New Hampshire Dark Justice Is Illuminated Down Under

In early 2024, several Civil Rights venues hosted new, hopeful developments in a 30-year-old lingering injustice: the once hopeless 1994 trial of a Catholic priest.

February 7, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 and sentenced to 67 years in a New Hampshire prison. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration. ... We enter another world with a life sentence. Australia is not New Hampshire, and I don’t believe Australia would blackball the discussion of a case such as Fr MacRae’s.”

— Cardinal George Pell, Prison Journal Volume 2, p.58

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It’s hard to know when to give up on justice. It’s even harder to know when to give up on hope. I have been at the brink of both several times over the last three decades, but I have not yet taken the plunge. I am not sure what that would feel like. Prison is bad enough without adding hopelessness to the mix. Other prisoners watch me for signs of hopelessness. If I descend into it, it will only justify their caving into it as well.

As my 30th year of unjust imprisonment began on September 23, 2023, my friend Pornchai Moontri wrote a post for this blog from Thailand. It is emotionally staggering to read, but it is also filled with hope — the sort of hope for which “the bigger picture” provides much-needed context. Only someone who has suffered and survived a great deal in life, as Pornchai has, could give both suffering and hope equal measure. l was not able to see his post, but our editor read it to me while preparing it for publication. She paused four times to cry.

Not all tears are tears of sorrow. Pornchai’s article deserves an award, but there isn’t one that measures what he and I, and Maximilian Kolbe, and Padre Pio have all been through together and triumphantly. Let that last word sink in. None of us appears on the surface to be triumphant in anything by any measure of this world, but in the Kingdom of Heaven, our enduring hope is radiant.

Its triumph is not just in our endurance, or in any obvious outcome. It is in the grace-filled ability to suffer with faith, hope, and love intact — the greatest of gifts as defined by Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 13:13). If you missed Pornchai’s post, you shouldn’t, but bring a tissue. Bring four of them. Nothing in my experience of the last thirty years makes any sense without the context provided by Pornchai’s heart rending message from our New Evangelization. His post is, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.” We will add a link to it at the end of this post.

In the early dawn of this 30th year in prison, there are some recent developments that I now need to write about, but first I must ask for your forgiveness. During the months between September 2023 and now, several of our readers extended kindness and generosity to me and this humble blog by helping with a number of expenses. I have been unable to respond with gratitude in a timely manner. I am sorry. My excuse is just more suffering. Like many in this overcrowded place I came down with a respiratory virus that lasted two months. A weekly post was all the writing that I could handle.

By December, the virus morphed into vertigo so even walking upright from point A to point B became a challenge. Then it became a month-long migraine with chronic double vision. It may even have been a minor stroke. I hope my posts of the last few months did not mirror the struggle I was in to write them. I now await an “outside” consult with an ophthalmologist.

I have begun to feel a little better but the vision problem remains a challenge, though with more recent minor improvements. So besides my BTSW posts, I have managed only a few letters in the last few months. Forgive me, please. We need your help but I am sorrowful to accept it in silence. A family member who had for the last 30 years been managing a small expense account for me with power of attorney has also had some health issues and I have had to relieve him of that burden. Please note at both our “Contact and Support” and “Special Events” pages, that we now have a new address for assistance to me and this blog. The address is: “Fr. Gordon MacRae, P.O. Box 81, Fayetteville, NY 13066-0081.”

You are raised up in thanksgiving before the Lord at every Sunday Mass in my prison cell. If you ever decide to help again in the wake of my only silent gratitude, it would help further if you always include an email address so I may properly acknowledge your assistance.

The Bill of Rights Obliterated

I owe a debt of gratitude to Ryan A. MacDonald, an accomplished columnist who has taken up my cause repeatedly over these many years. His latest articles appeared here over the last few weeks. In “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List” Ryan accomplished something that no other writer has taken on. He exposed concrete examples of how judicial secrecy in New Hampshire has further eroded the rights of citizens to seek justice.

Former Keene, New Hampshire Detective James McLaughlin is now retired, but at this writing he continues in retirement to investigate cases for the local Cheshire County (NH) prosecutor. As many readers now know, he has been exposed for a pattern of corruption and misconduct in his investigations when his name appeared on a once-secret list of officers with credibility issues. He also choreographed a fraudulent case against me that rode the waves to capitalize on Catholic scandal over the last thirty years.

Detective McLaughlin’s name appeared on that secret list for an unspecific 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records.” In some reports it has been described as “Falsification of Evidence,” something that I have accused him of since my own charges first arose over 30 years ago. Getting to the bottom of this is a test of endurance in a legal system that shelters police misconduct through secret and anonymous hearings.

Under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent (“Brady v. Maryland”), prosecutors are required to inform defendants and their defense counsel when an investigating detective is on the list for misconduct. In my case and many others, they did not do so. This discovery constitutes new evidence that can reopen a case. Famed civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate addressed this in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.”

As pointed out in these pages in recent weeks, however, judges hearing former Detective McLaughlin’s petition to remove his name from that list have allowed these hearings to be presented in secret proceedings that are rendered anonymous through the use of “John Doe” in place of an offending officer’s name. Citizens are prevented from offering any further evidence because of this judicial secrecy. On January 24, Ryan MacDonald published another bombshell: “In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret.”

His article lays out additional evidence under New Hampshire law for a multitude of other alleged incidents of official misconduct on the part of this officer. They include perjury, witness tampering, attempted bribery, tampering with evidence, and additional incidents of falsification of records. All of this has been shielded under color of law by the practice of sealing police personnel files and hearing challenges to the police misconduct list in secret. Ryan has also cited articles published at InDepthNH.org:

“The records obtained by InDepthNH.org indicate there are more internal affairs reports dealing with McLaughlin which the city has not so far provided. The city has also not provided an explanation for the omission of the other reports.”

The reporter cites a 1988 letter in McLaughlin’s file from then Keene, NH Police Chief Thomas Powers:

“I reviewed your personnel file and several internal affairs investigations. While you have accumulated a number of praises in your career, a disproportionate number of serious accusations and violations have significantly detracted from your record, including a one-week suspension.”

First in the Nation

By coincidence (or probably not) I am writing this post on January 23, 2024, the day that the State of New Hampshire hosts its much-celebrated, but now endangered, First-in-the-Nation presidential primary election. In anticipation of this event, Kentucky attorney Frank Friday penned a superb and provocative article for American Thinker entitled “Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition.” It begins ...

“This Tuesday, New Hampshire will hold its quadrennial first-in-the-nation primary. I am sorry to say, I have come to know something of the seamier side of this small state, writing these past years about a great legal injustice that has occurred up there. This is something most Granite Staters don’t like to think about: the Fr. Gordon MacRae frame-up.

“Thanks to the state’s tiny, inbred legal and law enforcement community, the matter was kept quiet for years. But the truth is inevitably coming out especially regarding the ‘hero-detective’ who doesn’t look so good now.

“One of my New Hampshire friends who writes about this has even found a small army of New Hampshire lawyers, police and politicos making a nice living off spurious sex abuse allegations. The local FBI office, no surprise, may even be connected. It’s worth reading the whole thing. You will be appalled.”

— “Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition,” AmericanThinker, January 20, 2024

To my great admiration, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights emailed the above article to its entire global network of members. It links in the final paragraph to a previous post here at Beyond These Stone Walls by Los Angeles documentary researcher Claire Best. Mr. Friday is right. You will be appalled! The link goes to, “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

And because of the American Thinker article, and the decision of the Catholic League to promote it, that link above surpassed almost all other posts in traffic so far this year. It is just the sort of thing that needs to happen. History has shown that nothing stifles Civil Rights more than a silent Coverup.

Wrongful Convictions Report — Down Under

While all the above was going on in recent weeks, I wrote a painfully difficult article about new developments in the case of the late Cardinal George Pell for whom I also have great respect and admiration. I do not think there has been a Church figure in modern times so unjustly maligned. My December 10, 2023 post was, “The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell.”

An unintended effect was that it caught the attention of a site in Australia that I did not even know existed. Within a week of posting the above link, the site editor, Australian writer Andrew L. Urban, did a deep dive into my own situation and published two outstanding articles there:

“Sexual Abuse or Justice Abused?”

