Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

BREAKING: Leaked e-mails show George Soros paid $650K to influence bishops during Pope’s US visit
LifeSiteNews.Com ^ | 24 August 2016 | John-Henry Westen

Posted on 08/24/2016 8:51:31 AM PDT by amorphous

August 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Leaked emails through WikiLeaks reveal that billionaire globalist George Soros - one of Hilary Clinton's top donors - paid $650,000 to influence Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit to the USA with a view to "shift[ing] national paradigms and priorities in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign." The funds were allocated in April 2015 and the report on their effectiveness suggests that successful achievements included, “Buy-in of individual bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages in order to begin to create a critical mass of bishops who are aligned with the Pope.”

The monies were granted to two US entities that have been engaged in a long-term project, according to the report, of shifting “the priorities of the US Catholic church.” Grantees were PICO, a faith-based community organizing group, and Faith in Public Life (FPL), a progressive group working in media to promote left-leaning ‘social justice’ causes. Soros has funded left-wing causes the world over and was just found to have been funding an effort to eliminate pro-life laws around the globe.

Board Minutes from the May 2015 meeting of Soros’ Open Society Foundation in New York reveal that in the planning stages of the papal visit initiative, the group planned to work through one of the Pope’s key advisors, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, naming him specifically in the report. In order to seize on the opportunity provided by the Pope’s visit to the US, says the report, “we will support PICO’s organizing activities to engage the Pope on economic and racial justice issues, including using the influence of Cardinal Rodriguez, the Pope’s senior advisor, 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.”

In 2013 Cardinal Rodriguez endorsed PICO's work in a video during a visit from PICO representatives to the cardinal's diocese. "I want to endorse all the efforts they are doing to promote communities of faith," he said, "... Please, keep helping PICO."

The post operative report on the funding to influence the papal visit comes in the 2016 report entitled, Review Of 2015 U.S. Opportunities Fund. The Soros group was pleased with the result of their campaign and saw statements by various bishops against presidental candidates who are using "fearmongering" - likely a reference to the GOP lineup, and perhaps Trump specifically - as one outcome of their efforts. “The impact of this work and the relationships it has fostered can be seen in the broad range of religious leaders hitting pointedly back at presidential candidates for their use of fearmongering,” the report said.

Additionally, the summary report says their funding was helpful to counter “anti-gay rhetoric” in the media. The “efficacy of the media campaign can be seen in the team’s ability to react to and counter the anti-gay rhetoric following the Kim Davis story (the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for defying a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples whom the Pope visited),” the report states.

The grant specifically targeted the ‘pro-family’ agenda, redirecting it from defending marriage to being concerned with income equality. “FPL’s media, framing, and public opinion activities, including conducting a poll to demonstrate that Catholic voters are responsive to the Pope’s focus on income inequality, and earning media coverage that drives the message that being ‘pro-family’ requires addressing growing inequality,” says the May report.

Attorney Elizabeth Yore, who served on the Heartland Institute Delegation that traveled to the Vatican in April 2015 to urge Pope Francis to re-examine his reliance on UN population control proponents who promote climate change, spoke to LifeSiteNews about the Soros initiative. “Catholics serve as a huge and influential voting block in the U.S. election,” she said. Soros, she said, is “using the head of the Catholic Church to influence this key voting block,” with the “bully pulpit of the papacy” to ensure Hilary Clinton’s election.

Yore pointed out “this is not the first time that the unholy alliance of Soros and the Vatican successfully collaborated on a political project.” In 2015, she recalled, “the Soros operatives, embedded in the Vatican, directed Pope Francis’ Environmental Agenda, by delivering for Soros and the UN, an Apostolic Exhortation on Climate Change, and a prized papal endorsement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Pope’s apostolic blessing on the Paris Climate Treaty.”

In terms of the Soros goal of shifting the priorities of the Catholic Church away from moral absolutes, two US bishops stand out as champions of the move. San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy has repeatedly stressed changing the Church’s priorities and has had the backing of Pope Francis’ ‘favored son,’ Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich. McElroy created a furor at the U.S. Bishops Conference meeting last November over his attempt to change a document instructing Catholics on how to vote.

McElroy made a pointed argument that the document was out of step with Pope Francis’ priorities -- specifically, by putting too much emphasis on abortion and euthanasia, and not enough on poverty and the environment. Cupich later praised McElroy’s intervention as a “real high moment” for the conference and supported the move to put degradation of the environment and global poverty on par with abortion and euthanasia.

