a gift of the Fascist Mussolini to the Catholic Church.

The church was with Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War. Even today, the Church is run on blood money. Blood money from where? By whom? Well, the details are in God’s Bankers. It is a must read for all those who love action-packed and suspense -filled real life incidents. God’s Bankers is more thrilling than Mario Puzo’s Godfather.

Source