Start by removing their tax exemption status.
The Vatican is its own country, they don't pay themselves taxes.
They don’t pay taxes to the city of Rome either, despite using our services and infrastructures: they use Rome’s sewage system but don’t pay for it, they use Rome’s garbage collection system but don’t pay for it - we are talking about private homes, not just churches. They don’t pay for the police service, streets maintenance and so on. The Vatican is s literal parasite of the city of Rome and the Italian nation as a whole. They are not an independent state, they depend on us for everything, hence they should pay taxes for the social services they use.
These are just humble men of God. Where would they possibly get the money to pay for such things?
Exactly.
To be fair, this sounds like it's also on the Italian politicians and therefore the Italian public for not having done anything. Just start charging them, what are they gonna do? Either cough up or become a stinking pile of shit.
They also don't pay taxes in a shitload of other countries.
When the Church is dismantled, who gets Vatican City? What would be a fun choice?
Well, Vatican city was already an Italian possession after the unification. The fascist regime gave it back to the papal state in exchange for the Church supporting Mussolini and fascism (Patti lateranensi).
That's why we can't give it to Italy. Someone else gotta get it.
According to Crusader Kings, the Norse
The Islamic State
Walmart. Some of the supercenters are already almost as big as Vatican City when you count parking. At least it would serve some useful function.
Seriously, fuck the taxes. I mean, fine, tax them where you can, but that is BY FAR the least of the worries. Churches in the US are tax exempt because they are organized as non-profits and charities. You either have to change those tax laws or audit the shit out of each of them, neither of which is a quick or easy solution. 
There’s two things I think can be done given the political will/public pressure. First, do not let institutions do like the catholic church does and let an individual diocese declare bankruptcy after losing a suit. The catholic church is a holistic organization and the entirety of the church should bear the blame for what it’s representatives did. Use the income of the entire church to determine damages, and make the church responsible for paying them. Seize assets if it declares itself unable to pay. Same with the mormons and any other religious institution.
Second, send bishops and other administrators to jail for criminal conspiracy if they knew of an incident and covered it up. Set mandatory reporting requirements that disregard religious ideologies like the “seal of confession.” Treat it like the criminal conspiracy it is. In the US you can bring in the feds because they moved criminals between states to escape justice.
Then seize property, then arrest high ranking members.
The entire international agency is to blame
This is why I left the Catholic Church and became a wizard with unimaginable powers of alchemy and healing.
This is why I left the Catholic Church
Nice, good
and became a wizard
uhhh...
with unimaginable powers of alchemy and healing.
Oh... okay... phew
A real roller coaster, that one
became a wizard with unimaginable powers of alchemy and healing
Is there a YouTube channel for that? Maybe a Great Courses Plus or a Coursera even?
Man bg3 really setting the bar with its cheap respec carrying over to real life.
After the decades of one child sexual abuse case after the other coming out and time and again finding out higher ups in the church knew about this but just kept hiding it, are we really at all surprised? That level of corruption originates from the top down, not bottom up.
It will not surprise me to find out that one day they bust a Vatican City meth lab. Once you already got helping Nazis and child rape and tax evasion you might as well throw in meth production.
Meth seems a bit on the low end for the Vatican.
They ought to be selling bio weapons, or nukes or something...
Does anyone know why the Vatican State exists? The answer is, because of a pact with Mussolini to support his regime in exchange for a state and the involvement of the church in education.
Sp, who's really surprised?
I learned about that in a Trevor Moore song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TxjrHPHypA
Hollo who?
Wasn't it created by Charlemagne The Great to support his rule as the "Holy" Roman Emperor?
That's the papal state, not Vatican city. The papal state ruled over central Italy for centuries until it lost most of its territories leading up to the unification of Italy in 1861. Then lost Rome in 1870 and ceased to exist. The Pope retreated to the Vatican where he assumed the position of "prisoner in the Vatican" while the Italian government tolerated for the most part the Pope ruling over the basilica and its territories.
The modern Vatican State is a new entity created by Mussolini and Pius XI in 1929 with the Patti Lateranensi. With the creation of this state Mussolini gained the approval from the church, which was extremely important to solidify its grip over Italy, while the Church abandoned all claims from the former papal state.
Thank you. I did not realize that the Vatican was only recently made. Since the church abandoned the state, was it considered a good compromise by most Italians? I would imagine most Italians are loyal to the Pope.
Prior to 1870, Italy was several kingdoms, republics and duchies, with a federation of papal states in the middle, and Vatican, then just another cathedral hill in Rome, was not special – the pope mostly lived elsewhere. During the unification of Italy, the pope retreated to Vatican and troops left the palace alone. For almost 60 years, the papal state, now only controlling the Vatican area, was informally tolerated by Italy until Mussolini signed a 1929 treaty, recognizing the territory was independent.
To be honest, I’m not sure what the pope could do if he no longer came to good terms with the fascists but if I were him, I would retreat to an Allied cathedral on a “diplomatic mission” and ring the alarm, not caring if the tiny Vatican was occupied to Italy. Its bad wartime performance was becoming apparent and there would be a chance of reclaiming Vatican after it lost the war.
Would the Pope have really been in danger? Wouldn't most Italians see him as worth protecting due to Italy's long relationship with Roman Catholicism?
Organised religions and dictatorial regimes have almost always lived in a symbiosis.
“However, Coco noted that Koenig also urged the Holy See to not make public what he was revealing because he feared for his own life and the lives of the resistance sources who had provided the intelligence.”
Koenig, for the 99% of people who don’t read past the headline, is the author of the letter in question.
You can take action without revealing your sources. Journalists and police officers do it every day. Politicians and businesses do it all the time. Yet the all powerful Catholic Church did nothing.
Which has zero relevance as the war ended
Oh, the morality of organised religion at work again.
The Vatican and denial. Name a better Duo.
Religion and hypocrisy.
This is completely unsurprising. Might be interesting to see how much communication there was between the Vatican and the Swiss banking cunts during that time though
Plenty of photos of hitler and the pope of the day.
In b4 “GoD WorKS iN MysTeRious WaYS”
no surprise here
These people aren't dumb, they do it intentionally and know exactly what they're doing. Probably to either control a narrative, religious political reasons, or just bigotry.
Always read those links as smh
Sounds like a death cult.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/