TO HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
CANONICAL
COMPLAINT
in the cause of
FATHER NICHOLAS GRUNER, S.T.L., S.T.D.,
(Cand.)
-against-
CARDINAL DARIO CASTRILLÓN HOYOS
Piazza della Città Leonina I, 00193 Roma, Italy
under cann. 1389, 1390, 1391, 1401, 1405 and 1406
of the 1983 Code of Canon Law
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
I. FACTUAL
BACKGROUND
II. THE
WRONGS COMMITTED BY RESPONDENT
Respondent wrongfully usurps the
power and authority of the Vicar of Christ, claiming to be a de facto
Pope in his dealings with priests and bishops
III. THE IMPROPER
MOTIVES FOR RESPONDENT'S CONDUCT
IV.  SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSION
V. PRAYER
FOR RELIEF
Most Holy Father:
 This document serves as my formal complaint and request for penal
sanctions against CARDINAL DARIO CASTRILLÓN HOYOS (hereafter the
Respondent).
According to the
1983 Code of Canon law promulgated by Your Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff alone
hears complaints of abuse of authority and other violations of ecclesiastical
law against Cardinals, legates of the Holy See and (in penal cases) bishops.
Can. 1405, § 1, 2°, 3°. The incompetence of any other tribunal to
hear such complaints is absolute. Can. 1406, § 1. Thus, under the law
promulgated by Your Holiness himself, only Your Holiness can consider this
complaint.
This complaint
consists of five parts: (1) a general factual background; (2) a specification
of the particular wrongs committed by the Respondent; (3) a discussion of
Respondent’s improper motives, as revealed in his own written statements;
(4) a summary and conclusion; and (5) a prayer for relief.
I. FACTUAL
BACKGROUND
A. The prior canonical
complaints regarding the attempted destruction of my apostolate.
This
complaint comes to Your Holiness against a background of systematic abuse of
authority by former Prefects and Secretaries of the Congregation for the Clergy
and the Apostolic Signatura. The parties involved in this abuse of authority
and the many details of their misconduct are set forth in combined recourses
and canonical complaints received by Your Holiness in November 1996 and
December 1999.
The admission of
the canonical complaints by Your Holiness, and the concomitant obligation of
the named prelates to join issue and respond to the complaints, was confirmed
according to Canon 1506, as noticed to Your Holiness (as formally brought to
Your Holiness’ attention) in my letter of April 20, 2000. I am still
awaiting action by Your Holiness on these complaints, as required by the Code
of Canon Law Your Holiness yourself has promulgated.
The Respondent,
who is the current Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, has joined this
general scheme and plan of systematic and deliberate abuse of authority by the
named prelates. The ultimate aim of this plan is to silence me and destroy my
apostolate, commonly known as the International Fatima Rosary Crusade, among
other titles (hereafter the Apostolate), even though there is no basis in the
law of the Church for prohibiting our activities. This scheme and plan involves
numerous illicit interventions without precedent in the living memory of the
Church. Although, as noted, the details of this scheme and plan are fully set
forth in the prior proceedings before Your Holiness, I summarize them briefly
as follows:
B. My Apostolate Is Theologically Beyond Reproach.
The
purpose of my apostolate is to make Our Lady of Fatima’s entire authentic
message better known, understood and appreciated within the Church so that its
imperatives might ultimately be followed for the good of the Church and the
world. Thus, the Apostolate engages in the frank public discussion within the
Church of the Message of Fatima, most notably its call for the Consecration of
Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Many millions of Catholics are
convinced the Consecration of Russia has yet to be done, because there has yet
to be a solemn and public act of Consecration of that particular nation
by the Pope and the world’s bishops acting together at the same time.
In all the previous Consecration ceremonies performed by Your Holiness,
including those of 1982, 1984, and 2000, Russia has not been mentioned as the
object of the Consecration and the moral totality of the world’s bishops
did not participate.
As a
consequence, it is quite apparent that Russia is not converting, as Our Lady
promised it would if the Consecration were done in the manner She requested. On
the contrary, the Catholic Church still suffers from official persecution in
Russia and is forbidden by law to make converts among the schismatic Orthodox,
who adamantly reject the papal primacy established by Our Lord Himself. As even
the Russian Orthodox patriarch of Russia has admitted, the moral, spiritual and
material condition of Russian society has been degenerating rapidly since the
alleged “fall of communism” in 1989, which some people confuse with
the spiritual conversion of the Russian people. There are more abortions in
Russia today then there were in 1984, the year of the alleged Consecration of
Russia—a fact which surely must grieve Your Holiness most acutely.
The
Apostolate also promotes its views on the Message of Fatima as it bears on
certain prudential policies and initiatives of the Vatican apparatus,
especially the Vatican Secretariat of State. These include Ostpolitik, a
policy still at work in the Vatican’s refusal to condemn persecution of
the Church in China or the schism of the Chinese Communist-controlled
“Patriotic Catholic Association,” which has illicitly consecrated
nearly 100 bishops in open opposition to Rome. There is also the Vatican’s
deep involvement in the godless and positively anti-Catholic United Nations,
and other pernicious institutions of the rapidly emerging New World Order.
These institutions include a new International Criminal Court (ICC), which
would be controlled by the same forces that have legalized abortion and
destroyed Catholic social order in every nation. The Vatican’s diplomatic
efforts through the Secretariat of State were instrumental in obtaining
approval of the first statutes for the ICC during the recent meeting of future
member nations in Rome itself. It now remains only for a sufficient number of
nations to ratify the ICC treaty, an undertaking which is supported by the
Vatican Secretariat of State. The ICC will undoubtedly foster the worldwide
regime of official state atheism, including abortion, and many Catholic
organizations are now calling for a movement to stop final erection of the ICC.
Finally, there is the Vatican’s general line since the Council of pursuing
what innumerable recent Vatican pronouncements describe as “the
civilization of love.” This novel idea does not involve the achievement of
Catholic social order, or anything approaching it, but rather the supposed
cooperation of the “believers”of all religions in creating a just
society—as if a truly just society were at all possible without explicit
faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to the teaching of His Church.
Your Holiness,
we believe these Vatican policies and initiatives are at odds with the
Church’s divine mission to bring every soul within her fold and thereby to
establish the Social Kingship of Christ in every nation.
First of all, as
Your Holiness well knows, the Church has defined infallibly in one solemn
pronouncement after another the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus
est—outside the Church there is no salvation. (Cfr. Council of
Florence and the Bull Unam Sanctum) Your predecessor Blessed Pius IX,
whom you yourself have beatified, warned the faithful in Singulari Quadem
that they must not preoccupy themselves with pointless speculation about
the possibility of salvation for those who are not formal members of the
Catholic Church, since only God knows whom He will save (in some extraordinary
manner) from among the great mass of humanity which has not exteriorly
professed the Catholic faith. For this reason, Blessed Pius IX exhorted the
faithful to hold fast to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus est and
to continue the divinely appointed work of the Church in making disciples of
all nations. As for the lot of those who remain outside the visible Church, His
Holiness warned that “all further inquiry is unlawful.”
Who can doubt
the wisdom of this admonition? Indeed, the Church has constantly and infallibly
taught that no one in this world (absent a special private revelation) can know
with absolute certainty the subjective state of any soul, much less whether a
soul—even one’s own—is numbered among the elect. Since it is not
possible for the Church to presume that anyone is either saved or damned, the
ministers of the Church are duty-bound to seek the conversion of every man,
woman and child on the face of the earth, following Our Lord’s own
command: “Go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded thee. He who believes and is
baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be condemned.”
