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Accuser blasts pope silence, ‘slander’ over coverup claims

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VATICAN CITY — The former Vatican ambassador who accused three popes and their advisers of covering up for a disgraced American ex-cardinal has challenged the Vatican to say what it knows about the scandal and accused Pope Francis of mounting a campaign of “subtle slander” against him.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano penned a new missive a month after his initial 11-page document sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church. It was uploaded to a document-sharing site late Thursday.

Vigano denounced the official Vatican silence about his claims and urged the current head of the Vatican bishops’ office to speak out, saying he has all the documentation needed to prove years of coverup by the Vatican about alleged sexual misconduct by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“How can one avoid concluding that the reason they do not provide the documentation is that they know it confirms my testimony?” Vigano wrote. “The pope’s unwillingness to respond to my charges and his deafness to the appeals by the faithful for accountability are hardly consistent with his calls for transparency and bridge building.”

Vigano threw Francis’ papacy into turmoil last month when he accused Francis of rehabilitating McCarrick from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI. He accused more than two dozen current and former Vatican officials, as well as a host of U.S. bishops and papal advisers, of being part of the coverup and called for Francis to resign over the scandal.

Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined an allegation he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. After news broke of the investigation, several former seminarians and priests came forward to report that they, too, had been abused or harassed by McCarrick as adults.

The scandal has led to a crisis in confidence in both the U.S. and Vatican hierarchy, since McCarrick’s penchant for seminarians was apparently an open secret in some U.S. and Vatican church circles.

The archdiocese of Washington announced Friday that McCarrick, 88, now lives at a Capuchin friary in Victoria, Kansas, ending months of mystery about his whereabouts.

In his first denunciation, published Aug. 26, Vigano initially claimed Benedict had imposed sanctions against McCarrick prohibiting him from exercising public ministry, travelling or lecturing on behalf of the church. He has modified his account, however, since the public record is rife with evidence McCarrick lived his ministry free from any real constraints, and it is unclear what type of sanctions were ever imposed.

But the crux of Vigano’s claim was that he told Francis of the sanctions against McCarrick on June 23, 2013, and that the pope effectively rehabilitated McCarrick and made him a trusted adviser.

Francis has refused to directly respond to Vigano’s claims, though the Vatican is expected to release some “clarifications” soon.

Francis has, however, referred to the issue indirectly in his morning homilies, speaking of the silence of Jesus before the “Great Accuser” — seemingly comparing his own silence to that of Christ and Vigano’s accusations to the work of Satan.

Rather than directly responding, Vigano complained, Francis “put in place a subtle slander against me — slander being an offence he has often compared to the gravity of murder. Indeed, he did it repeatedly, in the context of the celebration of the most Holy Sacrament, the Eucharist, where he runs no risk of being challenged by journalists.”

Francis refused to take questions about the Vigano accusations during his in-flight news conference returning from the Baltics on Tuesday.

Even though it was released Thursday, Vigano’s new document was dated Friday, Sept. 29, the feast of St. Michael, Archangel. It wasn’t a coincidence.

St. Michael is considered the protector of the church, the leader of all angels who battled evil and drove it from the church. Vigano has cast himself as the church’s protector who at great personal risk dared to break two decades of “omerta” or silence.

He acknowledged that by doing so he violated the pontifical secret — the rule of confidentiality that governs much of the inner workings of the Catholic Church.

“Certainly, some of the facts that I was to reveal were covered by the pontifical secret that I had promised to observe and that I had faithfully observed from the beginning of my service to the Holy See,” Vigano wrote. “But the purpose of any secret, including the pontifical secret, is to protect the church from her enemies, not to cover up and become complicit in crimes committed by some of her members.”

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

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Kananaskis G7 meeting the right setting for U.S. and Canada to reassert energy ties

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Energy security, resilience and affordability have long been protected by a continentally integrated energy sector.

The G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, offers a key platform to reassert how North American energy cooperation has made the U.S. and Canada stronger, according to a joint statement from The Heritage Foundation, the foremost American conservative think tank, and MEI, a pan-Canadian research and educational policy organization.

“Energy cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States is vital for the Western World’s energy security,” says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and one of America’s most prominent energy experts. “Both President Trump and Prime Minister Carney share energy as a key priority for their respective administrations.

She added, “The G7 should embrace energy abundance by cooperating and committing to a rapid expansion of energy infrastructure. Members should commit to streamlined permitting, including a one-stop shop permitting and environmental review process, to unleash the capital investment necessary to make energy abundance a reality.”

North America’s energy industry is continentally integrated, benefitting from a blend of U.S. light crude oil and Mexican and Canadian heavy crude oil that keeps the continent’s refineries running smoothly.

Each day, Canada exports 2.8 million barrels of oil to the United States.

These get refined into gasoline, diesel and other higher value-added products that furnish the U.S. market with reliable and affordable energy, as well as exported to other countries, including some 780,000 barrels per day of finished products that get exported to Canada and 1.08 million barrels per day to Mexico.

A similar situation occurs with natural gas, where Canada ships 8.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the United States through a continental network of pipelines.

This gets consumed by U.S. households, as well as transformed into liquefied natural gas products, of which the United States exports 11.5 billion cubic feet per day, mostly from ports in Louisiana, Texas and Maryland.

“The abundance and complementarity of Canada and the United States’ energy resources have made both nations more prosperous and more secure in their supply,” says Daniel Dufort, president and CEO of the MEI. “Both countries stand to reduce dependence on Chinese and Russian energy by expanding their pipeline networks – the United States to the East and Canada to the West – to supply their European and Asian allies in an increasingly turbulent world.”

Under this scenario, Europe would buy more high-value light oil from the U.S., whose domestic needs would be back-stopped by lower-priced heavy oil imports from Canada, whereas Asia would consume more LNG from Canada, diminishing China and Russia’s economic and strategic leverage over it.

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The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

As the nation’s largest, most broadly supported conservative research and educational institution, The Heritage Foundation has been leading the American conservative movement since our founding in 1973. The Heritage Foundation reaches more than 10 million members, advocates, and concerned Americans every day with information on critical issues facing America.

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Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

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From Conservative Party Communications

Yes. He must be disqualified. I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty, a foreign government that would almost certainly execute that Canadian citizen.

 

“Think about that for a second. We have a Liberal MP saying that a Canadian citizen should be handed over to a foreign dictatorship to get a bounty so that that citizen could be murdered. And Mark Carney says he should stay on as a candidate. What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?

“Mark Carney is deeply conflicted. Just in November, he went to Beijing and secured a quarter-billion-dollar loan for his company from a state-owned Chinese bank. He’s deeply compromised, and he will never stand up for Canada against any foreign regime. It is another reason why Mr. Carney must show us all his assets, all the money he owes, all the money that his companies owe to foreign hostile regimes. And this story might not be entirely the story of the bounty, and a Liberal MP calling for a Canadian to be handed over for execution to a foreign government might not be something that the everyday Canadian can relate to because it’s so outrageous. But I ask you this, if Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?

“He has never put Canada first, and that’s why we cannot have a fourth Liberal term. After the Lost Liberal Decade, our country is a playground for foreign interference. Our economy is weaker than ever before. Our people more divided. We need a change to put Canada first with a new government that will stand up for the security and economy of our citizens and take back control of our destiny. Let’s bring it home.”

 

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