SMH

…[T]he grand Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga in Australia still stands in an estate of factories and warehouses near Rooty Hill in Sydney but the pride of the Polynesian community is cloaked in shame and debt.

Owing $21 million, the Methodist church is set to collapse amid a confusion of parties, including 20,000 Tongans, Westpac and a Bankstown paint company with a sideline in short-term finance.

The church went into voluntary administration this month and into receivership this week, with the debt secured against church properties around the country.

The bulk of it – $18 million – is split between Westpac and an industrial paint business, Phoenix Lacquers & Paints, which lent the church $950,000 less than four years ago.

When the loan was not repaid after six months, during which time the interest rate was 5 per cent a month, a penalty was imposed and the interest rate increased to 6 per cent – or 72 per cent a year, the paint company said. The debt has now snowballed to more than $9 million….

Mr Lee denied the 72 per cent annual interest rate was predatory. He said this week he was willing to accept $1.4 million if the church could restructure its debt.

”They understood that the interest rate was high but they entered into it because they needed to have the church finished,” he said.

On Wednesday, Krul, 61, of Forestport, pleaded guilty in Oneida County Court to second-degree grand larceny for stealing more than $87,000 from the church between October 2008 and January 2011.

Krul was taken into custody after his plea to begin serving six months in Oneida County jail, where he once worked as chaplain for the Sheriff’s Office.

Krul will return to court Wednesday, March 7, to be sentenced by Judge Barry M. Donalty to five years of probation, including jail time.

The Observer-Dispatch

A German court has convicted a Catholic priest of 250 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys over the period of several years and sentenced him to six years in prison.

The state court in Braunschweig on Thursday found the priest guilty of abusing the boys, aged 9 to 15, between 2004 and 2011.

The 46-year-old man, whose name was not revealed, told the court he abused the children during youth camps.

PressTV

A Missouri Catholic bishop will go to trial in September on a misdemeanor charge that he and the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese failed to report suspicions of child sexual abuse by a priest…

The charges against Finn and the diocese stem from claims that the diocese waited five months before telling police about pornographic photos of children found on a priest’s computer.

A computer technician found hundreds of “troubling images” on the Rev. Shawn Ratigan’s computer in December 2010. Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photos in December, but didn’t report them to police until May.

He obviously wasn’t ‘troubled’ enough.

KMBC Kansas City

Holland is a pastor at the United Faith Church, which had been holding services in the lobby of a tax service business on Hacienda Avenue in Las Vegas. The alleged incidents involving Holland are said to have occurred at various locations in Henderson and in Las Vegas.

What happens in Vegas… happens in Henderson too, apparently.

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

The show “The Untouchables” on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.

The Vatican issued a statement Thursday criticizing the “methods” used in the journalistic investigation. But it confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing “sadness over the publication of reserved documents.”

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state’s gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure.

Vigano, currently the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.

In one letter, Vigano tells the pope of a smear campaign against him (Vigano) by other Vatican officials who wanted him transferred because they were upset that he had taken drastic steps to save the Vatican money by cleaning up its procedures.

It’s that damned UNESCO again!

The case of Jacob Doe entered its third day Thursday at Superior Court in Waterbury. The plaintiff and his childhood friend, known as Matthew Doe in court papers, testified before a six-member jury.

In sometimes emotional testimony, the men, now in their mid-40s, told similar stories. They met the Rev. Ivan Ferguson, who died in 2002, when he began working at the school affiliated with the St. Mary the Immaculate Conception Church in Derby. Both boys were altar boys and testified that they immediately liked Ferguson when he showed up there in 1980…

After dinner, Ferguson showed them pornographic magazines and encouraged the boys to masturbate while he walked in and out of the room. Soon, the two Does testified, the priest gave them what they called “bear hugs.”…

Matthew Doe testified that he went to sleep on the couch and woke up with Ferguson performing oral sex on him. It was the first of several times that Ferguson abused him, Matthew Doe testified. Earlier, Jacob Doe testified that Ferguson sodomized him at one of the sleepovers…

What the two boys did not know was that the archdiocese assigned Ferguson to the school in Derby in spite of a complaint from a mother in Simsbury that Ferguson had previously abused her two sons while assigned to St. Bernard’s Church in Simsbury’s Tariffville section….

The negligence suit against the Hartford Roman Catholic Diocesan Corporation alleges that Jacob Doe’s abuse was the result of the church’s failure to take steps that would have kept Ferguson away from children. Matthew Doe’s lawsuit, similar to Jacob Doe’s, is pending.

ELPAÍS.com in English

During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

Because with all those letters in it, UNESCO just has to stand for something bad..

United Network Encouraging Sexual Choices Obscenely?

Ugly National Enmity to Solid Christian Options?

UNESCO? Seriously?

Salman Rushdie’s virtual participation at the Jaipur Literature Festival was canceled at the last minute Tuesday, after Muslim groups attending the festival threatened violence if his image was shown.

Mr. Rushdie was scheduled to address thousands of Lit Fest attendees by video conference Tuesday afternoon, after cancelling an in-person appearance.

‘‘There are a large number of people adverse to this link in and around this property and they have threatened violence,’’ said Thakur Ram Pratap Singh of Diggi, the owner of Diggi Palace, the festival venue. ‘‘This decision is necessary to protect everyone here,’’ he said.

But isn’t showing pictures of the founder of Islam also wrong? Is there anything that’s not wrong — other than grovelling subservience to the irrational sensitivities of the religious, of course?