(Mark 16:16)
Following this
command, the Church has not only taught the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla
salus through the infallible definitions of her extraordinary magisterium,
but has also infallibly proposed through the constant teaching of her universal
ordinary magisterium the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ—that
is, the duty of every nation, as well as every man, to profess the Catholic
faith and follow the law of Christ the King. As Your Holiness well knows, this
teaching is expounded in a marvelous manner in the encyclical Quas
Primas, by your predecessor of blessed memory, Pius XI, and is also found
in the encyclicals of Saint Pius X (Vehementer Nos), Pius IX (Quanta
Cura and the Syllabus of Errors), Leo XIII (Immortale Dei and
Libertas Humana), Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos) and others.
Moreover, in his
apostolic letter against the French Sillonist movement, Notre Charge
Apostolique, St. Pius X condemned the very notion of a pluralist social
order in which men of various religions agree to work for the common good and
build up an imaginary new civilization of peace and harmony, putting aside the
differences which divide them. Pius X contemptuously described this utopian
ideal as “a Democracy which will be neither Catholic nor Protestant, nor
Jewish. It will be a religion … more universal than the Catholic Church,
uniting all men as brothers and comrades at last in ‘the Kingdom of God
.’” His Holiness condemned this notion as a threat to the very
mission of the Church, reminding the bishops of France that the task of the
Church is not to pursue a non-Catholic utopia, which has never existed and
never will exist, but rather to work for the building of the only truly just
civilization by restoring Christendom and “the Catholic City.”
Holy
Father, it is one thing to agree in principle to collaborate with non-Catholics
of good will to uphold the natural law in a society in which Catholics comprise
a minority, and where such collaboration would not pose any danger to the
integrity of the Faith or the salvation of souls. It is quite another, however,
to present as some sort of ideal a “civilization of love” in which
there would be no objective duty on the part of every member of society to
embrace the one true religion — the whole and entire Catholic faith —
nor any duty on the part of temporal authority to protect and defend that
religion which God Himself commanded be brought to every corner of the world.
Holy
Father, in view of the Church’s infallible teaching on these matters, is
it not apparent that the Vatican’s post-conciliar policies of
accommodation with the powers of the world and its pursuit of a non-Catholic
“civilization of love” are at odds with the Message of Fatima? For
the Message of Fatima is nothing other than a heavenly recapitulation of the
necessity of the Church for salvation and the duty of the Church to establish
the Social Kingship of Christ throughout the world:
“You have
seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them God wishes
to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart ... In the
end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate
Russia to Me, which will be converted, and a period of peace will
be granted to the world.”
As the words of
Our Lady of Fatima show beyond any doubt, the establishment of worldwide
devotion precisely to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the very intention of God
Himself in making known the Message of Fatima. But the Immaculate Heart cannot
triumph in this manner until the Russian people embrace the Catholic Faith,
since the Orthodox churches do not admit the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, and thus do not have the Catholic Faith. Furthermore, because the
Orthodox do not formally, officially and publicly acknowledge the Immaculate
Conception (even if some individual members of the Orthodox do) the public cult
and devotion to the Immaculate Heart as Our Lord wills it, cannot be achieved
ever under the Orthodox churches. We must recall that Sister Lucy testified in
a letter to her confessor, dated May 18, 1936, Our Lord Himself told her:
“I want My whole Church to acknowledge that Consecration [of Russia] as a
Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that it may extend its cult later
on and put the devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My
Sacred Heart.”
Now, if the
Vatican’s new orientation, since the Council, does not represent some
contradiction to the perennial teaching of the Church on her own mission in
this world — then it would have to be shown how this new orientation
comports with the prior teaching of the infallible extraordinary and universal
ordinary Magisterium. Only a further infallible definition by Your Holiness or
his successor could establish this new orientation as also the binding teaching
of Holy Church.1 Otherwise, it cannot be accepted, since it does not
carry the approval of the infallible Magisterium, but is found only in the
opinions of certain functionaries in the Vatican, or perhaps in views expressed
even by Your Holiness in speeches and other pronouncements that lack the
character of infallible Catholic doctrine addressed to the universal Church.
This new orientation stands as a complete novelty in the history of the Church,
which until recently never ceased to preach the objective necessity for
membership in the one, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church by every man, and the
profession of the true Faith by every man for salvation.
What is more,
since this novel orientation works against the constant teaching and
orientation of the Church, one would have a duty to resist it, in keeping with
the unanimous teaching of the theologians and doctors of the Church (including
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus Liguori and Suarez),
that a subject may resist a prelate—even the Supreme Pontiff—when he
says or does something that threatens harm to souls or the common good of the
Church.
All of this being so, no one can say—indeed, no one has
said—that anything I have preached or published over the years is
contrary to the Faith. Quite the opposite: my apostolate promotes the Faith in
all its integrity, as well as pious practices fully approved by the Church,
most especially the Rosary and the brown and green scapulars. Yet, as early as
1989, the Bishop of Avellino (in whose diocese I was originally incardinated)
was receiving what he called “worried signals” from the Secretariat
of State about our perfectly lawful and legitimate apostolate. Beginning in
1994, certain persons in the Secretariat of State, combined with the former
Prefects and Secretaries of the Congregation for the Clergy and the Prefects
and Secretaries of the Signatura, began to take direct action in order to
silence me and the Apostolate.
FOOTNOTE:
1. In view of the widespread
confusion on this point, it should be noted that this document is not
suggesting that His Holiness or any Pope can define a new doctrine that
contradicts the previously defined doctrine of faith. As Vatican I solemnly
taught—Papal infallibility is not given so the Pope can teach a new
doctrine. "The reason for this is that the Holy Spirit was promised to the
successors of St. Peter not that they might make known new doctrine by
His revalation, but rather, that with His assistance they might religiously
guard and faithfully explain the revelation or deposit of faith that was handed
down through the apostles." (Emphasis added) Denzinger 1836
C. The Plan to Silence the Apostolate.
Recognizing
that no law of the Church prohibited our activities, these persons contrived an
illicit canonical ploy which they hoped would destroy the Apostolate: The
former Prefect of the Congregation pressured the Bishop of Avellino to recall
me from Canada (where I had been living with his permission since 1978) unless
I could find another bishop to incardinate me. Then high ranking persons in the
Congregation for the Clergy (with the help of the nuncios) illegally and
deliberately blocked my incardination by a series of benevolent bishops, while
directing the Bishop of Avellino not to excardinate me under any circumstances.
Having unlawfully interfered with the rights of four bishops in the matter of
my excardination/incardination, the Congregation declared that I had
“failed” to find another bishop and was therefore guilty of being in
an “irregular condition.”
This immoral and
illicit canonical ploy was combined with “announcements” in
L’Osservatore Romano and on Vatican Radio urging the entire Church
to shun any conference conducted by the Apostolate. Similar communications were
carried to every bishop in the world in the diplomatic pouches of the nuncios,
who also sought to prevent bishops from obtaining travel visas to attend the
Apostolate’s Fatima conferences.
These actions
against me have no known precedent in Church history. Not even notorious
heretics who condemn Your Holiness in public pronouncements have been treated
in this manner by Vatican officials. Clearly, the motive for these actions can
only be suppression of the Message of Fatima, since there is nothing else about
my work which is controversial. This was made quite clear at the Vatican press
conference of June 26, 2000, concerning publication of the vision associated
with the Third Secret of Fatima: the entire conference was organized around the
theme that the Third Secret relates only to past events, that Russia has been
validly consecrated and that nothing remains of the Message of Fatima but a
call to personal holiness. Cardinal Ratzinger took the occasion to mention me
by name, suggesting that “the Magisterium” has declared that Russia
has already been validly consecrated. Of course, Your Holiness has never said
so himself in any magisterial pronouncement addressed to the universal Church.
Of
course, Your Holiness has never said that “the Magisterium” declares
the Consecration to have been done. In fact, to my knowledge Your Holiness has
never made any statement to the public that Russia has been validly
consecrated. On the contrary, before more than 200,000 people in St.
Peter’s Square on March 25, 1984, (as reported in the
L’Osservatore Romano in the March 26-27 Italian edition) Your
Holiness, addressing himself to Our Lady of Fatima, stated as follows:
“Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrusting You
are awaiting from us” (“Illumina specialmente i popoli di cui tu
aspetti la nostra consacrazione e il nostro affidamento”). You uttered
these words, in a departure from the printed text, after you had just
consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart. That is, you acknowledged before
the world that what you had just done on March 25, 1984, was still not what Our
Lady of Fatima had requested concerning Russia.
Several hours
after the Act of Consecration of the World on March 25, 1984, while inside
St. Peter’s Basilica, Your Holiness (again addressing yourself to Our Lady
of Fatima) stated before 10,000 people that: “We wished to choose this
Sunday, the Third Sunday of Lent, 1984 — still within the Holy Year of
Redemption — for the act of entrusting and consecration of the world, of
the great human family, of all peoples, especially those who have a very great
need of this consecration and entrustment, of those peoples for whom You
Yourself are awaiting our act of consecration and entrusting”. (But
any person who has studied the matter knows that Our Lady of Fatima
specifically asked for the consecration of only one country … Russia.)
Your Holiness, you then said, “We have been able to do all this according
to our poor human possibilities and the measure of human weakness but with
immense confidence in Your maternal solicitude”. This was reported in the
Italian Catholic Bishops’ official newspaper Avvenire, dated March
27, 1984, on page 11.
Obviously these
remarks by Your Holiness lead many to the conclusion that Your Holiness himself
does not believe that he has been able to accomplish what Our Lady requested of
you concerning the Consecration of Russia. Accordingly, I say with all respect
that it is incumbent upon you, Your Holiness, either to do precisely what Our
Lady requested or else pronounce with the full authority of your infallible
magisterium that you have fulfilled Her request. With respect, Holy Father,
neither Cardinal Ratzinger nor Archbishop Bertone nor anyone else can remove
the burden from you by offering the opinion that the Consecration has been
done, for no one but Your Holiness has the authority to settle this question.
Meanwhile, the condition of the world continues to deteriorate by the hour. In
Russia the abortion holocaust not only continues but grows worse. As for the
condition of the Church in Russia, two of Russia’s apostolic
administrators (the Church is even afraid to establish a Catholic diocese in
Russia lest the Orthodox object) have been told that they must marry
Russian women if they wish to remain in the country. Holy Father, your
own bishops are being told by civil authorities that they must violate their
vows of chastity in order to remain in Russia!
Your
Holiness, nothing could be clearer than that there is still a need for the work
of our Apostolate. No authority in the Church can require the faithful to
ignore the evidence of their senses or to suspend the use of their reason. The
First Vatican Council infallibly decreed that there is no contradiction between
faith and reason. It is reason which demonstrates that our views about the
Message of Fatima are correct. It is reason, viewing the evident facts, which
causes so many members of the faithful, including more than 1000 members of the
Catholic episcopate and 40 percent of the Cardinals, to support the
Apostolate’s aims.
As Your Holiness
knows, despite the unprecedented abuses of power designed to destroy my
reputation and the work of the Apostolate, the Archbishop of Hyderabad
proceeded to incardinate me, and he has affirmed his decree of incardination in
a subsequent decree. His Grace (along with 26 other bishops, 1900 priests and
religious and 16,000 members of the laity) has also signed an Open Letter to
Your Holiness which was published on April 2, 1998, in Il Messaggero.
The Open Letter protests the scheme and plan to silence me and the Apostolate,
while true enemies of the Church within the priesthood are allowed to attack
her with impunity in every nation.
On November 22,
1999, I made recourse to Your Holiness from the latest decree of the Signatura
in my case, which purports to uphold the order to return to Avellino based on
nothing more than my alleged “irregular condition.” This
“irregular condition” was created and imposed upon me by the above
mentioned prelates, who have systematically abused the authority of their
offices within the Congregation for the Clergy (acting according to the same
“worried signals” of the Vatican Secretariat of State cited by the
Bishop of Avellino in 1989).
Finally, as
noted in my recourse to Your Holiness, the latest decree of the Signatura
boldly declares that the successive Prefects and Secretaries of the
Congregation for the Clergy involved in this scheme and plan had the right to
engage in these unprecedented interventions because they allegedly possess
the ordinary vicariate power and jurisdiction of the Pope and are the
“hierarchical superior” of every bishop. As my recourse to Your
Holiness explains, this novel theory (which appears to have been developed
solely for my case) is a direct attack on the divine constitution of the
Church. (This heretical theory may also explain other abuses which are now
coming to light in the Catholic press.)
II. THE WRONGS COMMITTED BY
RESPONDENT
The Respondent has made his own peculiar contributions to this
scheme and plan. Since his appointment as Prefect of the Congregation for the
Clergy in 1996, the Respondent has undertaken the following illicit actions
against me:
A. Respondent threatens me with excommunication if I
do not abandon a perfectly legitimate civil proceeding in which he has no right
to interfere.
Ten years ago I
instituted a suit for libel against Monsignor Alan R.A. McCormack, former
Vice-Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Toronto. This civil proceeding is fully
permissible under natural law and the 1983 Code of Canon Law Your Holiness
himself promulgated. Indeed, today there are innumerable pending claims
in the civil tribunals throughout the world against priests, monsignors and
even bishops who are accused of abusing their authority in ways which violate
the civil law and the legitimate civil rights of persons.
My own
proceeding is based on Msgr. McCormack’s false statements in 1990
regarding my canonical status. These statements falsely implied that I was a
suspended or imposter cleric, when only two months before the Bishop of
Avellino had issued a certificate of good standing to me and renewed my
permission to reside in Canada.
Msgr.
McCormack’s libels were circulated in secular newspapers throughout North
America, where they were read and believed by millions of people. The damage to
my reputation and the Apostolate’s good name is incalculable. It was only
for the sake of the Apostolate that I took this action in the first
place—but only after Msgr. McCormack had refused my repeated requests to
make a retraction.
In March of this
year the civil tribunal refused to dismiss my claim, rightly recognizing that
it involved grave damage to my reputation in civil society and was not simply a
Church matter. During the ten years the suit was pending, no one in the
Vatican had objected to it. Meanwhile, however, Monsignor McCormack had
become a Vatican employee in one of the Congregations. This perhaps explains
what happened after the civil tribunal refused to dismiss my claim and
scheduled a trial for August of this year.
On June 5, 2000,
about two months before trial, Respondent sent me a letter in which, while
shamelessly invoking Our Lord and Our Lady and the “Spirit of the
Jubilee,” he threatens me with excommunication if I do not accede to his
demand that I abandon the suit before it went to trial.
Respondent’s June 5 letter states the threat as follows:
“Besides,
this situation is aggravated by the civil process pending before the Provincial
Tribunal of Ontario. This cause, independently of the results that you will be
able to have, will not fail to generate further tensions right at the moment in
which the current Jubilee Year promotes significant gestures of reconciliation
and communion. It would really be sad if, in such circumstances, instead of
being able to reach a solution to this old and tormented affair, you should
give to public opinion the bad example of a judicial conflict in the civil
forum and, as a consequence, you should ultimately proceed on the
canonical level even unto the penalty of excommunication.”
(Emphasis added)
[Inoltre, questa
sua situazione è agravata dal processo civil pendente presso il
Tribunale provinciale dell’Ontario . . . Sarebbe davvero triste che, in
tali circonstanze, anziché poter addivenire ad una soluzione della
annosa e tormentata vicenda, si dovesse dare all’opinione pubblica il
cattivo essempio di uno scontro giudiziario in foro civile, e, di consequenza,
si dovesse ulteriormente procedere sul piano canonico anche fino all pena
della scomunica . . .]
Respondent
openly confirmed his groundless and extortionate threat of excommunication in a
July 6 communiqué which he directed the Apostolic Nuncio to circulate to
all the bishops of the Philippines:
“In the
spirit of the Jubilee Year, the Congregation for the Clergy, through the
Apostolic Nuncio in Canada, wrote to Father Gruner on June 5, 2000, admonishing
him to undertake to withdraw his civil litigation and to
undertake to reconcile himself with ecclesiastical authorities. The same
letter warned that failure to do so would provoke additional canonical
procedures against him, up to and including the penalty of
excommunication.” (Emphasis added)
In response to
his threat of excommunication, I wrote to Respondent on July 11 and July 12,
2000, offering to withdraw the civil proceeding if his threat were also
formally withdrawn. I also requested a meeting with Respondent in an effort to
resolve the civil proceeding and all related matters.
In reply,
Respondent sent me a letter dated August 8, 2000 in which he states that he
cannot discuss the civil proceeding with me because the Congregation has no
competence in these matters and that he must maintain strictly the
distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical forums. Thus, after
attempting to interfere in my legitimate civil proceeding by making an
extortionate threat of excommunication if I did not abandon the lawsuit,
Respondent admitted he had no right to meddle in the matter in the first place.
He thus admits to his own hypocrisy, mendacity and abuse of power.
Respondent knows
there is no canonical basis for his threat of excommunication. Not even
heretics and sexual deviants in the priesthood have been threatened with this
ultimate penalty. If I were excommunicated, I would be the only priest in the
history of the post-Vatican II Church to be excommunicated by a sentence of the
Vatican. Yet I have violated no law of the Church nor committed any offense
against faith or morals. What could be more absurd and unjust than this, Holy
Father?
Respondent compounded his abuse of power by publicizing his threat
to excommunicate me through the nuncio to the Philippines, with the obvious
intention of increasing its illicitly coercive effect upon me. Merely to make
this threat in private was unconscionable. That Respondent would
publicize it is an abuse of power without parallel in the modern Church
history.
B. The Respondent has used the Apostolic Nuncios of the
Philippines, India and Papua New Guinea to deliver communiqués which
falsely accuse me of criminal activity and contain many other false statements
concerning my canonical status and the work of the Apostolate.
These
communiqués are either written by Respondent himself, or by a nuncio or
a nuncial employee at Respondent’s direction. The falsity of these
communiqués is amply demonstrated in the Apostolate’s Formal
Response of July 28, 2000 to the July 6, 2000 communiqué of the
Philippine Nuncio, as well as our letter in response to the acting Papal Nuncio
of Papua New Guinea.
The
communiqués contain the following falsehoods, among others:
1. The communiqué to the bishops of the Philippines falsely claims
that in 1989 I used “forged Secretariat of State documents . . . to imply
endorsement” of the Apostolate.
Holy Father,
there are no such “forged Secretariat of State documents.” The
allegation is a pure invention and a demonstrable lie.
If such forged
documents really existed, I would have been ordered to cease using them eleven
years ago, when the Nuncio claims they first appeared. I was never notified of
any “forged Secretariat of State documents” because they do not
exist.
In my letters to Respondent on July 12, August 31 and September 16, 2000, I
brought this false allegation of criminal activity to his attention. He has
thus far failed to retract the accusation or to make restitution for having
falsely accused me of a crime.
This
Respondent’s libel has been circulated far beyond the Philippines via the
Internet and otherwise. For example, we have received information that the
libel is being circulated in Taiwan.
2. All three
communiqués imply that I and the Apostolate lack required
“ecclesiastical approval” to “organize his [Father
Gruner’s] conferences” for bishops, priests and laity held in various
countries to promote the Message of Fatima.
Respondent is
certainly aware that this implied accusation is false. Under the 1983
Code of Canon Law promulgated by Your Holiness himself (not to mention the
natural law) there is absolutely no requirement for “ecclesiastical
approval” of conferences on Fatima or any other subject of concern to
Catholics.
Nor is there any
requirement for “ecclesiastical approval” of my personal
participation in such conferences, or in the activities of this organization as
a whole. See canons 208-228, in particular, cc. 212, 215, 278, 299. In fact (as
Respondent well knows from reading the acts of my case) upon my election to
the Board of Directors of this organization, Your Holiness himself conveyed his
congratulations through his personal secretary.
Holy Father, you
know better than anyone that today in the Church there are thousands of private
associations of clergy and laity operating without “ecclesiastical
approval” of any kind and in perfect conformity with the law of the
Church.
To accuse someone of functioning without “ecclesiastical
approval” when no such approval is necessary is to commit calumny by means
of the deliberate use of a half-truth. The accusation is also an outright lie
in the sense that the Code of Canon Law in and of itself grants
“ecclesiastical approval” for private associations of clergy and
laity, and episcopal attendance at private conferences arranged by such
associations, without any need whatever for formal approval by any Church
authority. Cfr. Canons 215 and 212.
Oddly enough,
the prelates who have attempted to interdict our Fatima conferences by various
illicit means did nothing to stop Bishop Lucker from attending a recent
conference of the heretical Call to Action movement in the United States. But
such is the double-standard which animates all of the interventions against our
apostolate. It seems that the only thing which truly alarms these prelates is
the prospect of a spreading awareness of the authentic Message of Fatima.
3. Respondent publishes the false accusation that the Apostolate’s
activities are of “dubious orthodoxy.”
Here the
Respondent, acting through the Philippine Nuncio’s July 6
communiqué, refers to a circular letter to the world’s bishops
issued by Cardinal Gantin in 1996. The only such letter from Cardinal Gantin
that we know of makes no reference to “dubious orthodoxy.” In fact,
Cardinal Gantin’s letter mentions only the alleged lack of
“ecclesiastical approval” for the Apostolate’s activities, which
approval is not required in the first place. As noted already, no one
has ever accused me or the apostolate of a lack of orthodoxy.
Respondent’s attempt to put such an accusation in the mouth of Cardinal
Gantin is despicable.
In March of 1997
the Apostolate replied to Cardinal Gantin’s letter by registered mail,
demonstrating that his implied accusation of canonical impropriety was false,
and posing certain queries to His Eminence. Cardinal Gantin has never replied
to the registered letter—not even after it was published in 90,000 copies
of the book Fatima Priest over the past three years.
Furthermore, it
should be noted that in December of 1998 I wrote to the Congregation for the
Clergy and the Apostolic Signatura, requesting copies of approximately 15 more
“circular letters” concerning me and the Apostolate of which we were
previously unaware. The existence of these letters, which have been circulated
behind my back and some of them for more than ten years, by various nuncios,
was first revealed by the Promoter of Justice in a 1998 document he filed
during the proceedings before the Signatura. So it seems that secret
accusations conveyed by nuncios have been added to the array of unprecedented
interventions against me.
To date, my
requests to the Signatura and the Respondent for copies of these secret
missives, which requests I made more than two years ago, have gone unanswered.
4. Respondent publishes the falsehood that I was acting in
“open defiance of the Holy See’s directives” in 1996.
This is
another demonstrable lie in the July 6 communiqué. I have never been
given any “directive” of the Holy See. There were no “directives
of the Holy See” requiring any action by me as of 1996, nor or at any
other time thereafter.
I have never
“defied” any “directive” of “the Holy See.” The
“Holy See” itself has never issued me any directive. Rather, the
Congregation for the Clergy has merely upheld a purported directive of the
Bishop of Avellino, not “the Holy See,” that I return there after an
approved absence of 18 years. As I have already noted, until recently, the
Congregation consistently took the position that the order to return to
Avellino was the bishop’s own idea and not the result of its own illicit
interference behind the scenes. I have made recourse from the bishop’s
order to return. There is no “defiance” or “disobedience”
to the Holy See in making a canonical recourse against a bishop’s unjust
order.
Therefore, it is simply a lie to say that in 1996 I was “defying” a
“directive of the Holy See.”
5. The Respondent publishes
the falsehood that I was “suspended a divinis” by the Bishop
of Avellino on May 16, 1996.
This
demonstrable lie is contained in all three communiqués.
As Respondent
certainly knows, the Bishop of Avellino’s decree of May 16, 1996, only
threatened the penalty of suspension if I did not return to Avellino
within 29 days, after an approved absence of 18 years. Since I pursued timely
canonical recourses from that order, under Canon 1647 the operation of any
threatened penalty was suspended. Those recourses are still pending in
the Apostolic Signatura, although it is rumored that there is some new decree
which I have yet to receive (if it exists). Therefore, it is a lie to say that
I was suspended a divinis in 1996.
6. The Respondent
publishes the falsehood that the Apostolic Signatura has definitively concluded
all of my hierarchical recourses.
This falsehood
is likewise contained in all three nuncial communiqués. It is obviously
intended to create the false impression that I have been deprived of any and
all canonical grounds for contesting the illicit actions against me.
In truth, there
is still pending before the Apostolic Signatura a petition for restitutio in
integrum or, in the alternative, a declaration of nullity. I have heard
from third parties that the Signatura has issued a document regarding my
petition, but I have yet to receive it from anyone. Although I requested a copy
of this rumored decree by letter of November 5, 2000, to the Apostolic
Signatura, I have not heard from the Tribunal as of this date.
My petition
notes that the only allegation now remaining against me, after years of
canonical proceedings, is that my “condition” was
“irregular” and needed to be “corrected” by the Bishop of
Avellino. This alleged “irregular condition” consists of nothing more
than my residing in Canada with the written permission of the Bishop of
Avellino (as well as my subsequent Ordinary), while being engaged in an
apostolate which does not require ecclesiastical approval and which I had the
canonical and natural right to conduct. Cfr. cc. 215, 278, 299. In other words,
Holy Father, there is nothing irregular about my “irregular
condition.”
My petition for
restitutio further notes that the order that I return to Avellino and
reside there permanently (after an approved absence of some 22 years) is
patently illegal. I am not an Italian citizen but a citizen of Canada. The
Bishop of Avellino never took any measures to obtain a proper entry visa for
me, even assuming he had the right to order me to return, which he does not.
Thus, the order to return violates Italian civil law on immigration, by which
the Church agrees to be bound. Cfr. can. 22. If I were to attempt to comply
with the bishop’s illegal order to take up residence in Italy without the
proper visa, I would be deported immediately at the point of entry, unless I
were to lie about the purpose of my visit.
In any case, I
am now incardinated in the Archdiocese of Hyderabad. Both the Signatura and the
Bishop of Avellino were provided with copies of the Archbishop of
Hyderabad’s pertinent decrees in the latter part of 1999, and neither the
bishop nor the Tribunal has since expressed any objection. Under apparent
prodding from Respondent, however, the Bishop of Avellino (in August 2000)
issued a letter that simply ignores my incardination in Hyderabad and suggests
that I should enter Italy as an illegal alien, without regard to the
requirements of Italian immigration law. I wrote to the Bishop of Avellino on
September 16, 2000, pointing out that his order is legally (under both civil
and canon law) and morally impossible to obey. He has not replied.
7. The Respondent publishes the falsehood that the Apostolic Signatura has
“settled” my well-founded claims regarding abuse of power by him and
his collaborators.
The nuncial
communiqués the Respondent has caused to be issued all falsely assert
that the Apostolic Signatura has “settled” my factual and legal
contentions regarding the abuse of power in my case, which I have set forth in
my 82-page reply to the Promoter of Justice. In truth, the Signatura
declined to address those contentions, stating only that its failure to
consider my reply does not mean that it admits that my contentions are true. In
addition to establishing the systematic abuse of power against me, my reply
also conclusively demonstrates that the Promoter’s document is filled with
false, misleading and factually inaccurate statements about me and the
apostolate which are gravely damaging to my reputation and standing as a
priest.
Instead of addressing the merits of my reply, the Signatura simply ignored all
my responses I had raised and ignored all of the rebuttals I had given, while
stating that its failure to address those issues and my rebuttals does not mean
that it agreed with anything I had to say. Meanwhile, the Signatura has
effectively abandoned the Promoter’s document – implicitly
recognizing that I had refuted it – yet does not have the decency to
retract any of the Promoter’s falsehoods and inaccuracies, or to order the
Promoter to do so, thereby leaving his grossly flawed document as part of the
record in my case.
On November 22,
1999, I formally requested Your Holiness that Your Holiness himself consider my
contentions concerning the abuses of power in this case, as well as my
demonstration of the Promoter’s falsehoods and inaccuracies, none of which
have been retracted. Therefore, it is quite false to say that issues I have
raised in my 82-page reply (and in related documents) have all been resolved by
the Signatura’s decrees in this case.
Neither has the
Signatura “settled” the fundamental question of how the Bishop of
Avellino could order me to become a permanent resident of Italy in violation of
Italian immigration law, even if he were still my bishop, which he is not.
Also not
“settled” are the allegations in the two separate canonical petitions
lodged with Your Holiness. Both petitions (one in my name and one in the name
of the Apostolate) were delivered personally to Your Holiness on November 20,
1996. A third petition sent to Your Holiness on or about November 22, 1999, and
its acceptance as a case pending before the Supreme Pontiff was confirmed by a
registered letter from me, dated April 20, 2000, citing can. 1506, under which
acceptance of the case is now mandated by the Code of Canon Law which Your
Holiness himself promulgated.
These petitions,
reserved exclusively to the Supreme Pontiff under cc. 1405 and 1406, cite
abuses of power by the Prefects and Secretaries of the Congregation for the
Clergy and the Signatura who have been involved in the totally unprecedented
process described here: namely, preventing my lawful incardination by three
different benevolent bishops, followed by accusations that I have not
“obeyed” because I have “failed” to find another bishop,
followed by a sentence of exile for my “failure” to “obey.”
These illicit measures were combined with equally unprecedented attempts to
de facto interdict the Apostolate throughout the world without any
canonical grounds or due process of law.
Therefore, it is
quite false to state that the petitions I have lodged with Your Holiness have
been “settled” by any decree of the Signatura.
8. The
Respondent publishes a false characterization of the civil proceeding I
instituted in Toronto.
The
communiqués falsely claim that I have brought suit against the
Archbishop of Toronto, when in truth the only defendant is the former Vice
Chancellor, Msgr. McCormack. This lie is obviously designed to provoke outrage
against me by creating the false impression that I have sued an Archbishop in
the civil tribunal.
The July 6
communiqué falsely suggests that the proceeding against Msgr. McCormack
was commenced during my recourses before the Congregation and the Signatura
(“Regretfully, in the meantime, Father Gruner initiated a civil proceeding
. . .”). The false implication is that I commenced the civil proceeding to
retaliate for the unprecedented canonical interventions against me. In truth,
the civil proceeding was commenced ten years ago, long before the
canonical interventions or my recourses against them.
9. The
Respondent hypocritically justifies his many false statements as necessary for
the good of the Church.
Respondent,
through the various nuncios, claims that he and his collaborators have acted
against me in order to “safeguard ecclesiastical discipline” and with
“exclusive regard to the salus animarum (the salvation of
souls).” Holy Father, I must say that in view of the state of the Church
today it is hard to believe the Respondent expects this statement to be taken
seriously.
Your Holiness,
the faithful everywhere know that throughout the world the Mystical Body of
Christ is being wounded grievously by innumerable clerical scandals involving
heresy and unspeakable immorality. Clerics who prey on small boys are
transferred from diocese to diocese and parish to parish for years, and the
Congregation for the Clergy does nothing about them until civil suits are filed
and the matter becomes a public scandal. Open heretics are allowed to preach
against Catholic doctrine and dogma for decades without suffering any penalty
from a Vatican congregation, and even if they do eventually receive some
minimal punishment, they are allowed to remain priests in good standing. They
are never required to retract the heresies they have preached and published in
books and journals. They are even allowed to continue expressing their lying
opinions.
Even though the
Church is afflicted by true enemies of the Faith on every continent, the
Respondent seriously suggests that I must be suspended and even excommunicated
when I have violated no law of the Church and committed no offense against
faith or morals. On the contrary, I have always defended the Catholic
Faith and promoted good morals by preaching and teaching the Message of Fatima,
with its call for penance, the Rosary and the Communions of Reparation on the
First Saturdays. What is more, the Apostolate has distributed millions of brown
and green scapulars which (by the promise of Our Lady) save properly disposed
souls from Hell and produce miraculous conversions.
Holy Father, I
ask you to consider the intolerable hypocrisy of those who do nothing (or next
to nothing) about the true enemies of the Faith within the Church, while
abusing the power of their high offices to persecute me in this unprecedented
manner, claiming to act for the good of souls and ecclesiastical discipline.
Does Respondent really believe he is acting for the good of souls and to
preserve ecclesiastical discipline when he does nothing about the evils which
afflict the Church, while persecuting one priest who promotes the Message of
Fatima, distributes scapulars and encourages devotion to Our Lady? If this is
Respondent’s notion of serving the Church, then he is a positive danger to
souls. This is yet another reason Respondent must be removed from office.
In the
midst of a total collapse of Church discipline, they pursue me with boundless
energy while indolently ignoring those who undermine the good order of the
Church in every nation and in virtually every diocese.
In the midst of
a loss of faith throughout the Church, they seriously suggest that the
salvation of souls requires them to condemn me and my apostolate before the
entire Church, yet they take no such action against countless clerics who
threaten the welfare of souls with heretical preaching or immoral behavior.
Holy
Father, what is to explain this insane disparity of treatment? There can only
be one answer: the Message of Fatima.
C. Respondent wrongfully
usurps the power and authority of the Vicar of Christ, claiming to be a de
facto Pope in his dealings with priests and bishops.
As noted in my
recourse of November 22, 1999, when the Signatura was unable to deny any longer
the illicit sub rosa interventions of the Congregation, aimed at
preventing my incardination by any benevolent bishop in the world, it finally
resorted to an utterly novel theory. In its decree of July 10, 1999 (issued
September 3, 1999), the Signatura declared that the Congregation for the Clergy
was entitled to prevent any bishop from incardinating me because the
Congregation possesses the “ordinary vicariate power” of Your
Holiness himself, and is therefore the “hierarchical superior” of
every bishop in the Church. According to this novel theory the Congregation for
the Clergy is the Supreme Pontiff, for all practical purposes.
The mendacity of
this belated claim of “vicariate” papal authority is shown amply in
my recourse of November 22, 1999, which makes note of the fact that neither
Respondent nor any of his predecessors ever made such a claim during the
previous five years of canonical proceedings. On the contrary, at all times the
Congregation implicitly denied its extra-canonical interventions and pretended
it was merely upholding the will of the Bishop of Avellino. Yet it is
undisputed that the bishop frankly admitted to me that he had no will of his
own in this matter, and had no grievance against me, but was merely
responding to coercion from the Congregation (which in turn was doing the
bidding of the Vatican Secretariat of State).
The notion that Respondent is a surrogate Pope who may interfere at
will in the process of excardination-incardination, even without any specific
delegation of authority from Your Holiness, obviously does violence to the
divine constitution of the Church. For the Church’s divine constitution is
based upon the divinely conferred right of each bishop to rule his own diocese
as a successor of the apostles. This de fide truth was solemnly
proclaimed by the First Vatican Council.
There is no
question that Your Holiness himself has direct and immediate jurisdiction over
every member of the Church, including every bishop, or that he can assign
certain tasks of governance to the heads of Vatican congregations. But this
does not, and cannot, mean that the head of every Vatican congregation
exercises your personal and direct jurisdiction so as to become a de
facto Pope. The result would be a disastrous proliferation of de facto
Popes in the Vatican and the reduction of bishops to mere subordinates of
Vatican congregations. Your own authority would thus be squandered and divided
among various fallible men whose aims might be, and often are, at war with each
other and (as the long history of the Church shows us) at variance with truth
and justice.
Holy Father, I
feel it is not out of hand to say that Respondent’s hugely expansive view
of his own power savors of heresy because it undermines the Church’s
divine constitution. And since this notion smacks of heresy, it leads to de
facto schism, since heresy always causes division among the faithful.
In this
case, a kind of schismatic division is also introduced into the proper relation
between a priest and his bishop, driving a wedge between them simply in order
to serve the personal agenda of Respondent and his collaborators in the Vatican
apparatus. That agenda is one of human policies and geopolitical dealings with
the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, rather than the advance of the Catholic Faith
into Russia and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary throughout the
world. It seems that to serve this agenda, Respondent and his collaborators are
willing to distort and even destroy (if necessary) the divine constitution of
the Church.
I hope and pray
that Your Holiness has not directed Respondent and his predecessors and
collaborators to conduct themselves in this way. Even if their actions had been
personally authorized by Your Holiness himself they would still constitute an
immoral abuse of authority.
I say to Your
Holiness in all humility and respect that not even the Supreme Pontiff would
have the moral right to command a priest to do something, prevent the priest
from obeying that command, and then accuse the priest of
“disobedience.” Yet that is precisely what has occurred in my case: I
was ordered to correct my “irregular situation” by finding another
bishop to incardinate me. Each time I found a willing bishop, I was prevented
from effectuating the incardination by the very people who issued the
order—with your “vicariate” authority, as they now claim. I was
then accused of “disobeying” the order to find another bishop and of
“failing” to correct my “irregular condition.”
Your Holiness,
no one, not even a Pope, has the right to abuse his authority in this way. No
one, not even a pope, has the right to manipulate and torture one of his own
subjects, like a cat with a mouse. If indeed these actions against me were by
your own explicit command or with your approval, then I am compelled to say
that they would bring disgrace upon you. This would be all the more true given
that these actions are clearly directed toward suppression of the authentic
Message of Our Lady of Fatima, to whom Your Holiness professes to have
dedicated his entire pontificate.
I cannot, and
will not, presume that Your Holiness would engage in such an abuse of authority
and steep himself in such hypocrisy. Yet without some concrete sign from Your
Holiness that my pleas have been heard and will be granted, how am I to avoid
the ultimate conclusion that what has been done to me has been done by your
command? And if that be true, what choice would I have but to resist such an
abuse of papal authority, following all the doctors and theologians of the
Church, mentioned above, who unanimously counsel such resistance even against
the Supreme Pontiff when he acts in a manner that poses a threat to souls or to
the common good of the Church? God grant that I will never have to engage in
such resistance, and that my spiritual father will come to my aid rather than
assisting in my persecution by remaining silent.
III. THE IMPROPER MOTIVES FOR
RESPONDENT’S CONDUCT
In one respect
the Respondent’s actions have produced a providential benefit. The
communiqués issued at Respondent’s behest reveal plainly, at long
last, what really motivates his illicit interventions against me, along with
those of his predecessors and collaborators: namely, a desire to suppress my
legitimate teaching and preaching on the Message of Fatima. The Respondent
openly admits this in his own statement defending his actions, which he caused
the Papal Nuncio to India to distribute to all the Indian bishops:
“2.4
Reducing the rich doctrinal-catechetical content of the message [of Fatima] to
some particular aspects, often in an exploitative and imaginary way, not only
creates confusion among the faithful, but also weakens the message itself. For
example, Rev. Gruner directs his polemics against the Holy Father for
supposedly not fulfilling the Virgin’s request to consecrate Russia to the
Immaculate Heart. Actually, the act of consecration made by John Paul II on the
25th March, 1984, has fulfilled all that was requested (by) the Holy Virgin.
This is repeatedly vouched for by Sr. Lucia herself.” (Prot. No.
200000997, June 19, 2000)
Here, finally,
Respondent abandons any pretense that the actions taken against me were
motivated by a need to correct my non-existent “irregular condition”
or punish my non-existent “disobedience.” Here, finally, the
Respondent admits that he hounds and persecutes me because I will not subscribe
to the fiction that Russia has been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart
of Mary and that the prophetic warnings of the Message of Fatima may now be
safely disregarded, even if our senses tell us that the world’s condition
grows worse by the hour. Respondent falsely denounces my refusal to subscribe
to this fiction as “polemics against the Holy Father,” even though I
have written not one word against Your Holiness.
Meanwhile,
Respondent says nothing and does nothing about the many priests who, like Hans
Küng, really do engage in polemics against Your Holiness. In addition to
his notorious denial of numerous doctrines of the faith, Küng has publicly
denounced Your Holiness as a despot who “rules in the spirit of the
Spanish Inquisition.” Yet the Respondent has sent no communiqués to
the bishops of the world denouncing Küng. In fact, Küng remains a
priest in good standing in the Diocese of Basle.
In fact, during
his entire tenure as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Respondent
has never publicly condemned the heretical preaching or scandalous
behavior of any of the thousands of priests who deeply wound the
Mystical Body and destroy the credibility of the Church in the eyes of those
outside her. This state of affairs Respondent is evidently prepared to tolerate
in silence, despite his sacred obligation to maintain vigilance over the
clergy. But when it comes to a priest expressing the view that Russia has not
yet been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart, how quickly and decisively he
acts—as if he has suddenly discovered a reason for the existence of his
high office in the Church!
And so it is now
admitted that I am to be condemned, suppressed and even excommunicated because
I do not accept the “consecration” of 1984 and the
“official” declaration that Fatima’s prophetic warnings to the
Church and the world need no longer concern us because they are all in the
past. Yet the facts cannot be made to disappear as easily as one priest, Holy
Father. And these are the facts:
Since the
“consecration” of 1984 the holocaust of abortion has only intensified
in Russia. There are now two abortions for every live birth in Russia,
and the Russian population is dwindling at the rate of 2500 people per day.
Life expectancy is declining, and half of all Russian men die before the age of
60. Abortion, contraception, divorce, alcoholism and violent crime are rapidly
destroying what is left of Russian society. No less than Alexander Solzhenitsyn
has declared that Russian democracy is a myth and that the demographic trends
in Russia are very alarming.
The Catholic
Church in Russia today labors under government-imposed restrictions to which
the Orthodox, the Jews, the Muslims and the Hindus are not subject, including
the prohibition of Catholic “proselytization” among non-Catholics. As
a result, there are almost no converts to the Faith in Russia, but many
thousands of converts to Islam, a favored religion under Russia’s new laws
on “freedom of conscience.”
By every
measure, then, Russia’s spiritual and material condition has only worsened
since 1984. There is no sign of the conversion of Russia. Meanwhile, overt
communism still enslaves one third of the world’s population in Red China
and elsewhere. The Catholic Church in China has been forced underground.
Bishops and priests have been arrested and imprisoned for the “crime”
of remaining in communion with the Pope.
Infinitely
greater than any offense Respondent has committed against me is the offense of
promoting the lie that mere political changes in Russia constitute the
conversion of Russia and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart as well as the
period of peace promised by Our Lady of Fatima. This great lie endangers the
spiritual and the temporal welfare of the whole world, because it lulls the
world, and especially Catholics, into a deadly sense of complacency. This lie
is a blasphemy, because it implies that the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary—an action of God Himself—means nothing more than the alteration
of a political system, not the miraculous supernatural conversion of souls to
the one true religion and their turning away from abortion and the other grave
sins still rampant in Russia.
Holy Father, it
is evident to millions of the faithful that the actions of your own
subordinates only confirm that the consecration has yet to be done. Consider
that only seven months ago many Vatican officials, including Cardinal Ratzinger
and Cardinal Sodano, were in Fatima for the beatification of Jacinta and
Francisco. Yet no Vatican representative asked Sister Lucy herself if the
Consecration was accomplished in 1984, even though she was in their presence
and available to speak! Instead, the Vatican’s commentary on the Third
Secret, published June 26, 2000, cites as the only evidence for the
Consecration being done in 1984 a computer-generated letter supposedly signed
by Sister Lucy in 1989 and mailed to a person whom the commentary does not even
identify. Holy Father, Sister Lucy does not even use a computer! Her voluminous
memoirs were written entirely in her own handwriting, yet we are expected to
believe that this cloistered nun (who was then over 80 years old) used a
computer terminal to type a one-page letter! We are also expected to believe
that this letter was composed by Sister Lucy even though it contains errors of
fact Sister Lucy herself would never have made—for example, that Paul VI
performed a “consecration” of the world during his visit to Fatima on
May 13, 1967, when this never happened.
Your Holiness,
one of the reasons Respondent and his collaborators seek to destroy me and the
Apostolate is that we pose to the public legitimate questions such as the
following:
- Why does the Vatican commentary cite, as the only
evidence that the Consecration was done in 1984, an eleven-year-old
computer-generated letter, when Sister Lucy herself was available seven months
ago to testify to the whole world?
- Although they have had every opportunity to do
so, Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Sodano and the other Vatican officials who
went to Fatima for the beatifications on May 13, 2000, never asked Sister
Lucy about the alleged 1984 consecration. Why? Or did they perhaps ask her,
only to receive the answer they did not wish to hear?
- If the Consecration was really done in 1984, then
why did Monsignor Bertone fail to ask Sister Lucy to confirm this when he
personally visited her in Coimbra on April 27, 2000? Why does Monsignor
Bertone rely on the same eleven-year-old letter, addressed to an unknown
person, as proof of a matter he could have discussed with Sister Lucy only a
few months ago?
Your Holiness, it is clear that Respondent and his collaborators
will stop at nothing to bury the Message of Fatima so that the Vatican
Secretariat of State can proceed unimpeded in its approchement with the
powers of the world. As Your Holiness is surely aware, on June 27, 2000, the
day after the vision contained in the Third Secret was published and explained
away as entirely a thing of the past, the Vatican staged a press conference at
which Mikhail Gorbachev was given a place of honor between Cardinals Sodano and
Silvestrini.
This press
conference was called to celebrate the publication of the late Cardinal
Casaroli’s memoirs concerning his policy of Ostpolitik—the
non-condemnation and non-confrontation of communist regimes—which Cardinal
Casaroli imposed when he was Secretary of State, and which Cardinal Sodano
continues to impose to this day in the Church’s dealings with communist
China.
Mr. Gorbachev, who recently admitted that he is still a Leninist, uses his
Gorbachev Foundation to promote a universal regime of abortion and
contraception in order to eliminate four billion people from the
world’s population. Gorbachev stands for everything Our Lady of Fatima
came in the name of Heaven to oppose and warn against. Yet Gorbachev, this
false prophet of the very culture of death which Your Holiness has so often
condemned, was made the Vatican’s guest of honor and seated between two
princes of the Church, only one day after the Message of Fatima was consigned
to the past.
This disgraceful
event at the Vatican is the very embodiment of the Vatican Secretariat of
State’s entire agenda since the Council, as I have described it in my
introduction to this complaint. Holy Father, was this not a most terrible
insult to Our Lady and Her divine Son?
Your Holiness,
the faithful have other legitimate questions concerning the Consecration of
Russia, which the apostolate has not ceased to raise:
- What possible reason could there be for refusing
to mention Russia in the very consecration of Russia?
- Is it not ridiculous for Vatican officials to
expend so many thousands of words explaining why this one word cannot be
uttered?
- Why not simply do exactly as Our Lady requested?
Indeed, in your own beautiful sermon during the beatification
ceremony this past May 13, you yourself, Holy Father, expressly linked the
Message of Fatima to the Book of the Apocalypse, Chapter 12, verses 1-4. In
your sermon at Fatima you declared that the appearance of Our Lady of Fatima
was nothing less than the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of the
“Woman clothed with the sun” in Apocalypse 12:1. You also drew our
attention to verses 3 and 4, wherein we see the tail of the dragon sweeping a
third of the stars from heaven. We know that the common interpretation of these
verses is that the stars of heaven represent the Catholic clergy. (See The
Book of Destiny by Rev. Herman B. Kramer, pages 280-285).
What were you
trying to tell us with this reference, Holy Father? Were you not suggesting
that the story of Fatima is far from over? Were you not warning us that we must
be on our guard against the many clergy who are doing the devil’s work in
our time? And who can seriously deny this, given the ever-deepening crisis of
faith and discipline in the Church, and the rapidly deteriorating condition of
the world at large? The almost daily news of scandal and malfeasance among the
Catholic priesthood tells us that you are right: many consecrated souls have
indeed been swept from heaven by the dragon’s tail.
Yet instead of
addressing the fall of so many consecrated souls, and the incalculable damage
this disaster has caused to the Church and the world, the Respondent and his
collaborators busy themselves with finding ways to destroy the good name of one
priest from Canada, whose only “offense” is to be outspoken about the
very prophecy Your Holiness himself has just proclaimed to the entire world.
Your
Holiness, my work does not bring me any material gain. I live in very modest
circumstances, and could live far more comfortably if I gave up this
Apostolate. Nor do I derive any pleasure from being unjustly denounced around
the world by the Respondent and his collaborators. Nevertheless, my conscience
impels me to continue with my work because, like millions of other Catholics, I
continue to believe that the Message of Fatima is a prophecy for our age which
[as attested by Sister Lucy’s own letter to Your Holiness in May 1982 and
published by the Vatican on June 26, 2000] has yet to be fulfilled.
The
Respondent’s communiqués accuse me of being “polemical”
concerning the consecration of Russia, but, Holy Father, any reasonable
observer should be able to see that the only polemics in this affair are coming
from the Respondent and his collaborators. For it takes a polemic indeed to
explain why the Church cannot simply do precisely as the Queen of Heaven
requested—in a Message authenticated by God Himself with the greatest
public miracle in the history of the world since the Resurrection.
Why Your
Holiness has thus far refrained from consecrating Russia in the manner Our Lady
requested is a question only Your Holiness can answer. But millions of
Catholics around the world continue to hope and pray that whatever impediment
stands in the way of the Consecration will be removed and Heaven’s request
honored at long last, for it is becoming apparent to more and more people that
time is running out.
And this is why
I go on with my work, Holy Father, even under Respondent’s groundless
threat of excommunication.
IV. SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSION
The Respondent
enjoys a very high position in the Church. As Prefect of the Congregation for
the Clergy, he is charged with the duty of protecting and defending the
rights of the clergy, not merely reviewing their obligations. (Pastor
bonus, Art. 95) The Respondent’s position requires that he exhibit
exemplary prudence, justice and composure in the exercise of his duties.
What is
more, as Your Holiness would know, the Council of Trent [quoted in Canon 2214
of the 1917 Code of Canon Law] has stated the binding teaching of the Church on
the proper relation of bishops to their subjects: “Bishops and all
ordinaries must be pastors not persecutors. They must rule their
subjects, but not dominate them. They must love their subjects as brothers and
sons . . .” [Meminerint Episcopi aliique Ordinarii se pastores non
percussores esse, atque ita praeesse, sibi subditis opportere, ut non in eis
dominentur, sed illos tamquam filios et fratres diligant . . .]
Respondent has
made a mockery of these sacred obligations of his. Instead of showing me
brotherhood and charity, he has done precisely what the Holy Council of Trent
condemned: he has sought to dominate and destroy me by brutishly abusing his
authority and spreading lies about me throughout the world. Enlisting the
worldwide apparatus of the Vatican Secretariat of State, and squandering the
prestige of his office in this illicit enterprise:
- He has falsely accused me of the crime of forgery
in a public ecclesiastical document, whose circulation he commanded.
- He has threatened me privately and publicly with
a groundless excommunication in order to extort my compliance with his unlawful
and immoral intervention in a civil forum—only to claim hypocritically
later on that he cannot discuss the matter with me because the civil forum is
beyond his jurisdiction! To threaten a priest who has done nothing wrong with
the ultimate penalty of expulsion from the Mystical Body, simply to gain an
illicit temporal advantage, is misconduct which in and of itself warrants
Respondent’s removal from office. Such misconduct has never been seen in
the modern history of the Church.
- He has published demonstrable lies about my
canonical status and Catholic orthodoxy in an effort to cause the whole Church
to shun me and a perfectly legitimate apostolate devoted to Our Lady of Fatima.
In summary, Respondent has taken actions against me and the
Apostolate he would never dare to take against any of the notorious enemies of
the Church, who operate freely within the ranks of the sacred priesthood while
Respondent does nothing to stop them.
Respondent’s brutal behavior demonstrates that his motives are malicious.
He seems to think it is his personal mission to destroy me, no matter what
means he must employ. He has completely lost sight of the purpose of his office
and the obligations of utmost charity and justice it imposes upon him.
Shamelessly invoking the name of Our Lord and Our Lady in his extortionate
correspondence, he cynically cloaks his malicious abuse of power in the
language of piety. In short, the Respondent is simply out of control. His abuse
of power and his naked hypocrisy disgrace the office he holds and bring shame
on the Church as a whole. Only Your Holiness can rein him in and restore the
dignity of his office—by removing him from it.
Furthermore, not
only Respondent, but all those who have combined and conspired with him in his
activities, are liable to severe punishments, not excluding their removal from
office. Cfr. Canons 1329 and 1389-91.
V. PRAYER FOR
RELIEF
For all of the
reasons I have set forth here, and in my pending recourses and canonical
complaints before Your Holiness, I respectfully request the following relief:
A. Removal of Respondent, Cardinal
Castrillón Hoyos, from office for abuse of power as envisioned in can.
1389.
B. A decree of Your Holiness compelling Respondent to retract
his false allegation of forgery and the other false allegations he has made
against me, and further compelling him to make restitution by publicly
proclaiming that I am a priest in good standing who has committed no offense
which would warrant penal action against me, as envisioned in cann. 1390 and
1391.
C. A decree of Your Holiness compelling Respondent to publicly
withdraw his illicit threat of excommunication.
D. Public censure
of Respondent by Your Holiness for his abuse of power, as envisioned in can.
1390, §2.
E. Public censure and removal from office of all
those who have conspired and acted in concert with Respondent, as envisioned by
the canons cited in A-D and can. 1329.
Your Holiness
now has before him three canonical recourses/complaints from decrees and
actions of Respondent and his predecessors and collaborators, including this
canonical complaint. The documents I have lodged with Your Holiness demonstrate
beyond any doubt an utterly unprecedented pattern of abuse of power by
high-ranking prelates who claim to be acting in your name.
I remain hopeful
that Your Holiness will act to correct the unparalleled injustices being
perpetrated in your name. I also retain the hope that Your Holiness will remove
the illicit motive for these injustices by finally heeding the key imperative
of the Message of Fatima, which our adversaries have labored for so long to
obscure and deny.
Humbly submitted this 20th day of December
in
the Year of Our Lord 2000.
Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D.,
(Cand.)
452 Kraft Rd.; Fort Erie; Ontario; Canada L2A 4M7
P.S.
I trust
that the three canonical complaints I have now lodged with Your Holiness, and
all of the accompanying documents and correspondence, are sufficient to prove
the allegations in this most recent canonical complaint against Cardinal
Castrillón Hoyos. If any of the documents I have lodged with Your
Holiness are missing, or if Your Holiness requires clarification of any point,
please let me know and I will forward the necessary documentation to Your
Holiness as soon as possible. |