Pope Francis excommunicates popular Archbishop as he doubles down on critics

 

This is what autocrats due to control the narrative. It's the only way to push through reforms that are unwanted and unhealthy. How many times in the history of the Catholic Church have they condemned and even destroyed the most holy among them?

Vatican excommunicates far-right critic

of Pope Francis

By Ehren Wynder

Far-right Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó once accused Pope Francis of covering up the sexual abuse scandal surrounding American ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. File Photo by Giuseppe Giglia/EPA-EFE

July 5 (UPI) -- The Vatican said Friday it excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States and a staunch critic of Pope Francis.

Viganò was found guilty of schism -- meaning he has split from the church -- for refusing to recognize the authority of the pope and the liberal reforms enacted after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, according to a statement from the Vatican.

Vigano would probably say that it was the church that left him rather than the other way about.

"The Most Reverend Carlo Maria Vigano was found guilty of the reserved delict [violation of the law] of schism," the statement read.

The archbishop responded to the verdict in a post on X, where he linked to the decree that the Vatican sent him.

"What was attributed to me as guilt for my conviction is now put on record, confirming the Catholic Faith that I fully profess," his post read.

The ultra-conservative archbishop, who served as papal ambassador to Washington, D.C., from 2011 to 2016, emerged as one of Pope Francis' fiercest critics over his support of immigrants, leniency toward LGBTQ people and a pro-vaccine position.

Viganó in 2018 went into hiding after he penned a letter calling for the pope to resign and accusing him of covering up sexual abuse by American ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

He also in public statements called the pontiff a "false prophet" and a "servant of Satan."

Since then, he has aligned himself with far-right conspiracy theories criticizing COVID-19 vaccines and accusing Western "deep state" powers of igniting the war in Ukraine.

In other words, he has found the truth.

The Vatican in June charged Viganó with schism and summoned him to Rome to appear before the tribunal in charge of religious discipline, but he refused the summons, saying in a statement that he did not recognize the tribunal's authority.

"I repudiate, reject, and condemn the scandals, errors and heresies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio," he said at the time of the charges, using the Argentinian pontiff's given name.

Viganó's excommunication means he will no longer be able to observe Mass, receive or administer sacraments or hold official positions within the church. He will, however, be able to keep his title.

Pope Francis has punished other far-right opponents within the church. Last year he fired Bishop Joseph Strickland from his diocese in Tyler, Texas. Strickland was a leading voice among American conservative Catholics who criticized the liberal reforms of the Vatican.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, who accused Francis of diluting Catholic doctrine, was evicted from his Vatican-subsidized apartment last year, as well.

The pope in 2022 defrocked the Rev. Frank Pavone, leader of the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, after he was found guilty of "blasphemous communications on social media, and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop," according to the Vatican.

Pavone argued he had not been properly notified of the decision, and the letter did not specify what communications or disobediences led to the decision.

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European Gas Crisis Spreads to Kazakhstan - Government Quits, State of Emergency, 8 Killed

..

Kazakhstan declares state of emergency in several cities

as ongoing fuel price protests erupt

Fuel price increase that kicked in on Jan. 1 sparked tensions,

but autocracy has long stifled dissent

Thomson Reuters · 

Posted: Jan 05, 2022 9:27 AM ET

A view shows a burning police car during a protest following the Kazakh authorities' decision to lift price caps on liquefied petroleum gas in Almaty early Wednesday. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)

Kazakhstan declared emergencies in the capital, main city and provinces on Wednesday after demonstrators stormed and torched public buildings, the worst unrest for more than a decade in a tightly controlled country that promotes an image of stability.

The cabinet resigned but that failed to quell the anger of the demonstrators, who have taken to the streets in response to a fuel price increase from the start of the new year.

An Instagram live stream by a Kazakh blogger showed a fire blazing in the office of the Almaty mayor, with apparent gunshots audible nearby. Videos posted online also showed the nearby prosecutor's office burning.

Earlier on Wednesday, Reuters journalists saw thousands of protesters pressing toward Almaty city centre, some of them on a large truck. Security forces, in helmets and riot shields, fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades.

The city's police chief said Almaty was under attack by "extremists and radicals," who had beaten up 500 civilians and ransacked hundreds of businesses.

This image grab from video shows protesters near an administrative building during a rally over a hike in energy prices in Almaty. Protesters stormed the mayor's office in Kazakhstan's largest city. (AFP/Getty Images)

A presidential decree announced a two-week state of emergency and nighttime curfew in the capital Nur-Sultan, citing "a serious and direct security threat to citizens." States of emergency were also declared in Almaty and in western Mangistau province, where the protests first emerged in recent days.

Authorities appeared to have shut the country off the internet as the unrest spread. Netblocks, a site that monitors global internet connectivity, said the country was "in the midst of a nation-scale internet blackout."

Government resigns

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev accepted the government's resignation on Wednesday following the protests, which have spread from the provinces to main cities since price caps on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) were lifted on New Year's Day.

Speaking to the acting cabinet, Tokayev ordered the price hikes reversed and new caps placed on the cost of other fuels.

The government said the regulated price was causing losses for producers and needed to be liberalized, but Tokayev acknowledged the move had been botched.

The unrest is the biggest test yet of Tokayev, 68, who took power in 2019 as hand-picked successor to Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former Communist Party boss who had become the longest-serving ruler in the former Soviet Union by the time he stepped down. Nazarbayev, 81, still retains substantial authority as head of the ruling party and chairman of the security council.

Kazakhstan's reputation for political stability under three decades of one-man rule by former leader Nazarbayev helped it attract hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in its oil and metals industries, but the pandemic has led to economic pressures, as elsewhere.

Tokayev said on Wednesday he had taken over as head of the country's Security Council and promised to act with "maximum toughness."

Scores of injuries

Atameken, Kazakhstan's business lobby group, said its members were reporting attacks on banks, stores and restaurants.

The city health department said 190 people had sought medical help, including 137 police. City authorities urged residents to stay home.

The interior ministry said government buildings were also attacked in the southern cities of Shymkent and Taraz overnight, with 95 police wounded in clashes. Police have detained more than 200 people.

A video posted online showed police using a water cannon and stun grenades against protesters in front of the mayor's office in Aktobe, capital of another western province.

The size of the crowd in Almaty late Tuesday is shown. Police fired tear gas and stun grenades in a bid to break up an unprecedented thousands-strong march, with injuries to protesters and police reported. (Ruslan Pryanikov/AFP/Getty Images)

Kazakhstan has been grappling with rising price pressures. Inflation was closing in on nine per cent year-on-year late last year — its highest level in more than five years — forcing the central bank to raise interest rates to 9.75 per cent.

Some analysts said the protests pointed to more deep-rooted issues.

"I think there is an underlying undercurrent of frustrations in Kazakhstan over the lack of democracy," said Tim Ash, emerging market strategist at BlueBay Asset Management.

"Young, internet-savvy Kazakhs, especially in Almaty, likely want similar freedoms as Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans, Kyrgyz and Armenians, who have also vented their frustrations over the years with authoritarian regimes."

European and international election observers continually condemned the legitimacy of presidential elections in Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev, who regularly won with over 95 per cent of the vote. Voting irregularities and detentions of government opponents were also noted in the 2019 vote, which Tokayev won with a more modest 71 per cent total.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Kazakhstan could solve its own problems and it was important that no one interfered from the outside, RIA news agency reported.

Russia's foreign ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation in its southern neighbour and counting on the "soonest possible normalization."

"We advocate the peaceful resolution of all problems within the constitutional and legal framework and dialogue, rather than through street riots and the violation of laws," it said.

The Latest > Eight police and military killed, over 300 injured in Wednesday’s violence so far, the Kazakh interior ministry says

Stunning Reversal of 275 Verdicts in Alleged Coup Plot by Turkey's Court of Appeals

Turkish court overturns 275 verdicts in alleged Ergenekon ‘coup plot’ trial

FILE PHOTO: Protesters are blocked by Turkish soldiers as they try to march to a courthouse in Silivri, where a hearing on people charged with attempting to overthrow Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government is due to take place April 8, 2013 © Osman Orsal

Turkey's Court of Appeals has rejected an Istanbul criminal court’s ruling on the so-called Ergenekon coup case, filed against 275 people over an alleged conspiracy to overthrow Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.

The high court found a number of contradictions in the case, which was launched back in 2007 against people including ex-army chief Ilker Basbug, politicians and journalists. The court found flaws in the investigation, trial, collection of evidence and fair hearing for the accused, the Anadolu news agency reported. 

According to the court’s ruling, "There is no incidence of admission of 'Ergenekon terror organization' by the local court, it remains unclear who formed it [the alleged terror group], when [was it formed], failure of revealing its crimes and hierarchical structure, and its leader is also unknown."

In other words, there was no plot! Few people ever thought there was, I suspect, as it seemed obvious that Erdogan was replacing top military people with those more committed to Islam than to Turkey, thus preventing a possible coup when Erdogan began pushing Turkey toward Sharia. 

This is a stunning reversal as the Court of Appeals stood up to Erdogan and ruled in favour of law and order, and common sense. That will not sit well with Sultan Erdogan who wants Turkey to be a caliphate with an autocratic ruler - him. I would be surprised if several Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Justices (Military Court of Cassation) are not replaced, one way or another, in the near future.

The Ergenekon case was opened when 27 hand grenades were discovered at the home of a non-commissioned officer in Istanbul, immediately prompting accusations that the explosives were allegedly intended to be deployed in a coup. 

Yeah, because that's all you need to bring down an entire government of a large country - 27 grenades!

The trial began in 2008, with nearly 300 people accused of membership in an organization dubbed Ergenekon. The 2,455-page indictment listed dozens of charges against the defendants, including an alleged plot to topple Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003-2004, when he was the country's prime minister.

Eyebrows were raised when former army chief Ilker Basbug, who retired in 2010, was arrested in 2012 over an alleged plot to topple the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government. Basbug became the highest-ranking officer in a massive probe into the alleged ultranationalist terrorist network, and along with 18 other defendants was handed a life sentence in 2013. "We can say it is really tragicomic to accuse somebody who commands such an army of forming and directing a terrorist group," Turkey's NTV network quoted him as telling prosecutors.

Hundreds of protesters clash with police in Turkey amid mass trial 

Critics of the case said the charges brought against the accused were based on shaky evidence,  noting that the trial dragged on for a suspiciously long period of time. Court hearings regularly led to violent clashes between the defendants’ supporters and police.

The Turkish military staged three coups between 1960 and 1980 and forced a pro-Islamist government out of office in 1997. Over the past weekend four senior military officials were dismissed from their posts.

You can bet that none of them were hard-line Islamists.

Miss Turkey Faces Prison for Anti-Erdogan Instagram Post

Merve Buyuksarac with the egomaniac Erdogan in the background

Former Miss Turkey is facing 4.5 years in prison for making an Instagram video in which she expressed displeasure with President Erdogan, reciting a poem from a satirical weekly.

Miss Turkey of 2006, Merve Buyuksarac, is facing up to 4.5 years in prison for an Instagram post that Turkish prosecutors deemed offensive to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"If you google the poem I shared (the one that does not include any insult), you will see 960,000 more people shared it… it's interesting, isn't it?" Buyuksarac wrote on her Twitter in response to the charges.

Buyuksarac deleted the post, in which she recites a poem critical of Erdogan, which was made in November 2014, after her friends warned her that such acts could land her in prison.

The poem, previously published in a Turkish satirical magazine, criticizes Erdogan using verses from Turkey's national anthem.

The Last Caliph of
Constantinople

The Turkish president himself was jailed for four months in the late 1990s, while mayor of Istanbul, for reciting an Islamist poem in the Turkish courts deemed to incite religious hatred.

I should hope that if Miss Buyuksarac is jailed for this absurd offence, that the EU will pull the plug on any  possibility of Turkey joining the EU. Erdogan the autocrat wants complete control and is patiently developing it. Attaturk's goal of separation of church and state is now dead and buried. 

Don't be surprised if Turkey is declared a Caliphate within a few years, and Erdogan a Caliph. That, I believe, is how highly he thinks of himself.

Update: Merve was given a suspended sentence of 14 months provided she not insult Erdogan again for 5 years.