Billionaire George Soros spent $650,000 (£497,000) trying to “shift the priorities of the US Catholic Church”, according to leaked emails released through WikiLeaks.
The two groups that received funding were Pico, a faith-based community organising group, and Faith in Public Life, which works to promote left-wing social justice causes.
Minutes from the May 2015 meeting of Soros’s Open Society Foundation in New York showed that in the planning stages of the US papal visit, the group planned to work through one of the Pope’s key advisers, Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga.
Using the opportunity provided by the Pope’s visit to the US, the report said that “we will support Pico’s organising activities to engage the Pope on economic and racial justice issues, including using the influence of Cardinal Rodríguez, the Pope’s senior adviser, and sending a delegation to visit the Vatican in the spring or summer to allow him to hear directly from low-income Catholics in America”.
A report by the foundation said successful achievements included the “buy-in of individual bishops to more publicly voiced support of economic and racial justice messages … to create a critical mass of bishops who are aligned with the Pope.”
Last week it was reported that the Open Society Foundation was funding attempts to repeal Ireland’s laws against abortion, hoping that this would provide a springboard to change the laws in other Catholic countries too.
Cardinal calls for healthy realism in ties with China
Prayer and “healthy realism” are needed to ensure progress in Vatican-Chinese relations and in helping Chinese Catholics to feel fully Catholic and fully Chinese, Cardinal Pietro Parolin has said.
The cardinal, who as Vatican Secretary of State is Pope Francis’s top aide, said there were “many hopes and expectations for new developments and a new stage” in relations between the Vatican and China. Cardinal Parolin made the remarks at a seminar in Pordenone, Italy.
He said Vatican efforts to normalise relations with the country’s communist government were motivated by a desire to help not only the nation’s Catholics, but also “the entire country”.
Pope Francis, like St John Paul II and Benedict XVI, is pursuing improved relations with China while fully recognising and paying tribute to “the sufferings, misunderstandings [and] frequently silent martyrdom that the Catholic community in China carries on its back,” Cardinal Parolin said.
The Pope, he said, also knows how deeply Chinese Catholics “yearn for full communion with the successor of Peter”.
‘All creeds rejoice at canonisation’
Catholics from all over India gathered in Calcutta last week to celebrate Blessed Mother Teresa’s 106th birthday.
Missionaries of Charity Sister Mary Prema Pierick, who was in Rome, said in a message that the canonisation would be an “experience of [the] universal family of the children of the one heavenly Father. The difference of caste, creed, colour, rich and poor will not prevent us from rejoicing together.”
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.