ROME — The Vatican synod of bishops on the Amazon region receives significant financing from the pro-abortion Ford Foundation, reveals investigative Vatican reporter Edward Pentin.
Groups belonging to the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network (REPAM), the primary organizer of the Vatican synod, have received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S.-based Ford Foundation, Mr. Pentin reported Thursday, despite Pope Francis’ declaration that the Church refuses to accept “dirty money.”
“A missionary council for indigenous peoples run by the Brazilian bishops’ conference has received almost $2 million from the pro-abortion Ford Foundation since 2006,” Pentin said, citing Brazilian investigator Bernardo Küster, who provided an itemized list of the grants taken from the Ford Foundation’s grants database.
Mr. Pentin asked the head of the Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples (CIMI), Archbishop Roque Paloschi of Porto Velho, Brazil, about the funding at Thursday’s press briefing at the Vatican and the archbishop did not deny.
The Ford Foundation is known for its consistent support for abortion rights and has also been a vocal advocate of gender ideology and LGBT activism.
Since 2010, CIMI has received $739,269 from the Ford Foundation, Pentin reported. Some of the funds were spent on “Natural Resources and Climate Change” along with “Urban and rural land management” and “Civil and human rights,” CIMI says on its website.
For its part, a local branch of CIMI, the Indigenous Council of Roraima, received $1,164,906 from the Ford Foundation from 2006 until 2018, Pentin wrote.
CIMI itself was founded by Erwin Kräutler, emeritus bishop of Xingu, Brazil, who is an advocate for women’s ordination as well as for ordaining married men in the Amazon to address the priest shortage.
Yet CIMI was not the only synod organization accepting the Ford Foundation’s dirty money, Pentin said. Two other groups that work closely with REPAM have also received funding from the Ford Foundation, namely, the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous People’ Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB)
From 2007 to 2018, COICA received $4,097,535, reports show, while, COIAB has received $1,623,443 in roughly the same period, from 2010 to 2018.
In 2016, Pope Francis publicly refused a donation from the Argentinean government in the amount of over $1 million destined for the Scholas Occurrentes Pontifical Foundation, an organization commissioned by Francis when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires to promote social integration and a “culture of encounter.”
At the time, Francis explained to the leaders of Scholas Occurrentes that the Argentinean government has to meet many needs of the people, “but you have no right to ask them a penny. God always provides for us by divine providence.”
Not long before, Francis insisted in a General Audience that the People of God have no need of “dirty money” and that the Church would not accept funds from those who exploit people.
Raising his voice in evident irritation, the Pope said that “some benefactors of the Church come forward with their donation — ‘take this for the Church’ — but this offering is the fruit of the blood of so many exploited, mistreated, enslaved, underpaid people!”
“I will say to these people, ‘Please, take back your check, burn it!’” he said.
Pope Francis has compared abortion to hiring a hit man to “take out” a child, proposing that the abortion mentality mirrors that of the mafia.
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