Did you know

   HIV/AIDS Figures for 2005 Lesotho.

          Population 2005 1,867,035
 

 Adults (aged 15+) with HIV/AIDS, 2005                         250,000

Adult HIV prevalence (%), 2005                                          23.2

Women (aged 15+) with HIV/AIDS, 2005                         150,000

Children with HIV/AIDS, 2005                                             18,000

AIDS orphans (ages 0-17), 2005                                        97,000

AIDS deaths, 2005                                                              23,000

 

 Did you know

This year,nearly 11 million children will die before they reach the age of 5.That's one child every five seconds. For more than half of them, the main cause of death will be illnesses linked to malnutrition.

 

 Did you know

  Government's spend Billion's and Billion's on producing Arms to wage war on each other, This money would be much better spent on relieving Poverty,hunger,Child abuse etc etc

 

 Did you know

Government's spent Billion's on  investigating corrupt politicians and business people in our world but little or no Money is ever recovered.

 

 Did you know

That we are all heading for a big disaster if we do not change our policies .

 

 Did you know

God never said wage war or do not feed your people.

  Did you know

That at least 10 Children have died from starvation while

you were reading this page .

 

 Did you know

 

WHERE THE VATICAN WEALTH IS STORED

 

A clutch of paragraphs from 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, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone.

"In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one 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 any rational assessment.

"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 individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."

It's all JUST MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS....

 

 

 

 

 

Scandal Shakes Catholic Church

The revelations about the sexual abuse of children in the U.S. Catholic Church have become an enormous issue for the nation’s 64 million Roman Catholics, and for society as a whole. When the scandal first broke in the Greater Boston area this January, the extent of the problem and its wider implications were not fully apparent. Physical and sexual abuse is not a recent phenomenon or confined just to the Catholic Church, but the history of these problems within the church goes back many decades.

Similar scandals have surfaced within Catholic institutions in Ireland, Australia, and Canada. This year has seen the resignations of Catholic bishops in Poland, Ireland, and the United States, after they admitted to their own sexual misconduct or to covering up the behavior of others. A growing list of other bishops and cardinals now face pressure to follow suit.

In the United States, over 30 dioceses out of a total of 196 have so far had allegations of child abuse made against their clergy. While the number of lawsuits filed by victims vary from diocese to diocese, plaintiff lawyers estimate that the total financial compensation the church will have to pay out will come close to $1 billion (CNBC 4/29/02). The price in relation to the emotional and psychological damage suffered by the victims for the remainder of their lives is incalculable.

Church Cover Up

What angers many are the attempts of the church hierarchy - the bishops, cardinals, and the Vatican in Rome - to systematically cover up sexual abuse. For years they have failed to report known cases of sexual abuse by priests to the authorities, and even now they are barely beginning to change this practice.

A few victims have attempted to dispense their own form of justice. One priest accused of abuse was recently shot by an alleged victim, and another priest narrowly escaped when police stopped another planned attack. Other victims have stood in front of the altar during Mass and faced down their abusers.

Many ordinary Catholics have been shocked and infuriated by the arrogant and insensitive handling of the crisis by the church hierarchy. The Boston Archdiocese withdrew a $30 million settlement agreement for 86 victims, after they found that an estimated 150 new cases had surfaced. Boston’s Cardinal Law amazingly asserted in court papers that one victim, Gregory Ford, was responsible for his own abuse through negligence despite being 6 years old when it began.

The Vatican also recently stated that church leaders are not held responsible under church law for covering up the abuse by other priests and clergy. The political and moral authority of the church hierarchy has been undermined by these actions.

The church hierarchy has consistently taken a very narrow, conservative stand

on social issues such as marriage, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, sexual education, contraception and abstinence. But as the recent wave of scandals within the Church has shown, a very different standard of behavior is applied by the Church hierarchy towards these outrageous crimes against children, when they are committed by its own priests.

These scandals also reveal the consequences of the repressive doctrines of human sexuality, promoted by the Catholic Church throughout its history, which seek to prevent sexual activity except as a way to reproduce within marriage. Untold damage has been caused by these teachings, particularly to women, young people, lesbians and gays.

Enormous Wealth

The financial costs of the scandal for the Catholic Church are increasing, both in the numbers and size of lawsuit claims and by an overall decline in revenues, as congregations become more reluctant to hand over their hard earned cash to the church.

It is difficult to estimate a true figure of the enormous wealth of the Catholic Church, because of their long-time reluctance to disclose their assets and financial interests. At a parish level the church collects around $8 billion nationwide each year, and this figure alone places the institution 234^th on the Fortune 500 of US corporations (Boston Globe 2/13/02). Real estate experts in Boston have estimated that the sale of Cardinal Laws’ palatial mansion and surrounding grounds, which include an almost empty seminary could easily raise over $100 million.

Meanwhile, the new Los Angeles Cathedral multiplex presently under construction, at a cost of $200 million, is being compared to the new stadiums some wealthy sport franchises have pushed onto the citizens of cash strapped cities. Invitation-only crypts start at $50,000 a piece for those with the extra cash. The actions of the Catholic leadership are also comparable to those of the top executives at Enron. As with Enron, it is the poor and ordinary church member who will be made to pay the costs of the crisis, while the leaders get off and are well taken care of.

Layoffs of workers and cuts in the programs and services that the church provides to communities are being proposed. The Catholic Church runs over 2000 agencies spending more than $2.28 billion per year. It has the largest network of private schools in the U.S., providing an education to over 3 million students. It also runs 637 non-profit Catholic hospitals, which account for 17% of all hospital admissions nationwide (CNBC 4/22/02).

Growing Challenge to Hierarchy

These scandals are provoking increased questioning and debate within the Church. Church reform groups have emerged and are receiving increased support. The church’s positions on priestly celibacy and preventing women from becoming priests, as well as its authoritarian, unaccountable structures, are being challenged by some of these groups and by church liberals.

The church hierarchy continues to bury its head in the sand, hoping that the crisis will soon blow over. However, their failure to deal with their responsibilities only adds fuel to the fire.

As socialists we respect the right of all religions to practice their beliefs, oppose any discrimination of one religion over another, and firmly support the division of church and state. We solidarize with the struggle being waged by ordinary Catholics who are demanding accountability. However, we must point out that in our view there is no possiblility that the hiererachy can be made fundamentally accountable to the laity.

In a broader sense the Catholic leadership, while talking about the need to alleviate poverty and other social problems, offers no solution to society’s pressing issues. In fact, under this papacy the Vatican has taken overtly reactionary positions on a range of issues, from opposing the right of women to control their own fertility to opposing the struggle of the Nicaraguan people against US imperialism in the 80s.

When sections of the Church itself moved to participate in mass social struggles like the "liberation theology" movement in Latin America in the 70s and 80s, this was suppressed and repressed by the Vatican. Large numbers of Catholics in the US disagreed with these positions. This section of the Church’s membership is looking not only for a more democratic spiritual community, but also for a way of expressing concrete solidarity with the oppressed.

The socialist approach to addressing the world’s problems is to first examine the workings of the capitalist economic and political system and its inherent contradictions in order to find the alternative that will show a way forward to humanity. We see a need for working people to organize ourselves in our communities, workplaces, schools, and political organizations, in order to defend our interests as opposed to those of the wealthy few.

All too often the line taken by the Catholic hierarchy in the past is that "the poor will always be with us," and that we should "offer up our suffering." Socialists believe that there are realistic, workable solutions to all the major problems we face in the world today. We also have confidence that the human species has the capability, with the correct ideas, to organize itself into a democratic, socialist society, so that we can control our own destinies and shape our world to provide prosperity, comfort and security from want for all.

The current crisis in the US Catholic Church will not go away soon and the struggle over the Church’s future could have quite wide implications. At the moment the hierarchy, fearing the financial costs of the scandal and under pressure from Rome, may be moving towards taking a harder line on settlements and trying to disclaim responsibility for the consequences of past cover-ups. But what ordinary Catholics and ordinary people in general want to see, is justice for the victims. The one positive aspect in all these tragic revelations is that it reveals that people are thinking issues through for themselves and are standing up for their rights. There needs to be far more of that in society as a whole.

By Seamus Whelan, 30 June 2002

This article first appeared in Justice (Issue 30, June-August 2002), the paper of Socialist Alternative (US CWI section).

What do they do for the poor.

             Very little

   Not what God asked them

                   to do. 

 

  Did you know

              At least 50 more children have died while you

                                       finished reading this