Reply #1: Crusader connections. [View All]

[formercia]

http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/bn022206b.htm

A well-wired firm
If events of recent months are any measure, access to Vatican officials doesn't come cheaply.

On Nov. 9 at the Met Life Building's Sky Club restaurant in Manhattan, more than 200 prominent Catholics gathered for an evening fundraiser to support the Path to Peace Foundation, the charitable arm of the Holy See's Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations. The night's honoree, winner of the Foundation's Path to Peace Award, was Fra' Andrew Bertie, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Previous winners of the award include former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Gali and his successor, Kofi Annan, former Phillipine President Corazon Aquino, and former Polish President Lech Walesa.

The Follieri Group was one of two "benefactors" of the event, the highest level of giving noted in the event's program. Seated at Pasquale Follieri's table were Jean-Pierre Mazery, Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Malta, who accepted the award for Bertie; Archbishops Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's permanent observer at the UN, and Gabriel Montalvo, then the Vatican's ambassador to the United States; and Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The following week, Raffaello Follieri and Andrea Sodano visited the Capitol Hill Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, site of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops annual meeting. An escalator ride up from the general assembly meeting room, the Follieri Group maintained a hospitality suite for bishops. At that meeting, by a vote of 222-2, the bishops agreed to seek Vatican approval for an amendment to church policy that would allow large dioceses (those with more than 500,000 Catholics) to sell or mortgage properties for up to $10.3 million without Rome's prior consent. The previous $5.1 million limit, said those supporting the change, was increasingly cumbersome in the go-go real estate market affecting U.S. dioceses nationwide.