“False allegations, a corrupt detective, flawed judicial decisions ... no wonder Father Gordon MacRae’s life has been ruined, sentenced to a 67-year jail term, after refusing a one-year plea deal wishing to maintain his innocence.”

And...

“The Back Alley of Justice: Fr Gordon MacRae’s Wrongful Conviction”

“Malevolent shenanigans behind the scenes in the Fr Gordon MacRae case, from withholding evidence to witness tampering ... It seems justice took a holiday — and hasn’t returned. Fr Gordon, now 70, has been in prison for men in Concord, USA since he was 41.”

The above two articles are the result of exceptional investigative reporting by Andrew Urban who also published an extended excerpt from one of my own recent posts on Australia’s own Cardinal Pell marking the first anniversary of his death on January 10. Andrew Urban entitled it, the “Week of Pell’s Resurrection.”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which casts some needed light on a story otherwise kept in darkness. You will demonstrate to the above writers the importance of this story by sharing it. You may also like these related posts cited herein:

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized by Pornchai Moontri

Our Corrupt FBI : New Hampshire Edition by Frank Friday, Esq.

New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case by Claire Best

Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List by Ryan A. MacDonald

In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret by Ryan A. MacDonald

Former Judge Arthur Brennan arrested at a Washington, DC protest in 2011.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

In New Hampshire Courts, Police Corruption Is Judged in Secret

Former Detective James McLaughlin, aka John Doe, has a single incident on a list of police misconduct but only because the public is barred from providing evidence.

January 24, 2024 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Editor’s Note: The following is Ryan A. MacDonald’s continuation of a post that appeared here recently entitled, “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List.”

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Just a day before starting this article, I received a surprising message with a link to a new title posted in Australia by Andrew Urban on the well-known Wrongful Convictions Report blog . The title of the new article is “Sexual Abuse or Justice Abuse?”

The well-researched article first appeared in Australia on January 8 this year, but by the end of the day it had found its way around the globe. I read it with concern at first, wondering if Mr. Urban’s article somehow preempts this one which is also well researched. Our two pieces were written with similar conclusions but from very different points of view. I am struck by how incisively Andrew Urban and several reader comments unmasked the questionable police tactics of former Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin, architect of the case against Father Gordon MacRae.

Since then, I have had a chance to peruse Mr. Urban’s excellent Wrongful Convictions Report with a special interest in his posts about the case against the late Cardinal George Pell. The case of Cardinal Pell and Father MacRae seem remarkably similar in their background origins, their shady police investigations, and in the extent to which money changed hands. Most interestingly, Cardinal Pell and Father MacRae also wrote about each other in their respectively unjust imprisonment. Father MacRae’s latest report on the Pell matter was his recent bombshell, “The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell.”

Preceding all the above by several months, Los Angeles-based documentary researcher, Claire Best also performed a public service with one of her many incisive articles published at Medium.com. This one, published September 1, 2023, is entitled simply, “Who Is James F. McLaughlin — New Hampshire’s Top Child and Internet Sex Crimes Detective?” Here’s an important excerpt:

“When McLaughlin’s name first appeared on a list of police with credibility issues in late 2021, it disappeared within hours. Something’s up, and past and present Attorneys General and District Attorneys know it. What are they hiding that they don’t want to come out, and why? For the majority of the sex crimes James F. McLaughlin investigated, plea deals were reached before trial. Money seems to be involved... He owns companies in Jaffrey (NH) with an agent/attorney who specializes in trusts and municipal laws. His wife owned a real estate company in Keene (NH). How were they funded to invest in real estate?

"Thomas Grover, the accuser of Father Gordon MacRae, admitted to his former stepson — Charles Glenn and a victim of YDC abuse who has demanded federal investigation of Attorneys General for their role — that he was offered money by James F. McLaughlin to accuse the priest who has been denied justice for the past 29 years — framed by the former sex crimes police officer.”

[See also “The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Fr MacRae,” a collaborative effort by Claire Best and Ryan A. MacDonald.]

Police Misconduct under Shield of Law

As indicated in “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List,” former detective James McLaughlin has petitioned the court to remove his name from an official NH Attorney General’s List of police with credibility or misconduct issues. McLaughlin has been allowed to seek his removal from the list under a pseudonym, “John Doe,” in Court filings. Thus any hearing before a New Hampshire judge will be held in secret at a time and place that is also secret. His police personnel file has been sealed. If any New Hampshire citizen had input or pertinent information that could further inform the Court in this process, that information is rendered moot by concessions to “John Doe’s” judicial secrecy.

At least one New Hampshire judge has published his disagreement with this process in a published op-ed, “Judge: Laurie List Police Lawsuits Are Being Improperly Sealed.” The judge, former NH Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker, stated:

“One of the fundamental precepts of a democracy is that public officials must be accountable to the citizens. This concept has been codified in the New Hampshire Constitution since 1784. Part I, Article 8 provides: ‘All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and always accountable to them. Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable, and responsive...’” “Cases cannot be fully sealed from the outset.... The party seeking to maintain court records under seal must demonstrate a ‘sufficiently compelling interest’ that outweighs public right of access.”

Whatever that ‘sufficiently compelling interest’ is or was in the case of former Detective McLaughlin, it, too, remains under seal and beyond public view. Having followed his cases and activities for years, I simply cannot fathom what that “compelling” secrecy interest could be. The Court process itself smacks of corruption.

The obvious public hazard here is that the McLaughlin petition to be removed from the Laurie List is thus heard in a vacuum. All that is publicly known is an original, non-descript 1985 incident labeled “Falsification of Records.” In other postings, specifically in articles by Damien Fisher at InDepthNH.org, the Laurie List incident is described as “Falsification of Evidence,” a far more serious infraction for a police officer.

Whether the original matter was “falsification of records” or “falsification of evidence,” or both, McLaughlin’s 1988 and 1994 investigations of Fr. Gordon MacRae involved both. I will clarify evidence for this below.

Damien Fisher appears to be the sole New Hampshire reporter covering the matter of the Laurie List. He reports multiple attempts at obtaining information under Freedom of Information Act requests with limited success. What he has obtained and reported on, however, raises serious questions about the judicial secrecy under which this matter still hides. It seems that as a sworn officer, James F. McLaughlin is culpable of far more malfeasance than his 1985 “Falsification of Records” infraction alludes, but it remains the sole publicly known infraction. There are hints of many others, however, but public accountability is hindered by judicial secrecy.

Attorney Andru Volinsky, who is representing the New Hampshire Center of Public Interest Journalism in its ongoing lawsuit to unseal the complete Laurie List:

“I have no idea whether any of the judges who looked at these cases applied an appropriate standard whether to make this anonymous or sealed or not. It creates a system of secrecy that does not build confidence in the court system.”

Keene, NH Det. James McLaughlin celebrates his 350th arrest as a sex-crimes crusader.

Infractions That Never Made the Laurie List

Listed below, therefore, I have itemized specific New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated (NH RSAs) governing police misconduct laws. Each is followed by examples of claimed misconduct raised by citizens or reporters regarding Detective James McLaughlin that had been kept out of any official investigation due to the seal of judicial secrecy. No one has investigated these claims:

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RSA 641 : 6 (I) — Falsifying Physical Evidence

A person commits a Class B felony if, believing that an official proceeding as defined in RSA 641:1, II, or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he alters, destroys, conceals, or removes any thing with a purpose to impair its verity or availability in such proceeding.

RSA 641 : 1 (I a) - Perjury

A person is guilty of a Class B felony if in any official proceeding he makes a false material statement under oath or affirmation, or swears or affirms the truth of a material statement previously made, and he does not believe the statement to be true.

RSA 641 : 2 (I b)— False Swearing

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he makes a false statement under oath or affirmation or swears or affirms the truth if (b) the statement is one which is required by law to be sworn or affirmed before a notary or other person authorized to administer oaths;

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EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATIONS: In sworn interrogatories in the 1994 case of NH v. Gordon MacRae, Detective McLaughlin was ordered by the Court to produce to the defense any taped conversations with MacRae or other witnesses in the case. McLaughlin wrote in a police report logged as Case No. 89-0-2440, “I also told [MacRae] the interview would be recorded to safeguard both him and the police from misunderstandings about what was exactly stated.”

McLaughlin then went on in his report to attribute statements to MacRae that were never made. When MacRae’s defense requested a copy of the tape, McLaughlin responded under oath that the recording in question had been recycled for other investigations and is thus no longer available.

Eleven years later, in 2005, McLaughlin sent that very tape recording to a reporter at The Wall Street Journal who then described its contents very differently than McLaughlin first reported them. Neither McLaughlin nor the prosecutor has ever explained this. This “Falsification of Evidence” should have been logged as an additional finding on the Laurie List about McLaughlin, but no one has acknowledged or investigated it.

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RSA 641 : 3 (I a) — Unsworn Falsification

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he or she makes a written or electronic false statement ... on or pursuant to a form bearing a notification authorized by law.

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EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: Throughout the “investigation” of MacRae, multiple tape recordings were referenced in police reports, but none were ever turned over for defense review as ordered by the court. McLaughlin’s signed reports attributed to named witnesses allegations about Gordon MacRae that those witnesses insist were never made. However the recordings containing such statements became inexplicably unavailable.

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RSA 105 : 19 (I) — Reports of Misconduct by Law Enforcement Officers

For the purposes of this section, “misconduct” means assault, sexual assault, bribery, fraud, theft, tampering with evidence, use of a chokehold, or excessive and illegal use of force.

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EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: From a Signed Statement of Steven Wollschlager: (October 27, 2008):

“Again during this meeting I mostly just listened to scenarios and statements being spoken to me by the police. The lawsuits and money were of greatest discussion and I was left feeling that if I would go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well.

“McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had. McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could be easier for us with a large amount of money.”

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RSA 641 : 5 (I a) — Tampering with Witnesses and Informants

A person is guilty of a class B felony if: Believing that an official proceeding, as defined in RSA 641 : 1, II or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he attempts to induce or otherwise cause a person to a) Testify or inform falsely.

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EVIDENCE FOR VIOLATION: From a Signed Statement of Debra Collett (February 20, 2008)

“I am Debra Collette I am making this Statement to James Abbott, Investigator for Gordon MacRae. My involvement leading to speaking with James Abbott was as Clinical Director at Derby's Lodge in NH. I was contacted by Keene Police Detective McLaughlin. I was uncomfortable with repeated stopping and starting the tape recorder when he did not agree with my answers to his questions ...

“His treatment of me included coercion, intimidation veiled and more forward threats as well as being disrespectful. I was overtly threatened. McLaughlin told me he would personally come to my home, drag me out of it bodily if necessary, and force me to appear in court and testify despite my information to him.

“My overall experience in interacting with [him] was one of being bullied with [his] attitude of animosity, anger, and preconception of guilt ... [He] presented as argumentative, manipulative, and threatening via use of police power in an attempt to get me to say what they wanted to hear.”

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RSA 641 : 7 (III) — Tampering with Public Records or Information

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if he purposely and unlawfully destroys, conceals, removes or otherwise impairs the verity or availability of any such thing.

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EVIDENCE FOR INFRACTION: Detective McLaughlin’s tape recordings of his interviews with Ms. Debra Collett cited above simply disappeared before MacRae’s 1994 trial and therefore could not be heard by defense counsel, the judge, or the jury.

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Citations from reported articles at InDepthNH.org by Damien Fisher regarding content not reported on the Laurie List

1. Altered Tape Recordings: Source: Damien Fisher, “County Investigates McLaughlin Complaint Filed By Man Convicted Decades Ago” (November 15, 2022):

“In 1988, James McLaughlin received a letter of reprimand from then-Chief Thomas Powers after James McLaughlin was involved in a December 1987 heated verbal confrontation on the phone, and later inside the station. It was during this incident that the audio portion of the tape was destroyed under suspicious circumstances, according to Powers ... . Powers called James McLaughlin’s explanation for the tape erasure ‘unacceptable.’”

2. Other Undocumented Infractions:

a) [From the same source as above]: From a 1988 Letter of Chief Thomas Powers in the file of James F. McLaughlin:

“I reviewed your personnel file and several internal affairs investigations. While you have accumulated a number of praises in your career, a disproportionate number of serious accusations and violations have significantly detracted from your record, including a one-week suspension.”

b) Source: Damien Fisher, “Records Show Keene Police’s Famed Ex-Detective Caught in Lies” (September 19, 2022) :

“McLaughlin was suspended for lying about shooting his gun, and another in which he ‘accidentally’ destroyed an audio recording that could have put him in a bad light.” “The records obtained by InDepthnH.org indicate there are more internal affairs reports dealing with McLaughlin which the city has not so far provided. The city has also not provided an explanation for the omission of the other reports.”

c) Source: Damien Fisher, “Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment” (January 11, 2022) :

“Once it was discovered that McLaughlin had sent [child sex abuse images] to [Defendant Lee] Allaben, United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe censured the police officer in court.”

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Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We thank Ryan A. MacDonald for his careful analysis. Part One, which appeared here recently, is: “Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List.” You may also be interested in these related posts published at the site, Wrongful Convictions Report on the case of Fr. Mac Rae:

Sexual Abuse or Justice Abuse?

The back alley of justice

And by Claire Best and Ryan A. MacDonald:

The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Father MacRae

And again by Ryan A. MacDonald:

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Trial of Cardinal Becciu, the Betrayal of Cardinal Pell

Credits: Left, CNS; Right, CNS/Paul Haring

In December 2023 Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the first prelate in history to face trial in a Vatican court, was convicted of embezzlement and money laundering.

January 10, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I recently explained to a friend concerned about the emergence of accounts of historic abuse by priests that mainstream media often save such stories to run them near Christmas and Easter. The motive of the left-leaning media in this seems obvious. It is to drive a wedge between Catholics and their Church. So it was doubly distressing when lurid stories of criminal behavior were generated from the highest levels of Church authority during the Advent and Christmas seasons this year.

“A Cardinal Once Seen as Future Pope Now Faces Prison.” That shocking headline was a front page story by Francis X. Rocca in the December 13, 2023 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, has stood accused by Vatican investigators of the crimes of embezzlement and money laundering since 2020. Trial for the then 75-year-old prelate commenced in 2021. In the weeks before Christmas in 2023, he was convicted of the charges and sentenced to a prison term of five-and-a-half years.

Cardinal Becciu is the first cardinal in Church history to face criminal charges in a Vatican court. According to the Rocca article, five others also faced criminal charges in the same case. They included other Vatican officials and outsiders. The case centered on a failed Vatican investment in a high-end London property and “the alleged theft of money intended to free a kidnapped nun but reportedly spent instead on resort vacations and luxury goods from Prada and Louis Vuitton,” according to Rocca. This story could not be worse.

The trial, which concluded near Christmas, included “accusations of Vatican vendettas as well as Becciu’s secretly recorded conversation with the pope.” Mr. Rocca reported that Pope Francis changed Church laws during the investigation in ways that defendants’ lawyers said favored the prosecution and violated the right to a fair trial — “including a broader authority to eavesdrop on suspects.”

Prior to his role as prefect for the Vatican office, Cardinal Becciu had been in the official role of “Substitute for General Affairs.” Mr. Rocca described this role as “effectively the pope’s chief of staff.” Becciu served in this capacity for the last two years of the pontificate of Benedict XVI and at least the first five years of the papacy of Francis. Becciu described this role, reported by journalist Francis X. Rocca, in 2018: “The substitute is, so to speak, the one who has no time for himself but must give it first to the Holy Father and therefore be willing to take any of his calls and favor any of his initiatives.”

It was Francis who elevated Becciu to the rank of cardinal and appointed him to his role overseeing the canonization of Saints. When the charges of money laundering and embezzlement emerged in 2020, Pope Francis asked him to resign.

Cardinal Becciu, Pope Francis, Cardinal Pell [Credits: CNS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters, CBCEW, Daniel Ibanez/CNA/EWTN]

Who’s Left on the Side of Right?

Several biographies of Pope Francis point to Vatican corruption as a primary impetus for his elevation to the papacy in the conclave of 2013. In my post, “Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy,” I described the conditions under which Benedict XVI shocked the world with his decision to step down from the Chair of Peter. His final year was marred by Vatican corruption, especially revolving around Vatican finances. The betrayals and political machinations in Rome became legendary.

The word, “machination” refers to a crafty scheme or cunning design for the accomplishment of a sinister end. There were several such schemes at work in the background that caused Benedict XVI to conclude, as he did in his February 2013 announcement, that he must step down:

“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

In the years to follow the 2013 conclave, one scandal after another emerged from Rome. Writing for The New York Times in 2018, conservative Catholic columnist Ross Douthat wrote of the “latest bomb” to go off in “an already cratered Catholic landscape.” The bomb then was an 11-page “testimony” from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States, accusing Pope Francis of shielding and enabling a serial abuser, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, by releasing him from restrictions on his activities and travel.

The restrictions had been imposed by Benedict XVI in the wake of revelations that McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians for years. Cardinal McCarrick had been restricted by Benedict to a life of prayer and penance, but ignored it. According to columnist Robert George writing in The Washington Post in 2018, “Pope Francis ignored it as well.”

Ross Douthat attributed this decision of Francis to the fact that he “needed allies” in the ongoing struggle between conservative and liberal Catholics. This is a scandal of its own. Douthat reported that McCarrick “was sympathetic to the Pope’s planned liberalizing push.” The irony was that liberal Catholics, the very ones who championed full exposure of the sexual abuse crisis, were willing to look the other way when Francis promoted McCarrick, removed his disciplinary sanctions, and corralled his help for an obsessive agenda to thwart Catholic conservatives. Some have suggested that such obsessive concerns helped to keep rogue Vatican actors like Cardinal Becciu from scrutiny. When the spotlight of obsession is on sexual abuse alone, money flows freely in the surrounding darkness.

When Cardinal Pell Was Accused

The case against Cardinal George Pell was also influenced by nefarious machinations, including police and prosecutor corruption. This was at the heart of a curious incident related in Prison Journal (Volume 1, p. 329). At a pretrial hearing on Cardinal Pell’s false sexual abuse charges, among the most difficult charges to defend against, a Melbourne, Australia priest who was present in the court told Pell’s supporters that he prays that the prosecutor will “mess up his presentation.” When that actually happened, the priest reportedly said, “See, my prayers are working!” When Cardinal Pell was told of this he said, “I would have much preferred that he prayed for justice to be done.”

Those were the spontaneous words of an innocent man who believed that justice in this life is possible — even likely. The guilty on the other hand engage in any number of contrived machinations to do an end run around the law. When a defendant is innocent and there is no evidence supporting the charge, it is too often police and prosecutors who resort to machinations to do an end run around the law.

There is a vivid example of this on the same page of Pell’s Prison Journal cited above. Detective Sgt. Kevin Carson of the Ballarat, Australia Police Department produced a report claiming that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Victoria — where Pell was facing trial — was responsible for forty-three suicides. After the shocking story was leaked to tabloid media, a parliamentary inquiry into the Church’s handling of sexual abuse was launched. An inquiry is similar to a grand jury report in the United States.

The police set up an investigation, but were able to identify only twenty-five of the forty-three named by Detective Carson. Of those twenty-five names, only sixteen had committed suicide. But only one of the sixteen had been assaulted by a member of the clergy. As Pell himself pointed out, “One is one too many, but one is not forty-three.” This tendency to “heighten the hype” lends itself to unfair trials and wrongful convictions, but it also lends itself to career advancement, a shamefully strong force in many of the US grand jury reports on Catholic clergy.

In his analysis of the Cardinal Becciu trial in The Wall Street Journal cited above, Francis X. Rocca included the following paragraph:

“Around that time, Francis made Australian Cardinal George Pell his finance chief and gave him sweeping powers. Pell unveiled new financial guidelines for the Vatican. But he clashed with the secretariat, which opposed his plans for a financial audit by an external auditing firm. Pell considered Becciu his main opponent.... Other Vatican officials also lobbied the Pope against Pell’s changes. The Pope curtailed Pell’s powers and the external audit was canceled. Pell later returned to Australia to face child sex abuse charges. He was acquitted on appeal and died” [on January 10, 2023].

In an October 15, 2023 published commentary on Mr. Rocca’s account in The Wall Street Journal, I added some further context to the story:

“The part of this nebulous story that most troubles me is the decision of the Pope to listen to Cardinal Becciu and other Vatican officials who lobbied against Cardinal George Pell’s financial reforms even after [ the Pope] had empowered him to reform Vatican finances. Mr. Rocca does not speculate on the source of charges against Cardinal Pell in Australia — charges for which he was exonerated in a unanimous decision of Australia’s High Court. This was after he wrongly spent 400 days in prison. There are many who believe that there may have been a connection between these false charges and Cardinal Pell’s attempted reforms of Vatican finances. Pell himself suspected this.”

Book cover image courtesy of Ignatius Press; Red cardinal photo by RachidH (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)

Many Unanswered Questions

In Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal Volume 2, in an entry dated 2 August 2018, he devoted several pages to an article of mine, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” The article had been sent to him in prison by Sheryl Collmer, a columnist for Crisis magazine. (The full excerpt now appears at our “Voices from Beyond” feature. )

My article drew a parallel between an accuser’s testimony in the trial of Cardinal Pell and that of another accuser in an unrelated case reported in Rolling Stone magazine by a now disgraced reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. It turned out that there was indeed a connection, and the Erdely article was widely read in Australia before Pell was accused. As Francis X. Rocca observed in The Wall Street Journal excerpt above, “Pell considered Becciu his main opponent.” Is there something further to be deduced from this? Consider this 2020 entry from the Australia site Wrongful Convictions Report — “Cardinal Pell ... well, well, well”:

“Italian media have reported that Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, 72, is suspected of wiring 700,000 euros to recipients in Australia who helped to ensure hostile testimony in the trial of Cardinal George Pell, who was accused of molesting choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. Becciu, days after being sacked by the Pope, denies the truth of the reports.”

Consider also these further entries in Cardinal Pell’s Journal written from his prison cell:

• Friday, 2 August 2019: “The allegations behind the 2011 Rolling Stone article, published in Australia, have also been demolished as false by, among others, Ralph Cipriano’s ‘The Legacy of Billy Doe’ published in the Catalyst of the Catholic League in January-February 2019. No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations was also a fantasy or a fiction. I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause.”

• Sunday, 27 October 2019: “I finished reading a collection of articles from 23 October 2019 on the Vatican finance scandals ... [One] article mentioned Msgr Cesare Burgazzi, who worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State on the finances who became disillusioned by his discovery of a parallel bank, another IOR, and was then removed from his position through media accusations of sexual behavior which were later shown to be completely baseless. I had not heard of this.” [Emphasis added].

• Thursday, 14 November 2019: “So far, the Vatican financial scandals have not bitten as deeply, especially in Australia, but they are a scandal of incompetence exploited by criminals.... Becciu had given an interview to a journalist as he was under pressure, which is not surprising.”

• Thursday, 28 November 2019: “Cardinal Becciu furiously denounced as ‘another false article’ Ed Condon’s accurate account on the London property fiasco and of the accounting procedures which attempted to conceal it.” [Footnote: Ed Condon, “Vatican Officials: Swiss Bank Suspected of Money Laundering led to Pell Conflict,” Catholic World Report, 21 November 2019.]

• Saturday, 30 November 2019: “I am becoming more interested in trying to put together the early stages in the evolution of the charges against me. Why were the charges first ascribed to 1997 instead of 1996? When was Sunday Mass introduced as a setting for the crime? Who helped the complainant? When did the similarities with the [Rolling Stone’s] Billy Doe incidents in Philadelphia emerge?”

Cardinal Pell’s last question now haunts this story: “Is there a Rome connection?”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: I continue to feel an obligation to the late Cardinal Pell to uncover the truth of this story whenever and wherever possible. Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Excerpt: From the Prison Journal of Cardinal Pell, 2 August 2019

Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?

The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Rolling Stone

The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”