Concluding their report reflecting on the success of the grant to influence the papal visit, the Soros group was very pleased with the results. Looking to the future, they are excited that the long-term goal of shifting the priorities of the Catholic Bishops in the United States “is now underway.”


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: bishops; catholic; catholicchurch; faithinpubliclife; liberalbishops; pico; pope; soros; usccb; wikileaks
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-63 next last
Somehow, SOROS = "666", jest ain't figured it out yet...
1 posted on 08/24/2016 8:51:31 AM PDT by amorphous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: amorphous

Is not anything uncorrupt in this country?


2 posted on 08/24/2016 8:55:10 AM PDT by Rennes Templar (President Trump: It's all over but the counting)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

High-level clergy are whores. Always have been, always will be.


3 posted on 08/24/2016 8:56:19 AM PDT by Moltke (Reasoning with a liberal is like watering a rock in the hope to grow a building)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rennes Templar

This guy is amazing, he throws money all over the place.


4 posted on 08/24/2016 8:57:31 AM PDT by phormer phrog phlyer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Rennes Templar
Is not anything uncorrupt in this country?

Not as long as Soros is around.

5 posted on 08/24/2016 8:59:03 AM PDT by Gosh I love this neighborhood
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

There are around 450 bishops in the US. Probably a fair number can’t be bought, and a smaller number can’t be rented, but it still works out to about $1 million per bishop, with money left over for the middlemen.


6 posted on 08/24/2016 8:59:39 AM PDT by PAR35
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rennes Templar

Everything that I have held dear...traditions I have embraced....faith I have proudly displayed....is being challenged during this election like never before. Trump has awoken me to the way the world really works....


7 posted on 08/24/2016 9:00:41 AM PDT by Blue Turtle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

Reminds me of the question: What will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Looks that can be quickly answered by some people.


8 posted on 08/24/2016 9:00:58 AM PDT by odawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: phormer phrog phlyer

Well, a lot of Jews died in the early 1940s, and a lot of Nazis died in the middle and late 1940s; all that money needed to go somewhere.


9 posted on 08/24/2016 9:01:09 AM PDT by PAR35
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

Is there no one, no entity that will deal with this person?


10 posted on 08/24/2016 9:01:16 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rennes Templar

“Is not anything uncorrupt in this country?”

Looking like its time for a lot of sunshine.


11 posted on 08/24/2016 9:02:17 AM PDT by DesertRhino (Dogs are man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

Not good for Catholicism in the U. S.


12 posted on 08/24/2016 9:03:08 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous
The road to hell is paved by Soros.
13 posted on 08/24/2016 9:03:57 AM PDT by JPG (Go Trump!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

.


14 posted on 08/24/2016 9:10:25 AM PDT by loungitude (The truth hurts.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous; Coleus

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga is the main Global Warming bully in the Vatican. He provided very obnoxious answers to those that questioned the alliance of Pope Frances with a rogues gallery of global Communists who created Laudato Si.

As for the PICO Network, http://www.piconetwork.org/, another Alinsky spin-off created by a Chicago Jesuit in 1972. It’s now full-on Anti-American with funding from usual suspects.


15 posted on 08/24/2016 9:10:40 AM PDT by Incorrigible (If I lead, follow me; If I pause, push me; If I retreat, kill me.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

How many Catholics will ever see this article, I wonder, and will the report be picked up by any wide distribution media?


16 posted on 08/24/2016 9:11:21 AM PDT by Truth29
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rennes Templar

Seriously. It appears my Church is now for sale.

I am printing out a copy of this article, and it is going into my collection envelope this Sunday. No money, just this article.


17 posted on 08/24/2016 9:11:30 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: amorphous
In 2013 Cardinal Rodriguez endorsed PICO's work in a video during a visit from PICO representatives to the cardinal's diocese. "I want to endorse all the efforts they are doing to promote communities of faith," he said, "... Please, keep helping PICO."

Judas should have thought of that, ... The Judas Iscariot Foundation.

18 posted on 08/24/2016 9:14:26 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (America, a Rule of Mob nation)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

The Whore Church if this is true.


19 posted on 08/24/2016 9:15:37 AM PDT by stockpirate (BEST F'ING ELECTION EVER)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: amorphous

Do not be surprised if Soros turns out to be just the visible front of a much larger group.


20 posted on 08/24/2016 9:21:35 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Big government is attractive to those who think that THEY will be in control of it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-63 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson